It Turns Out, You Can Go Home Again

I remarked on Facebook a couple of weeks ago that I had the first phone conversation with my host brother that ended with “я понял” which means “I understood”. This was a huge step for me living in the family’s house for three months and after one year finally getting an affirmation that my Russian was at least good enough for him to understand. In that conversation I was only asking to come visit for the day, but in reality it was so much more. To finally have a conversation with someone where you feel you can communicate is such a personal hurdle that you may not appreciate if you aren’t actively trying to learn a new language. Rewind now to last October when I visited my host family Tanya, Pavil, and Vera for the first time since training where I would get the first real life assessment of my language skills. Since immersion is my method of picking up a language it is very difficult to truly asses the advancements (or the declination) of how much I actually know the language. As I sat at the dinner table with the family who saw me go from not knowing one word to actually being able to carry on a basic conversation, I thought they would be the best people to realistically tell if my Russian had improved, declined, or stayed the same. (of course I hoped for latter, dreamed of the first, and prayed against the second). And as we sat at the dinner table six months ago my host mom, Tanya, leaned over and said, “your Russian is not very good”. I was dejected and wondered if it was really as bad as she said. Now, I know that I am lucky in that my counterpart speaks English, so my practice in speaking Russian is actually limited, since her will to improve her English is stronger than my will to improve Russian. Nonetheless, as I visit my host family for the first time since October, I hope that my Russian has at least improved to where I can carry on a (slightly more complicated than basic) conversation and answer simple questions. If you don’t speak a foreign language, you may not be able to fully appreciate the difficulty that comes along with the learning process. After a year (although I am improving) I still have problems with numbers, for example. You would think, at least I would have thought, that numbers are basic. One through twenty- how hard is that? However when you have numbers that sound so much alike when they are spoken quickly, it can be a real challenge. Dva [2], dyevet [9], dyeset [10], dvanadset [12], and dvadset [20] all sound the same to me when spoken. To the point that I usually give the people the wrong money frequently and have to be asked for more (they ask for dvadset [20] and I give them dyevet [9], for example). Since October, this is my first time “home” and I was interested, if not a little worried, to hear the answer to the question “has my Russian improved?” Either way, I suppose I was prepared to hear the verdict.

I took the train into Kiev on Saturday morning and after some brief delays finally made it to the buses that would take me to Chernigov. As I walked in through the gate the first person I saw was Sasha standing in the walkway with a sly smile- one, that to this day I find it impossible to decode. I can’t tell if he is smiling in a “good to see you after all this time” kind of way, or if he is mentally saying “son, that hair has got to go and while you’re at it lose the sneakers, shave, and for Christ sakes get rid of that backpack” kind of way [either way is entirely possible]. Next was Tanya, who was able to slow her speech down enough for me to understand everything she said. Maybe after the last time she realized that if there was any chance of us really communicating, she would have to bend a little if it was going to work. Over the course of the next two days every time I told her I did not understand something she would rephrase is and in all but two times…it worked! We were doing it. She was asking about my life and I was answering about it (and vice versa). I was relaxed and as my weekend was coming to a close I asked, “do you think my Russian is better today than the last time I visited”? To which she responded with a big smile “of course it is better”! The smile on my face was bigger after hearing this.
I had a great visit, language assessment aside. I am so happy to have this family in my life who took me into their home sight unseen just over a year ago and are so interested in the goings on in my life on every level. It is people like Tanya, Sasha, Pavil, Vera, and Maxim that make my experience here so special…and dare I say life changing.