Principles of Grammar for Students of Slavonic Languages: Progress Test

[mothwing]

That is the most boring class in the entire universe. Usually, we compared grammatical constructions and peculiarities in Polish, Russian and Czech. This might have been fun with a more sound knowledge of either of the three, but was useless for us who only started studying Russian in September.
It is also taught by Dr. Dunn, who is an expert on Russian Media and... well, he just does not seem to be a language teacher. This class was interesting in parts for me, because I have taken Linguistics courses before, but for most of the people there, who wonder about what cases are, it was just useless.

Today was the final exam in that course. Seeing him walk in with those scary mauve answer booklets alone gave me the creeps. But we needn't really have worried:

"Explain, with examples chosen from the language you are studying, why Slavonic languages are particularly difficult to learn for speakers of English."

Mwehehehe. I really should not have despaired with the didactic means of the man, teacher of the most boring class in the entire Uni. This is a topic really every student can relate to easily, and it gives them room to vent about why Russian is so terribly hard. Well done, Dr Dunn! There were other questions, but we could choose between that one and two of the other four.

Strangely, even that seemed to be rather hard for one or two of the guys ("What on earth is an accusative?" - "Were we supposed to learn the names of all the cases? Oh no!!").

Apart from that, how about a few pictures? 

These are a bit random, like this one:

Shores.

From easter - dying eggs - and sadly not much beyond, although my plans for colourful eggs were grander. 


My current wallpaper


Boiling water. 


Staircase in the Hunterian Art Gallery which Photobucket resized. Thanks, PhotoBucket!! Grrr. I really have to see if Flickr allows this kind of insertion, too...

... but there are always flowers:

And some flowers...

Since I am lazy and did not manage to prepare anything, I'll have to miss the final session of my creative writing group... or do I go anyway...? To be entirely honest, I'd much rather go home and cook something, but then, maybe I will regret it later, because it is the last session and everything, and I may regret it later on if I do not go, and and and... but I have nothing to contribute, and it is somehow not really fruitful to just sit there. I can always comment on the amazing poem and short story the other guys wrote by mail. Sigh. I will miss these meetings, though.

We need a Creative Writing Society in Hamburg. AND a Photography Society. 

Guys?  

Comments

[rizardofoz.livejournal.com]

Flickr is much better and they don't resize the images like photobucket is wont to do recently. The only downside is that you have a limited amount of pictures you can upload a month.

Love the egg picture, by the way!

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I know it is, but does it allow you to use those direct-link-thingies (watch me using impressive technical terms) like PhotoBucket does? I was looking for it just now, but somehow, I couldn't find it, I'll go and look some more, though.

Thanks! :)

[rizardofoz.livejournal.com]

I've linked photos from flickr onto my LJ. My Default concert photos gave me a ton of grief on photobucket, so I used flickr instead and had NO diffuculties.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's great. That's what I'll do in the future, then. Thanks for the tip. :)

[lordhellebore]

The flowers are prettyyyyy!!! Also, for some reason I love the safety pin at the shore. And the egg - the colour is beautiful.

Creative Writing? Yessss!!! Photos? Yessss! Remember first semester? The literature thingy we tried (and dropped? *shame on us"*) Let's do something more serious? ;)

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :)

Oh, I love Shores, although I felt sooo stupid for taking that picture, I can tell you - Sunday morning, no one there but me and a few guys who thought I was drunk because I first was leaning over the flowerbed in front of the Music department to take pictures of the Croci there, and then in the gutter because of the pin. It does look like a boat heading for a shore, doesn't it?

Yeah, of course I remember! Hey, good to know you're that enthusiastic about it! Let's hope I retain part of my enthusiasm, too, enough to actually get some writing done for a change, that is. :D Usually I just fret, write, fret, throw away, fret, rescue from the bin, fret and edit at the moment. Oh, and then I fret. :p

Hmm... maybe we can combine CW and photos? The... Media Society? :P

[lordhellebore]

Usually I just fret, write, fret, throw away, fret, rescue from the bin, fret and edit at the moment. Oh, and then I fret.

Um - ditto? *lol* I'm all enthusiastic in theory, you know. Theory.

[count-tygath.livejournal.com]

Hey, thx for sharing the pics. :)

Whee, I was actually there when no. 3 and 5 were taken. :D

Apart from that I particularly love no. 9, 11, and 13 from above. Veeery beautiful. Where are these from?

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Oh, the flower pics were all taken in the greenhouses of the Botanical gardens here in Glasgow. THE place to go for beautiful plants and grumpy gardeners.

Yep, you were. :) I still have to upload the pics to Bugbitten, but since these computers only allow me to upload around... 3 pics on that site at a time, I'll need reeeeeally a lot of time for that. :)

[moonystone.livejournal.com]

Media society? I'm in! I'm still crap at writing, but I do love taking pictures.

I didn't know you where such a great photographer, I really like these. The safety pin/shore thing is beautiful, and the colour of the egg is just breathtaking. Oh, and I love the plant pics, too. The leaves with water are my favourites.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Great, that means we're three already. Whee!

I'm crap at writing, too, but let's pretend we're not. >D

Thanks for liking the pics. :) I guess it all depends on the camera, really. I used to take fairly crappy pictures without the digicam, but with this wonderful thing, it is absolutely impossible to take bad pictures.

It's the colours. Usually, when they processed my non-digital pictures, the guys do awful things to the colours, and since it is really easy to completely mess up the colours, they usually do. It's really amazing.
My father has a scanner with which you can scan the negatives of non-digital pictures, and the difference between the colours in the digitalised version and the paper version is just stupendous. That's why the egg up there is so red, the praise goes to my camera alone. :D