До свидания!

No more Russian! 

No more translations to hand in by Friday, 4pm. 
No more last-minute printing in the library and running into people up in the Hetherington Building who had been handing in their homework just on time, as well. 
No more racking my brain and online dictionaries in search for obscure phrases and words no one apparently ever uses apart from the people writing learner's text books. 
No more leafing through the back pages of my coffee-stained Russian book, battered and old-looking as no book in my possession does, in search for a word. 
No more sitting in the back row with the three guys and the four guyettes which made this course as great, no more running into Kirsi. 
No more hanging around in front of the Hetherington Building for hours on end after the course with my two favourite smokers in this place.
No more stupid assignment which are actually doing the opposite from what they are supposed to do from a didactic point of view. 
No more attempts at motivating us from our darling teacher. 
No more grammar lessons!
No more lessons with Ms Terijezo.
No more progress tests "with a little help". 
No more getting our work back. 
No more reading Russian texts in a group.

No more Russian.  

I am not quite sure about how I feel about that. 

Sad, sure, but after this horrible exam, I am also partly glad. 
Well, more than just partly, I can tell you. Our darling teacher (that is no sarcasm, she is really awesome) had told us we would get a sheet with the words we don't know yet in the text. Well, there were plenty of words I for my part had never seen before, so either they were all in that one translation I did not submit (unlikely), or we just hadn't, which sounds far more likely, since the others did not seem to know any of those, either. 

It was really sad to see my wonderful Russian class for the last time, I had really come to love these guys. Most of them are going home for summer, sadly, and I didn't think about taking pictures of the guys until after the exam, when everybody was already gone. 

Boy, that was hard. The mock exams we had were absolutely nothing compared to this on, they were all fairly easy, this one had had least two constructions in them I was quite convinced we are not even supposed to know yet. Not sure I got them all right... Ah, well, can't be changed, now. I didn't quite finish with writing in ink the answers I had not been quite so sure about. Stupid as I am, I had them in pencil, and I guess that means I will not receive any marks for those answers. Which sucks. But then, maybe it's better, because who knows what kind of nonsense I came up with in those parts?

There was a whole passage which looked somewhat like this in my first version:  "Being the son of a _______ (fisherman??), he was not ____________ (with) to (?) hard work and thus ___________ so that he could (?!) ____________ with ________________. He went to Moscow and during that time he was able to __________ with lots of ____________ ."

Terrible, I can tell you. And I know I would have known the words, had we had them. I mean, yes, there were words I keep and keep forgetting, but these were none of those. Ah, well, we'll see. 

There is still the remote possibility that we were supposed to get a sheet with extra vocabulary but accidentally just weren't given. Or something. Well, not that likely, I know. 

And now? 

University over and the gigantic emptiness of two month ahead. Holidays as yet free of any preparations and obligations, except for seeing as much of this lovely island as possible while I still have the chance and time. 
And then? 
Applications for courses, again, online and offline, facing the uni life at home, again, missing so many of the people and teachers here, missing Crocky, academic half-life in the daze which hangs over our faculty at home... I want to stay heeeeeeeeeeeere.