Russian course

I am taking a Russian course at the university. For one, because it helps me to get into the election observer team of the foreign ministry. They see Russian as a huge asset and since I was not let in last time, I hope this helps and hearing from the ministry it hopefully will. Secondly, I would like to be able to understand, read and even speak a little the next time I am in Russia or the Ukraine. I know some very basic words and can read very little, but I hope this will change and for sure improve after a couple of weeks. The course is till December, so I still have a couple of months to learn it all, but it is much harder than I hoped and expected. For the writing I know mostly the print-letters and we use also the handwriting letters and it gets me confused quite a lot.

In the course some people take it because they have some free time, some need a language for their studies or have to fill up some free space in their curricullum and some have a girlfriend who speaks Russian. It is mostly men in the course though. Strange... :-)