A week to go, just a quick update

As I am writing this, I've less than a week in Russia proper. This time next week I will be flying somewhere over the atlantic. This week is already more than half over, and things are starting to wind down in earnest now. Today we went on a pretty casual boatride down the river to the edge of the lake, did a nice lazy turn around and road back. It was a nice change from our normal type of mini-trip which involves rigid scheduling and tours. There was no guide, no narration, we just got to enjoy the scenery and the surroundings of a nice pleasant afternoon. I was actually a little unhappy about the prospect of the boatride because I was expecting to be assaulted with information the entire time, but it turned out to be a nice little relaxing afternoon.

I've only 3 classes of Russian Language and 2 classes of history left now. I feel like I've learned a ton in both classes actually, to this point. While I've got a lot of grammar and vocabular to learn still, of course, I do actually feel like I'm getting a feel for the language, which isn't exactly a concrete achievement, but maybe I can explain it better by saying I'm starting to have a slightly more intuitive feel for learning, even though my actual body of knowledge is a long way from fluent. Hopefully it means my time here will mean I've not only gotten better at speaking and understanding the language, but better at learning it, which is probably at least as important in itself.

Thats all for now.