What did you say?

Russian is an incredibly difficult language to learn. The Cyrillic alphabet bears no resemblance to English language characters or the sounds they represent. So, unlike other languages, like Spanish or French, where you can kind of guess what the road sign means or what the menu says, we will not have that luxury in Russia. 

We have the Rosetta Stone computer program to learn Russian and have been learning a little. It has been difficult, but it should provide a base for us to take to Russia and continue to learn and build upon. Also, worked into Mark’s contract with the Organizing Committee, there is an allowance for language courses to help ease the transition. We plan on taking full advantage of this allowance.

When we moved to the Middle East, we had every intention of learning Arabic. However, due to the nature of the “business world” in Qatar, and the fact that nearly everyone spoke English, we were never really “forced” to learn Arabic. It’s unfortunate that opportunity wasn’t embraced and taken advantage of. This time, it will be more difficult to get by with day-to-day living without learning at least the basics in Russian. Mark will most likely struggle more than Danielle. Throughout our travels, Danielle has always been better at picking up words and phrases and she is great at using a phrase book or language guide. Mark always struggled in each new country they visited. However, Danielle struggled with people speaking English with a thick accent. Mark always had to “translate” the English (in thick accents) for Danielle. So, as usual, Mark and Danielle make a great team. Mark can not speak other languages and Danielle can. Danielle can not understand English and Mark can :)