A definition of the term “Failure”

Nothing much to tell this week, I’m afraid. Nothing more than a whole lot of unsuccessful attempts.

I’ll start with our failure on Sunday. This weekend a major Film festival took place here in Moscow and we thought it might be fun to go and see one of those old famous films in a major Moscow cinema, not understanding anything of what was said, but afterwards feeling very proud of ourselves because of the new experience. Then, another great idea of our German friend: “Let’s walk there, it’s only 1 metro station, so it can’t be far”. Now, that’s not exactly the right attitude in a metropolis such as Moscow, but rather suicide. Anyway, no problem for myself and the red shoes (it’s still around 20 degrees here, so I’m actually running out of shoes and tops, as I only brought boots and warm sweaters) (Also, may I hereby ask a moment of silence in honour of the red shoes… they are currently ‘walking’ their last days). So, obviously, we arrived late and all tickets were sold out. Conclusion: Belgium 0 – Germany 1.

The next day, after class, we decided to have another one of those cultural afternoons, we were determined to pay the deceased Lev Tolstoj (God bless the fellow!) a visit. A bit of background information first: the second week we were here the boys also had one of those brilliant flashes of intuition. Conclusion: all museum are closed on Monday. The week after that I thought I’d try the well-known feminine intuition. I should have known better after all these years; the museum closes at 16.00. And still we were determined not to give in to Lev’s obduracy, so on Monday we went again. Indeed, you can already guess…MUSEUMS ARE CLOSED ON MONDAYS!!!!! I believe Lev’s angry with us for never having read one of his way too long novels. Or another theory would be that we’re just Moscow’s worst idiots… Anyway, conclusion: Belgium 1 – Germany 1.

Ready for another disappointment? Here we go… On Wednesday our Russian professor from Belgium (Greta for the mates) arrived in Moscow and paid us a short visit. And so I started talking about my thesis plans; good idea to ruin my day, that was. The answer: “Legal translation is not one of my many specialties, so I can’t possibly be your assessor and OH, by the way, the guidelines for the Master thesis have just changed (a pity no one else knows about this yet) and you are now obliged to do linguistic research based on Translation science”. Can it get more boring??? I had been thinking about my topic for so long and I it was really what I wanted to do. But no, forget about it Sarah, a shame though of all the time and effort you’ve put into it, and those books you just bought are now useful for Russian bonfires; just start all over again, will you my dear? Anyway, I’ll keep you posted on the theory behind the act of translating legal texts. HA, I’m sure I’ve just lost at least half of my blog readers…

But hold on, another fiasco is yet to come. On Wednesday I discovered that on Thursdays I’ll have class from 9.35 till 18.00 – in total 50 minutes break to eat and take my linen to the local laundry. I already started reading the Russian Constitution, because I’m sure somewhere it’ll say that such a things are inhumane and thus illegal and thus forbidden and thus not to be done to me!!! But that’s not even the fiasco I was talking about. So on Thursday I got up at 8 am (which is way too early for an exemplary student as myself, who studies until 3.00 in the morning) and made my way up to University. I was 15 minutes early because I wanted to check in which auditorium the class would be given. Unfortunately for me our dearest Alla (not the one that is big and everywhere, but the head of international affairs at Uni – actually also everywhere as she seems to follow our every move) seemed to have forgotten her glasses that day, as class only started at 11.25 (well, the one I needed to attend; don’t worry, I now have another class to go to at 9.35). No worries what so ever; considering my morning mood is of excellent quality, I didn’t even dare to be angry with the poor woman. So I thought this was a good time to find out where I can follow the other courses, for which I need equivalents. And yes yes, I think I’ve found everything, so that in the second semester I’ll only have to be at school 8 hours a week. So, all happy about my achievement I went to room 302 where, according to the nicely written timetables, class would be. Hmm..No one arrived, Hmm...it was an office in stead of an auditorium. Hmmmm… Eventually I then found out that the main University building has an A-department and a B-department and I thus was waiting in the wrong department. So yes, classes seem to get more and more interesting every day around here…Conclusion: We have a newcomer; Belgium 1 – Germany 1 – Russia 1.

More exciting news? Not really, sorry to have to disappoint you. In the evenings I usually study or watch a film (Pirates of the Caribbean in Russian, how wrong can it get? Even worse, Orlando dubbed? That’s clearly rape!). May I notice that this always happens after a delicious meal à la Cedric-Yves-Sarah (Oh how we make our mothers proud and how we make the others jealous of our mothers). Oh oh, a bit of excitement maybe; this week 2 more Belgian (we Belgians are so well represented out here) girls arrived and one of them has the honour of having the same surname as myself, VANDECRUYS, and also has a lot of family in Yellow-town (Geel for the Belgians). Isn’t the world small???

We do, however, have some rather exciting future plans. Firstly, on Sunday me and the German girls are going on an excursion to Vladimir. This trip will be arranged by the University and is thus a good opportunity to meet new people, practice my Russian and see more than alone Moscow. Pictures will follow! We are also going to see the ever so famous ballet “The Swan Lake” from Tchaikovsky at the even more famous Bolshoy Theater. Tickets will be rather expensive but while in Moscow this is something we must do. Another, rather/very vague plan is to jump on a train and go to Siberia, The Balkaj lake, for a week (Well, actually 13 days as 6 of those days will be spent on the train). Again, very expensive and we don’t really know if we will be allowed to skip 2 weeks at Uni, but again an opportunity I need to seize. Long live Sarah’s emancipation!

One last conclusion: “Failure” is a spreading disease…