making some preparations

Well, we still have a couple of weeks before we can get our final documents from our home study agency, and when they arrive we will be in Canada for a week...so we hope to send our new dossier on August 15. We still don't know for sure which region we will end up in...a total of 19 agencies have been reaccredited, but ours is not one of them. So assuming they are not reaccredited within 3 weeks, we will go with the new region.

Meanwhile, we thought we should be thinking ahead a bit and learning some Russian for the trip. Although we probably would have done a short/simple program for tourists, some friends were kind enough to pass along a longer course that they no longer needed. It is a completely "aural" course (all on CD's, listen and repeat, no book). It took us a bit to get used to it, but we are starting to catch on. We listen in the car almost every day. We have finished 20% of the course (6 out of 30 lessons) and I can already say some important stuff:

(note: I am making up my own spelling, because of course we are just learning how to say them, not write them in Cyrillic)

"Zdrastvuit-ye. Ya nimnoga goveroo parusskie. Ya Amerikanke. Ya khatchelee ba shtonyboot payeest."

"Izvineet-ye. Skazheechee puhzhalste, gjeuh shtonyboot payeest?"

Translations:

"Hello. I speak a little Russian. I am American. I would like something to eat."

"Excuse me. Tell me please, where is something to eat?"

I figure these will help me in any number of situations :)

I know that the language is starting to sink in, because I was trying to wake Rob up yesterday - "Time to get up!" - and he mumbled something at me. I said "What?" He repeated: "mozhitbweets poe-zhuh".

Translation: "Maybe later".