Russkii i dom

This week much of my focus has been on two things: the Russian language and the sell of my home.

These two things have occupied any free "brain" time I have had this week.

In the evenings, and sometimes early mornings, as much as I could I listened to Russian news podcasts and read articles in Russian. At lunchtime I did not eat with others but went instead to a place where there are old Russian-language magazines and newspapers and I spent my lunch time reading them. Whenever I could remember, I prayed in Russian and talked

to myself in Russian about whatever was running through my head and I even translated in my head sometimes when people were speaking.

Why all this work and craziness? I took a 2-hour language test on Friday afternoon. Part of it was speaking and part of it was reading. The test is designed to be as difficult as possible to find out where the upper limit of ability is. It was pretty tough when they wanted to get into a technical political debate with me and I that seemed to be about my limit. On the reading they only give you a couple of minutes to read passages and tell them what they are about (not necessarily translate, but describe and give context, and so forth). It was challenging and I knew it would be.

The other thing that took up some of my brain-time and time-time this week was the sell of our

home. After what seems like forever waiting for it to happen, it actually closed this week! Since we were doing it long-distance we had to sign the paperwork on our own, fax it, and send it in FedEx. We barely made it (thanks to FedEx being a few minutes late to pick up). A lot of rushing around and worry, but it is done. Thanks to our Realtor and friend for all of her help.

I also thought it was interesting that on Wednesday night we had a notary come over to certify some of the documents that required a notary and . . . . she was a Russian!

Russkii (Russian) i (and) dom (home) -- done!