David-tp7

6/11/2012

Today I was supposed to be having a joint tutoring session with Ladji and Alena because they have a couple of the same classes.  I got to the library and grabbed my ritual Starbucks coffee.  While ordering my traditional iced coffee and coffee cake (which I have eaten since I was a kid) the waitress proceeded to make my drink.  As she poured my soy milk in my drink (I don't eat or drink dairy because of lactose intolerance) she noticed the soy milk was bad.  She made me another drink from a different (the last) container of soy milk and noticed that this one was bad as well.  She then offered me the drink saying this one should still be drinkable.  I say no way no thank you ma'am and she remade my drink without soy milk because now they were out.  I turned around and walked to a near by booth to drink my coffee when Alena showed up and went ahead and got herself a coffee as well.

While we sat we made small talk waiting for Ladji.  After about 15 minutes we decided to call him and he was sleeping so he clearly wasn't going to make it.  We decided then to go ahead and complete the session without him.  I took a look at a small essay that she had prepared for class and we went over the mistakes in it.  After that I told her I wanted her to reteach me the Russian alphabet.  She was so happy that I wanted to learn and could not wait to show me how.  It had been so long since I had looked at the Russian alphabet that I did not remember a letter so I knew this was going to be hard.  I really wanted to do this so she could say that she got to give me something too and so that she could be the teacher for once.  Letter by letter we went through the Russian alphabet and some history about it.  I told her that I thought that many of the letters looked like they were borrowed from Greek.  She confirmed my suspicions and told me about the founding of the Russian alphabet.  Apparently they can pin point the origin to two people who collaborated to make the alphabet.  I told her I did not have a clue who was responsible for ours and we continued.

After we went through the alphabet she gave me a vocabulary word that started with each of the letters and then asked me how to spell it in Russian.  Russian has some similar sounds compared to English but a few that are very different.  So I began practicing with the new alphabet immediately and using it.  Before I knew I was reading, spelling, speaking, and writing in Russian.  What an amazing lesson this was to me not to mention she showed me some techniques that I want to use in my English teaching.  The ending of this lesson was bitter sweet because she is to leave Friday and we will only get to see each other once more.  She and my family have become good friends and are already making plans to see each other again soon.