Russian Characters in Orange Is The New Black Posted by Maria on Jun 23, 2014
If you are watched at least one episode of Orange Is the New Black, you will have seen its Russian characters. For those who don’t know, Orange Is the new Black (OITBN) is the highly successful Netflix original series (сериал) set in a women’s prison. I’ll try not to spoil too much for those who…
Ten Things an American Takes for Granted and a Russian Lives Without Posted by Jenya on Jun 18, 2014
We are so used to all the things we surround ourselves with, we tend not to recognize the comfort level they help us achieve, that is until we are placed in a situation where those things are no longer available. The opposite is also true: if we never had certain things to begin with…
Unexpected Discoveries After Moving to Moscow (Part 2) Posted by Maria on Jun 16, 2014
This post is continued from last week’s post. Read the beginning here. 3. Being Moscow-born matters One of the things you will sometimes hear said with pride around Moscow is “Я коренной москвич/Я коренная москвичка” (I’m a native Muscovite: male/female). Коренной comes from the word корень (root). In other words, “My roots are here.” Interestingly…
Unexpected Discoveries After Moving to Moscow (Part 1) Posted by Maria on Jun 12, 2014
This is part one of a two-part post. Click here to read part two. As you may know from my introduction, I was born in the city of Chelyabinsk (Челябинск) — to quote Lorde, “we live in cities you’ll never see on screen.” In high school, I moved to Moscow. I was fairly anxious about…
Quiz: How Good Is Your Russian? Posted by Jenya on Jun 11, 2014
Behold boys and girls, in this post you will be quizzed on your knowledge of Russian. Driven by the addictive nature of quizzes and a desire to freshen things up a bit for our readers, I decided to come up with my own quiz. The quiz is not long but I believe it is pretty…
Russian Etiquette 3D Posted by Maria on Jun 5, 2014
Those of you who have visited Russia may remember your friends or study abroad advisor tell you about the peculiarities of your host culture. Perhaps they touched upon the etiquette and body language, as well. Still, we tend concentrate so much on the proper thing to say or do that we often overlook spatial awareness…
Apps with Russian Origins Posted by Jenya on Jun 4, 2014
If you have a smartphone, and statistics show that 22% of the world’s population does (1), then you likely have downloaded an app or two or ten. What you may be surprised to know is that some of the most successful apps were created by people from Russia or countries that used to be a part of the…