If you are wondering where Russian found me, you should look to a basement at Beloit College. This basement housed classes in many languages, but I spent most of my early time there on Ancient Greek, which I was sure I wanted to continue through college. It’s one goofy language. But that first year, I didn’t get the intro geology class that I wanted, and the only thing that would fit my schedule was Russian. So I studied Russian and Ancient Greek in the basement.

In comparison to Ancient Greek, beginning Russian is really boring.

You cover the Greek alphabet in less than a week, and a few weeks later you have all the cases memorized. In Russian, we didn’t learn the instrumental case until second semester. “To be” couldn’t even try to be irregular, as it is in almost all languages, because it doesn’t even exist in the present tense! Russian was a breeze.

Of course, you have to speak Russian. And that’s what kept me at it. I love oral expression. In that basement, it felt just wonderful to be able to say “У меня все хорошо!” And then my teacher would ask, “Почему?” and I’d say, “Потому что идет дождь.” I just love that in Russian rain walks.

In comparison, in Greek we got to read about crumple horned cattle and Thycidides. Now who is ever going to use the word for crumple horned in Ancient Greek? Really, who?

So Russian won out. And I went to Russia, where the snow also walks, and people say so. It’s a beautiful place.