Learning a second language is HARD, especially when that language is Russian.

The alphabet, pronunciation, cases, verbs of motion, and don’t even get me started on genitive plural.

When studying at Carleton, speaking Russian is generally limited to conversations with my fellow classmates where their American accents make it easier for me to understand. In addition, its a lot less anxiety inducing knowing they are also not fluent speakers and make mistakes.

However, practice makes perfect and talking with actual Russian speakers is absolutely necessary when actually living in Russia. Who would have guessed! Therefore, for one of our first assignments, we were assigned the task of striking up a conversation with a Russian stranger in one of Moscow’s neighborhoods.

This assignment served two purposes; to practice our speaking skills and to explore the city outside of central Moscow.

In preparation, we read Lisa Dickeys book, Bears in the Streets. In this novel, an American women travels throughout Russia, documenting the people she meets over the span of three visits in thirty years, each visit ten years apart. Throughout her journey, she meets and interviews complete strangers and documents their lives in order to show how Russia’s changing political and social status over time has affected them.

So, if this woman was able to get countless of Russians to talk to her and even invite her to their homes, would we be able to get a Russian stranger  to answer a few questions about their neighborhood?

The answer is no.

Turns out we grossly miscalculated the difficulty of this task.

Now, to be clear, it IS possible to talk to random Russian strangers. Since this assignment, I have had multiple encounters with strangers when out and about ranging from conversation topics about my passport in a cafe to different types of shampoo in the grocery store. Additionally, other students were able to accomplish this task easily.  So, where did we go wrong?

Well, it all started on a very rainy Sunday afternoon. To give you an accurate depiction of how rainy it was, please see the below.

After a lengthy metro ride, we arrived at Izmailovksy. Izmailovsky is truly a beautiful neighborhood. It has an amazing park which many people stroll through, even on this extremely rainy day tons of people were there. It is filled with small cafes, stores, and apartment buildings. In addition, it has a great indoor flea market where you can buy lots of cheap goods!

 

We figured our best bet would be to stroll through the park where the conversations would just happen naturally.

Wrong.

Here are a few of our attempted conversation starters:

” Do you have a minute to talk about this neighborhood?”

“What kind of bird is that?”

“Hello we are Americans and we were wondering if you have a minute to talk?”

“Hello”

*Just a very long stare hoping they will strike up a conversation*

In all of these cases, we were shut down and kinda feeling a little defeated. Lisa Dickey, how DID you do it?!

After our attempts, we headed to the indoor flea market to hopefully get a few words from a vendor. Ian decided to buy some tea from a kind gentleman and afterwards asked him his thoughts about the neighborhood in which he told us that it “was a great place to live.” He had other customers and did not really have time to talk so we figured it was better than nothing.

Overall, I would not call this a failed assignment only because it did manage to teach me some things. It also gave me more respect for all those second language learners who are able to integrate into different countries and make friends with locals because it is definitely not just a “walk in the park” (pun intended).