The ToDay

Ah, this is much nicer.
I realise that because I have made my Russian blog private you cannot see anything if you try to follow the link. I will change the settings. I guess you are only interested if you are one of my few friends that speak Russian. The reason I made it private is that I don't completely understand livejournal very well, and I don't want the whole world to read my silly grammar mistakes.

As I was sitting on a bench outside of the Memorial Union on campus today, I heard someone mention the words Europe, Spain, the Soviet Union and Volga. When I also heard them saying "they live in silty sand" i thought, hmm..ecologist...(or siol scientist, but I didn't think that at the time) I wonder if he is Russian. So I asked the one with the accent if he was Russian, in Russian! :D He was. and when I said I was Norwegian - still in Russian, he sat down and talked to me for 10 minutes. It was very cool indeed, and he spoke slowly so I could understand. Bless... I don't understand a whole lot, but I am getting there.... homework every day of the week. Right now we are doing characteristics of people and clothes and such. Last week was the kitchen (kyxna) and the like. My teacher is great, but she speaks very quick. Someone told me once that people from Moscow speaks faster than other Russians... I wouldn't be surprised!!!

Later this afternoon, after having been home and started the dinner (red cabbage, onion and turnips, plus olive oil, salt and tiny bit of balsamico vinegar = you will be popular and it is dead easy, but don't make that the main dish!) I biked to the Engineering department to see my professor. Professor Lund actually lived in Lund (Sweden) for a year or two. He must be one of my top 3 professors ever. It is a graduate class, and therefore quite advanced. I am an undergrad, i.e. not that advanced. He still let me take the class, as it is actually less technical than undergraduate engineering classes (they need to learn the nitty-gritty details; we are supposed to know them already). Another plus is that I am European, and that in itself means that you most likely will be ahead of American students. I apologise if this sounds arrogant, but in my first year in England we already wrote papers and did research like you don't get to do here in most cases at least until your last year of undergraduate study. So, I chose to be arrogant. Point being, anyhow, that I am in this class that is Oh, so challenging, but very interesting. Water Resource Management is maybe not something I would like to do for the rest of my life, but it is a very important feature all over the world. Learning about Californian and US (water) history is fascinating. They even used hydraulics to flush away mountains to find gold in the late 19th century - and thus destroyed and eroded incomprehensible amounts of soil, but oh, well, at least they got rich (and moved on and did it again other places). Please hear the sarcasm. I'll get to the point. I went to see Professor Lund today because we are supposed to write a paper (there is no exam, just 2 assignments; a 5 minutes presentation of a Californian Water Plan (mine is form 1919) and a water management modeling assignment that is tricky, and a paper due in December. I.e in a month from now. I am very bad at writing outlines, and I felt very very lost. So I went to see him at his office, outside which he has a picture of Küngen and he welcomes you with a sign of Lunds Tekniska Vattenressurslära It is funny, I promise. (It is as if he IS the institute, if you get me) However, I think I am the only one who get the joke. Oh, another thing about that class is that it consists of 3 Americans and the rest are from Iran, Hong Kong, Brazil, Mexico, Italy, Norway, South Korea and... another country.
I don't seem to get to the point; As I was sitting waiting for Professor Lund to come from his meeting, I opened the notebook I had brought with me. The Barcelonian notebook I got from Mariel when she and the boys had been in Barcelona. And I read what she wrote to me. I miss Mariel a lot, and it was very special to read it today. Those words still mean the same, they are still true and inspiring when I read them. I don't manage to write even half as much as I would like to. There is simply not enough time in a day. But one day....