Peonies

Wouldn't it be nice to have your own country house with lots of luxurious fragrant peonies outside?

What does it take to become a linguist, translator and interpreter?

3 stacks of notebooks,

a stack of booklets, several folders with xerox copies (mostly German), a pile of Russian, English and German newspapers and magazines,

a shelf full of dictionaries, also an English-English and a German-German dictionary kept in the desk (not featured here)

One also has to write a paper (probably using half a hundred of cookbooks, needlework books and other how-to-make it books as material for linguistic analysis).

One has to make a speech at a students' conference - and of course to write that speech first:

An Old, Deserted House

"I think an old, deserted house is such a sad sight," said Anne dreamily. "It always seems to me to be thinking about its pastand mourning for its old-time joys. Marilla says that a large family was raised in that old house long ago, and that it was a realpretty place, with a lovely garden and roses climbing all over it. It was full of little children and laughter and songs; and now itis empty, and nothing ever wanders through it but the wind. Howlonely and sorrowful it must feel! Perhaps they all come back onmoonlit nights. . .the ghosts of the little children of long agoand the roses and the songs. . .and for a little while the oldhouse can dream it is young and joyous again."

From Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Seeing old deserted houses I always imagine the same thing Anne does.

A Castle

A Castle. Not a Glass one. A bit lopsided. Evidently inspired by documewntaries about Scottland or Wales borrowed at the British Council library.

What grows around my house (a week and a half dated)

And here comes the final one which I think the best:

I feel I can smell the roses. And the tiny creature is just great. And all so fresh and the leaves so glossy after the rain

The Sky on Sunday

What does one do when all the work is over? Contemplate the evening sky from the window listening to the birds.

Dungeon on Fire

To celebrate the end of all the problems with this livejournal (is this the right name?) - a quick post of yesterday's sky. The contents of the posts are at risk to become rather dated with all these glitches.

Flowers near the old port

Yesterday I also saw some pretty flowers. The sun was shining and it seems summer and freedom have finally come!

A glance at a Vezloma bank first

...and one more

wild vetch - мышиный горошек - Vicia cracca

The Russian name is the cutest :)

wild roses - petals falling

green green grass - all fresh and young and flooded by afternoon sunlight

Nizhny looked like this yesterday

I took these pictures yesterday on my way home after defending the paper - from a ferry deck

The Kremlin and the boat used as a restaurant

Another famous site and sight

The smallest house is the fina arts museum (with the huge Minin painting)

I found the deep long shadows particularly attractive in this view

The monastery

How it feels to really become a linguist, transalator and interpreter

Well, when you are waiting for the results for defending the paper to be announced when all the rest go to the library to return their books (I usually go there to borrow!!! - and I've already returned all the textbooks but there's a couple of novels (Novemberkatzen and the two first Little House Books) I still want to finish) you just wander around the Uni buildings visiting the nearby bookshops (the place to relieve all possible kinds of srtess either positive or negative) and taking pictures of whatever interesting you see and then almost miss the results announcement... that you got an excellent grade... and the congrats of the dean on becoming a linguist, translator and interpreter - those noble careers...

Look here to see what I saw around the Uni and on my way home



Pictures of the whole group and some other shots (e.g. my brilliant adviser and me) to follow later from Stacy's (or was it Ira V's ?) camera (mine wasn't on - the problem of sharing the only set of batteries with my NAUGHTY little sister)
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I'm having some problems uploading the photos, views of Nizhny from the ferry deck and some flowers near the port (cannot miss even the smallest one!) are to follow soon (now that Dornroeschen - the sleeping Princess is free from the 5 year's charm!:))

Last Glimpses of Spring

There's a kind of saying you can tell that spring is over when lilac blossoms are falling down. They have already fallen, except on those pink-blossoming bushes in the centre of Nizhny (Minin Square, the Philology Department of the NN Uni building etc.), which are not lilacs exactly. And here comes Apple Trees in Blossom (you can see lilacs too) by Nikolay Khokhryakov, with spring we have seen not long ago. I found this beautiful postcard in a bookshop a couple of days ago, when the pink-blossoming bushes were still blooming and it did not look like summer with that could wet wind and rain though lilac blossoms had already fallen.

P.S. Why are students always to have exams at the end of May - the beginning of June? It's the most beautiful time of the year when the days are lond and are growing even longer and you feel that the whole summer is ahead and do not yet have that somewhat bitter feeling that time is slipping away ?

About Pandas

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sanwich, eats it , then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," ha says, at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

From Eats, Shoots and Leaves, the book I'm reading now. Or rather reading some random excerpts (first at the back, then in the middle then somewhere between the back and the middle - I might eventually read the beginning!).I seem to never have time to read a book properly.
Quite entertaining. Especially that we never seem to have never been taught English punctuation at the University.

The panda on the shelf came to live with me from Beijing.

And here's the panda I saw at Panda Park in Beijing this March. 11 in the morning is an early hour for pandas, and most of them were still asleep inside.

A Good Recipe

One more post to do with my sorting the books and papers. When listing books in the bibliograph for the paper I realized how many good books on coooking, needlework and the like I have - and I was using them not for any practical purposes but for analysing modality! I hope I have more time to cook and knit now that the paper is finished at last.



This one is a very good salad recipe (haven't made it for ages). I made it once for my 17th Birthday and then for the cooking contest in the group in the 1st year and both times it was a grat success!

A Collage Made of the Things I Used to Keep in my Commercial Translation Book

I had to return it to the library and these are the things I had to take out.
Indeed, being about to leave the Uni I feel very much like what Anne says about leaving the place where you might have felt very different at different times...

The quotations on the advertisement cards are from Persuasion by Jane Austen,

the quotation on the maple leaf - from The French Lieutenat's Woman by John Fowles (the book I never finished because I had to return it to the library and never borrowed it again having little time and other interests in something else)/ By the way (and it only occurs to me now!!!), Fowles quotes Persuasion at least twice in this book and events described in both books take place in Lyme Regis! (Hence Fowles's mentioning Persuasion in The FLW)

Umweltfreundlich

Heute raume ich in meinem Zimmer auf und dieses Bild habe ich gefunden. Im 4. Stuienjahr hatten wir Umweltschutz mit Stefan, und er hat gesagt, dass das Bild sehr umweltschutzfreundlich aussah und sogar dass ich das Haus ganz scoen gezeichnet hatte!

A Garden Life Miniature

To have something brighter to treat the eye after the two black-and-white drawings. Done with coloured oil pastels (not professional, kid's stuff apparently but all my drawings are a bit of children's style anyway)

So Hot and Stuffy...

...that you cannot do without a fan, especially when finishing up your paper.

No wonder if we have a storm after all this.

Lady in the Garden or What is Outside?

One more drawing of 2 years, a lady in the garden walking towards the gate. Nothing can be seen outside, however. What could be there? I cannot see it clearly. The inside is evidently more interesting, but has been left unfinished too.