Spanglorusskikonglish

I leave for Russia in ONE WEEK. I should really be brushing up on my Russian. I spent seven months in Russia back in 2000, and I majored in Russian (well, double major in Russian and PolySci, actually) at Sewanee, but I graduated back in 2001. Since my graduation, I have spent a total of seven months (not continuous) in South Korea, two months in Costa Rica, and a little over two years living ten minutes from the border with Mexico, in a heavily-Hispanic city. I've reached the conclusion that I now speak the rarest of all rare and useless languages: Spanglorusskikonglish. I can picture it now. Skazhite, please, odiessayo la kvartira de Alexei? Sigh. 

I would like to say that I spent my day actually doing something useful (so as to explain why I haven't so much as cracked a Russian book), but alas, the most useful thing I've done is go to Wal-Mart to purchase slippers. (In Russia, you take off your shoes at the door, and wear slippers, called tapachki, around your home. Most people keep an extra supply of tapachki near their door. When you visit someone, be sure to remove your shoes and to utilize the spare tapachki. While I'm sure I'll be able to find better tapachki in Russia, we were instructed to bring two pairs - one for home and one for work - and so I have.) It's simply hard to focus on the the fact that I'll be leaving for Russia on August 10th when A. is coming to visit on August 5th!