Счастливых праздников! Taking leave...

Having ourselves a modest little Christmas

As the year draws to a close, it's time to step back and look at how things have transpired over the past fifty-two weeks. And all things considered, it hasn't been a bad year. We ended a successful and enjoyable two-year tour in Shanghai and returned to the familiar confines of Falls Church via Bremerton, Washington. During the year I was able to witness several volcanic eruptions up close (on Sakurajima 桜島 in Kagoshima 鹿児島 during the Lunar New Year), and realized two long-held travel ambitions: to finally visit Thailand (which we did in June) and to drive across the U.S. (accomplished at the end of August and into early September, taking in Yellowstone National Park, Mt. Rushmore, a Cubs game at Wrigley Field and Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater en route). Most importantly, everyone here is in good health, and hopefully will remain so for a long time to come (knock on wood). Sure, there was the unpleasant surprise of having been unceremoniously pulled out of Lithuanian and placed instead in Russian, a language I never had an interest in learning and have struggled to master on a basic level since Labor Day. Still, I have made progress and am probably where I should be at this point in my studies, so I'm confident I'll eventually pass the final hurdle obstacle exam, and move to Vilnius as scheduled in early May of next year. 

Lithuania may have been part of the Soviet Union, but culturally it isn't Russian. Which is why I chose not to take part in the Christmas festivities organized by the Russian section last Friday. Instead, after a morning of listening to how form sentences in Russian using the present progressive tense, I rode the shuttle to the main State Department building, then took a walk along part of the Mall, passing the World War II Memorial and the Washington Monument, to the Freer Gallery of Art, next to the Smithsonian Castle. The Freer and the adjoining Arthur M. Sackler galleries house an impressive collection of Asian art, and I've visited several times. However, the Freer Gallery will be closed for renovations from January 4, and will not reopen until sometime after 2017 (the Stackler Gallery will remain open during that time, however). With time running out, last Friday afternoon seemed a good opportunity to check out the Freer's Japanese collection one last time. The current exhibitions, Bold and Beautiful: Rinpa in Japanese Art and Bold and Beautiful: Rinpa Screens, are centered around works of art from the Rinpa 琳派 school of Japanese painting. These exhibits are tied in with the ongoing Sōtatsu: Making Waves exhibition downstairs at the Stackler, which my family and I visited on Veterans Day. Seeing the various ceramics, paintings and screens on display (and using the time to better appreciate Sotatsu's Waves at Matsushima and Dragons and Clouds) proved to be perfect antidote to the stress that results from trying to understand how and when to use the accusative, prepositional and genitive cases.

How I feel everyday after five hours of Russian classes

Early 17th-century tea bowl by Hon'ami Kōetsu 本阿弥光悦

A pair of sliding door panels from the early 18th-century by Ogata Kōrin 尾形光琳, featuring a scene from The Tales of Ise 伊勢物語. 

That was a week ago. Today I had Christmas Eve off, thanks to a presidential proclamation. Well, technically, only a half-day free, but the Russian section didn't schedule any classes this morning, so there wasn't any point to going into FSI. Instead, I used the opportunity to ходить в природе, "walk in nature". I couldn't have picked a more opportune day for doing so. This winter has been unseasonably warm, and today was a record-breaker, the warmest December 24 ever recorded in the Washington, D.C. area, with temperatures in the low 70's (normally they would be in the mid-40's). Jim Inhofe has been strangely silent this season. 

So I left the apartment early this morning (with the girls still asleep) and drove to Black Hill Regional Park, located forty minutes from Falls Church in Boyds, Maryland. It was an easy walk in the park, covering 6.8 miles (10.9 kilometers) in 2½ hours. Black Hill is noted for its meadows which attract hundreds of monarch butterflies during their semiannual migrations in April and September. The butterflies have long since moved on, and the leaves have fallen from the trees, but the park is still starkly beautiful. It felt great being outdoors today:

The park surrounds the 500-acre (202 hectares) Little Seneca Lake. The view from the back porch of visitor center. 

The mineshaft from an 1850's gold mine

On the Black Hill Trail

The only animals seen today were crows, geese and squirrels, but something else left this behind on the trail.

A bridge over Little Seneca Creek

The remains of a water mill, dating back to 1810. This one pressed flax seed in the production of linseed oil before it closed in 1895. 

Little Seneca Creek

No explanation is given for these stone ruins

Crossing Lake Ridge Drive

The sign says it all

Pausing by the lake

A pair of geese enjoy the warm weather

The last section of the trail becomes asphalt

A farm across the water

I'll be taking the next week off, a much-needed break from Russian, though I do intend to set aside time for review each day. As my break begins, I wish all of you and your families the happiest of holidays this season!

Air and space, the final frontiers

Last week was a rough one in Russian. I wasn't in the best of moods all week long, and I wasn't feeling very well, no doubt fueled by anxiety over my first progress evaluation, scheduled for Thursday afternoon. When it came time for the one-on-one evaluation, I went to the wrong room. By the time I realized the mistake and had tracked down the correct location, I had already missed nearly twenty minutes of the scheduled fifty-minute test. Looking at my phone and seeing that the next shuttle home was going to leave in just a few minutes, and facing the prospect of having to bide my time for another three-quarters of an hour until the next one was due to depart, I did the most sensible thing I could think of: like Elvis, I left the building. And with that, I suddenly felt a whole lot better, and the next day's classes went pretty well. As for the progress evaluation, these things can always be rescheduled, and mine has been for next week. Ба́бушка (гада́ла, да) на́двое сказа́ла ( — то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет) - or something along those lines.

Apropos for a space cadet, the family today visited the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, close to Dulles Airport. Home to eighty planes and sixty spacecraft housed in two huge airplane hangars, the center serves as an additional exhibit space for the more well-known National Air and Space Museum, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (which we visited three years ago). Like other Smithsonian museums, admission to this one is free, though it does cost $15 for parking. Its location in the northern Virginia suburbs, and the difficulty in reaching it via public transportation, means the museum isn't as crowded as the main facility in Washington:

The interior is huge:

One of the highlights is an SR-71 Blackbird, a legendary spy plane that could reach heights of 80,000 feet (24,384 meters) while traveling at speeds up to Mach 3.3:

Everywhere I go, it seems, I'm being dogged by the Reds:

The Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima 広島. No mention is made of the morality of the decision that resulted in the deaths of around 75,000 people, which is probably the way most American visitors would want it, at least judging by the reaction of some people (all of whom were Americans) when I shared my opinions on the subject on Facebook following my trip to Hiroshima in April 2012. One well-known blogger in Taiwan, who often criticizes the mainstream media for failing to think outside the conventional wisdom when it comes to China-Taiwan relations, and who is a strident critic of American foreign policy (and rightly so), surprised (disappointed) me by falling in line with the conventional American narrative on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 長崎: that the Japanese were "fanatics" who would've fought to the bitter end, therefore it was necessary to vaporize or irradiate up to 250,000 (by some estimates) men, women and children (not to mention opening up one hell of a Pandora's Box in the process). Which just goes to show that when the topic is Japan, some people know quite a lot about Taiwan:

They say the skies are getting crowded. My daughter wondered whether the wires were strong enough:

Another highlight is a Concorde, the Anglo-French supersonic jet that was in service from 1976 to 2003:

Pride of place in the space wing of the museum goes to the Space Shuttle Discovery. In 27 years of service it launched and landed 39 times, and the effects of all those fiery re-entries into Earth's atmosphere can be seen on its exterior:

The IMAX movie we saw this afternoon. Speaking of Harrison Ford, Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be shown in 3D at the museum's IMAX theater starting from the 17th:

After the movie, we ventured up to the observation tower, which provides a 360-degree view of Dulles Airport and the surrounding area. Planes coming in for landings are almost at eye-level:

Back on the ground, Amber tries out some of the controls on a real Cessna. She also took part in a paper airplane-throwing contest (finishing third), and the two of us took a ride on a Space Shuttle simulator:

Not all of the displays are related to huge flying machines:

Visitors can peer down onto the Restoration Hangar. Behind my daughter is a seaplane which searched for Japanese submarines after the attack on Pearl Harbor: 

A Lufthansa jet comes in for a landing as we walk back to our parked car. If you enjoyed the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, you will certainly like the Udvar-Hazy Center. We did. The only fault I could find with the museum is that the only source of food there is a McDonald's. Otherwise, if you're interested in airplanes and spacecraft, you owe yourself a visit:

Я не понимаю

Lunch this afternoon at a Greek cafe

I’ve been studying Russian for almost three months now, and my first progress evaluation will take place later in the upcoming week. To say I’m feeling anxious is an understatement. While I’ve certainly made a lot of progress in the sense that I started from point zero to where I can now make some basic statements about myself in the Russian language (and I can read Cyrillic!), being able to ask even simple questions in русский is still a struggle. Which is a cause for concern as interviewing in Russian is a major component of the final exam I will have to sit sometime in the spring.

The family took a two-hour walk after lunch in the Fraser Preserve, 220 acres (89 hectares) in Great Falls, Virginia, managed by the Nature Conservancy. 

Unlike Mandarin, I’m enjoying learning this language. Unfortunately, the approach to teaching still hasn’t changed much since my ordeal with Chinese at the Институт зарубежной службы over two years ago. The emphasis remains on being prepared to make presentations in Russian on topics such as weapons of mass destruction or international terrorism instead of learning the language needed for daily life, e.g. shopping for food, seeing a doctor or getting a haircut. OK, that last one doesn’t really apply to me. Then again, neither do the others, as it’s highly unlikely I’ll be using Russian on the streets of Vilnius (only 8% of Lithuanians speak Russian as a first language). At the same time, its doubtful I’ll be applying much of the specialized vocabulary that I'll be learning in the coming weeks and months once I’m on the job. In an ideal world, I would be spending my time in class learning how to conduct visa interviews in Russian, but that isn’t how the real world works in my particular corner of the federal government.

Downed trees remain as evidence from the big snowstorms of five years ago

Ideally, I would be learning Lithuanian right now, which I was originally scheduled to do until my position in Vilnius was re-designated. I'm often told that knowing both Mandarin and Russian are of great benefit in enhancing careers, but after one tour in China (and those years in Taiwan beforehand), I've had my fill of the Mandarin-speaking world. And living and working in a country with a suffix ending in "-stan" doesn't sound very appealing. I would much rather have an opportunity to bring my Japanese up to a level where it should belong, or to pick up a couple of “boutique” languages along the way, but the choice hasn’t been mine to make. So I’m left with the task of starting to learn a new case this week, while my grasp of the three cases we’ve learned up to this point remains shaky at best.

All carping about its complex grammar rules aside, Russian remains an interesting language, and I am slowly developing an interest in the culture underlying it. Still, I intend to study some Lithuanian once I eventually get to the Baltics, and to learn as much as I can about the country, and its culture and history, in the process.

The biggest obstacle to passing Russian isn’t the language, but rather my personality. For in order to do well on the exam, it's necessary to pretend to be someone that I’m not. I have to enjoy talking about myself. I must look forward to asking questions about what people in my interlocutor’s native country like to do in their free time, as if that person is qualified to speak for an entire nation. I need to be confident, frank, opinionated, outgoing and self-assured, the stereotypical Yank. My employer likes to trumpet that all Briggs-Myers personality types are welcome in the workforce, but when it comes to language training, everything is geared toward certain characteristics only. The first time around, I made the mistake of trying to battle the system. This time I’ll make the mistake of pretending to be someone else. Whatever it takes to pass…

Colvin Run Mill (circa 1811), the only surviving operational 19th-century water-powered mill in the D.C. area