PassionForRussian.com

Cyrillic wear

Karyn Dubravetz — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:23:13 +0000

And on a somewhat related note to my last post, Russian stuff, I just came across the Facebook page for Cyrillicwear – the new and improved version of the “Kiss me I’m Russian” T-shirt, though I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a “Kiss me I’m Russian” T-shirt…

So, what do you guys think? If nothing else, it could help you learn that pesky cyrillic alphabet?

If you’re interested, you can check out their website or blog.

Russian stuff

Karyn Dubravetz — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:17:42 +0000

Today I am one step closer to being prepared for my trip to Russia because I now have the perfect “diddy bag”. (“Diddy bag” is a term that was used in my home growing up. I always thought it was annoying, but now it seems to be the best thing to call this bag.)

Bag in the U.S.S.R.

Anyway, I found it on ModCloth.com. They call it the “Bag in the U.S.S.R.” – cute! After I bought it, I saw that the website sells some other cool Russian stuff. Click on the photos to buy.

Dining in Prague Plate Set

I couldn’t help but notice these plates. Not only because they are so cute, but also because my husband and I received them as a wedding gift almost 3 years ago! (Thanks, Jeannie!)

Saint Tea-tersburg Tea Set

This comes apart and forms 2 tea cups and the teapot.

Bubby’s Matryoshka Measuring Set

An interesting use for all those Matryoshka dolls I picked up in Russia. (But who’s Bubby?)

Matchmaker Scarf

Fun fact: If you would call this a babushka in English, that’s because the word babushka, in Russian, means grandmother. But it’s not babushka, it’s babushka.

Okay, happy shopping!! Let me know if you try any of these items out!

Кто хранит русский язык в США?… Я!

Karyn Dubravetz — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 17:12:36 +0000

I was recently contacted by Ekaterina Bychkova, a reporter from the Новое Русское Слово (The New Russian Word), a Russian-American newspaper based in New York. She was writing an article about who is studying Russian language in the United States and why.

Here is her article, published May 28, 2010. It is entitled, “Кто хранит русский язык в США?” or “Who is preserving the Russian language in the US?” And I am happy to say…I am! It was so cool to see something written about me, in Russian, that I didn’t write myself for a class or something!

Visit www.nrs.com for the full article. It’s a long article – scroll down to about 8 paragraphs from the end to get to the portion about me and the Washington Meetup Group. Look for my name written in Russian, Карин Дубравец.

For more articles by Ekaterina, check out her website.

Want to be someone who helps preserve the Russian language? I highly recommend Meetup.com. Here is a list of over 100 Russian language related Meetup groups in the US, and around the world.

My birthday at the Russia House

Karyn Dubravetz — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:53:45 +0000

When I turned 29, I started getting a little nervous about turning 30. So I decided a year ago that instead of letting 30 get me down or freak me out, I was going to take control of my own destiny and just have an awesome birthday – and that’s exactly what I did. I ended up doing a joint event with my buddy, Alex (of the blini party if you remember that one), who turned 30 a week before I did.

We had a nice dinner at the Straights of Malaya…

…followed by a private party at The Russia House – including vodka, Baltica, and dancing to my own mix of early ’00s Russian pop music.

We even rented a hotel room downtown for the weekend since we won’t be moving out of the suburbs for the next few weeks. Unfortunately, no matter how hard you party, it seems there’s always someone who partied harder than you did – like this guy, who we found asleep in the hallway of the hotel at 4am. We couldn’t decide if he was just too drunk to find his way back to his room, or if he got kicked out of some room – what do you think?

Wish I had taken more pictures, but I was too busy having my best birthday yet!

Thanks to my friends, Alex and Natasha!! Without you guys, it wouldn’t have been possible!!!

***By the way – don’t forget about the Tweetup, this Sunday May 2nd at 1pm EST!!

Let’s tweet up!…again!

Karyn Dubravetz — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:01:31 +0000

Well, the first Tweetup was successful enough that I’d like to make this a regular event. I’m going to try for the first Sunday of every month. So that means the next one’s comin up on Sunday, May 2nd. Like last time, it’ll be at 1:00pm EST/GMT-5. It will officially last an hour, but you can feel free to keep on tweeting as long as you want.

Thank you to Vicki Boykis for use of this photo!

Here are the guidelines from the original post, Let’s tweet up.

Everyone will log on to Twitter at the same time (day and time specified above).
Simply tweet as you normally would, but follow each post with this hashtag: #rltu (Russian language Tweetup).
You will need to run a search for this hashtag to follow all the tweets. You can do this simply through Twitter, but it’s best to use an application like TweetDeck, or HootSuite.
The point is to practice Russian, so tweets should be in Russian.
It’s a good idea to have a Russian/English dictionary open at the same time in case you need help. Multitran.ru is a good one. Translit.ru is another great resource – for typing in Russian and more.
The Tweetup will last an hour.

The last station

Karyn Dubravetz — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 23:48:13 +0000

Okay, the title of this post has a double meaning, so I hope everyone can follow along:

Meaning #1:
A few weeks ago, I saw, “The Last Station”, a movie about the final years of Lev Tolstoy’s life.

Photo by Design Haus

I don’t think it’s showing in theaters anymore, but you can eventually get it on Netflix. I enjoyed it, but honestly, it’s probably more of a renter, anyway, even though both leads were nominated for Academy Awards. And of course, к сожалению, it’s in English, not Russian.

Meaning #2:
Heading home from the film, my husband and I couldn’t help but notice that we live at “the last station”. Take a look this map of the Washington subway system:

Photo by dbking
See the stop on the end of the red line in the upper left-hand corner? That’s where we live. And see that cluster of stops in the center where all the lines intersect? That’s downtown, also known as, where I work. So, if you couldn’t guess by looking, I have quite a hefty commute to my office, not to mention most social outings we attend.

BUT…..thanks to our current landlord for raising our rent, we decided we can afford to move in to “the city”!

So that’s my breaking news: We’re moving!!! (And I just used the movie as an excuse to blog about how excited I am.)

So have a great weekend, everyone, and let me know if you want to help us move!

And the Oscar does NOT go to…Russia

Karyn Dubravetz — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:57:52 +0000

I recently had and missed the opportunity to see the film, Ward No. 6 (Палата № 6) at the National Gallery of Art as part of a mini film festival honoring Anton Chekhov and his 150th birthday. I later found out that Ward No. 6 was Russia’s Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film.

If you watched the Oscars (another one I missed) you know that “Ward 6″ did not even receive the “honor of just being nominated”. It got me thinking about what Russian films have been nominated, or even won Oscars in the past.

Photo by shaun wong

So here is a list of Russian films that have been nominated for academy awards. If the title is a web link it will take you to Netflix where you can and should rent it! Most of these that I have seen are really great – especially Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears and Burnt by the Sun – I own both of them!

Which ones are your favorites??

12 – Nominee ’07
Вор (The Thief) – Nominee ’97
Кавказский пленник (Prisoner of the Mountains) – Nominee ’96
Утомлённые солнцем (Burnt by the Sun) – Winner ’94
Урга (Close to Eden) – Nominee ’92
Частная жизнь (Private Life) – Nominee ’82
Москва слезам не верит (Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears) – Winner ’80
Белый Бим Черное ухо (White Bim Black Ear) – Nominee ’78
Дерсу Узала (Dersu Uzala) – Winner ’75
А зори здесь тихие (The Dawns Here Are Quiet) – Nominee ’72
Чайкoвский (Tchaikovsky) – Nominee ’71
Братья Карамазовы (The Brothers Karamazov) – Nominee ’69
Война и мир (War and Peace) – Winner ’68

Here is a list of all of the films that have been submitted by Russia.

We tweeted up!

Karyn Dubravetz — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:48:37 +0000

Yesterday I organized my first Russian language tweetup. Overall, I’d say it went pretty well! We had a handful of participants, most of whom were native speakers, which is great for those of us who are still learning! It got off to a little bit of a slow start, but after a while it was almost hard to keep up with all the tweets!

Photo by netzkobold

Personally, I really enjoyed it. Just like at the real-world Meetups, it’s good to have a time where you tell yourself, okay, for right now, it’s Russian only. I’ve gotten a lot of practice speaking lately, but writing is another story. You can’t fudge those case endings!! And it’s good spelling practice, too!

So I want to thank everyone who participated. I’ve already gotten some feedback, and it seems that everyone would be interested in doing it again, so I’m thinking this could be a monthly thing. So if you missed it this time around, stay tuned – you’ll get your chance!

Thanks, also to the tweeps who filled out the survey. If you participated in the tweetup, and haven’t filled out the survey yet, here’s the link.

And finally another big thank you to my fellow bloggers who helped me spread the word: Vicki Boykis, Russia Without Borders, and Russian Sphinx.

What’s Ashton Kutcher doing in Russia?

Karyn Dubravetz — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 03:19:55 +0000

So the other day, I was running my usual twitter search to see what people were saying about Russian language. And much to my surprise, I saw a few tweets to @aplusk, who I happen to know is the unofficial king of Twitter, himself, Ashton Kutcher. So I click on his twitter page, and sure enough, he’s in Russia.

I was a little surprised, so I immediately googled, “What’s Ashton Kutcher doing in Russia?”

Photo by @aplusk (via twitpic)

As it turns out, he, along with other American Technology gurus, was participating in a State Department Delegation to Russia. To put it very briefly, the goal of the trip was to meet with Russian technology and community leaders to discuss how technology and social media can save the world.

For more information, see:

My google search

Ashton’s tweets from the trip (Search for #rustechdel on twitter to see all tweets about the delegation.)

Venture capitalist and fellow delegate, Esther Dyson’s flickr page for pics

A report on the outcome of the delegation in English or Russian

***And finally, see Ashton talk about the trip live on USTREAM on February 25, 2010 at 10:00AM PST!!

So here’s my question: Ashton, now that you’ve been to Russia and all, will you be participating in the Tweetup this Sunday??? (Hope to see you all there!!)

The Olympics Hockey

Karyn Dubravetz — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:54:58 +0000

The 2010 Winter Olympics begin this Friday, February 12th. So I wanted to talk about which events Russia is expected to dominate in. But with the exception of a few figure skaters here and there, there is really only one sport to talk about when it comes to these games: Hockey!

Now I don’t want to offend the other athletes. You can get the low-down on all the Russian sports here. But Russia is expected to take the gold in men’s hockey – in part because of the Washington Capitals’ own Alex “Ovie” Ovechkin (not to mention Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin and Atlanta’s Ilya Kovalchuk).

Photo by clydeorama

As someone who has lived in the DC area for a few years now, I am ashamed to admit that I have never seen this scary Russian in action. He was the NHL MVP for the last 2 seasons and was recently chosen as the new captain of the Capitals, whom he has lead to victory in their past 14 games!! (Game stats here.) He has already won too many awards and honors to mention in this blog, but you get all the info here.

So if you want to check out Ovie and the other Russian hockey players in the Olympics, here is the schedule. And don’t forget to check back in 4 years, when the 2014 winter Olympics will be held in Sochi!!