Why We Travel: Serendipitous Lunches
That time a Kazakh human-rights attorney invited us to a lunch of Russian dumplings at a Kampot, Cambodia roadside stand
Emory University Shuts Down Russian Major
On Emory University’s decision to shutter several academic departments, including my beloved Russian
Honest Language Lessons: Русский
A poorly-executed tribute to the McSweeney’s “Honest” series, with props to my beloved old Russian 101 primer (in which an early vocab word was “crane operator”).
Back in the (Former) USSR
I never thought I’d see Moscow again, although I dreamed of it for fourteen years. I boarded a teeming Aeroflot flight in late summer 2005, as Katrina’s receding waters revealed, inch by inch, the erasure of New Orleans as I once knew it. Mourning for that blighted, intoxicating city, I rushed towards another place I…
С женским днём! (Happy Women’s Day)
“Don’t forget to call Lidia Yakovlyevna tomorrow,” my émigré friend Inna reminded me yesterday at our weekly Russian lesson. “For the holiday.” I searched my mind frantically. I always feel so proud when Inna and her husband Victor tell me I’m “practically Russian”–usually when I’m happily scarfing down a plate of smoked herring or beef…
This is your brain on русский язык.
Why studying languages makes your brain a better organ.
The Greenery 