Thursday 24 April 2014

Combining work and joy

I will have an exam in Russian next week and I have been a little worried about it as I feel like everything I have learnt during this spring is just a big mess in my head. I somehow can not put all the grammar rules, words and pronunciations together so that I was able to produce some understandable language.

So I spent most of the morning and afternoon by studying at home, and then I thought that I could as well combine the work and the hobby. So what to do to succeed in that?

First I took my big box...

... that contains all my empty postcards and folded cards and also my stamps. Everything I need to write a postcard, so to speak.

I did buy quite a lot of stamps last year, right before the prices went up so I still have quite a good inventory of stamps.

I have a soft spot for these old(ish) tin cans and buy them in flea markets. The tiny one holds my priority labels and in the bigger one I storage some more stamps and customs related goodies.


So here comes the work-part! As I am sending to repeated countries I was pretty sure I would get multiple addresses to Russia, so I took my Russian book to keep me company while writing cards and decided to try to express myself as good as I can in that language.

It is good to have some help, especially with some verbs... 

And here we are! I got to write and send nine cards to Russia this time and managed to revise not only vocabulary, but also grammar for the exam that is coming up - and for the future's sake, too, I hope. The best part is that it did not feel like studying at all, I actually enjoyed this a lot.

6 comments:

  1. I love the way you write this post! :)
    I also use Postcrossing to study languages. I'm quite sure my English had been never improved without Postcrossing, so I'm very grateful. At first I thought I could practise Arabic too, but this is really difficult. Maybe I need to start with Russian ;)

    I wish you luck in your exam!

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    1. Thank you! :)
      Yes, I have same thoughts about the English as well, even though I think that pen pals have helped me there a bit more. I can imagine Arabic would be a challenging one to practice at Postcrossing! :D

      Thank you so much! :)

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  2. Hyvä idea kielitaidon ylläpitoon! Opiskelin itse yhden venäjän kurssin ja kirjoitin johonkin Postcrossing-korttiin venäjää ensimmäisen tilaisuuden tullen (vaikka en osannutkaan kuin pari sopivaa lausetta). :)

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    1. Joo, venäjän kohdalla tämä toimi erityisen hyvin, koska oma kielitaito on vielä niin heikko. Nyt oli ikään kuin "pakko" käyttää aikaa ja vaivaa, jotta saa jotain fiksua korttiin. Käytän aina sopivan tilaisuuden tullen muitakin osaamiani kieliä, mutta niitä varten ei yleensä tarvitse oppikirja kädessä raapustella. :) Postcrossing (ja varsinkin foorumi ja sen liitännäiset) on kyllä omalta osaltaan avustanut kielten handlaamisessa ja kertailussa hurjasti!

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  3. What a great idea! This really makes me want to learn another language, Since I'm already pretty fluent in English. But Russian is scary hahaha. By the way, I love tins too! I think I sometimes just keep things I don't need just to fill my tins with something haha

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    1. Thanks! Just courage to learn a new language, then! Russian is tough for sure, and unfortunately I only had a chance to take two courses of it. But even knowing the very basics has been very useful. :) Haha, nice to "meet" a fellow tin addict!

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