как дела? что это?

I am on an intensive Russian course. Our group has 8 lessons (3hours twice a week) every week until the end of the year. Or it should be like that. Or maybe not. The problem is that we don't know for sure whether or not we have to pay something for the extra hours (normally these classes have only 4 lessons per week) and if we do, how much will it be.

The reasons why I signed up for this intensive class are very simple: you feel so helpless in here because you can not speak Russian and also I want to be able to speak Russian after I graduate from this program. Maybe not fluent, but conversational. At the moment we are still on this "how are you", "what is that"-level. I believe the situation is much better in a couple of months time.

Some practical problems you are facing without the knowledge of Russian:

- You are not able to buy meat from the shop unless it's prepacked. In Finland this is not a problem, but in our nearby market most of the meat and fish are behind a counter and you have to ask for it.

- You need someone with you every time you have to negotiate or if you are running some errands or bureaucratic stuff.

- You are not able to stop the marshutka (minibus). This may lead to you missing your stop :)

- etc etc.