I’ve started school already. Russian, I think, is going to be fun. The prof seems to be pretty excited about the language and is happy teaching it to us. Olessia helped me with my homework yesterday. It was simple exercises to practice writing a select few of the Russian letters in cursive. We practiced the sounds too. Olessia realized I knew almost all the letters to spell Murzik in Russian (she made me spell it!). Since I know how to spell Murzik, I know how to spell purr in Russian too! Its simply the “mur” in Murzik. And what’s also cool, is if you properly pronounce “mur” in Russian, it sounds like a cat purring. Kpyto! (means “cool” in Russian which sort of sounds like krewto)

DSA2 is going to be cool. Sadly, we’re not allowed to use a notebook or other gadget in class. Apparently too many students abused this privilege by playing games and such and the prof had enough. I guess the good thing is I don’t have to lug 7lb of computer gear in my backpack. The bad thing is I’ll have to decode my handwriting!

Here’s some freaky stuff about the two classes:

My Russian class only had 5 students on Monday! Of the 5, there’s another Rob/Robert (but don’t call me “Bob”) in the class. Rob, in Russian, means slave so I don’t think either of want to go with that. In my DSA2 class, there’s maybe 20 students. In there, there’s 3 Robs! My prof for DSA2 is also learning Russian this semester.

Now the one part that had me worried about DSA2 was the use of Java. See, I survived intro to computer science and DSA1 by using C++. It was the language of choice back then. But now the university has switched over to Java. Luckily for me, this is the class is made up of 50% C++ coders and 50% Java coders. This is also the first time this prof has taught Java. Hopefully she’ll have some mercy for us C++ coders. Sorry, but I won’t be able to post the class notes up. I’m not sure if I’ll post the programs.