Hey, I’m Daniel, and I work as a staff reporter for the University of Washington Tacoma’s student newspaper, the Ledger. On March 20th of this year my news writing professor Dr. Demaske, my former editor Rachel, my news writing classmate Megan, and myself, will travel to Moscow, Russia. Once there, we will assist students of the Moscow State University school of journalism produce a newspaper, titled The Zhurnalist.
We’ll be there all of ten days, and in exchange we recieve full internship credits! If we want them (There’s a lot of complicated shit where the credits count toward the spring quarter, and if we do this AND take a full courseload, we’re charged more. Boo.). Pretty sweet deal, eh?
Moscow is, of course, the capital of the Russian Federation. From what I understand, it’s become something of a lively little hamlet, particularly with the recent stability accredited to President Vladimir Putin. This is interesting, because critics say he has accomplished this by curbing civil liberties, civil liberties that include the powers of the press. As a result, journalism and journalistic styles are a different animal in Russia then they are here in the States.
But if it weren’t difficult, it wouldn’t be fun, now would it?
Meanwhile, I’ve set to work learning some basic Russian, enough to buy stuff, go places, not look like an asshole, and impress Russian ladies with the foreigner-who-tries-hard-to-fit-in angle. It’s strange in a few ways. For one, the cyrillic alphabet (the one used by the Russians) is almost entirely different than the English alphabet, both in its symbols and each character’s representation of a very specific sound.
Second, it feels like the entire language is spoken in the front of the mouth. I seriously feel like the words are marbles that I have to keep pushing against my lips with my tongue, lest I completely jumble what I’m saying.
My mouth is sore. Mouths shouldn’t be this sore.
But, bitching aside, I created this blog to document our trip, both before, during, and after, when some Russian students will follow us home. Hopefully I can set this up as a multi-user account so Rachel and Megan can post here too, telling a little bit about their own experiences.
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