Some things never change...

For one, a morning person I am not. Sure, I can get up early, I just don’t enjoy it. And I am not one to talk when I first wake up. Oksana and I have taken to waving at each other each morning as opposed to speaking. We understand each other well ;o)

Two, I still crave icecream after a stressful day. And if I can have it with coffee, that’s even better.

Three, I will always do better on an essay test than on multiple choice, fill in the blank or whatever other type you want to throw at me. It was true in high school and it is true now. I often say that living in Ukraine, everyday is a cumulative test of my language skills. No more of those “this test will be over chapter seven. No, you can plan to go to the market and pull out your chapter three vocabulary; or on Sundays you can be prepared for chapter eighteen, Religious Words and Phrases, but you never know when your roommate is going to start talking about the Soviet military (I must have skipped over that chapter) or when a lady at a youth pastor’s meeting is going to question you about Radooga’s upcoming conference “The Problem With The Rib” (referencing Eve being made from Adam’s rib and sounding slightly better in Russian than it does in English). You just can’t prepare for these things. Hence the everyday being one big test of my language skills (which, believe me, are still quite lacking).

Anyway, yesterday in class we had a more customary type of test. And I did fine on the test as a whole, but my teacher finished reading the essay part, looked up and said “I haven’t met many people who do better on my essays than on the other parts of my test, but your essay is basically flawless save a few spelling errors.” (Yet another thing that will never change, I can’t spell in English, forget Russian) Why is this? Because I don’t try and say what I don’t know I can say. I had a history class in high school and the teacher gave us the option of taking a scantron test or an essay test. Out of 30 students I was the only one who opted to take the essay test and I always opted to take the essay test. An essay test tests what you do know and a scantron test tests what you don’t know. I don’t know a lot. But, I can talk about what I do know when prompted. ;o)