Interpals =)

Have you ever heard  of the website Interpals? No? Well, then you missed out on something!

Interpals is a language exchange website where you can sign up and look for people who speak the language you want to learn. When I was 15 years old, I wanted to improve my English skills, and I knew that I would have to speak with natives in order to do so. I've known my oldest Interpals friend for more than 4 years now. He's an American from New Jersey, and he's the one who helped me improve my English in high school and who still proofreads my essays sometimes. The funny thing is that I always thought that I'd be the only one who's so nerdy that he signs up for something like language exchange. And for a long time I was the only one among my friends who was sooo crazy about languages. I guess you know that you found the right field of studies when the ones who study with you are just as crazy as you are :D A lot of my friends here in Graz are also on this site (and they also always believed to be the only crazy ones haha). So now it's like a 2nd facebook for us- we all use this site and added each other as friends :P.
Cool, right?


Yesterday I skyped with a pretty cool Russian guy who said he would help me improve my Russian. We had a very nice conversation. If I didn't know a word, he explained it; if I made a mistake, he told me. After some time, as I got really really tired, we started switching between English and Russian. We talked about politics and life in Russia, and since this is not the easiest topic, we decided to use both languages. He's not really good in English, so if he didn't know a word in English, he said it in Russian, and I told him the English equivalent.
It was really interesting to hear his perspective on various topics like, for example, the issues with the Ukraine. Once again I found out that our Media coverage isn't perfect either. For example, I'd never heard/read that the Krim used to be part of Russia until Jelzin decided to give it to the Ukraine as a present in 1991. The Russians suddenly became Ukraines- but most of them didn't want that. The Ukrainian government forbade them to vote whether they wanted to be Ukrainian or not.