My bedroom/table 'studio'!

Ronnie, I just like the language and it's a real challenge. No, I don't have a Russian keyboard. I use translit.ru to type then copy & paste.

Thing is Lislarch, if you did paint your walls, you could have been spending that time making jewellery!!! I know what I'd rather do!!!
I am very lucky to have such a wonderful view, I never tire of it.

Well Elaine, I continue to be extremely impressed as not only - by all accounts - is the language difficult but it is a completely different alphabet!

I'll hold my hand up to thinking your name was on the punk rock theme. Didn't a band have a name like loveitch at one time?

Dave

Dave! Nothing so 'cool'!!!

I lived in Russia for a couple of years. I had all these ideas about learning the language and being able to read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in the original, and then discovered that 'that' Russian doesn't really exist any more after the language cleansing instituted by Lenin in the 20s. I ended up managaging taxi/bar/supermarket and that was about it! Then moved to the Middle East and had to do the same thing with Arabic. I could just about manage the Cyrillic transliterations, so could find street names and read out loud, but never managed to grasp the written word in Egypt!!

You are a woman of hidden talents MizGeorge!! Not only are you expert in jewellery making but speaking Russian and even mastering Arabic.. well.. I am able to speak a smattering of Hebrew and many, many moons ago was able to read and write basic... but now - all forgotten except a few phrases! xx How long were you in Russia for? Forgive me George, you've just said a couple of years!!!!

LOL, my Arabic is far from mastered! I can get from one place to another, order a meal and tell small boys and hawkers to leave me alone and that's about it!!

I did the kibbutz thing in my late teens, but everyone was so keen to speak English that I never really got going with Hebrew, which is a shame as I'd have love to have learned it. I recall a very surreal experience one evening in the canteen watching Blade Runner, partly upside down, with an out of sync soundtrack and hebrew subtitles. There again, I'm not sure it made that much more sense when I saw it 'properly' a couple of years later.....

Like you Ronnie, I have a very mixed heritage - none of my four grandparents had the same nationality, and as a result I've picked up a bit of a hodge podge of everything along the way