7. First education results.

The half of our first university semester is over,so there are some impression about classes. In this post you'll read about my English class.

In August I hoped to greatly improve my English. I don't correctly estimate my progress, but I think that there is a progress in my English. First of all, I improved my communicative skills, the greatest reason of it is our instructor - native English speaker. It became more easy for me to write essays and to formulate thoughts in writing. And a great progress is that now I understand English speech better than two months later - at the first lesson it was hard for me to understand David's speech, but now it isn't a problem for me to understand his speech or English speech in films or in song. 

The most difficult for me in this course is writing assignments, but there are very useful. A blog assignment and reading assignments are interesting and not as hard as writing.

For this two months I've learned strategies of understanding the meaning of words, some grammatical rules, new words and rules which are necessary to follow when you write essays.

And I hope I will improve my English in the second half of semester more than in this half. 

P.S. I think it will be cool if some of our assignments will include video materials(for example, watch a video at home and discuss it in class).

6.Oh, football!

In Friday, October, 12, after lessons I and Telman decided to go the cafeteria in HSE building which is situated on Myasnitskaya Street. When we went there, we met Roma and Ildar, students of our faculty. Then they told that they had one free ticket to football match Russia vs Portugal. Of course, I wanted to go to such game!
At 6 pm we were at the stadium. Weather was nasty (it was rainy and coldly), but seats were under overhang, so we didn't feel that it rained. There were a little people in that time. But in 7 pm when the game started, tha stadium Luzhniki was full. There were about 75 thousands of people.We were in the fan-sector, it's too far from the playing field, so we didn't completely see faces of players, but the action and players' numbers we saw, we distinguished Ronaldo from Nani, for example.

The match started from a number of Portuguese attacks. Russian team defended. Fans cried 'Forward, Russia!', 'Only Russ, only victory!'. But on the 6th minute it was a great Russian counterattack, Roman Shirokov set Alexandr Kerzhakov clear and the forward scored from the one-on-one. It was the first and the last opportunity of our team in the first half. In 20 minute there was a substitution in Portuguese team: lateral Fabio Quentrao was substituted by Miguel Lopez because of Quentrao's injury. Portuguese attacked, Russians defended - good characteristic of first half. After the brake both Portuguese and Russian team had some chances to score, but we saw no more goals. Ronaldo's game wasn't very good, maybe because of his injury (before the match there had been no information about his possibility of playing because he had been injured in the last Real's match).

I'm really happy that I was on the stadium and I supported my national team. I cried too loudly, so I lost my voice. In my opinion, this victory is a great success of our team, because it's a luck that we won.Because Russian team defended too much, and a referee didn't appoint several free-kicks for Portuguese. Russian left back Dmitriy Kombarov was rally good, he didn't let Nani do anything. Also our defenders and midfielders controlled Cristiano Ronaldo the whole match, it's a side of success too.

And now there is a hope that Russian national team will qualify to the FIFA World Cup 2014. Capello, we hope in you!

5. Water-ice adventure

Novosibirsk Reservoir or as it usually called the Ob sea is very big artificial lake on the Ob river. It takes about 15 minutes to get to the shore of the Ob sea from my house.

This happened seven or eight years ago. One spring day I with my friend Vlad went to the sore of this sea. The whole lake was covered with ice, but there was a spring, so ice started to melt. And there were big water pools, which were hidden under ice. If you step on this ice, which is reliable in your opinion, you risk to go under cold water. We decided to go for small "island", which wasn't far away from the shore. When we go to this island everything was OK. But when we decided to go home, we found that the ice wasn't strong and there was an opportunity to become wet. We got the wind up. There were no other people we could ask for help. Every our step was careful.

When the shore became near, ice under my boot cracked and my leg immersed in ice-cold water. I started to run...

I run to the shore for couple of minute that seems like hours. I came home with wet boots, but, fortunately, I wouldn't catch a flue after that accident.

4.Football

I'd like to write about football (or "soccer" as it called in the USA).

I’ve decided to touch this topic because on Tuesday (October, 2nd) my favorite football club Spartak played the second match in the UEFA Champions’ League group stage. Unfortunately, it lost. Now Spartak is the last in its group, so it must win at least 2 or 3 matches (from 4) in order to continue participate in the best European football competition.

Version of Spartaks' emblem made by fans

Emblem of Real Madrid

And now about football. Why I like it? Sincerely, I don’t exactly now. But it’s a fact-I like football. I like to play football and to watch it. 

My favorite football clubs are Spartak Moscow (I’ve been fan of it since I was 10 or 11) and Real Madrid or Real Madrid Club de Football which is full name of this fantastic team. I like its attacking style and players’ collection, and now Real’s coach is Jose Mourinho, in my opinion, one of the best coaches in the world.  London’s football club Chelsea is interesting for me too. There are an unusual coach and perspective young players.

 My favorite football player (from sportsmen who is playing football now) is Cristiano Ronaldo (now he plays in Real). I’m marvel at him: his dribbling skills are amazing, his sprints are very quick and his shots are accurate and strong.

Maybe lately I’ll write more about Spartak or Real. Or about UEFA Champions’ League. But not in this post.

P.S. Tomorrow I hope to see Real Madrid’s game against Ajax from Amsterdam. And I expect good game and beautiful Real’s victory!