#shoutout to masha at the russian grocery in town

[madjacobin]

being a russian language student is wild because when you tell the odd russian or two that you meet in town that you can speak the language they just cheerfully go right to speaking it really fast, but if you tell your fellow americans that you can speak russian they immediately go "so you want to work in the cia??? you want to be a spy???"

also the fact that at my school the russian/german department is INCREDIBLY tiny so there's like 20 russian majors total. we all kinda know each other.