Derek & Rita

Well, best is really subjective and more of a personal choice.

For me, I have a .357 magnum as my main home defense handgun. I don't have a shotgun. But I'm leaning towards a Mossberg 590A1 as my choice.

Do you have any in mind?

I'm glad your .357 Magnum was one of the first replies. That is a fine choice. I'd prefer a Colt Python 8" for scaring the ####### out of any intruder that sees you holding it. It's a great one for target shooting too, which is what you'll be doing with it. The fact that it's a revolver means it is one of the easiest to load, and it tends to make more noise. It also won't jam up on you.

As far as shotguns, get a pump action 12ga. The sound of that pump action is enough to tell your intruder to GTFO.

Just for you. She remains a Russian citizen and can travel to Russia and most FSU countries without a visa. I believe there are SOME FSU countries that can no longer do this, but Russia, Ukraine and Belarus can. Alla travels to Russia using only her internal passport, she does not need even the international passport.

You can get a Russian visitor visa fairly easily, it takes a little time and costs a little money. Most people use a visa service to do this.

The law in Russia is - if you have a russian passport and an american passport, and you get a visa to travel to russia, you are giving up your russian citizenship. So, if you have both, travel on your Russian passport, and never ever get a visa, unless you want to surrender your russian citizenship.

Please understand I'm not interested in personal lovemaking, but any possible problems related to former living with parents as adults ect...

Uh, every woman is different. If she ain't loose enough for you now, I doubt that will change coming here.

google translate? yikes!

You'd be surprised how well it works. It's a statistical method, so the more people use it and correct it, the better it gets. I hate that I can't specify the proper tense (it tends to be too formal) but overall, it's not too bad. I speak russian, but I can't write it, and I use google translate for that. It also has a transliteration mode where you type what the word sounds like in russian and it will convert it to cyrillic.

I could not care less about what you do, try to do, or fail to do.

Can you go troll someone else, elsewhere? Seriously. You're getting petty. Or go back to the pronoun thread and continue arguing with me over how to pronounce 'coffee' in Russian. Leave this thread alone.

A K-3 is a non-immigrant visa, so I can see where there would be confusion.

1. I am not a Justin Bieber fan and never will be. I am not into Hollywood celebrities or Hollywood celebrity worship. They don't pay my bills for me at the end of the month anyway.

2. "Dude" is an American term. I am not one. Feel free to use it with those that are.

3. I had to write "Big" so that you could know my perspective about certain issues and about the "site" you made reference to previously which I will stay silent about.... let's just say because of.....and that's all I will say about that with a good laugh added to it. :rofl: As Shakespeare once wrote:

"Give thy thoughts no tongue"

William Shakespeare

"He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike."

William Shakespeare

]or as one man put it....

"He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass"-Edgar R. Fiedler

4. There now this post contains letters with with a lesser size. Your reading panic should be hopefully now quelled for now. As one person wrote:

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."

Henry David Thoreau

Thanks for your contribution thought...You've been a real sport..

Regarding #2 - The original use of dude implied an individual unfamiliar with the demands of life outside of urban settings, as in dude ranch, a ranch catering to urbanites seeking more rural experiences. The implicit contrast is with those persons accustomed to a given frontier, agricultural, mining or other exurban setting. This usage continues into the present.

So, by calling you a 'dude' he is saying that you are 'city folk'.

I'd suggest you get a good dictionary, then you'd just have to get used to the transcription. Most of my foreign acquaintances in Moscow had quick results with that

Yes, I have a good dictionary, and I bought a better lesson book. Using the Rosetta Stone software was really helpful to me. I also use google translate and I know enough to understand when it's a good translation and when it's bad.

What’s the correct contact email address of the Moscow embassy? Is it like on the web site (support-russia@ustraveldocs.com) or like on the instructions to the interview (consulmo@state.gov)? In the past years, I used the latter one, but not sure if it is still the case.

Thanks

All my contact with them has been through here: MoscowWarden@state.gov

The poll will show that men who ordered their wives off the internet had very little success with formal training. However, those who concentrated on informal training tended to do quite well.

Those of you who are fluent in both languages would do well to remember the significant amount of time you spent immersed in the other culture. Compare/contrast that with the time you spent in formal training.

I'm not saying formal training is a bad thing. (There's never really such thing as "bad" training.) What I'm saying is it's important to use your time and resources for what's most effective in your case. The average dude on VJ isn't going to be served well by spending thousands of dollars on classroom training so he can go to Moscow and meet his perspective wife for a sex date. A dude who moves to Russia for a few months and lives with her family probably would.

Transliteration of words such as kafe/kofe rarely leads to accuracy in pronunciation and that was my point with learning to read Cyrillic. If you're reading the word there's a difference in the way it's pronounced. If you're learning the English transliteration of the word, it's quite possible you won't say it correctly in the target language either. That's why it's important to study directly from the target language instead of English transliterations.

I spent not a lot of time immersed in russian culture. I spent maybe a total of two months in Russia. I've studied every day for 30 minutes to an hour every day, as well as using what I learned to communicate with my (now) wife for a few hours a day as well.

Transliteration of words is awful, I bought a book about russian (the for dummies book) and they have no Cyrillic in it at all. It's a shame really, I can't believe they sell a book like that. Not only is it transliterated, you have to memorize not the standard transliteration, but their own 'translation method' where they simply replace a single cyrillic character with a single latin character.

Even if Derek talks to Rita predominantly in Russian, that alone in itself is not going to help her or hinder her from learning English in the long run, especially if she's taking measures in order to improve.

Seriously, slim, you said it yourself - she'll be engulfed and overwhelmed by the change, the culture and the language regardless, and it'll be frustrating and undoubtedly upsetting. I believe that if talking in Russian eludes misunderstanding and arguments for them, then so be it.

If there's a will - there's a way, she'll learn English sooner or later, she's got no choice, it's only a question of how dedicated she's going to be about it, and in turn that will determine how well or not well she ends up speaking the language.

If Derek now switches to only English, it'll cause problems in the short term and won't ultimately help in the long run because it's not his manner of speech alone that she has to get used to, it's the rest of the world she's moving to.

Yes, that's my point. She won't be starting work immediately - we have a 3 month old kid, and she is going to be staying home with her until she is old enough to go to pre-school. That whole time she will be living here with me, going to movies, watching tv, shopping. She'll get chances to practice, and I plan on getting her into some ESL courses before she gets out in the real world and gets a job.

There is only a finite amount of water in the world, I assure you, your water has been in a toilet. Probably in Morroco.

No doubt, but it comes from rain and snow melt. Hmm... I suppose when that snow made from sewage melts and gets into the water system... yep, we're drinking treated sewage...

For a baby there is no language that is harder or easier to learn. In fact, they had an experiment, where they had adults from different countries listen to a baby, who couldn't talk yet - and each of those adults claimed that they heard sounds from their native language.

But, of course, when babies start putting words together, short words are easier. Looking at my little American niece and babies in Russia, I thought, probably, since one of the first words of an American kid is "please" and one of the first words of a Russian kid is "дай", English-speaking babies grow up to be stereotypically happy and polite, while Russian kids grow up into stereotypically "mean, gloomy and cold" Russians Just a thought.

Teach your daughter both languages, native proficiency in both English and Russian might be very useful for her in future

"but why not?"

True, I think English has an advantage since most words have less syllables than Russian, mostly.

Interesting theory though about first words. I will of course teach her both languages, and maybe Spanish, Italian, French, or Chinese, whichever she wants. Hmm, maybe even German.

That sounds very funny to me, since I hear a lot of Russian women complaining about Russian men for the same reasons that you did not like American men.

That's exactly why I hate all kinds of generalization by national origin. While there are certain differences in mentality and mindset, it's completely different when it comes to who is more marriage material. There are decent Russian guys and there are decent American guys. And there are worthless guys anywhere as well.

Yes, I think when you are looking for someone who doesn't fit the "norm" for your culture, you widen your search. Perhaps there was a woman in America who would have met my standards, but I happened to find mine in Russia.

The reason I am married to a russian is not that I could not find an american woman willing to be married to me. It had to do with setting the bar high, just as I do for myself. And that is not to say that there aren't a lot of terrific, gorgeous american women! But around here they all seemed to be happily married!

The way this is worded, seems to imply that you were looking only for a gorgeous woman...

Also, I was impressed by the fact that you'd learned Russian for your woman. I wish my husband would learn Russian He lacks motivation though...

Well, when you meet the right person, you know. We didn't even speak the same language, but we knew. When that happens, you'll do whatever it takes. As far as language is concerned, we start from where we are strongest and go from there. I learn quickly, so that's why I chose to learn Russian.

My favorite instances of this are when she calls him a her or her an it. With Russian assigning gender to everything it's no wonder we hear things like, the light isn't burning brightly, "Oh, she not work so good. She try and try and work so very hard but her power so gone."

Cute at home... a possible job killer in the workplace. What's amazing is verbal communication is relatively easy but written communications are harder. It's counterintuitive. Written should translate directly but it doesn't. Spoken is often easier because of context clues, intonation, etc.

And here's the problem with "formal" language learning. Nobody really talks like that!

There are some really good language learning tools out there with software, books, etc., but at the end of the day, they're way too formal. I remember the first time telling a babooshka in Moscow "Zdrastvuite! Dobre Ootra." And she just kind of grunted. Same with "Spasiba bolshoi!" Or, even better, "Bolshoi Spasiba!"

Say it how they say it.

For the OP - I'd be apprehensive of her not speaking English. One of the biggest headaches and hurdles they face coming over here is not being able to communicate and participate in things. I'd encourage you to have her start English classes ASAP. I'd also encourage you to communicate with her in English. Start today!

Ah, Slim, I think we are doomed to not get along. You always make assumptions that are not correct about me, and you make proclamations.

FYI, she is learning english, but we certainly can't hold a conversation yet. I do help her to practice english, and I have tutored several people in ESL. She's at the point now where these videos will be useful to her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI2J3IT7Ozg

They are useful to me to help me to improve my russian as well.

in my family it has always been a no-no to refer to someone using a pronoun especially if the third person is present. The way we normally do it - "How is your daughter doing?" "How is (insert name) doing?" and after that it's perfectly fine to insert pronoun every now and then.. though still using name is much more preferable )))) I use it as a rule of thumb even when speaking Eng

I think you might have the right answer here. Though of course, she is so little, she can't understand any language yet, much less russian.

And I think for learning to speak, English just seems much easier. Which is easier for a baby to say, "Toy" or "Igrushka" ? "Milk" or "moloko"? We'll keep teaching her russian though, she's only three months...

Yeah I agree with you there, but on the other hand I wouldn't want to confuse the OP because we've no idea what level his Russian is at currently. But I do get what you're saying

I see kotori chas as "which hour (is the clock at)".

Don't argue, just do it. This is your wife, be her man. Men solve problems, just solve it. Marshmallows, if you must, look for ways to avoid responsibility, whine, make excuses and generally disappoint everyone around them.

Men just say "I'll take care of that" and make it so. Make it so. That's why she married you.

Bringing animals is no big deal. Seriously? C'mon, this is a cinch and you will likely not get a better price on anything that will please your wife so much. Check around, call the airlines, make the plans and do it.

That's what I love about Russian women - they expect the man to be a man, to make the decisions. It's important how the OP responds here.

It's 'which' in female form, but it's also a way of asking 'what's', in different types of questions such as: 'kakaya ona?' meaning what's she like, or 'kakaya problema?' is what's the problem.. not just asking, 'kakaya krasivaya devushka!' is 'what a beautiful girl', that's what I was trying to get across in my other post but my daughter was demanding attention and I didn't get my thoughts across properly before pressing 'post', so maybe that's part of the misunderstanding, possibly?

In that case, the translation should be "such a beautiful girl!" or perhaps that would be the translation to "takaya krasivaya devushka".... t and k sound alike anyway...

So let me see if I have this correct.

You met a hot girl from Ukraine.

You cannot travel to see her because the Ukraine embassy in your country is closed.

She is willing to travel to you but she needs an international passport and visa that you must pay for.

She sent you a scan of her internal passport to prove she is real

Have you thought about trying a Ukraine embassy in another nearby country to get your visa?

If there is an operating Russian embassy in Trinidad perhaps you can widen your search.

If you have to pay for the visa and passport, you will be paying for a LOT more.

Scan of an internal passport doesn't prove much.

Perhaps you both could meet in Turkey. No visa for you and visa upon arrival for her.

Yes, I know for example in Iran, Americans can go to the Canadian embassy.

You're totally right on that.

I was a suffering a kid-bugging-induced hurry to post, I meant to continue and ask if you could be having a misunderstanding because she could be presuming you are asking 'kakaya ona' (what is she like?) or something of the sort, didn't mean to confuse you with the previous post, apologies!

Hmm, I always thought of Kakaya is kind of like "which one" or something like that.

The water you drink is made from treated sewage.

That depends on where you live. Here in Arizona, it's not.

Alla had been to the "zoopark" in Moscow but we have also visited Brookfield Zoo in Chicago. Parc safari in Quebec (between our house and Montreal), Biodome in Montreal and the aquarium in Chicago. She agreed they were better.

She likes the theatre experiences we have here but is dismayed at the prices and the buildings are not as elaborate as, say Moscow Arts Theatre or Odessa Opera Theatre of course.

Alla also likes the second hand shops though the ones we have here get a lot of donations from various stores which are closing out seasonal clothes and things, so many of the clothes are brand new and very cheap. $4 or $5 for sweaters, slacks, dresses. It is kind of a hit or miss thing and she occasionally gets a real treasure but she likes to check them out.

Yes, I'm sure she will love going to a "Ross" store. Also, I just realized that another difference is when you buy your ticket here, you don't get assigned a seat. I'll have to make her buy the tickets and she will be confused when they don't ask where you want to sit.

Also, have you considered that it's the question word 'what' ie 'kak' that is the problem here.

Yep, exactly - 'what', 'kak' = not just 'how' or 'as' but also 'what'. Maybe she gets confused by your asking 'what she?', albeit again, that shouldn't be the case but it could be, I suppose.

I always thought Chto was "what"... anyway, how else should I say "How is she sleeping?"

I've got no clue as to why there's such confusion going on there. Being Russian myself..

Maybe it's a person-specific trait in lieu of a language quirk, because personally, I don't see why there's a recurring misunderstanding there from a language perspective. I understand the question 'как она?' just fine, but maybe you should try 'kak u neyo dela' instead, meaning 'how is she doing?' in order to avoid further confusion. (как у нее дела?)

~Natasha (previous reply was from Slade)

Well, if you're a Russian and you're telling me that I'm using the pronoun correctly, then it must not be a language specific thing. Yea, I was just giving an example. My question was, how is she sleeping? kak u neeo spala? something like that... Thanks Slade and Natasha!