The Russian language-русски язик

I have been meaning to write about this for a little while now.
When I first arrived I got really tongue-tied (yes, it does happen) in English and my Russian disintegrated to the point that I had to remind myself of how to say thank you and please. I put this down to the deluge of information and new experiences, as well as being rather tired after the last few weeks of work/sorting out the flat/hopping around Europe.
Anyway, after a few days I could start to make out words when people were talking, which is quite a challenge in this language as people speak really fast and swallow the ends of words.
After 2 weeks I often get the topic being discussed, and sometimes actually understand what is being said! Only of course on known topics but still I am quite happy on that front.
I had a boost the other day (day before expected night reservoir section)-when I got back from the nasty drive I described, I had to get out to show my pass to the security guy as it was the first time I went past there driving on my own. After he had helped me run after and catch the car, which had decided to slide away in the meantime (…) he decided to come round later and chat. So we had a rather bizarre but fun conversion where he spoke really fast in Russian with odd English word (about 3), lots of hand gestures and some drawings, and I did the same in English, with a bit more Russian thrown in. But it gave me a good boost to go and learn more!
The next morning, the canteen lady decided to chat to me as I was alone in the mess. She started really slowly with “WHAT…IS…YOUR…NAME…YOUNG…LADY?” but when I had answered that and asked her hers, she rapidly increased her speed to 1000 wpm. I still managed to gather that she lived in Nefteyugansk, that she has 2 daughters, one of them called Anna, who are students, one in economics and the other in tourism, and that she invited me to come and visit them all. And I managed to tell her where I am from, what I do, where I studied, and that I was going to pad 26-could I have a bag for the pastries I was taking? I got a bag, lots of pastries, yoghurts and fruit juice :-)
Which all came in very handy during the logging night…
Incidentally, it is hard to imagine the importance of bringing small things like pastries or chocolate to your fellow workers without being here-the small details are what really make the biggest difference!
Now I am here on my own and things are stabilising a bit I hope I finally have a chance to sit down and learn/revise my Russian, and actually try to use it elsewhere than in the canteen. Obviously it does help that the Deutag cook doesn’t just ask potatoricemacaronicabbageporkfishchicken but actually enunciates and looks rather happy when I remember the name of something!