A look to the past and a little SciFi

This week's Norwegian movie was Max Manus. It was a very well done war period piece. Lots of German, but I didn't want to use the subtitles, so I just struggled through the German bits. I guess I vaguely knew of Max Manus, having heard of him when I was in Spain. He spent the last part of his life there, along with his wife, also portayed in the movie. But I didn't know how important he actually was to the Norwegian resistance. So I learned a lot from the movie historically as well.

For Polish, I've begun reading Czarne Oceany, a novel by Jacek Dukaj. It's a bit tougher read than I had expected, but I'm enjoying it. Lots of compound words that aren't found in any dictionary, so I'm forced to think pretty hard about what I'm reading. Old-school SciFi at its best!

This week, my Skype partner for Turkish conversation is on vacation, so we haven't talked at all this week. He'll be back next week. In the meantime, I've been getting into some older Turkish pop music, namely Bariş Manço. I discovered him maybe a month ago. Quite amazing for his time. And he had a very long, successful career. I highly recommend a listen!

I'm also continuing on with Türkçe Öğreniyoruz. I'm guessing another week and a half to two weeks and I'll be able to start on the forth course.

I'll mention this once again, but it's not part of my goal this year: I'm slowly going through an Ojibwe course and am documenting it at Indoojibwem! I'm not counting this as part of my goal because I have no immediate plans to use it, other than passively. That may come later, but right now, it's a purely passive thing. I'm finding the number of similarities between Turkish and Ojibwe incredibly interesting.

More movies

I've continued with Norwegian cinema. This last week I watched two offbeat movies - just my style. The first was Budbringeren. Overall, easy to understand, and I liked the story, even if it was somewhat depressing. There wasn't a whole lot of dialog, so truth be told, it was really just a normal movie-watching experience. I'd like to say that it's because I'm getting just that comfortable with watching Norwegian movies in general - and maybe I am - but the next movie I watched tells me no. The second movie I watched was Naboen. An equally quirky movie, if not more violent. Where Budbringeren was easy to follow, Naboen was irritatingly difficult to understand at times. Lots of different accents going on. That one I will watch again.

I'm also watching a lot of NRK programming, now that I've found their great plugin for XBMC. In fact, I've been going through a lot of their documentaries. There's a lot of interesting stuff to keep me interested.

I'm also making a concerted effort to improve my writing in Norwegian. A while back, I went through two courses, both completely in Norwegian, the first titled På Vei, which is considered A2 material, and Stein på stein, which supposedly takes the learner up to B2 level. I used both the textbook and the audio, but never went through the workbooks. Well, I got my hands on the workbooks and am now going through the Stein på stein one. It's a nice review, and is really cementing my written Norwegian.

I'm back on track with my reading in Polish too. A friend of mine recommended I check out Joanna Chmielewska. She's primarily a crime/thriller novelist, much in the same vein as Patricia Cornwell, but a generation older. So I found a copy of Rzeź bezkręgowców (Kill all Invertebrates). I haven't really started in other than the first couple pages, but it has much more familiar language than Linia Czasu has. So I'm hopeful. Her writing seems to be very much from a woman's point of view - again, much like Patricia Cornwell - but that's fine. I'm just thrilled I found some original, engaging literature.

I've gone through one more chapter of Teach Yourself Turkish. I'm still very happy with my progress with Turkish. If anything, I wish I had more time to devote to it.