I recently received a question from someone who read my Transitions Abroad article on Immersion in Russia. The reader wanted to know how to learn the basics of Russian without access to a class.

Before I transferred to Colorado College and started taking Russian, I tried a “teach yourself Russian” book (I no longer have it and can’t remember which one it was). The advantage of this type of book over a regular textbook is that they’re intended to be used without the benefit of a teacher. However, they tend to focus exclusively on very basic conversation–perhaps not a bad thing if you just want some bare-bones of grammar, vocabulary, and the Cyrillic alphabet before you dive into immersion.

If you go the route of a book, it’s definitely helpful to get one with audio CDs. A huge part of picking up the basics is learning to hear and recognize the sounds of the language. Since I did study Russian formally in college, I don’t have any particular recommendations for homestudy books/CDs. I suggest reading reviews online and trying your local library’s selection to see what fits best with your learning style before you buy.

There are a few other possibilities besides college classes, depending on where you live. Local recreation and community centers often offer casual language classes for adults. Russian is a less common offering than some other languages, but it’s worth looking. Even if your local college doesn’t offer Russian classes, there might be a student group that meets to practice conversation, or you might be able to start one in your college or community.

All of this applies to learning most other languages, although finding or starting a local conversation group will be more difficult (or impossible) if you’re planning on studying a less commonly-taught language.

I’ve seen three major approaches to projects like this:

1. Focus on your favorite type of photography and try to improve it.
2. Focus on a less comfortable type of photography and try to improve it.
3. Attempt to encapsulate your day in a photo.

I started out well within my comfort zone–macros of flowers–because flowers hold still, it’s spring (hooray!), and I’m trying to push the limits of my digital point-and-shoot (they’re pushed). By the end of the month, I had moved more towards the third approach.

I improved some aspects of my photography, and managed to create a fairly interesting (to me, anyway) account of my month: spring in Colorado, Florissant, Steamboat Springs, and my trip to Houston last week. There aren’t a lot of people in my photographs because I don’t like posting photos of people online without asking first. The main thing I am taking away from this experience is that I’ve pushed my point-and-shoot as far as it can reasonably go, and I seriously need to start looking at DSLRs if I want to take the photos I imagine.

You can see most of my photos in my Project30 Flickr Photoset.

All the same, there are a number of stories in the book–particularly the Caribbean and Eastern Europe chapers–that I think are well worth reading, although for different reasons than the title suggests.

I really enjoyed writing this up–the Kudia River fossils are beautiful and strikingly different from the cold-tolerant plants of today’s eastern Siberia. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find much about Kudia River in the scientific literature. I also think ginkgoes in particular are really interesting–today one species survives as the sole representative of an entire order which was once both more diverse and more widespread. Was it primarily climate change that led to the decline of the ginkgoes or did other factors come into play?

It’s a bonus that the Kudia River fossils were collected by one of my scientific heroes, T.D.A. Cockerell.

Looking at fossils from all over the world is way of traveling for me–both through space and time. One of my most profound experiences while traveling recently was seeing petrified redwood stumps in Iceland. While I knew that redwoods once grew all over the world, imagining the redwood forests of California while surrounded by the mossy volcanic highlands of modern Iceland really brought home to me how much the world has changed.

Photo: Wouter Hagens

Gregory Hubbs, son of the founding editor and publisher Dr. Clay Hubbs (who passed away last year) wrote:

Unfortunately, these days it is almost impossible to make profitable small and independent niche magazines without “angel investors.”

I love print magazines, personally–I pick up free ones compulsively and subscribe to quite a few more. I enjoy the tactile experience of them, and unlike web publications, they’re convenient for the bus, the airplane, the doctor’s waiting room, or flipping through during lunch. But the web is fast and convenient for quickly looking up information (when I wanted to know something about a specific destination, I turned to TransitionsAbroad.com, not an index of the print magazine), and this does seem to be the way of the future.

The editor of the print magazine, Sherry Schwartz, describes the hopes for the future of TransitionsAbroad.com:

Greg and Clay’s wife, Dr. Joanna Hubbs, will continue offering a wealth of travel editorial, commentary, and resources online. The Hubbs are excited about expanding TransitionsAbroad.com and upholding the same editorial integrity that the magazine has maintained. They will be taking TransitionsAbroad.com to a new level by offering a greater breadth of content than ever before. The goal is to encourage and inspire new audiences, as well as to remain a tried and true resource for Transitions Abroad’s loyal readers. The coming expansion of the website on March 1st will offer ever greater flexibility for featuring the voices of Transitions Abroad’s columnists and contributing editors.

I think TransitionsAbroad.com is currently presenting a huge amount of great information in a somewhat overwhelming way, and I hope the new layout will be more approachable. When TransitionsAbroad.com began encouraging submissions for new sections like “Travel to Eat” last year, I thought that was a great direction to expand in, and I hope to see more in that direction.

I believe that Transitions Abroad filled an important niche of practical, down-to-earth travel information aimed at ordinary people with ordinary budgets, interested in seeing and doing things besides resorts and big organized tours. I wish the people at TransitionsAbroad.com the best of luck in continuing to fill that niche with the website. I’m excited to see what they do.

If you could take a dream trip in 2008, where would it be to and why?

My long-term dream trip is to take the Trans-Siberian Railroad across Russia and then the Trans-Mongolian to Ulan Bator. I loved my time in Russia and would very much like to see more of the country, particularly the countryside and Siberia, and I’ve wanted to visit Mongolia for many years (not just because of the fossils).

This trip definitely isn’t happening in 2008, though.

If you could only visit one new (to you) city this year, which one would it be and why?

That’s tough, since I don’t really have cities as dream destinations most of the time–I much prefer parks and small towns. So I’ll change that to “destination” and give an answer that’s actually likely to happen this year: Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. I’ve had it on my list for the past few years for its spectacular scenery, and it’s only a few hours away, so I really have no excuse not to go.

If you could go back to one place this year that you’ve been to before, where would it be and why?

South Iceland. Partially because I lost many of my photographs from my 2006 in a major computer crash, but also because having been once, I have a much better idea of how to prioritize my trip (more time in Skaftafell, less in Reykjavik).

Do you think you might travel more or less this year than in previous years?

More than some, less than others. I don’t think I’ll be able to do much recreational travel except within Colorado, but I hope to be doing quite a bit of travel for research and conferences.

What will you be looking for in your travels in 2008?

New experiences, as always.