In 1812 the invincible Grande Armee of Napoleon Bonaparte crossed the Neman River and thus began entered war with Russia. The Russian Army was unable to stop Napoleon's advance yet, neither was Napoleon able to destroy the Russian Army. Napoleon even captured Moscow but instead of the expected peace delegation he found a deserted city which was set ablaze soon after he arrived. Napoleons supply train was hopelessly overstretched and the Grande Armee was forced to retreat. Russia's time had now come and it seemed the very land seemed to come alive. The Grande Armee was plagued by constant raids from cossacks and starvation but the most terrible foe of all was the land itself, Russia's General Winter. Out of the original force of 615,000 proud French men, it is estimated at as little as  50,000 saving and frostbitten soldiers made it back to France. 

Of course this is just one of the many chilling stories of the dreadful Russian winter, yet so far it has not met expectations. The winter has intact been quite mild and I have not even had a chance to wear my heavy coat! 

Classes are ending as yesterday was the last day of exams. Now we will furiously grade papers to give back our results in our next and final classes. It has been a good semester and I shall miss my students, but I am proud of their progress and am happy to say that I think that almost all have substantially improved this year. 

I had a very exciting weekend last week. On Friday night I came home, took my shoes off, washed my hands, and turned to see a large carp swimming around our bathtub. "Marie" I said, "why do we have a fish in the bathtub?" "O" said she, "I bought it today, road home on the bus with it, laid it down on the floor, and then when I tried to cut it up he started jumping around!" "So you put it in the bathtub? Why didn't you leave it and let it die?" "O thats horrible I can't kill it! I'm a women, but your a man, can you kill it? Men can kill things." I laughed, "sure," said I looking at the breadcrumbs floating in the water that she had been feeding it. So Marie hands be a bucket and a big knife and I drain the water. I'll just cut off its head quick I thought, that will be nice and quick. So I stabbed the knife in just behind the gills only to realize that the knife was extremely dull. It took a lot longer than I had originally planned, but eventually I succeed and Marie immediately started gutting her late pet. And I must say, he was quite delicious.