Russian in 3 Months: Day 1 & 2 About a month ago, I started dating a guy who grew up in the Ukraine. Telling him how I used to study languages which made me want to start studying again! So, I decided to do a similar challenge as Benny Lewis' girlfriend and learn Russian in 3 months as a surprise for him. By January 1st, 2016, I want to have a spontaneous conversation in Russian and capture his reaction on film. I began looking for language partners and had my first Skype session yesterday with a girl named Alena. We went over the Cyrillic alphabet together and spoke in English. I scheduled a session with a professional tutor on iTalki for today and went over the alphabet a second time, but this time I was able to have a little more guidance. There's a couple of phonemes that feel very unnatural for me that I really want to focus on. Some of the letters I need to focus on are: - P (a rolled r that I am really struggling to master in some phonetic contexts) - K (remembering to stress it) - X (I need to relax my throat more since I'm too used to the French r) - bl (remembering to place the tip of my tongue on the back of my lower teeth) - O (like a New York accent in "awesome" and how it changes when it's unstressed vs stressed) - Ж (placing the tongue more forward, tensing my embouchure) - Hard vs Soft T I'll keep practicing and hopefully I'll master the alphabet and sightread Russian very soon!