apex1x,
I've actually graduated high school a number of years ago...
Well, it shouldn't be much more than 2, since I was referring to thread656-374964 dated Oct 4, 2002.
Was that year in Ukraine that same church mission you were talking about? Can I gather from that that you studied Russian as a foreign language and it's not spoken in your parents' home?
See, a language is such a thing that you either use it or lose it. If you knew it from your childhood, then it would come back to you very soon after you get in the environment. If it's skill learned much later in the life, it's much harder to get it back.
I was born and grew up in Ukraine, got my Master's there. So even though Russian is my first language, I studied Ukrainian for many years in school as a required second language. I was nearly as fluent in it as in Russian, seriously. I also studied English as a foreign language, and had some topical knowledge of some other languages. When I came to USA, I had to speak only 2 - Russian at home, and English outside of it. Just 1 year later, I was trying to speak to a group of Ukrainian-speaking visitors, and I found that I couldn't do that any more! I still understood them pretty well, but wasn't able to come up with the words to express myself. The words coming to mind were all English. It effectively took place of my second language. They understood my problem, and we switched to Russian. That’s how it works.
So I can understand that you want to incorporate Russian into your career, or you might lose it otherwise.
Besides IT, in all countries with many Russian-speaking immigrants (USA and Canada in the first place), there is a whole industry of everything Russian, including importing/exporting, deli/grocery stores, book stores, pharmacies, travel agencies, shipping services, child care and tutoring services, immigration services, driving schools, computer stores (where you can buy, besides everything else, a keyboard with Russian letters marked, and dictionary/translating software), and many, many other. As a rule, this is usually the niche for slightly older immigrants, who are fluent in Russian, still have many years to work till retirement, but find it hard to learn English (or, in other countries, the language of the country) and return to their professions. They have plenty to offer and know their customer base very well. I am not sure that’s what you want to do, but you can look into a possibility. Maybe you can think of something that’s not already on the market but may find clientele.
On the other hand, many people learn languages just for the sake of knowledge. I can’t recall for the life of me now the name of that famous person who said you are a human as many times as many languages you know. You can learn a language just because you like learning languages, or because this particular culture is of interest to you, or because of some other reasons. If you learn Russian at an advanced University level, even if it’s not required for your job, a great wealth of classical literature will become open to you, that doesn’t even come close to the original when translated. You can always find people to talk to in order to keep it fresh. And you never know when it comes handy.
You see, when I attended English classes, I thought I was just getting an education. I didn’t actually know just
how much I would appreciate having done that in not so many years.
Good luck to you.
Stella.