I got a rude awakening the other week: My Russian is in terrible shape.

Full disclosure: It was never in great shape to begin with. It's the last of the five foreign languages I have learned, and when I learned it, I focused on a very narrow vocabulary. Basically just what I needed to communicate with a small child and the people who cared for him.

But my minister wanted to try something new for Pentecost, so she asked several members of the congregation to read the same passage, each in a different language. I got assigned Russian. And there I stood, staring at the Cyrillic text, and it seemed like nothing but a big jumble. Like that squiggle of letters that passes for a security check when you go to register on many Web sites.

So I got to thinking about what I could do to keep up my Russian. A Russian-speaking friend in town has moved away, and my shoe repairman, who is from Khabarovsk, wants to practice his English. I have never been very motivated by drills and structured lessons, and between work and kids, I have next to no free time any more. But I found a few resources on the Internet that I could work into my day.

First stop was the Russian alphabet page on "Master Russian". Just seeing the letters and hearing their sounds (it has small audio files for pronunciation) was a help.

Then I did a search for Russian television on the Internet. I figured my little guy learned English by watching "Backyardigans" and "Fairly OddParents", so why couldn't I do something similar in Russian? DirecTV has a Russian channel now, but I don't have satellite, so that was out. Russian services like LaruTV and TV Rossiya could stream Russian channels to my computer via broadband. I even found broadcasts of news and information on several channels right on the Internet. And there are dozens of Russian-language videos on YouTube, including what appears to be an entire season of the "Nasha Russia" sitcom. Unfortunately, I have no interest in that kind of nonsense (it's based on the BBC's "Little Britain" series); if there was an HGTV equivalent in Russian, I'd be much more interested.

If I had a bit more free time, I'd try to join one of Meetup.com's Russian language groups. The site says it has 4,711 members in 53 existing groups, and almost 4,000 more waiting for a group to be created in their area. If you're not familiar with the Meetup concept, it's a way for people with like interests to find each other and get together in groups to talk about those interests. Language clubs are one of the most popular uses of Meetup.

But, in the end, I was saved from struggling through the Russian reading at church. The person who was assigned German got sick, so I volunteered to do that one instead.

Image Credit: Milford Public Schools