Keeping up over vacation

[nyessax.livejournal.com]

Hello everyone.

I finished my first term of Russian a little over two weeks ago, and I have about four more weeks before the spring semester starts and I continue with the second term. I haven't figured out yet how I'm going to keep up on what I've learned between now and then.

There are a few little things I've been doing so far. I come across a lot of Russian journals while I'm browsing around LJ, so I pick out whatever words or phrases I recognize and puzzle out the simpler sentences with a Russian-English dictionary to build up my vocabulary a bit. I've also been listening to Russian music every day. But I definitely need some way to work on my speaking skills, which is particularly difficult for me since I have trouble just speaking in English. I only made two friends in the class who I keep in contact with outside of school. One dropped the class and the other, though he finished this term, isn't continuing so I don't know if he'd be interested in practicing with me. I haven't seen any of my Russian speaking friends offline in over a year, so finding someone to subject to my horrible pronunciation doesn't look like an option. Does anyone have any tips or ideas for how I can keep up and practice on my own over the break?

Thank you!

EDIT: I'm sorry, I didn't think to mention when I posted that I can't do voice chat, otherwise that would have been my first thought. I don't have any sort of microphone for my computer, or the money to get one until February at the earliest (really broke college student at Christmas, hah). But thanks for suggesting it, in any case! It's something I'll keep in mind for when I'm able.