going to russia to study russian

[see-kret-nono.livejournal.com]

umm, hi.
i've just joined, and im not sure if this is allowed, so, sorry if it isnt.
but I used to learn Russian on my own. and i feel that there's something about this language that makes it VERY different from the other languages i know (and no, it's not just the 'alphabets'). and so i stopped because i felt that something i was doing was not quite right.
there aren't any language schools in my city that teach Russian.
But i found a university in Tomsk that offers a degree in Linguistics and Translation. (i chose such a degree because Im going to major in linguistics in college anyway, and i've always liked translation.)

I just thought i'd ask for opinions regarding going to Russia to study. Or perhaps, if you have studied this language on your own with no help from others, what methods/books/etc did you use?
(i'm fluent in english and Mandarin, and have learnt Spanish and French for a few months before, and have never faced the problem where i feel that i'm doing something horribly wrong.)

i did a search and found a LJ community for tomsk, but it's all in Russian which i cannot understand. I can read and pronounce the words, and understand some basic simple words, but that's about it for now. I would like to go into Foreign Service or something later on, so i think actually learning a third (for me) language properly would be great.

again, I apologize if this post should not be here. but i didnt know where else to put it as i cannot quite read Russian...
thanks

Comments

[olydiagron.livejournal.com]

"My advice to somebody who goes to study Russian in Russia is to have very high demands on the teachers. If you get a bad teaher, demand to get another one."

I didn't mean that teachers are bad, I just meant that they actually listen to your complaints.