on becoming the last non-russian speaker

Last week, all I could understand of the teacher was jam, jam, jam. I wasn't able to decipher anything else she was saying, but she was definitely repeating jam - варенье - over and over. But not really, because my Russian vocabulary is so limited that the matching game of what I hear to the contents of the sparsely populated bank of words in my head is rife with error. Jam? Today was the third week of Conversational Russian and at this point I am the last non-Russian, non-Armenian, non-heritage speaker standing.There were more of us but I think they ran away. The boy who used to spend all of class with his face in his dictionary didn't show up this week. The last other was very firmly kicked out of class today for not knowing what "вапросы" meant. It means questions. He begged to stay but he was kicked out right then and there by our silver haired, former Muscovite lecturer and she said she would remove him from the roster tonight. She's quite stern. Everyone else in the class already speaks Russian well and most are middle-aged women trying to improve their English. This was a shock to me when I came into the first class and everyone was chatting in Russian and doing Russian crosswords and answering their cell phones with, "Allo?" A scatterbrained Asian woman stumbled into class today and I thought another had joined my ranks, but she sat down and said she is Kazakh and promptly started разговаривалing away. My peers are a strange bunch and do things like talk on their cell phones loudly and wander around the classroom for no reason in the middle of class. We had to prepare introductions of ourselves in the language we're trying to practice. I could see the first line of my neighbor's paper - My name is Yuriy ! He kept handing his paper behind him to his daughter and she would correct his mistakes and he would rewrite it and pass it back again. Meanwhile, I am trying my hardest to understand what everyone is talking about and it feels very much like the springs in my head have been wound overly tight and like my head is going to split open at the top and sides and copper gears and sprockets will go flying everywhere. Last week, an Armenian/Russian woman asked me after class why I am studying Russian. I resisted telling her that it is the language of love. I told her I suck. She told me, "Stick with us! You will get it."

I've noticed that people on this city college campus are much friendlier than the people I ever met on campus at my alma mater. Everyone smiles and says hello and offers to let you pass if you're stuck behind them and want to walk at a quicker pace. I was backing out of my slanted parking spot and the driver behind me was tapping his horn. I assumed I was being slow and irritating him. I started driving and a crazed man clutching a bottle of beer accosted me and began banging on my car. He had wide, frantic eyes and looked dirty and insane. Terrified, I started driving away. He was yelling after me and I looked in my side mirror and he was holding the paper coffee cup that I'd accidentally left on top of my car. I opened my door and he chased up to me, screaming, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?! YOU FORGOT YOUR COFFEE!!!" It was basically an empty cup but I took it back and felt embarrassed for having mistreated him. He may have scared the shit out of me, but he must have been very nice.