Hi, my name is Steve. I'm 31 years old, English, but living in Dublin, Ireland.

One of my ambitions is to read "Crime and Punishment" in the original language. (I had a similar ambition for Kafka's "Transformation", which I achieved). I'm a long, long way off being able to do this, having just about learnt the alphabet and how to count to 10.

If any Russian thinks they might be able to give me a little encouragement and help from time to time in getting on top of their language please let me know. I think the best person would be someone who already can speak/write English sentences, but would like some help improving.

General topics that interest me are literature, films, classical music, history & science, though I'm certainly not an expert in any of the areas.