Howdy,

It's vacation time for the Gnomes, and I was thinking of studying Russian or Chinese this year, instead of Spanish. Does anyone have any positive or negative experience with short-term (3-6 weeks) immersion language programs?

I'm definitely not a college student, and so I can't spend more than a single month studying. My previous experience with immersion schooling was with a truly excellent Spanish language program in Puebla, Mexico (sipuebla.com). I'd like to find a similarly excellent program someplace in Russia or China.

I'm a little leery of studying languages that don't use the latin alphabet, since I figure they'll be a stone bitch. I'm leaning toward Russian only because I think that it contains a lot of French loanwords, which means that it may be "easier" due to the latin cognates. (Sadly, I don't have any serious belief in the value of speaking Russian--the Russians have fucked their economy up to the point where I can't take them seriously.)

Chinese appears to have value as the language of a new economic frontier, but I see a huge set of risks associated with going over there. Woe is I.

Anyway, I'd appreciate any input you have about schools, etc.

Dem Linguistic Gnomes