I also started learning German from a native German in a Department of Defense Dependent school in Germany, took two years of it in college, and spent my junior year in Germany. I also took classes in Russian, a language that seems to have been deliberately designed so as to be impossible for outsiders to master.
I have no clue with Russian but their expletives after crashing their cars are amusing, whatever they mean.
Now that i am teaching a class on the Eastern Front, a class on the Siege of Leningrad, and working on Russian Civil War class i have not only gotten into romanticized Cyrillic but some Finnish. My understanding is Finnish is so difficult 25% of Finns speak Swedish. Since we are here does anyone have a source that can show me how to pronounce "englishcized" Russian words and names like a Russian instead of pronouncing them as if they were English words. Spasiba