another source for russian tapes (and most languages) is audioforum. they claim to be using the same methods the state dept. uses:
I’ve heard the Pimsleur course is good.
As my soon-to-be SO will be here in the US from Ekaterinburg, Russia, even she says Russian is a difficult language to learn. According to her it’s the use of intonations that can imply different meanings much like with Japanese and Chinese.
YMMV
One of my good friends did the CIEE '95-'96 St. Petersburg Program. She thought it was a complete joke because the classes met so infrequently and she ended up learning way more Russian on her own than through the program itself. She did the right thing though, and segregated herself from other Americans as much as possible.
I did the CIEE program in St. Petersburg too, in the fall of 1994. By chance, I was in the Gornyii Institute program (Not the SPSU one, which seemed much less structured). My dorm was right in front of Ploshad’ Krasnovo Flota and I had a view of the Findlanskij Zaleev from my dorm window. Had a crazy Russian roommate from L’Ubercy (sp?), outside of Moscow. His father was well-connected to the Yeltin administration and my roommate kept things like guns and tasers in our room–I did not feel more comfortable. During my time there, the dorm where the SPSU people were staying had a murder (or perhaps accident)–Someone (a Russian resident of the building) fell (or was pushed?) from a high window to their death. I did not see it, but people in that dorm said the body lay on the sidewalk for hours (uncovered i recall!) before the authorities got around to coming by and dealing with it. Ah, such nostalgia!
What is this Defense Language thing like? Is it a full blown Army camp, where you have to go through basic training and get up at 5 am and all of that? How much of a commitment is there?
Indeed I was, although I think they probably renovated it between the time you were there and when I went. The floors where they housed the foreign exchange students were actually quite nice, while the Russian-only floors were pretty grody. I would wager to guess that the Russian-only floors are closer to what you remember.
ataraxy22, who’s your friend? If s/he stayed there the whole year there’s a real good chance we know each other. E-mail my username at hotmail if you’re not comfortable going public with the info.
Well, when I was there there weren’t any distinctions between “foreigner” and “Soviet” floors. I was the only American in my blok, but all the other Americans were paired off as half of a blok. I was happy as a clam to be the only American, though; I made more linguistic progress than most of the others.
Although the fact that they needed to renovate a dorm which had only been built a few years before was a pretty sad statement on late Soviet construction in any case. The elevator, for example, only worked about half the time, which was particularly fun when you were sick as a dog with food poisoning and lived on the 13th floor.
When I was there the floors where they housed the foreign students were mixed, actually - you got Russian roommates with every flat. And the elevators worked just fine 
And I did the same thing you did; pretty much blew off the American students unless I absolutely couldn’t avoid it and hung out with Russians - students, friends, their acquaintances, and so on. Went to some great parties that way. And made serious linguistic progress. Certainly a damn sight better than listening to the other kids in the program kvetch about how difficult life was in a different country.
The Defense Language Institute is where you go if you’re in the Army and want to become fluent in a foreign language. I understand it to be a total-immersion residential program.