Some Russian last names end in -ович. That's right: every once in a while you come across a last name that looks like an отчество patronymic. For such names the general rule is that if the bearer is a man, the last name declines, but if the bearer is a woman, the last name doesn't decline. One person who has such a last name is the well-known composer Дмитрий Шостакович. His own name declines like this:

His wife's name declines like this:

One of the ways that Russian orthography differs from English is in its use of capital and lowercase letters. The phrases «прописная буква» and «заглавная буква» mean ‘capital letter,’ and «строчная буква» means ‘lowercase letter.’

Notice that in Russian we say that a word is written "from" a capital letter (с + genitive) not "with" a capital letter.

Rules for Russian capitalization (all in Russian) are available here. One of the curious things to note is that during the Soviet period the names of holidays associated with the revolution were written with a capital letter on the first word (not the others, if any), thus: Первое мая May First, Международный женский день International Women's Day, Новый год New Year's, Девятое января January Ninth. (Why the heck they thought New Year's was a revolutionary holiday is beyond me.) Religious holidays, in keeping with the Communist Party's general denigration of religion, were supposed to be written with a lowercase letter: рождество Christmas, троицын день Trinity Day (which is usually called Pentecost in the West), святки Yuletide. That bit is changing nowadays, and the first letter of the first word of religious holidays is often capitalized. The Soviet period rules are still reflected in some places, including the link just given.

Last but not least, first names, patronymics, Western middle names, and surnames (last names) are always capitalized:

Picky detail: the «II» of Obama's name is said «второй» out loud.

The words анекдот and шутка can both be translated into English as joke, but they don't mean the same thing. A joke that you say out loud that has a punchline is анекдот. When you replace the salt in the salt shaker with sugar, that's шутка.

Russians have a wealth of jokes, and one type of joke that used to be very common is "Armenian Radio" jokes. These jokes play off of old radio shows where listeners used to call in and ask questions, and then the experts on the radio would respond with sage advice. The joke usually begins with «Армянское радио спрашивают» “Armenian Radio was asked” or «Армянское радио сообщает» “Armenian radio reports”. Here's a classic example:

The word пока can also be used as an adverb that means “in the meantime, for the moment, for now.”

Another meaning of пока is "see you later":

If you count the syllables of that dialog, you see that Russian only takes 10 syllables to say what English says in 15 syllables. See how much more efficient Russian is than the decaying languages of the West? Aren't you glad you are studying Russian? Other examples:

¹ Бабки and братан are slang. Don't use them in front of your Russian teachers unless you want them to think you are a complete hoodlum.