One of the Russian words for shoe is туфля. Note the genitive plural:

The word is mostly used in the plural:

Of course, it is possible to use the word in the singular:

Young women in Russia are much more likely to wear high-heeled shoes than their US counterparts. If a woman is young and sexy in Russia, then by heaven she is going to dress to kill. The picture below captures a commonplace: here are the feet of a lovely young woman next to the feet of her boyfriend.

It's funny, really. If ever there was a country where sensible shoes would be... well... sensible, it is Russia. There are cobblestone streets, dirt streets, uneven asphalt streets, and potholes the size of Kilauea, all of which can twist your ankle and break your leg at a moment's notice. Young Russian women conquer them all in high-heeled shoes.

We mentioned previously that one of the words in Russian that is translated as need is надо. Sometimes you will run across sentences like this:

Such sentences are conversational, and they really have an implied verb in them. Thus the first sentence probably implies something like «Мне надо купить книгу» "I need to buy a book," and the second probably implies something like «Вите надо взять гаечный ключ» "Viktor needs to get a wrench."

People often use these phrases to ask you what you need:

That reminds me... the phrase is used in a wonderful children's poem by Корней Чуковский called «Телефон». Read it out loud to yourself in Russian. The rhymes are delightful:

You can find the complete text of the poem here.

¹ Шоколада here is in the genitive case, not the accusative. The genitive adds the 'some' idea.

Рисовать/нарисовать means to draw or pаint. It is a perfectly standard -овать verb, which means that in the conjugated non-past forms the -ова- is replaced by -у- :

Sample sentences:

The noun form is рисунок:

Both the verb and the noun are used in the world-famous song «Пусть всегда будет солнце» "Let there always be sunshine." Just as in French you cannot live without knowing "Freres Jacque" and "La vie en rose," just as in Spanish you cannot live without knowing "La cucaracha," just as in English you cannot live without knowing "Oh, my darling Clementine," so in Russian it is absolutely essential that you know this schmaltzy song, without which you will an ignoramus and a hooligan... So click here for the text and a video of the song.

When I was a kid, every morning when I woke up I would go into the kitchen, and immediately my mother would say, "Good morning, sweetie, how did you sleep?", and I would answer "Good, thanks." Or Mom would say, "Good morning, honey, did you sleep well?", and I would answer "Yeah" or "Fine" or "Not so great" or "Awful. I couldn't sleep at all." The verb that the Russians use when asking about how you slept is the pair высыпаться/выспаться "to get enough sleep." It conjugates like this:

Some sample sentences:

The Russian word for address is адрес:

The primary meaning is the postal address to which one send mail. Russian addresses during the 1980s began with country, then city, then city/street/street address and person. There was a certain logic to that. Nowadays the official guidelines seem to have changed, and addresses start with the person and then go to street, and then to broader areas which may include city or region, and finally comes the postal code. For instance:

The word адрес can also be used in the sense of an e-mail address:

The word адрес can also be used in the sense of a person at whom a comment is directed:

¹ Okay, this is nerd humor, so I suppose I had better explain it. Per RFC 2606 "example.com" is one of those domain names reserved for use in documentation examples; in other words, no one anywhere can ever have a working domain named "example.com." If someone gives you an e-mail address with that domain in it, it means they are pulling the wool over your eyes. So the sucker in this example will have no future with the krasavitsa in question.