russian drivers and ballet dancers

I've mentioned the Russian traffic a couple of times
And said that I would get back to it later.
So here we are
I don't know what you've heard about the driving culture behind the eastern border and I don't know what you've experienced and what you're used to,
but here's my experience and opinions.

When I got in my host family's car almost two weeks ago I didn't really have an idea what I would experience.
Let's just say that people in Petersburg have different driving habits than people in Finland.
At times it was a bit scary, but I got used to it. You know, the speed limits get more attention in Finland.
Overall it's more dangerous, people take a lot of risks, make very fast decisions and drive fast. And you can always fit one more car anywhere. People drive on the tram rails. And some of the drivers make epic u-turns. The traffic as a whole it often jammed and can often be described with the word "chaos".  And still everyone reacts super fast and no matter how close it was there's no harm done. Might be that nobody really cares about the traffic rules, but no one wants to be in a car accident.
A thing that I noticed was that the driving was more restless than reckless. It must be horrible to every day spend hours in the car because of traffic jams. I can only imagine how many accidents there must be every year. And every time I'm surprised of how careful you have to be as a pedestrian, barely any car stops to let you cross.
I know that this is common in many other countries, but this was just the first time I got to experience a crazier driving culture properly.
And I'm alive. It was a really interesting experience.
So if you want to drive yourself in e.g. Russia and you've never driven there and you're used to the Finnish way, just don't. You'll thank yourself later.

Another interesting thing about Petersburg is the lack of mailboxes. Seriously, I've seen two during all of my stays. Post offices are also hard to find. I don't know how much you care, but I'm one of those who like to send a couple (haha a couple yeah right) of postcards when I'm abroad (and even if I'm not). So on Tuesday morning when I had my two (this time it really was just two) postcards I didn't really know what to do. My host mom dropped me off the at the hotel Moskva, where our bus picked us up later. And that was when I remembered that this hotel has a post office of its own, meant for the customers though. (Yes, I've stayed at this hotel once) I didn't really care though and we walked in, went up with the lift and I left my postcards at the post office and nobody else cared either.

The big program of the day was our visit to a regular school (1-11 grade). First a teacher gave a speech about the school and its history, but just briefly, because we really behind in the schedule. Then a group of girls danced some traditional dance (I suppose) and it was so cute.
During the following hours we visited some lessons in small groups. My group went to an art class, a Finnish class and an English class and it was so nice! The students in the English class were young teenagers, but the others that we met were 7-8 years old and they were so cute.
In the arts class they were drawing Easter eggs on greeting cards. Then at the end of the lesson some of them wanted to show us what they had made and told who they wanted to give this greeting card to. And they were all so cute, they were going to give the card to their mothers and grandmothers and they told some cute stories about what they usually do every Easter and so on.
By the way, Easter is the biggest and most important holiday in Russia.
The Finnish class was really fun to visit too. The kids could barely any Finnish (they had just started studying it, they were 8 years old) and they had difficulties to concentrate and were giggling all the time. The teacher look pretty done. He looked really tired.
Ah yes, there are just e few schools in Petersburg that teaches Finnish and this one happened to be one of them.
My host sister from last year studies at the moment in this school and we actually met in the corridor! I was really happy to see her!
And oh I almost forgot, we visited a music class too. And it was so different from what I'm used to, what Finnish students are used to. We have proper instruments and chilly lessons where we just play songs and sing and so on and sometimes we have to learn some theory. But here they didn't have any instruments but a piano and they just did some singing exercises and learned about traditional Russian songs. And they never really do anything else. My Polish friend told me that they have it the same way in Poland. The schools simply can't afford instruments. I really feel sorry for them.
It's was really nice to notice that I understood quite a lot of what was said, always at least what they were talking about. Well, on the English lesson they talked only in English, so that wasn't really a problem.

I've heard that the Isaks cathedral is so expensive that no one could today afford to build a similar one. And it is huge indeed and weighs a lot. But the most impressive for me is that you can go up to the tower and look at the city, the beautiful view over the big five million  city (+ two million illegal citizen) and I can tell you that it is absolutely fantastic. Yes, the church was beautiful inside to, but the view from the tower got all my attention. I think there is a picture in my last post taken from the tower.
But the stairs oh my lord. They weren't that many but as one of those injured because of sports, my legs had a hard time climbing them. And no, there were no lifts. Okay, I shouldn't complain, there are people with a worse leg situation than mine. But just honestly, my calf, no, actually both of them, kinda cramped after that. So kids don't break your bodies with sports.

The last two times I've visited this city I've been to a theater, but both times I've seen operas because that has been the only option, or like on the school trip last year, everybody except basically me and one of my friends, voted for opera instead of ballet. They were indeed experiences, but I was so happy that we now would see a ballet instead. Opera wasn't really my thing, I mean, it was quite okay, but ballet is so beautiful and it really is easier and not that tiring to follow the story line. Just saying.  The ballet was La Sylphide (contains spoilers) and it was so good. Well, as we were in the Marinsky theater, the dancers were of course professional and very good, but I still just have to say that it was so great! I enjoyed. This was the first classic ballet I've ever seen and it was just so beautiful. (I have seen a modern ballet back in my hometown that wasn't really good.)
And yeah, the theater itself is beautiful and so on.

This was the last day, the next day we would leave with our bus. And this far I had been speaking all the five languages I know. And believe me, my head was a mess. I had difficulties speaking any language and I came up with new words and mixed simply by mistake and entertained my friends at times.
I wish it had been on purpose. But it was kinda funny too.
And you know when you're so tired that everything's funny, also the terribly bad jokes and the jokes that really aren't jokes.

the next post will be about the last day
and I have no idea why the posts changed their order on my blog

stay online

petersburg in pictures

As you might have noticed,
the posts about my trip to Saint Petersburg haven't had any photos
so here you have some pictures
more on my flickr. account

From the sightseeing in the night with my host family 

From the Isak cathedral

Inside the Isak cathedral

Basic souvenir stands

As you might noticed I haven't written about the cathedral yet,
so hang on
'cause the next post's gonna be about it
and a ballet that we saw

back in behind the eastern border

yes.
I know I've been super lazy writing this blog
* super lazy barely writing anything at all
because I've been travelling but yes as you can see this blog has been in coma since October

but now
wow
I've slapped myself and here we go

Unfortunately I'm not blogging "live", and that's actually not because of my laziness, but because I had no access to any wifi during my trip and when I had a chance to use a computer, I chose to sleep six hours instead of writing crappy posts til the morning light.

 So, I went to Saint Petersburg, it was a trip with school, a trip for stundents studying Russian. We left 12.4 and came home 16.4, the first and the last day was spent in the bus.

It is always interesting to cross the border. Most of the times there has been some kind of problems, mostly small ones, luckily. Once one of our boy's passport was a bit broken at a corner and the Russian customs didn't want to let him through, but eventually they let. Another boy was citizen from an non-European union country, which we Finns were, and it took 40 minutes to get him through. Normally it takes 2 minutes.
Well, this time everything went smooth, nobody wrote their own name wrong in any forms and everybody crossed the border without any problems. The checking of the bus went also smooth except that they wanted to look in one of the bags, but there were no problems.
A difference between crossing the Finnish border and crossing the Russian border is that when the Finnish customs check your passport, the say hello, check the passport and say "there you go" when they give it back. At least most of the times. The people behind the desks at the Russian customs barely look at you. Only once that I remember has anybody said hello to me. These are the first people you see on your trip that look really done with their job. Done with at least their job.

One funny thing with crossing this particular border by bus it that the quality of the road changes pretty radically as soon as you leave Finland. Forget everything about a smooth ride through the southeast Karelya, because no one has really cared to fix any roads.
At least before. I don't know if it was just me, but the roads weren't in that bad condition this time. I do have a memory though of our bus driver saying that the roads were fixed because of the Olympic games in Sotji. It's sad how people need to become hosts for the Olympic games before they start repairing and fixing the infrastructure.

We arrived sometime around 5/6 pm. The trip had taken around 8-9 hours with the stops. But I don't mind sitting in the bus for a long time, especially not when I have great company and good music, which I had.

Arriving by bus or car, anything that drives on the roads, gives you an opportunity to see the real Saint Petersburg. You see the huge blocks of flats in the size of a neighborhood, many built during the communistic rule, you see the shady local bars and markets, many open 24/7, you see the trash and you experience the traffic. And believe me, the traffic is an experience. But more of that later. Many of the block of flats have broken windows, broken balconies, they're basically falling apart. But people still live there. Though I haven't yet seen any slum that could been compared with the ones in e.g. India.

The first stop in Petersburg was at a school. We stopped because 1/3 of the group, including me, would get picked up by their host families. And this time I wasn't the last one to be picked up.
Yes, I lived in a host family.
And yes, last year I was on this educational trip too or how to describe it, and last year I also lived in a host family. Those who didn't, slept at a hotel.

Why did I choose now for the second time to live in a host family?
It's pretty simple.
Nowhere is a better place to familiarize yourself with a foreign culture than in a local family. All the families are different, I know, but the more times you've been in families, the better picture you get. And this was not the same family as last year. I'm going to spoil a little now and mention that they were different in many ways.

When you live in a local family you get to eat either traditional food that's homemade or what the modern world has shaped these traditions into. I've gotten both cake and porridge as breakfast.

For me this time the language part was very important. I'm studying Russian and I finally got to try it live in real situations with native speakers. Last year I barely had any skills in this language so it was really hard to even learn anything. And when my hosts barely knew any English it was pretty difficult sometimes to communicate, but they were very nice people and everything went well. Now I have studied Russian for two years and I actually am able to say more than hello and count to ten. And when I met my host mother, who picked me up when we arrived, I was finally able to talk in whole sentences. 

But.

My skills are still pretty non-excisting, and it was difficult at times (or more like all the time)to understand what was said and especially to answear questions. But there is no better way to practice a foregin language than to speak and just to try to communicate. When i left my hometown for this trip I had promised myself not to cheat and speak English, which I actively do when speaking with my Russian friends. But as my host sister was 13 and the brother even younger, I felt that cheating would not be a problem. I wanted to try to speak Russian as much as possible.

The third big reason why I chose to live in a host family was the opportunity to be an insider. I got to see a part of the real Russia, the real Saint Petersburg. I expreienced the traffic, the colloquial life and the social culture better than if I would have stayed at the hotel. And I got new friends, my family was a buch of very nice and sympathic people. 

As a person not used to neither talk or to listen to Russian daily I had to concentrate a lot. And to ask to repeate. And to tell them all iver again that I'm sorry but I don't understand. As my rescue the daughter studies Finnish and knew a little and the mother knew even more and was iger trying to speak. Her Finnish was a bit better than my Russian a year ago and we managed well. 

The Finnish-Russian-Finnish vocabulary the family had was something worth more than gold for those days. Just saying. 

The first night was nice, even though I had some serious problems with learning how to lock the bathroom door. When my host sister came home from the movies with her cousin, we played Monopoly for a couple of hours. 

A good piece of advice for you:

If you want to learn the numbers better and to count overall in a foregin language, play Monopoly.

As the guest I got the childrens room for myself and they slept on the big couch in the livingroom. I think my hostmom asked me where I want to sleep but I just mumbeled awkwardly and pointed at the bed and said может быть (mozjet bit, means maybe). 

Remeber that word.

I was a little lost and felt a bit stupid not knowing what to do, not really understanding what the familymembers said to me and not knowing where in the appartment to go. But these are things that don't last for too long.

Oh, I almosy forgot, this family lived, like many others, in an apartment in a, for a Finn, normal sized block of flats, probably built during the Soviet rule. Luckliy on the first floor, my knees are greatful. And this family also has Finnish neighbors and a summerplace in Finland, which probably explained some of the knowledge in the Finnish language and the Finnish products around the house.

I also got a pair of plastic sandals to wear inside, but I like to walk barefoot so much that I always forgot to use them. 

As dinner we had these traditional Russian pelmeni, the pastathingys with meat inside. It was the first time I tried pelmeni, and it was good. 

And tea. Never forget the tea. It's something you can't escape in this country. 

Not that I mind, I like tea. 

I also study Spanish and I'm way better and more fluent in Spanish than in Russian even though I've taken less courses in Spanish than in Russian. And when my hostsister asked me where I wanted to play Monopoly- in the kitchen or in the livingroom, I was just about to say "no me importa" (directly translated: it's not important to me), when I noticed it was the wrong language. 

This would not be the last time that I had difficulties tearing languages apart, so to say, on this trip. 

I was relaxed even though i realized that I would have a hard time with the language. That it would be a lot of awkward moments, misunderstandings and mistakes. But I was motivated, this is a language I want to learn. 

I was excited and tired, happy to be on the road and I felt like home. I don't know why, i just did. I had returned to a familiar city that I only have good memories from.

Welcome back to Russia.

To be continued :D

my head is a messy landscape of languages

Sleep is something fantastic.
On the third day of our trip in S:t Petersburg I woke up and noticed as soon as I opened my mouth that it suddenly was a lot easier to talk i whole sentences, the construction of the Russian language suddenly was so much clearer.
But don't you worry, I still has a lot of difficulties.

My host mother (and me) drove her daughter to school and as we had around an hour spare time before my program started, we walked around in the center of the city in the morning sun. She showed me some places, like the small statue of the little bird, Чишик-пишик (tchishik-pishik), that we threw some coins on hoping that our dreams would become true. This statue is on the inside wall of one of the channels, I can't remember which one of them. Then she also showed me a palace which is said to he haunted.

Last year we visited the Russian museum, the avantgarde exhibition. Even if my art teacher had been explaining what avantgarde is in the bus and we had seen such art at the museum, I still hadn't understood what avantgarde was until my friend explained in the bus on our way home. ehehe
But we had an excellent guide, and I've never understood modern paintings as well as back then. I mean, it might be a bit difficult to interpret a black square on a white background if you don't really know anything about art.
So when we this time also were supposed to visit this museum, but another exhibition, I really hoped it would be something easier to understand. And yes it was. We saw paintings by e.g. Van Gogh, Claude Monet and by Russian painters like Shishkin and Aivasovski. The theme was landscapes and they were all really beautiful. The guide was good and when his explanations included concepts like "expressionism" and "impressionism", I felt educated because I understood what they meant.
Until I realized that I didn't

There is a certain amount of hours that you are able to spend on guided (and then translated) tours in museums.
And we were crossing this line.
I mean, over fours hours on two days.
It would have been alright if we would have walked around on our own and seen what interested us, but when you have a guide it gets really tiring, you're just standing and standing and listening, and then you look at one single painting for at least five minutes.

This day was basically only about art. After lunch, we had a spare hour or two to spend before an art workshop with the same theme as the exhibition.

But now I want to tell you about the extra hours because they were amazing.
Some background:
In summer 2011 I participated in a six day camp arranged by Suomi-Venäjä seura and it was located in Kolpino, just outside Saint Petersburg. If I remember right we were 9 youngsters from Finland and 11 from Russia. The themes were art and environment. The camp 2011 was the last camp of some bigger project, I was there as a consequence of a misunderstanding and got to experience only the very end of the project.
Misunderstandings have seldom made me happy like this one.
So on this camp I got a lot of new friends, of which many were from Petersburg. Some of them I've seen a couple of times since the camp, some I haven't and one of them I've seen many times, she has come to Finland to see me and I've met her every time I've been in Petersburg since the camp (the camp was also the first time I was in Russia).
And as I was in this city again we wanted to meet each other again and this random hour gave us a great opportunity. But to our disappointment this wasn't free time, it was a short city sightseeing with the whole group all together. First I thought that this would be a problem, but my teachers said that my friends can join us.
Hahah so why not that was our only chance to meet
I met four of my friends, one of them I hadn't seen since the camp and it was really great to see her! I was overall very happy to see them! We had so much to talk about that it was difficult to know where to start. Three of them are this spring or later applying to universities Finland, I hope they pass the exams!
And I actually tried to speak Russian and I used it for a couple of times, but as my English is a loooot better we spoke English and yes I know I wasn't supposed to cheat but I'd rather be able to talk with my friends that I meet rarely than practice a foreign language that I'm poor at and that I already are practicing like all the time otherwise.
Yes.
And I was so surprised of how it suddenly was so hard to speak English.
After trying to concentrate on Russian for three days all the other languages that I speak suffered a lot.
I had been brainwashed by the Russian language.
Hah you should have heard when I tried to speak Spanish with the French assistant techer who knew perfect Spanish. It took ten minutes to remember how to say good morning.

During our little sightseeing we had a chance to look around in the very beautiful Church on our Saviors Blood (Спас на крови, click to see picture). I recommend you to go and have a look inside if you only have a chance. I had already been there two times, so I stayed outside with my Russian friends, and I made the same choice at the book shop Дом Книги (Dom Knigi) , though I bought two postcard first, and then I went back outside. Next choice was about going to either Kazan cathedral or to a doughnut cafeteria nearby, and for some reason I chose the doughnuts, even though I had been there last year (oh that was a funny occasion) and I had never been in the cathedral. But oh well. These doughnuts are super cheap and taste quite ok, nothing special, really. It's simply an experience in the colloquial Russian world.
My friend gives you a piece of advice about this place: don't drink the coffee
The name is Пышки (Pishki)

We forgot to take a group picture and after the sightseeing we said goodbye, til the next meeting, and went to this art workshop.

The workshop. I was hungry, tired, my head was a mess of five languages and I was getting pretty fed up by all the art history and painters, art overall.
 yeah, so we were supposed to do these small pieces of art, some kind of landscape, using pens and colored paper, we were not aloud to use scissors. It was okay, I could totally have been so much worse.
The leaders were Russian and our teachers translated.
During all the guided tours in the museums we had been divided into two groups, for one group a teacher translated into Finnish and in to other one into Swedish, and I was in the later group. To make the group sizes more even, the oldest students (four guys) were put into our group, even if their mother tongue is Finnish. Everybody just expected them to know good enough Swedish and Russian to survive. And they did. In this workshop the French assistant was in our group, and she knew no Finnish, Swedish or Russian.
So one of these Finnish guys translated what was said in Russian and Swedish into French.
All my respect.
I was really impressed.
And then my other friend (Swedish speaking) talked in Spanish with her, helping with the translation I think.
They sat on the other side of the room so I don't really know what was translating and what was just regular chatting.

These art teachers were really eager and liked to talk with us about how we proceeded with our art. And every time they came to me, they just talked in Russian and explained how I could continue and what I had done well and so on. I understood only some of it, but I just nodded and no matter what she asked me to do or change, I answered может быть (mozjet bit) and she went satisfied away. Every time.
 может быть means "maybe".

In the evening everybody, also the hosts (not the whole families, e.g. only my host sister), ate dinner at an Armenian restaurant. This time also the teachers had remembered to order the water on beforehand. We had a really nice evening and I got to know a guy from my school better (at all, I had never talked with him before this trip). It amazing how you get to know people from your own school on these trips. At one point someone played at the piano in the room and the atmosphere was so friendly and nice.
First I wasn't sure if my host sister was about to join the dinner, so I tried to call my host mother with a cell phone that they had given me (so that we wouldn't need to pay extra for calling to my Finnish phone), but there was some problems so I tried to send a text message instead, but when that didn't work either, I just gave up. She came two minutes later.
That phone didn't work properly, it was old and turned itself off all the time.
I gave myself an award in my mind for successfully explaining in Russian the concept "Finland-Swedes" to my friend's host sister so that she finally understood what our minority is all about.

The Russian culture differs in the world of restaurants in many ways from the Finnish. An interesting difference that might be good to remember, is when you're meal consists of many courses. You're next plate will be brought to you when you have finished the last one, you don't have to wait for everybody to finish. Or this is my experience, right me if I'm wrong. It's a smooth system and there's no pressure to be quicker because anybody wouldn't get the main course before you've finished your soup.

The subway in Petersburg is something of an experience, do take a ride if you only have a chance, but don't get scared of the amount of people and so on.

My host family's dog is so cute. When I sat in my room he just walked around me in circles until I started scratching his back. And he was always so happy to see me. hih

My host mother had been talking about taking me to somewhere sometime in the evening some day when it wouldn't rain, and this place included bridges and flowers. I din't really understand what was going on but I definitely wanted to go. And it was supposed to be beautiful. So why the hell not.
(here you have an example of how much I normally understood of the Russian spoken to me)

And this day when it got dark, me and my host sister and host dad left with the car. And they showed me some cathedral and palace, they looked beautiful in the dark with the spotlights.

The river Neva is floating through this city and there are a lot of bridges crossing this river. These bridges have a lot of colorful lights that are lite when the night falls, and some of the bridges are opened for the night.
Remember that when driving in S.t Petersburg, you can't cross all the bridges after 12 pm anymore.
And what my host mother meant was that they'd show me when the bridges are opened, because all the colored lights make this whole happening so beautiful.
Color and flower is the same word in Russian. (цвет, tsvet)
But it had started raining so hard at 12 pm that it was difficult to really see anything but I saw the opened bridges (not when they were opened though) and I saw live like half of the pictures on the postcards sold in this city.
My host sister had fallen asleep and I was tired too, so after driving on the main street Nevski prospekt and along the riverside, which was beautiful in the night too, we went back home and I fell asleep immediately.
This trip was making me really tired.

hang on this story will continue for two posts more, two days left to talk about!

forget Strömsö, we're in Russia

So

Day number two in the city of Peter the Great. 

When I woke up (I slept like a baby) my brain clearly had proceeded some Russian because it suddenly was easier to remeber words. It was still difficult to construct sentences but it was easier to remember words than yesterday. And that felt amazing. My level of being lost decreased.

The last post was a little erh I went off track and it was a bit messy, so I hope that this post is eh less messy.

Sightseeing by driving around in the city in a bus, is normally the most boring you can do when travelling. And we did it. Again. Just like last year. But luckily our busdriver, who guided us, is awesome. He has been so many times in S:t Petersburg that he knows a lot of interesting facts and so on. But even if he was awesome, the tour was way too long not to bore us. Fortunately i had some great friends with me.

When I before the trip looked at the list of the participants, I was happy to see that there would be a couple of awesome guys from last year with us, but sad that two other guys would not.

I was so wrong. The two guys were already in Petersburg on some kind of a short exchange and they joined us form this day on. 

During the sightseeing we stopped at two places, where we took some photos and where some bought some souvenirs. I did not.

You all know the traditional Russian furr hats. They are popular souvenirs. And people like to try to sell them at some tourist attractions. These are not made of real furr anymore and among the black hats you can find pink and violet ones. I think that our first stop was on the Vasilevsky island (right me if I'm wrong), where the huge red columns with the statues on are. Within just a small area there were like three salesmen selling these furr hats. And just one boy bought one. 

I can only imagine how fantasticly boring it must be to try to sell those hats. Or souvenirs at all, as long as you don't have a stand. 

And for the record, the hats were overpriced. 

Seriously, imagine that you're day in day out standing in the cold wind among silly tourists trying to sell some overpriced hats and no one even looks at you as you try to speak with them when they're walking by.

And you probably have a crappy salary. 

Sighseeing makes you hungry. 

And when you're hungry, there is one absolutely fantastic place to eat. 

Штолле (Shtolle) is famous for its pies, and I totally understand this publicity. There are different pies to choose from, e.g. cabagge, salmon, meat, mushroom and then sweet pies filled with quark (?), apricose or cranberry. I've eaten the salmon, meat, apricose and cranberry pies and they were so good. 

I said in the last post that tea is something that's going to keep harrasing you as long as you are in Russia. There are also some other water based things that you'll always be served no matter where you go, and one of them is 

Soup

Yes

There is no restaurant that doesn't serve soup.

Ok maybe McDonalds and Hesburger doesn't but the rest does. 

(Please right me if I'm wrong)

You see, first you get soup and then you get the maincourse. 

And at Штолле/Shtolle there is one absolutely fantastic soup that I never thought I would hear of, and that's sorrel soup. Suolaheinä suomeksi. It looks like seaweed, smells like seaweed, but it tastes so good. And then there's meat and a half of an egg. I recommend this soup. 

A piece of advice for you:

It can be very difficult to be a vegetarian or anything like that in Russia, it's not common in any way.

And another good thing to remember:

In this country it's not common to drink like water during the meal, you eat the soup as a starter and then you drink tea afterwards. And last year this was still a surprise for our experienced teachers. Last year our teachers were too Finnish to remember this and you can only imagine the cultural shock when there is not enough botteled water at the restaurant for us all because no one expected us to need any and we expected them to have some. The pies were ordered on beforehand and our teachers thought that water was self evident. This year the remembered this and we had some juice, морс (mors), made of lingonberry and cranberry or something like that. 

But seriously

That confusion

From both sides.

Marvelous.

One more thing that makes our bus driver awesome (remember that he's Finnish). The traffic in Petersburg is pretty horrible and jammed, just saying. When he noticed that he'd need to make a u-turn, he just made a u-turn on a super tight road with a lot of cars and it was perfect. Then he just stopped in front of this pie-place and  said "get out quickly, we're blocking the whole road".

He's awesome.

The pie lunch included fooling around with an iPad's camera.

Ah, right, the teachers had came up with this great idea that we should document our trip with their iPads, either by photographing, filming or in whichever way we wanted to retell the trip. I think everybody just took photos and wrote some texts. It was not smooth to swing that iPad around wherever you went.

The Hermitage (Эрмитаж) is full of art and there are 25km to walk if someone feels for hiking indoors. It's a complex of several buildings, including the famous Winter Palace.

Saint Perersburg is full of huge different coloured palaces, just saying.

Yes, the Hermitage, we walked around for an hour or two with a guide, and our teacher translated. It felt awesome to actually understand as much as 1/3 of what the guide said. 

We saw two paintings of Da Vinci and the famous golden clock with the owl, peacock and the tree. It was beautiful and very extraordinary. 

I didn't unfortunately take a picture, but i bet you can find one if you google.

The guided tour took longer than planned and we were behind in the schedule. And also before the guided tour in the Hermitage, we wandered around with the whole group for a while because we had so much extra time. After the extra time we had some more extra time because our guides were late (or something like that). 

And when people got nervous about all this, my teacher just said

"Forget Strömsö, we're in Russia!"

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

(Google the TV- program Strömsö if you don't know what it is, but the point is that everything always goes perfect in Strömsö.)

This art educational visit was the last program of the day and my host sister picked me up from the square outside. We and her cousin were supposed to go to the Summer Garden ( Летний сад) but it was closed. I was a bit disappointed because I have never been there, but well it's pretty obvious why it was closed, it's still so early in the spring sonthere's nothing to see.

Back home with the host family things went well. I basically spent the whole night talking with the parents about this and that, and they told me about a road trip they hade made with the whole family two years back, in eastern Europe. They showed a lot of pictures and it was so interesting! Last summer I road tripped through the US, coast to coast, but I somehow forgot to tell about it, I really didn't get a chance. I was too interested of their trip :D 

Something I wrote that night:

                         *

I'm just sitting there scilent, just listening and nodding to tell I've understood and when I try (notice my choice of the word) to speak they understand me but my grammar goes all wrong. But that doesn't matter as long as I'm understood. 

                         *

The son in the family, a seven years old funny little fella, was so cute. And their dog, he was so kind and cute and I and my host brother played with the dog for a while inside, even thought the apartment wasn't big at all. And we must have distured the mother so such when she talked on the phone oh my God.

Can I just talk about children and foreign languages. They talk fast and they're iger and shy and show-off and you think they are so cute but you only understand 1/4 of what they say, when you normally understand about half of what is said when someone older than 10 speaks a foregin language to you. But with a child, you just nod and smile and everything's alright because they think that you understood.Here you have my situation with my host brother explained. 

The worst is when they mix languages. I have a relative who is half swedish and half chinese, he speaks cantonese chinese and then swedish. Last time I met him he was around three years old and he had so much energy and ran around playing some super cool exciting game (alone). Once he stopped in front of me and my second cousin and started to tell us something, probably about the game. We understood the word "police" and the "Pew! Pew!" So it must have been one hell of a chase and a lot of action i have absolutely no idea. Please note that swedish is my mothertounge. 

Oh this went off track again, I'm sorry.

But mainly, nodding was my saviour until someone asked me something.

Hehe.

Here is a list of expressions, words and sentences that I really felt retard without, that are simply hard to live without:

Whatever/doesn't matter to me

Watch out!

I'm hungry

How do I lock the bathroom door?

I could..

Should I...

Are you ok/hurt?

No, that was not what I meant

I meant that... 

I tried

I learnt some of these during the stay. 

I found more persons during the day with fantastically boring jobs. For example, at the entrance of the Hermitage, there was a security control, this kind of metal detectors like on airports. Well, nothing ever happened and when something did, the guard just told you to keep on going. So the guard just sat there yawning. An other job at the same place was the "guards" in the actual halls with the art, those old grannies that are watching your every step and watched that you didn't touch anything or that you didn't use flash when taking a photo. I would manage for a summer but not longer, I would get terribly restless and start singing and jumping around or something like that. 

People that always look so done with everything are the bus conductors (note: not the drivers) and the guards at the end of the escalator in the subway/metro. Well, maybe I'd rather have that kind of job than no job at all.

I hope this post wasn't too messy. 

And it's a bit longer than the last one. 

I apologise for possible grammatical and spelling mistakes and

I'll be right back