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!
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!
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