Karelia

 

Today all the students get their long waited certificates. Now they can with proud that they know Russian language and can speak Russian without any fear which is extremely important!

And the team of Russian language school appreciates time spent in July!!! Thank you guys for everything, hope to see you later!!! 

And on Monday 3 August we are ready to meet 24 finish participant from Imatra University and 19 more guys from all over the world…

 

Yesterday the volunteers of the Russian language school Enjoy Russian prepared the theatre party for the foreign students. The guys were offered to put on plays, based on fairy-tales. The students were divided into 2 groups and each group had their own fairy-tale to show. The first group showed Repka, which is a national Russian fairy-tale and the second had The Red Riding Hood. Though the second fairy-tale is not Russian, but the Russians love this one very much, so we tried our best to make it look Russian. The action was a great fun, because the roles were taken at random, so it turned out to be very funny. The guys really managed to play their roles with flying colours, and the roles were not very easy to act, for example, Michael from Germany had to play Repka, which is, in fact, a vegetable, and Jorma from Finland played the granddaughter! A reporter from a local newspaper, who came to have an interview with the students, also took part in the play and was impressed by the friendly atmosphere of the theatre party and the local TV channel also made a report about this event.

 

 

On Tuesday the students from Russian language school Enjoy Russian had an adventure going down the Karelian river Shuya in a boat. The rafting was a real fun, as the guys have said, the “river-road” was not very dangerous, so they didn’t have to worry and could just relax. After the rafting the guys had a tasty dinner, consisting of national Russian food, cooked on the open fire! Moreover the guys could breathe fresh air outside the noisy city, swim in the Shuya River and enjoy the wonderful Karelian landscape.

 

 

This weekend seemed to be very sunny and warm, so the volunteers organized a picnic for our guests. We went to the beach and had fun there playing volleyball, singing Russian songs and speaking Russian a lot. The students got acquainted with some new volunteers they haven’t met before. One of the volunteers Andrey played the guitar and the guys liked the song “Alie Parusa”, which means “Red Sails” most of all. But suddenly it started raining! Nevertheless we have had a great time together at the picnic.

And today students from Enjoy Russian language school are going for rafting! We suppose that this will be a great adventure for them…

 

This week the students went in for bowling at the entertaining centre “Aviaretro”. Actually, we were not only playing, but also supporting each other, talking, telling jokes in Russian, taking funny photos, in other words, had fun. After our time at bowling was gone, we walked around the city, visited some parks and cafés.  

 

Yesterday the guys visited the local cinema and watched the movie “Public Enemies”. As we are in Russia, the film was of course in Russian, so the students had one more chance to practice our beautiful language. The movie was quite good, though the girls didn’t like the thing, that there were much more shooting than romance, but the boys, on the contrary, liked it. 

 

 

This weekend a group of students visited St. Petersburg. We had a very big program and were worrying that we wouldn’t have enough time for everything, but fortunately we successfully managed to visit every place we wanted. First of all, we set off for Petergof on a bus and spent a great time there, walking in the parks, watching the marvelous fountains and visiting the museums, which are former palaces of Russian emperors.

 

 

Then we came back to St. Petersburg and took a boat-excursion around the canals of the city and, of course, Neva River. The charming architecture of the so called Northern Capital of Russia was without any doubt breathtaking! After all we had a nice walk along Nevskiy Prospect, visiting Kasanskiy Sobor and Dvortsovaya Square. Unfortunately after the trip to St. Petersburg we had to say “goodbye” to half of the group, because they only had a course for two weeks at our school and were going back home, to Belgium, but we really made friends with all of them, and hope to keep in touch.

 

 

On 14th of July we gathered together again to watch the most famous Russian cartoons. After that the vols organized some activities: games, quizes and other creative tasks about the cartoons.

 

 

The following day one group of students had an excursion to the Museum of Regional where they knew some interesting facts about Karelia and Petrozavodsk.

 

 

 

 

 

On the 7th of July our volunteers threw a great welcome party where everybody got to know each other playing different funny games. On the following day the Russian vols organized an excursion around Petrozavodsk where they showed our guests the most important historical and cultural sights and just beautiful places of our city. The great cultural program is prepared for our international friends and we will do our best to make this July unforgettable for them!