Привет!
It was truly fascinating how different and alike our cultures were, to experience different living situation, food, achitecture... BAH! <3
My host family, Natasha, who's one year younger than me, and her mother, they were very kind. I'm fond of them, who wouldn't be? They took me in warmly and I felt immedietly at home in their cosy apartment. Not to mention that they fed me a lot, I don't think I ever went hungry. XD I miss them already. ;_;'
Hm.. Who am I to complain? I love cakes. XD
Besides, I already warned her that I will feed her a lot when it's her turn to come to Sweden next year. :3 PAYBACK :D
The activities the swedish and russian groups mostly did were kind of discussions concerning democracy. It was fun actually, we compared Swedish and Russian democracy, the pro and cons, how to improve the situations and so on... Really interesting :'o We mostly focused on topics on Human Rights, Violence against Women and Ecology Issues..
Go ahead, bash my handwriting XD
Then we swedes were shown around the city by our hosts, Novgorod is much bigger than Hudiksvall I can tell you. XD And we have so much Russian history crammed in to our heads now o_o We were shown the local TV station, Kremlin (the old centre of Great Novgorod), the Wooden Museum (hah, we witnessed a wedding out there in the cold XD), folkdance ('Stavropol').. Waaah! The folkdance was stunning! O_O The traditional russian clothing were amazing, and how they could dance! I was oggling on how they could use their legs. XD And not to mention their singing voices, there was one man who sang that gave me and a friend the shivers. Wooh. Wah! And the Sofia Cathedral, it was beautiful. *_*
We stayed in Novgorod for about seven days, the last three days were spent in St. Petersburg. ^^
Uh, I can't say that our arrival went well. Our teacher convinces us to walk to the hotell, because it would save us the money and it wasn't that far.. Well.. It wouldn't have been far if we weren't heading to the wrong direction. XD After an hour and so, with us students whining, we finally managed to take the taxi instead. That went far more smoothly.. ^^'''
I'm behind that light. Me shy. x)
That's Julia and me on the picture, the last night in the hotell, we decided to explore. :'o I was to lazy to change out my dress, this was after a folklore, kinda like the one in Novgorod. This one was fairly amusing, 'cause one in our group, Martin, got pulled up the stage by one of the lead-ladies, and had to dance in front of the audience. XD I was laughing so hard! He was totally cool, keeping his composure and seemed to have the time of his life! ;D
I can't wait until next year when they all come to Sweden ;D