Month: June 2023

ODS

Last night at the Open Door Shelter was one of these, which brought joy and endless satisfaction. When I arrived, two of the residents told me right away that they wanted to cook with me and asked how they could help. Luckily, this time there were several dishes that could be started at the same time, so there were four of us standing around the table and doing something, and three more just standing by and chatting. And one girl said: you know, it reminds me how it was at home when we were all cooking together! And I told her that that’s exactly how it felt for me!

Another girl asked me whether I minded making a TikTok video of us cooking, and I said I do not mind at all, and we had fun filming different stages of the process.

The staff joined us; there were many simple steps that I could delegate to any of the interested parties. It was great to see how in contrast to previous times, most of the youth hurried to package and put away the remaining unused ingredients and clean the cooking surfaces. I almost lost hope I would ever see such an attitude again!

And everybody liked what we made! No, we didn’t sit for a meal together; this is still months apart, even if things will keep going the way they are going now. But we talked! We talked while cooking, and we talked after. I had some really deep and thoughtful conversations, and I hope to keep developing these relationships.

Before I left, I checked how many meatballs were left – not more than a third of what we made, and most of the mashed potatoes were gone, too. I like when people like what I cook!

A girl who already finished eating asked another one, who just started: do you like it? And after hearing “yes,” continued: then say thank you! The second girl looked embarrassed: she didn’t even think about that option 🙂

I left reluctantly at 8 PM, and we made plans for my next visit, and we also decided to try to go to the movies in the park after the holiday.

… and I know very well that one good day does not really mean that everything will be good next time, but I still feel like “the day is not wasted.”

This Week In Chicago

Although I arrived on Saturday and, technically speaking, could attend the Pride Parade, it was not on my mental list, so I ended up not going there. Instead, I tried to catch up with tons of little things and was petty successful with that.

Some Pride in Rogers Park:

Continue reading “This Week In Chicago” →

Morning In Helsinki

Just a couple of pictures taken on the way to the ferry in Helsinki – it’s amazing when the sun is so bright at 6 AM!

***

When the mutiny in Russia started, I had some hopes. The hopes were that they would be busy killing each other or at least weakening each other, and meanwhile, Ukraine would be able to advance more. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen, meaning they didn’t destroy each other, at least at first glance.

Boris said that at least Ukraine will return to the front pages of the news. To our deepest regrets, it didn’t happen either. Instead, Russia returned to the front pages. I listen to what Biden had said about not interfering, and I understand, but…

Tallinn At Midsummer – The Rest Of The Pictures

Once we discovered the oldest cafe in Tallinn, we stop there each time we visit.

Two kinds of Rhubarb pies and sea buckthorn pie
Vana Tallinn coffe
Round two – Chocalate to go
Marzipan Museum
Continue reading “Tallinn At Midsummer – The Rest Of The Pictures” →

Learning English At School

I started the series about an elementary school in the Soviet Union by
stating that across the country, all schools were almost the same in terms of what they taught and how did the schedule look like. However, there was something special about the school I attended – it was a “specialized English school with several subjects taught in English.”
The overall quality of foreign language teaching in the Soviet Union was poor, and Soviet people were notorious for not being able to communicate in any foreign language,
In our school, things were better, although far from perfect.

In all ordinary schools, students started to learn a foreign language in the 5th grade, while we started in the second grade. More importantly, for English lessons, classes of 35 + students were divided into three groups, so we had more interactive instructions.
In the second grade, we had English three times a week (which meant that we had five periods instead of four on these days). At least once a week, we had lessons in “lingo rooms,” where our desks were equipped with headsets to listen to the tapes recorded by the native speakers and practice pronunciation.

I should have my second-grade English notebooks somewhere, but I could not find them, so here are my third-grade ones. We did a lot of writing and reading but also a lot of oral practice, so by the end of the eighth grade, my English was fluent (I lost some during High School and got it back in the 90s when I started interacting with foreigners.

I think that by the fith grade, we had English every

In the upper grades, we used to joke that they were educating us to become spies, and we could not imagine how close to reality these jokes were.

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.

Tallinn At Midsummer – More Pictures

I started to put this post together yesterday, and today is very different. I am on the plane back to Chicago, and since early morning, the only thing I can do is to scroll the new and to hope that Ukraine will use this time the best possible way. I didn’t see any confirmation of recapturing Donetsk, but I hope that it was not somebody’s joke.

At first I wanted to conserve this post for a while, but then I though that there is nothing wrong in celebrating the beauty and the spirit of freedom of the country that so far gave the greatest portion of it’s budget to support Ukraine. So let it shine!

Continue reading “Tallinn At Midsummer – More Pictures” →

Tallinn At Midsummer

Today was the first day of this trip when I was really happy that Anna’s family trip was rebooked. Today, we all would go to Tallinn, assuming “there was no holiday n Estonia,” and it was! Somehow we missed when Midsummer became the same everybody’s time-off in Estonia as in Finland, and today almost everything was closed! Olevista, most of the museums, and even many smaller boutiques, believe it or not! Even finding public restrooms was a problem!

We tested the routes for our August trip, and I took pictures of all opening hours, located the restaurants which allow people from the street to use their bathrooms for one euro fee; took notes of all places which are not child-proof (a lot!) and almost counted the steps 🙂

Continue reading “Tallinn At Midsummer” →

Russian Embassy In Tallinn

When The Bike Is Slow

Now, I have five bikes in total: thee in Chicago and two in Helsinki. Bois asked me a couple of months ago whether I am interested in a new bike with disk brakes: they were on sale. I said – sure, and he got a bike for me. Meanwhile, the biking season in Chicago was in full swing, and I encountered a problem: my new bike, which I purchased last fall, was slow. Boris kept telling me that I was making things up and it was just the start of the season, and I was a little bit slower than I was at the end of the last one, but the Apple Watch told me otherwise.

When I dropped my new bike for the tune-up, I asked to check what could be wrong and is it possible that the brakes were too tight.

They said that there was nothing wrong, but I didn’t believe them. On the day when I was going to pick up this bike from the shop, I also dropped my old bike for a checkup. Having both bikes right here, I demonstrated the difference in the speed the wheels were spinning. Then one of the shop workers started to look closer. After twenty minutes of exploring the situation, he found the culprits:

He explained that these extra rubber rings were there to prevent water from getting inside (I am not sure what :)), but they were slowing down the axis. After he removed them and tuned the brakes, I got the difference right away! Now I can bike even faster than at the end of the last season!

And my new bike in Helsinki is a real beast! Even though i Helsinki, it’s almost constantly up/down hill, I still get around fasted than in Chicago!

I biked twice so far, once in a rain, and it was fine as well, and my “salamandra skin” worked great. Actually, this time around, when it was very hot during my first bike ride and cold and windy during my second time, it really proved being a second (and better!) skin!