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…
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.
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!
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 🙂
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!
Lilacs in bloom have always been a sign of summer for me, especially summer in Estonia. There were lilacs along all the streets of Narva-Joessu, and the month of June was all about them.
Yes, there are lilacs in ROgers park, and all my bike rides in May smelled lilacs, but it turned out that I completely forgot what lilacs in full bloom smell like! They are not “shrubs” – they are trees! Forest of lilacs! And the smell os overwhelming!
The flowers were so close to my face that I could not resist the childhood memories and started to look for “piatery” -“the lucky fives.” And guess what – I saw one right away!
And then I did what you’re supposed to do with the lucky five – I made a wish and chewed a tiny flower. And I hope that this wish will come true!
More lilacs – you can’t even see the leaves behind the bloom!
Hettie's Reflections 