Hunting of the Statue

 I finally got rid of the flu (expect for the cough) and I have two full school weeks with lots of homework behind me! I've had so many things to do, that the weeks passed without me noticing.

The main building of our University.

Our schedule. Apparently Finns, German and Chinese have the most lessons, because other groups don't have school on Fridays. Our courses include Russian literature, Oral communication, Written communication, Russian verbs and History and culture of Russia.

We have a canteen at the university, so I decided to try it out. On the first day we went there with Elena and we were sort of surprised how small it was. The meals were ready on plates and they just heated them up in a microwave.. BUT it was good and cheap! After we had finished our foods we noticed that a lot of people were coming from upstairs so we went to check it out.. and that was the real canteen! :'D We ate there the next day, it was also very cheap (and there were so many breads, pies and sweet puns to choose from). ^^

These were all the dishes you could choose, and then they heated them up in the microwave.

All this cost 92.80 rubles (about 1,90 euros).

This was my meal at the real Stolovaya, it also cost less than 100 rubles.

I also tried Селедка под шубой (layered herring salad). My friend said it's a Russian salad so I just bought it, I had no idea there was herring in it... I'm not a big fan of herring, but I managed to eat it all. :D

On Wednesday we got a nice homework from oral communication: ask local people how to get to a statue the teacher gave your group. We headed out with Elena and Sonja to find the monument of the Heroes of Chernobyl.

First we found Lenin's square.

Lenin!

Then we found this rider statue...

Cool looking Russian post office. One hint though! Don't visit post office in Russia if you're in a hurry. I waited there with my friend for 20 minutes, after which I had to leave and my friend continued to wait another 20 minutes...

More monuments on our way!

The building that doesn't look so stable.. I heard it was abandoned for several years because people were afraid it will collapse. Now it's a business centre.

We finally reached the park of the Heroes of Chernobyl.

We celebrated the finding of the statue at a super nice restaurant!

Milkshaaaake!

After finding the statue I went home and my host mom asked if I'd like to go to the newest shopping mall in Tver with her. And of course I wanted! It was quite far from the centrum, but it was the biggest shopping mall I've ever been to. The vegetable and fruit section alone was bigger than the biggest store of my hometown. :'D

Finnish cheese! ;)

On Thursday I made some onigiri (Japanese rice balls) and ended up buying all the wrong incredients because I had no idea what they were. But they tasted okay! Later we went to the library to join "Lingua Cafe" where we had conversations with Russian students mostly in English, but also little in Russian. ^_^

I didn't even get tuna. :(

Not the pretties onigiris I've seen, but this was my 2nd time making them. xD

The library where we have Lingua Cafe. Usually you're not allowed to go in without a library card or passport, but because we're stupid foreigners we got in.

Nice statue on top of a bank in front of my home.

 In my next blog entry I'll tell you about our ballet trip to Moscow!