Russian kids/creators of Runaway.
The Russian students were very eager to take us out and about exploring St. Petersburg. We had this particular student, Nastya, who is younger, so she struggles with English. However, ‘struggles’ is the key word, because damn, she tries so hard. Her father, Mikeal, is so proud of her studies and he wanted to take us out to show his appreciation. We agreed to have dinner with them (Mikael also brought along his friend from Estonia to meet us) and then go on a short tour of the city. So, because we had already done a lot of the touristy stuff, he wanted to show us the old, run down parts of St. Petersburg. We ate at this traditional Russian buffet place that serves this style of food that sounds like this Yo-kie- Polk-ie (that is for sure NOT how you spell it. Haha!) That is where it started to get interesting. In my previous post, you saw the jelly looking madness…well, that night is when it happened. Really, catfood MUST taste better than that stuff. So, after dinner, we proceed to go on a three hour tour (just like the castaways in Gilligans Island) with a man who does not speak a WORD of English, his daughter who struggles with every word while translating, a man from Estonia and one of our other students (Fedor…which sounds like Fjord-or) who just nods his head mostly. Awesome. Here is some of what we saw:
Estonian on the left; Mikael in the middle; Nastya on the right.
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While ordering pasta from a small kiosk in Stockholm, I struggle to find the Swedish words for what I want to eat. I can clearly see that the man behind the counter is an immigrant and assume he does not speak much English, so I figured we maybe could fight through my bad Swedish together. I manage to get out what I want and then go to pull money out of my wallet. As I open my wallet, there are American dollars there. He sees them and says to me in English “You from America?”
I shake my head yes.
He smiles and says, “I am from Baghdad. We have the same president.”
Indeed.
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I have not been to Hank and Emelie’s home in several years and since they just purchased their first apartment, it seemed time to pay them a visit. I took the train up to the town where they live, Gavle, Sweden, and spent 24 hours just hanging out with them. We just took everything slow, cooked dinner, sipped wine, drank beer, ate seared tuna, drank some more, melted chocolate, sliced fruit, cooked it in wine, ate our creation, had sweet dessert wine, played guitar, sang and feel asleep on the couch. It was just what it should have been.
Emelie’s toe is pointing to a circle in the floor where there used to be a bell for the master of the house to ring in order to get the servants attention. Umm, Harry also sleeps in the old ‘servants quarters.’ Haha! Old places are cool.
So, little Harry is starting to talk a lot in Swedish. It is interesting, because we can almost communicate with one another since my Swedish is about as good as his. Em left me with him for a few minutes in Ikea and he and I had a great time playing and trying to understand what the other one was saying. Part of me thinks he knows that I can only speak as well as he can, so he was very patient with me, repeating words as if saying “come on, Carrie, say it like this. The good news is that Harry does know the most important phrase in English. Check it out.
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A weekend in the country. No running water. No flushing toilets. Peace.
A ride on the motorboat…close up.
This could just be as easily be a picture of Kansas. I love that.
