It's Friday again.

It’s been a while since my last post. Sorry! 
I intended to post about the local architecture, but it happened otherwise. See below. Now again you’ll be able to read my weekly flow of thoughts.

I had a nice walk in the centre on Sunday (16/02/2014), taking photos of post-soviet style buildings, as I promised. However, for some reason my memory card decided not to work, so I had to format it. Thus, all my pictures I had taken disappeared. I swore for a couple of minutes, but then I decided to look at things positively. At least the memory card still works. You’ll have to wait though, until I’ll be able to walk this route again.

I’m NOT a technical genius, so in case anybody has any idea what happened, please tell me. At one moment I was watching the photos on the laptop, then it said “format unidentifiable. You have to format the card.” If there is a way to prevent such events from happening, I’d gladly do so.

Anyways, shit happens every now and then, I guess. I’ll take those bloody beautiful photos again.

……

The SUN shined in the first 2 days of the week. Looked gorgeous. Haven’t seen her for a few days. It would be nice for a change to have nice weather. In the past 2 weeks it’s been cloudy, foggy and gloomy. According to the weather forecast the rest of the winter will be quite warm. I prepared for hard minuses… I think I will just boil in the spring months. :D

……

I took some photos before the classes on Wednesday. You’ll be able to see that there some pretty nice houses in the smaller streets, so it is nice to walk around in the centre.

(This time I saved the pictures to three different places, so if the memory card feels like being funny again, I’ll have backup from the pics. )

Those who are interested in the history of the Cold War will welcome one particular picture. Lee Harvey Oswald, presumably the person responsible for the assassination of JFK (John Fitzgerald Kennedy) lived in Minsk for a while, before he returned to the US and carried out the assassination. It is very near the MGLU (our university), so I took a detour and took a photo of the building.

www.picasaweb.google.com/karsai.roni

( the Internet is slow here, so I cannot upload the pics here as well)

Then, I walked to Victory Square and took some shots of the memorial there. I pass the monument day by day, since it is on the way to home/the university. It’s a massive and big soviet-style monument that commemorates all those people who have fallen in the Great Patriotic War (aka. World War II). The obelisk on the square was erected in 1954. It is around 40m tall and it is topped with the red star. On 3 July 1961, an eternal flame was lit in the base. If one walks around the monument, there are 4 scenes from the war.  Well-known Belarusian sculptors were invited  to carve out the scenes. They are really impressive. 

The monument is quite enormous, so one cannot pass the neighbourhood without noticing it, but it is a fine memento of history.

Apparently, it is quite popular amongst locals to have their pictures taken here on their wedding day. I'll watch out for the opportunity to take a photos of such an event! :)

Now another topic. I have some observations to share: It is interesting to see that there are in fact just a small number of people who study Russian here really enthusiastically and for the sheer fun of it. Not that it is fun always. I frequently have nervous breakdowns when I have to comprehend ‘uncomprehendable’ things. :D It is as if I wanted to learn Hungarian.

-Why do you say it like that?

- Well… just because it’s like that.

Very very thank you. 

……

Here comes some facts about the multinationality of the university/dormitory:

Our dormitory is a big, 12-floor building, so many students live here, but most foreign students are packed together, thus our floor is very multinational. I’d say around 70 % of the students are of Turkish origin, then there are a couple of students from Asian countries (I’d met so far Chinese, Korean and Japanese persons) and the rest is, well… there is one girl from Belgium, another from Nicaragua (half Belarusian), a guy from Germany and me. That’s all. But I’m sure I haven’t met everybody yet, so let’s not draw conclusions. Not all of the students live here, since the dormitory is just available for those under the age of 35. There are many students from Arab speaking countries. In my current group there is a girl from Iraq, in my former group there was a girl from Yemen and men from Egypt and Iran. So, yep, many nations gather together here.

I enjoy this environment, as usual!

In theory, all students, who study here for longer than 3 months, have to undergo a medical examination at the student hospital. I didn’t have to go there yet, but nowadays they take it very seriously, because a couple of months ago one Chinese student had tuberculosis that he/she brought from China… Thus all the students, who were in any kind of contact with him/her, had to undergo extra examinations. So it’s not fun at all, and one really has to be precautious.

So, that's all, folks! I will take some photos this weekend and then write a post about the lovely buildings. :)

Cheers!

P.S: The local beer culture is not something that I should overanalyze. They don’t have good beers. Point. I tried yesterday a Latvian one though, and it was quite good. I think I’ll rather stick to beers from the neighbourhood. Actually, as I was told, at many places they don’t even sell Belarusian beers.