The You Tube method of teaching

Terve! Hej! Здравствуйте! Hello! As you may have guessed this is hello in 4 different languages (English is of course included). I am studying three of these languages while here. Now you may call me crazy for doing so but here they are offered free to students and in Maastricht the courses can easily cost over €100. The language center here has a very unique fun way of teaching involving the internet. To let us listen to the language, instead of the boring standard exercises, we watch clips on Youtube. For example… this is the clip that we listened to first for the intensive Finnish course. WARNING: All these songs will stick in your head.

Unfortunately we haven’t had any songs or other things yet for Swedish, but Russian on the other hand:

Next up we have a comedy sketch on how to deal with Russian Police officers, or militiamen (милиционер)as they are known.

Apparently you can negotiate a price with the police in Russia.
Despite the corruption, I am really looking forward to the Russia trip coming up on the 9th of November. Russia is not the only other country I will have visited during my Erasmus. Last weekend I was in Tallinn, which was awesome. Pictures are up on the site. Tallinn is a very interesting city. The old town has perhaps the best preserved city wall I have ever seen, and within the wall you really feel like you could be walking in the past. The price levels are also good when compared to Finland (or the Netherlands for that matter). For instance, a three course meal including drinks didn’t cost more than €20, and the potions are HUGE. And the ferry is a definite must-experience attraction. It’s amazing to see how much liquor people can buy. Whole families were maxing out their duty free limits and filling their empty suitcases and trolleys with boxes and boxes of alcohol.
But I have to get back to studying for my exams now so: Nähdään! Hej då! & до свидания.