Well, since september I am working as a trainee in the small swiss develloppement organization "Horyzon". Just for some publicity: www. horyzon.ch. It is actually the international cooperation office of the YMCA/YWCA Switzerland.
I was looking for job for quite a while, so I am really happy I got the opportunity to work right there, as it is exactly the kind of work I was looking for and, what makes it even better, it is an organization, which is part of the YMCA, movement I really like. I really like working there, good team, very nice colleagues and interesting, varied work. Still I understand I really miss university as well. You know, student life, especially if you studied in the philosophical-historical faculty, is really great. You have probably much more freedom, than in every other period of your life. You just decide on your own wether you go to classes or not, to which classes you go and what you want to learn. And then you can just go to hear lessons about something, you are interested in. And you just have an unique opportunity to learn so many things. Okay, for sure, you sometimes have to follow some boring classes as well, and there are some really bad professors, but still.
And then you are living, sharing a flat with other students and meet a lot of students, young people interested in the same topics as you are, and enjoying their life, every day. It's so easy to have a good company when you are at University and you have parties all the time. I'm exagerating now, but, it's true I really miss Unviersity, students and social life at Unversity.
I'm glad to know I'll have to go back to University for my master degree, studying two years more. :-)
Since I am working only 80% I have a day off, and imagine, I'm going to follow some classes at University on my day off! :-)
Sonntag, 26. Oktober 2008
Weekend in the Tessin
Okay, I have to admit, even if I worked really hard during the weeks I tried to enjoy the weekends.
Especially as during the whole month of August I had a visitor from Russia, Masha, and I really wanted her to enjoy her stay in Switzerland. So all the weekends we travelled to some special places in Switzerland. One of the best trips was for sure the weekend we spent in the holiday-house of a friend of mine on the boardes of the Lago Maggiore in the Tessin. It's incredible how different the Tessin is from the rest of Switzerland. You really feel like in some southern country. There are growing lemons and oranges and other tropical fruits and it is, at least in summer, much wormer. We spent only a day and a half in the small village of Porto Ronco, but it felt like a real, very relaxing holiday. Just sunbathing, swimming, and haning around next to lake. I also tried some windsurfing. I event didn't do it too bad, so it seems as if the windsurf classes I took in June kind of helped.
We also made a small excursion rowing to an island in the middle of the lake. Needs quite a bit of musles, but still, we (Masha and me) really enjoyed it.
What I did this summer
So, as some people reading my blog got the completly wrong idea, of me doing nothing except travelling, enjoying festivals and partys, I decided to show you now, what I really did most of the time during all this summer. It started in the end of May and went on like this until end of September!
So, most of the time I was writing papers for my Bachelor degree at University. I had to write one paper about russian literature, concretly I had to analyse how Michael Bakunin described the russian terrorist Nechaev in his letters. I had to write an other paper about Russian Philosophy. I had to compare the views on russian and european culture of the two important russian philosophers Chadaev and Kireevski in the end of 18th, beginning of the 19th century. I also had to write 15 pages in spanish, about the way, colombian culture was represented in Gabriel Garcia Marquez book "100 years of solitude". I had to write a paper in Ancient History as well, about the reign of Antiochos III of Sardes. And I finally had to write my bachelor thesis in History as well. I did researches about Soviet delegations, visiting Switzerland during the period of nonexistance of official political relationship between the two countries.
That means, I had a total of 5 papers to wirte, 4 of about 15 to 20 pages and one more important of abotu 30 to 40 pages. It also means that I spent most of my summer in libraries or in my room, behind a computer writing all this papers. For my bachelor thesis I also had to visit the National archives in Bern, looking for information about this delegations. I then had to take a picture of all the documents I found and have a closer lookt at them at home. So, alltough, reading my blog, maybe it doesn't seam like this to you, believe me, I had a lot of hard and crappy work to do this summer. I was studying a looooot. And I took more pictures of archiv-documents than I took of all my free weekends and small trips.
"Buskers"-Festival :-)
During one week every year we have a very nice festival in my town, called the "Buskers". During a whole week every evening a lot of street musicians and other street artists are playing on the streets and squares of the center. It's music of very different styles and there are also kind of magicians, clowns, and circus-artits. So, it is a big variety in program and the good thing about this festival is that it is for free and dures a whole week. So you can go to the center, having a walk, stay for a moment if there is playing a group you like and go on, if you don't. You also allways meet a lot of friends, doing the same, just having a walk in the old town and enjoy it. I think it is my favourite festival in Neuchâtel. It just makes you feel so good, so relaxed. :-)
This year I have been there with Masha, a russian friend who came to visit me in August.
I tried to take some pictures of our favourite band on this years festival. They came from England, but played some kind of Balkan-Style music. You just couldn't resist to dance when you heared it! (At least me, Masha, and the small children, that were around with their parents, we just couldn't restist this rhytms)
Samstag, 11. Oktober 2008
still in Prague
it's great to have friends from all over the world... :-) and to meet them all in one place...
Y! M! C! A!
Yes...so no some pictures of the festival in Prague! It was really amazing...there were about 10'000 people from YMCAs of all over Europe and even other continents. So there were guys from Togo, India, Corea, the States, Colombia and even Honduras as well! And I met all the girls I met in february in Belarus again. It was so great to meet all this friends again and to make new friends as well of course. So here you see just me, than a part of the opening show, when all the countries had to bring up ther flag on stage, then Sergej my "boss" during this week and picture of Prague by night. It's really nice the festival being situated right in the city of Prague. So when ever you feel like, especially during your free time at night, you could go for a walk to the center.
I've been as a volunteer at the festival, working in the translation group but as most of the people giving a show on stage or participating at a work-shop knew english, we hadn't so much work. I had maybe to translate like 10 minutes a day by average, so could fully enjoy the festival and had the plus to live in the international volunteers hostel, which was very closed to the festival site. As a volunteer I also had more contact with people from different countries. Especially with russians and belorussians, as meanly translations from russian to english were needed. So I spoke a lot of russian during this week. Excellent exercise!
Nordhausen once more
Just the promised pictures of the second evening in Nordhausen. "Stadtfest" with Sasha and some of her friends.
"Progulka" with Sasha in Nordhausen
My only holydays this summer were on the YMCA-Europe-Festival in Prague where I was a volunteer in the translation group. However I managed to take some days off before the festival to visit my friend Sasha. You saw her on some of the pics from Russia allready, as she was one of my best friends in Nizhny Novgorod. Right now she is working as a volunteer in a small town in Germany (Nordhausen). So I absolutely wanted to see her, since she is so closed now. Even if it isn't that closed thinking in a swiss way, as it took me about 9 hours by train to get there...but still. I made a stop on my trip to Prague to spend 2 days in Nordhausen and we really had a great time together.We spent a very nice evening under a bridge next to a small river, together with the other international volunteers, a bottle of very good red wine and a guitar :-)
Sasha and me, remembering our evenings in Russia, just really felt like dancing, so we started to dance in the river , what was a lot of fun. :-)
At some moment all the volunteers living with Sasha got really tired...but we still decided to go on the party, and so left for some students pub. This second part of the evening however wasn't as nice as was the first. The next day we had some walk around the town and went swimming in a small nearby lake. Then we decided to coulour our hair with henna, so that's what you see on the last picture. Was fun as well. This evening it happened to be the town-festival, so there was a typical german party in the old town. Lot of beer, lot of drunken men and some pretty bad german schlagers. Anyway it was just so typical german, or at least how we see germans in Switzerland, it amused me a lot. :-) The pictures of this second night in Nordhausen you see them in the next post.
Samstag, 4. Oktober 2008
My birthday...
I came back from the BigBoss-Festival on sunday evening and party went on... My parents came to visit me for my birthday which was on monday. It was very nice to have them over, since it was the very first time they really came together to visit me in my flat in Neuchatel. They also brought me my favourite birthday cake...That was very nice as well. In they evening I had invited some friends to celebrate my birthday on the border of the lake. It was good weather and several friends, that I haven't seen for a long time came to the party. So it was a pretty good birthday. And I had two cakes on that day! I'm a very lucky girl to have such awesome parents and friends!
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