Well that was unexpected but definitely fun

Yesterday I came back to the dormitory at 10 pm planning to rest a bit and also study some Russian. My plans quickly evaporated because of really unexpected event. My flatmates and I heard a knock from our door which we of course answered. On the other side of the door there was about 8-9 Russian students asking if they could come to our apartment to have a little party. That's not anything unusual actually, but the next part is - we didn't even know them. At all. So there they were standing on the other side of the door with wine, vodka, borsch, blinis and other traditional Russian dishes. Being the social gentlemen that we are, we of course invited them in and had a really fun evening.

The thing is that this kind of stuff doesn't happen anywhere else. Seriously. How often have you been in a similar situation or heard from your friends same kind of story? I bet never. This country continues to amaze me like Finnish "humor" amazes all other nationalities. Even hungry hungarians.

Sixth flatmate

Yesterday marked another chapter in our life at Karabliy. We got another flatmate to our spacious and lovely apartment. The coolest thing about the newcomer is that it has 6 legs and is a tough guy overall. Yup, we saw a cockroach in our kitchen.

Okay, it has to be admitted that it is not the cleanest kitchen in the world but still meeting a cockroach is a bit... abnormal for a Finn. Of course we can do something about the situation, but the "funny" thing is about cockroaches is to my understanding, that it doesn't matter that much whether or not your place is clean because if your neighbourgs live in a dump the cockroaches can still appear.

Some might consider this cheap

Living here in St.Pete is so much cheaper than in Finland. Here is a couple of examples of prices.

- One trip by metro costs 20 rubles (about 44 cents), by bus 18 rubles and my marshutka (minibus) 22-26 rubles.

- Pack of cigarettes costs about 27-45 rubles, depending on the label.

- 1 kilo of potatoes costs about 10 rubles in the nearby store

- 2 litres of Pepsi is about 50 rubles (1,11 euros)

- 1 can half a litre can of Baltika 7 (popular beer) is about 25 rubles (55 cents)

- Prices of one bottle of Vodka varies from 60 rubles upwards. You can get a decent bottle (0.7l) for 200 rubles (4,44 euros)

- 1 kilo of bananas = 29 rubles

And the list goes on. I'm not complaining!

Introduction to Organizational behavior

We MITIM-students needed to choose an introduction course to one of the following subjects: finance, accounting, marketing or organizational behavior. Like many of my coursemates, I decided to go for the OB. Previously I've taken three or four courses about marketing so I didn't feel like listening to stuff about 4 P's again and even though finance & accounting are important subjects they are not my cup of tea (or чаи, like they say here in Russia). The OB course was pretty intensive, we had classes every weekday from 1 o'clock to 4 o'clock and then some minicases to be prepared for next days lesson.

I actually quite liked the classes overall, except maybe the classes on Friday when the discussion was really boring for some reason. The professor in this class was good in my opinion and managed to keep students awake and active. Which is obviously good news for us, since the same professor is also teaching us about cross-cultural management and also at least some parts of knowledge management starting from October. After the classes there is still a couple of minor things to do, such as writing a self-reflection report and a mini-case analysis on some experience regarding OB that you've had in your life. Doesn't sound too bad and it shouldn't be too hard.

In the course it was quite interesting to follow the discussion. Or actually notice what kind of opinions and views other people had and what was the content of their comments. To me quite a lot of those comments were a bit generic and repeated the same issues which was a bit frustrating on few occasions. It seemed that some of the people just wanted to be active in the class and maybe impress the professor. Of course, there was also good and interesting comments and views to the subjects at hand.

как дела? что это?

I am on an intensive Russian course. Our group has 8 lessons (3hours twice a week) every week until the end of the year. Or it should be like that. Or maybe not. The problem is that we don't know for sure whether or not we have to pay something for the extra hours (normally these classes have only 4 lessons per week) and if we do, how much will it be.

The reasons why I signed up for this intensive class are very simple: you feel so helpless in here because you can not speak Russian and also I want to be able to speak Russian after I graduate from this program. Maybe not fluent, but conversational. At the moment we are still on this "how are you", "what is that"-level. I believe the situation is much better in a couple of months time.

Some practical problems you are facing without the knowledge of Russian:

- You are not able to buy meat from the shop unless it's prepacked. In Finland this is not a problem, but in our nearby market most of the meat and fish are behind a counter and you have to ask for it.

- You need someone with you every time you have to negotiate or if you are running some errands or bureaucratic stuff.

- You are not able to stop the marshutka (minibus). This may lead to you missing your stop :)

- etc etc.

Zenit St.Petersburg

I went with to see Zenit Vs. Rostov at Petrovskiy stadium last Sunday. The match was good overall and it was fun to be at the stadium. In events like those you remember why football should be watched live at the stadium instead of TV at home. The atmosphere is just something special when you are a part of the crowd with many thousands people just like you.

I was a bit suprised that the stadium was so "small", only about 24-25 thousand capasity. But they are builing a new one which will be twice the size of the new one, which is great. It should be complete next year, so there is another good reason to come back to St.Pete, if not to study then at least to visit. I will maybe post some picture of the match later on.

Internetless in St.Pete

Sorry that I haven't been able to update my blog that much. That is mainly because of missing internet connection at the dormitory. So yes, I still don't have any ability to connect to the Internet from my own laptop at the dormitory which is not the ideal situation. Makes it a bit hard to keep everyone updated. Please be patient! The problem is with 90% probability some hardware related problem in the room, so there is not that much I can do about it. A guy will come to see the situation maybe this week, maybe next week, maybe never...

Last week we had an intensive introduction course to organizational behavior. The course was okay, I have written a post of it on my computer and will post it later when I have the chance. Apart from the school things are okay. Still trying to learn Russian and hoping to be able to understand something that someone says in public. It just takes time.

I've spent quite a lot of time with the other exhance students living in our dormitory at Karabliy. It's somewhat weird for me that the Russian students are located in totally other parts of our dormitory than we "international" students. At the moment the GSOM Mitim-students are a other community than LUT Mitim-students, but hopefully the will mix soon. I still don't know that many Russian MITIM-students personally, just a couple. To erase this problem of separation we are planning to have some kind of MITIM-event some day this week to break the ice between us and for getting to know each other.