Day 3, August 2
We had a tour in St Petersburg, which was great, although I remain mystified why we had these 20-minute "stops for taking photos" which were obviously too long for just taking the photos and too short for doing anything else. I mean, if there's a statue with a guy on a horse, and then there's nothing else except for souvenir stalls... Hey, hmm... now I wonder what the intent of the tour guide was there... :-P
Anyway, after that very weird tour we had lunch, which was... their attempt to introduce us to the modern version of the Soviet Union cuisine? Yep, I cannot help but mention that the food was remarkably better at last year's ILO in Estonia (although when I think about it, we also had weird not-entirely-edible "traditional" Estonian food during the tour then).
After the lunch we had a couple of hours of free time, which I, along with one half of the Estonians, used for visiting bookstores (the other half of the Estonians went to look for chocolate, also not too bad an idea :-P). I ended up getting a Japanese-Russian dictionary and Japanese grammar textbook. Only later did it dawn on me that I know no Russian grammar terms whatsoever, and will more likely be using the Japanese phrases to figure out Russian grammar terminology in some distant future...
Once again, I don't really remember what we did in the evening, although I am sure it included playing psychologist and possibly going out for a walk with Melissa (my teammate), Cornelis (from Holland) and two Moscow people (yes, shame on me, I don't remember their names). I am certain that happened either on the night of day 3 or day 2, but for some reason I can't remember which it was... or actually, now that I try to remember, I actually think it was day 2, but either way that was really nice, interesting discussions about philosophy, religion etc. Or, well, it was more like I and Cornelis were discussing philosophy and religion, and the Moscow girl... um... Kira was talking about how she hated discussions about philosophy and religion. :-P Btw, I must mention that after having watched Death Note it was interesting to see a Russian girl having her name be Kira. Kira Kiranova, even. I wonder what that implies. :-P
Anyway, coming back to the olympiad, it is now time to proceed to...
Day 4, August 3
...which started with the team contest. What is up with this year's linguistics problems being so much harder than last year's ones in all levels of the olympiad? We... how should I put this... completely totally absolutely failed to solve the team contest problem. It was about a Hawaiian genealogy tree and the words they use for different relatives etc. And, of course, I did have this "feeling" of what the more important words were supposed to mean, but of course I didn't go with the feeling. Oh well, as it turned out, only 4 teams managed to actually solve the whole thing in the end, so at least we weren't an especially unsuccessful minority. Not that being glad about others not doing well would be a good thing or anything. But (hopefully) more about that when I get to the closing ceremony.
In the afternoon, we had the longest, most fun and otherwise best psychologist game of the whole event. A really international one, too. Maybe this will start a chain reaction of the game spreading across the world or something. :-P Then we had dinner, and after that I went to my and Melissa's room and slept for a couple of hours (I guess my body was not too happy about my motto of "let's not waste precious time on sleeping here").
At night, there was this disco, where, at least as far as I know, there were a whole two people dancing. Yes, our team leaders definitely appeared to feel quite at home there. :-P I was there for about 5 minutes along with Joshua (from the US), Kira and most of the rest of the Estonians. Afterwards we went for a walk again with Cornelis, Kira and that Moscow guy whose name I don't remember, then we came back and had Liza (also from Moscow) join us, and then we went to the beach and talked about life and beauty and things like that.
I think I'll stop here once again and hopefully some time soon I'll write about the last two days.
Run Wire Behind Baseboard
2 weeks ago
1 comment:
Yes, the tour was nice, wasn't it? I bought some nice souvenirs there, most importantly a wooden matroshka doll for my father.
I think I spot some Estonian-Russian rivalry cropping up. (smile) It seems to extend even to the 'cuisine', as you elegantly put it.
You seemed quite fluent in Russian. Shouldn't it be easy to figure out grammar terms? How difficult could that be, anyway? There can't be too many...
I shall consult Yandex to be sure of what happened on the evening of the 2nd. * runs upstairs * You did something else that evening, actually, because I was at the bar with the Swedes until very late in the evening. The walk you are referring to took place on the 1st. You did not play lots of psychologist that evening, because I gave away the game to that genius Adam, remember? After that, the Americans went back to playing card games and we talked about vegetarianism and eating meat as a sacred act, your childhood wish to go to the stars, your mature wish to contribute your own small part to the whole, science fiction and fantasy, and the relationship between Estonia and Russia (which I couldn't follow -- it was a very nuanced discussion). Oh, and I think we also saw one kitten and two frogs.
I mean, I know I forget stuff like that. So I write it down immediately. (smile)
The discussion you are referring to, with Kira saying she didn't like to debate such things, actually took place on the 3rd, when we were walking to the store. We went there first, then we went back to the hotel, fetched Liza and our coats, and proceeded to the beach.
By the way, Cornelis is my Christian name which is also on my passport, but everyone calls me Eli. Just so you know...
What kind of character is Kira in Death Note? I must admit I don't know the movie or the series.
And you're right, the problems were very difficult. We didn't solve it either. We kept sticking to the assumption that 'source man/woman' referred to parents rather than to grandparents...
I'm looking forward to the rest.
Post a Comment