Minu Eestimaa - L'estonie et moi

    Now, I'm in the final month of my European Voluntary Service in Nooruse Maja. So I have to think about how to arrange things to go back to France and how I can leave a footprint here. The latter being of course exceptional because I will do it. XD

   When I arrived here in Estonia, my tutor Uudo told about an exhibition we should do by the end of our EVS with Katerina. He told us to think about this when we are travelling around the country to take some very good quality pictures to be used for this exhibition.

   And now have come the time to do it. We agreed on the dates (Sept 8th-19th), the preview (Sept 8th, same day as our open door afternoon). I selected about 19 pictures from which I should only take half since I have to share the frames with Katerina. I also asked for some help from Hana, the new volunteer from Czech Republic who will take our place. She did a really great job for the photo montage I kindly request her to do for the exhibition. You can see it on the poster i made today. It is a montage made of pictures I took, except one I must say (thanks Daire ;) to recreate a map of Estonia and its provinces. 

   I'm trully happy with this work. The montage also shows the effort of dissemination and collaboration between EVS, the handover of our work here to the new person volunteering in our organisation. During my EVS, I had to help Uudo about reports for projects he took part in and lots of times we had the question how we could do follow-up and dissemination. Having Hana preparing this with my pictures can be also a good presention of her skills. 

    So if you want to join us for this exhibition, please come in Nooruse Maja, roheline 1b, Pärnu 80036 from Saturday Sept 8th to 19th and enjoy our pictures and arts about how we see Estonia, the places we visited. I haven't thought much about it, but if there are some pictures you like, it might be possible to make a reproduction so you can get it back home for a fair price.

Riga

     When I went to my on-arrival training for my voluntary service, they reminded us not to focus only on working. I couldn’t agree more on that. I know for a fact if I don’t have a way to relax somehow, I’ll go crazy and won’t be able to work properly. So when I was asked to go to Riga, capital of Latvia for a few days, I jump on the occasion as this city was one of the things on my list of prospective visits.

     (Side note in the middle of the text : one tip to remember in which order the baltic countries are located on the map if you mix them together. You have to take them in alphabetical order –Estonia, Latvia & Lituania- and place them from north to south on the map, next to the border with Saint Petersburg, in Russia)

     I also didn’t hesitate to come as my friends already took care of the accomodation finding someone for couchsurfing. I didn’t have a clue about the cost of living there until I met this group of american students who came to Pärnu for a Choir Festival. They told us the exchange rate was 2USD for 1Lat. i found later for €, it was 1.4EUR for 1Lat. So In decided to be on a budget time. Luckily for me, one of us knew the city and showed us where to go eating for a cheap price. Next to the bus station there is this huge market where in one of the four halls, you could find some bakeries which offered snacks for a cheap price. We went there for our breakfast and some time for some of the other meals.

     Concerning the visits, we essentially went to the old town on Thursday afternoon and nothing much the rest of the time as it was very cloudy and rainy. It’s sad as I wanted to see the different parks in the centre. Unfortunately there isn’t much very old building due the bombs in the 2^nd World War. The remaining building are still very nice to see. On a lot of them, we could feel the russian influence. They are in serious need for a renovation. They already started but i twill take time to renovate everything.

Dalida travelling to Estonia

     As I was visiting a different area in Tallinn, usually not well known by tourists, the port and Kalamaja or Fish House, I stumble upon a second hand shop with lots of vinyl discs. Among other things, this french singer from the 1970's, Dalida. Yes, you read it right. I found a vynil disc of Dalida, one of the most famous French singers in a small country like Estonia. It was indeed a bit unrealistic to see it but I enjoy this view.

Media review: on the net (english version)

      After the article from the newspaper, today I present you the blog post made about us by an Estonian man very active with his blog. The orginal article is here (in estonian language). The guy made a very good research work about the places we studied at, our hometown. I was very surprised about it.

     Katerina Petreska and Pierre-Marie Brianceau are european volunteers who arrived at the beginning of Feb in Parnu to work on projects which are for Nooruse Maja. Thanks to the managar of Nooruse Maja, Uudo Laane, enthiastic and ambitious in writting projects, the french volunteers already enriched the culture of Parnu in the last two years. Last year in january arrived Gaetan Homerin from Albertville thanks to an EVS, and in march 2010 arrived Florianne Rigaud from Clermont Ferrand, in the centre of France.

    This time, the freezing weather which was -10°c welcome the two wolunteers in Parnu., one from France and one From Macedonia.

   Katerina, 24, from Prilep, Macedonia, slighty bigger than Parnu with a population of 66 000 inhabitants. The similarities between both cities are that they are the 4th biggest populated cities in their country. She studied at Saint Kiril and Methodus Skopje University philology and macedonian language. Aside form her monther tongue, Katerina has studied bulgarian, serbian, russian, german and english. Katerina told she could decide for her EVS between Greece, Romania and Estonia. She choose the latter because it was unknown and it seemed interesting and may be a little bit exotic. During her stay in estonia she would like to learn Estonian and possibly work as an official in Embassies. She has worked as volunteer with all ages. Her hometown Prilep gave her the chance to work as mentor in ecological activities. Katerina knows very well latin american dances and she is very keen on teaching them. She has worked in two private companies, where she worked with cosmetics. She thinks it’s possible she manage this kind of companies.

     Pierre-Marie Brianceau, 29, says his full name is much longer than the name Estonians used when they call him. His home town is close to the atlantic coast and his hometown consists of 4 different words. On the west coast of France, in the area of Vendée, La Roche Sur Yon is a post-napoleon city with 55 000 inhabitants. Pierre-Marie has studied economy and languages at the University of Nantes. This well known french university was created less than half a century ago during the college reform. There are about 34000 students from which about 10% are foreign students from 110 countries. Besides his mother tongue, he also speaks English, Spanish and Chinese. He also worked 2 years in Spain and studied and worked 3 years in China. There, he worked for a outsoucing company where he helped companies find information and suppliers in the chinese market.

    Pierre-Marie has not yet decided what kind fo work he will do but he thinks he could work in embassies or leading offices of the EU. In the first month he also learned a little bit of estonian. Unlike Katerina, he didn’t search for the country but look for the projects. Uudo Laane had to choose from dozens of candidates and both men found each other and signed a cooperation between both sides. Nooruse Maja manager observed mainly the motivation in the application in which Pierre-Marie wished to come as volunteer in Pärnu.

   Within a month they get to know local life and some places outsides of Pärnu. For example they participated in a training in Viljandi. Althought, the ability to cope with the snow and cold is different for them. In Macedonia, you can see this kind of snow and cold quite often so that’s the reason this is not unusual for Katerina. At the same time, the french guy who is living next to the Atlantic coast doesn’t see snow or minus degrees as often. So first, he needed to change his sneakers for winter shoes. After having to suffer such temperature, when the weather drop to -1°, he felt he was having summer in the city. With the help of Pierre-Marie, there were an opening conference for a new project which consist of six countries and which prupose is to introduce the concept of sisters cities/twinning. The communication in the project is in English but the project itself presented to the EU was in French and needed Pierre’s help.

   On March 24th, there will be another French Cultural Day which will be lead by Pierre-Marie and on April 24th, Katerina will manage a similar day for Macedonia to introduce the culture. Upcoming we might expect Pierre-Marie’s presentation about chinese culture and language. At the same time Katerina will work on a mind map about solidarity.

Source : http://blog.maaleht.ee/parnumaa/?p=39889. Translated from Estonian into English.

Just a little help to translate english into estonian

Has you might be aware if you read this blog, I'm in Estonia. Since it's a complicated language (I speak Mandarin Chinese and I think it's almost easier then Estonian!!), here is a little help in case our best friend for online translation is not giving you satisfaction. 

This little website help me and my friend this morning to translate some words in English for the two articles that were published beginning of March about my EVS projects. Just one little warning: the translation only works for single words and not whole sentences.

if the link doesn't work for you, copy and paste this:

http://enet.animato.ee/

And the winner is…..

    Early last week, we were told by our tutor Nooruse Maja will the place where a children and youth theater competition will be held the Friday after this conversation. I was curious about it and already wanted to check this. Uudo asked us if we wanted to be part of the jury who will give away some awards for best group and best actor or actress. We were a bit afraid at first but the challenge was appealling. The only downsize I saw from this was the time of start for this contest. At 9am, it’s a bit early for me. As I work mainly in the afternoon,    I can go to bed late and sleep through the morning.

    So when the day finally came, I went to my organisation for 9am to meet with the last of the jury member. This old lady was very friendly and at the nice age of 73 years old, she was still pretty active in the drama are. The day was divided into two parts. The 1st one was dedicated to after-school clubs when we had 3 groups to judge. This was more easy than I think since we agree on all the awards we had to give away. The 2^nd part of the contest was for school drama clubs. As we already had some experience before we all thought it woulld be very similar but on the contrary, it was harder. Even with the list of actors, some times we couldn’t get who was who in the play. Even the last memver of the jury who was Estonian couldn’t make the difference between all the actors and actresses. We managed to overcome this difficulty but i’m pretty sure if it was not that hard we would have made other choices.

    I was pleased with our choices. We were there to judge for drama acts not musicals as some of them turned out to be. It was a shame as two classes were very good and made a huge effort on the decoration. We went for those with the less songs, and we elected the first group who played something about the twelve months. Apparently it was some kind of fairy tale know in Eastern and South-East Europe. We give them the Mask for the 2012 best school drama club. I really like the idea of the trophy being a Mask. Instead of having a ugly cup with which you cannot do a thing, on this mask, they could write all the winners from the first year of this contest. I also appreciate the white chocolate with strawberries we had as part of the thank you gift for being in the jury.

I’m not biting.

Well, not at the moment.

I went this week to meet the French teachers and their pupils in the local highschools. I found it strange that none of the three teachers are French : two Estonians and one Greek. I was told they haven’t been learning French for too much, usually for several months at most. I didn’t prepare much for them as I didn’t want to scare them away from learning my beautiful language. I just went for some tongue twisters. Those little things are nasty for us, native people.

When I arrived in their classes, they were surprised to see me next to their teachers. I presented myself without revealing too much about me as they wouldn’t have asked me anything after. They were so shy to talk in French, so I said I wasn’t biting, they could talk. I’m actually proud of them as I know French is not an easy language. I was asked the usual questions about my hobbies outside my work, what I like to listen as french music. I also asked in return what they would advise me about Estonian musicians they listen. And of course, I couldn’t avoid answering the classical questions « do you have a girlfriend ? » and « do you like Estonian girls ? ». The former was asked by a7th grader girl ; they were gigling in the back of the classroom so I assume they were going for this question. Quand j’ai répondu non, elles avaient l’air soulagées. Katre the teacher told me they like me a lot. I don’t want to now what they had in mind exactly. The 2^nd question was asked when I went to meet the 10th grades kids. The guy who asked me that question was a bit embarrassed to do so. Talking about this class, when they entered the room, I was wondering how many litres of soup they had each day to be sot all and so thin. I’m not particularly tall nor small but at just 16, they were already taller than me.

There was one class I came back since I was told by the teacher they would bake something for their last french class before the holiday. She didn’t know herself what they would do. I was surprised they did everything without the supervision of an adult. They even almost clean everything before leaving the kitchen. They had baked : waffles, some light vanillia flavoured biscuits, chocolate truffles, chocolate cupcakes, oats cookies and some kind of salty canapés with fish and eggs. The three boys of this class made the latter which coincidentally was the only I repeat because I like it and also because i twas the only I could repeat !! After the degustation, we played as the day before some tongue twisters but not only in French also in Estonian. They wanted to get revenge. After we played a snake and ladder game where the actions were replace by some simple exercises in French like counting from 1 to 10 or answering simple questions. To make it mor fun for me, I decided to do it in Estonian. I was lucky it wasn’t very hard. The kids were looking at me to see if I could pronounced correctly numbers or if I knew the corresponding words. I have to say I was very proud of myself during this game !!

The French Speaking Day (3): "Official Program"

Laupäeval, 24. märtsil Nooruse Majas, Roheline 1 b, Pärnu

Journée de la Francophonie – Prantsuse keele pave

Ürituse korraldaja Pierre-Marie Brianceau, vabatahtlik Prantsusmaalt

Tule omandama teadmisi ja kogemusi prantsuse keelt kõnelevate maade kultuurist ning toidust. Kogu päeva jooksul saad vastata teemakohastele küsimustele ning õigesti vastanuid ootavad ilusad ja maitsvad auhinnad.

10.30 avamine, päeva tutvustus, esitlus, näitus, mängud Prantsuse sümbolitega.

Esitlus „Kui hästi tunned Prantsuse kööki“

12.30 Lõunasöök. Buffet lauas on Pierre-Marie valmistatud toidud. Eelregistreerumine vajalik info@noorusemaja.ee Lõunasöögi hind 3€

14.00 Tutvumismängud, et raputada alla maitsev lõunasöök

15.00 Räägime stereotüüpidest Prantsusmaa ja prantslaste kohta

16.00 Kokkuvõte päevast ja viktoriinist. Räägime erinevatest võimalustest, kuidas ja kus õppida prantsuse keelt Eestis ning kuidas saada informatsiooni prantsusekeelsest maailmast

What? You  got scared? 

Here is the program in english. :p

Saturday March, 24th. Nooruse Maja, Roheline 1b, Parnu
Journée de la Francophonie – Prantsuse Keel Paëv
Come and enjoy some activities about French speaking culture, food and games. During the whole day, you will have some questions to answer for a small quiz to win a beautiful and yummy prize.

Start 10.30: Official opening
Presentation of the events of the day, exhibition and some games involving French Symbols
Presentation: How well do you know French Cuisine?

12h30/13h= Lunch with a buffet made of food cooked by me. "Reservation to be made before at info@noorusemaja.ee, limited number of place, Price: 3€/person"

14h= Energiser Games to digest my beautiful and delicious food.
15h = French People and French speaking people stereotypes

16 = Results of the quiz and Presentation of the different way to learn French in Estonia or have more information about French Culture.

The international French speaking days (2): Ask for the program

In Estonian

In English

On-Arrival EVS Training – Day 3

    This third day was orientated towards the culture of the country, how to learn from the point of view of the stereotypes, how to improve self management by resolving our problems and the unplanned event.

    We should have talked about Estonian culture during the first part of the day but we continued our talks about the movie The Singing Revolution, the consequences for the country, how it was seen from different perspectives, from Estonian politicians, the Russian minority and some events that happened a few years after the rebirth of the country as Estonians call this day of August 20th, 1991. I don’t think it was the way they planned to talk about Estonian culture but since we were older (>24yo, except for little Sean who was 20) than the average group they usually had, we could talked longer and get into details, something that could not have been possible if the group was younger. After we had to make a list of the possible problems we could face during our activities projects as volunteer and rate them by probability and importance if they happen. I only thought about four problems and without deciding before hand to make a ranking, the results reflected my thoughts. It was interesting I rated it that way since it wasn’t planned at all.

    An important part of the EVS is to learn from others. Our trainers went for a different approach by using stereotypes. They made a list of the countries we were from and told us to write what we thought about any of those. Surprisingly, all countries got a lot of stereotypes and not only Italy, France or Ireland. Since we couldn’t talk about everything written on the board, they decided to go for some unusual ones. Like for me, although people wrote a lot about food and how we enjoy it, I had to talk about our character and some aspect of our nature. It was better not to go for the obvious. 

 How to sing about stereotypes

   During the last activities in the morning, Kristina asked us about what we wanted to for the evening. We knew it was supposed to be the sauna moment but she wanted to propose something else. She talked about a concert given by a local group of jazz from the 1930 and 40’s. As soon as she said the word jazz, I raised my hand like Kristina did. I didn’t hesitate since I love this kind of music. She didn’t know if we would agree to pay the entrance fee since it wasn’t free. But for 150 cents, it was nothing. We had the Thursday night to go to the sauna so we opted for the concert that night. It resulted in a good choice. The band was great and I appreciated they announced their songs in English for all the audience. They alternated fast and slow songs, known ones and their own compositions. At one point, the leader tried to imitate a Frenchie talking about music in the Latin Corner in Paris thinking no French would be in the room but nope, I was here. He as so confused and was ashamed to have done it but I actually found it very funny. After, we went to see the old castle ruins. As it was already night time, we couldn’t see much of it but we found on the way back home a nice big swing. We were all grown-ups but it was nice to be a little child again!

Minu nimi on Pierre!!!

      I so wanted to start my Estonian classes. It’s been 2 weeks I’ve been here in Parnu and it was frustrating not to be able to talk to people in their own language. You feel like a stranger in a room full of people. I hate this situation so I prefer to be able to understand the local langue people talk when I’m staying long enough in a place or in a country. Talking the same language makes contact easier and you are more integrated. You can have good laugh when you try to say some difficult words!!

     So this morning after passing at the bank to get my card, we arrived at our organisation and finally meet our Estonian teacher, Katre. It’s a shame Katerina and me are not both French or both can speak this language as Katre is also a French teacher. It would have been easier to have the teacher using your mother tongue for a new language. We started our class by spelling words that are very similar to English or French, like bus, coffee (kohv in Estonian), and move to the alphabet. That will be the hardest part for me as some letters are very similar to what we use in French but they make it harder, lol. For example, U is pronounced as the same sound OU in French and if you want to pronounce it separately, you will need to write Ü. They also have the ~ in some vowels. The “J” is pronounced like a “Y” but they don’t really use the latter. Or is it simply because I haven’t met one word using this letter?

     The book we will use is not the simplest one but the more efficient according to our teacher. It has some kind of vocabulary at the end for Finnish, Russian and German. That may sound weird to you but Estonian is very close to Finnish and Russian but also to German as they were a German territory for centuries. I will need to be very good and work hard during the classes as the previous volunteer in just 3 months could speak very good Estonian and was able to write almost on his own the small exhibition he prepared for the French Speaking day he organised last year. The next one is next March, 20^th but I will talk about it in due time!! As they say here, Nägemist !!