Merry Christmas!! Joyeux Noël!!

Merry Christmas and all the best for my readers, their family and friends and everyone in between for who health, joy, good fortune and work will bless them in the coming new year.

Interesting Facts - the keywords to look for my blog

Here are all the keywords I've found from people who visited my blog. Some are  normal, some are really weird or just unsual. 

Blog estonia or estland, Love after sauna, pärnu

I’m talking with my, european voluntary service pierre, the first independence, fromparnuwithlove

evs training experiences, rekord tó, spinach lasagna, thoughts about parnu

sauna experience

evs estonia food and pocket money, free ladies pärnu

speaking international French, french yogurt cake for kids

french yogurt cake apple, maria european voluntary service Estonia, minu nimi on

Eesti 2€, estionian linedance, French food speaking activities, Francia 4-5 aug festival

private russian teacher pärnu, evs all year application, recipes made with yogurt

wheelchair dancing, blog Estonia, parnu gelato, Tallinn hotel de ville, tutvustus prantsuse keelega,

Estonia Line Dance, Line dance Parnu Estonia, Parnu sauna, mama toni Gelato, Line dance festival Pärnu 2012, line dance parnu estonia august 4

Sauna drinking, blogspot Pärnu, talinna lovelinks, volunteering in parnu

Wingate university choir, mama don gelato parnu, electric wheelchair dancing.

Baltic in winter, tere wheelchair, open air pärnu 4 august, Estonian linedance 2012,

Parnu gelato, parnu city orchestra, wheelchair activities, parnu volunteer, Estonia,

How to paint on porcelain, petit camembert whis, pärnu chocolate cake,

baltic sea fishing spears in fish, Mai Kolossova

Experience from Estonia by Hanka

Hanka, the new volunteer in Nooruse Maja my organisation, has made a new blog about her experience in Pärnu. She just arrived so for now there is not much. It is up to your people, especially from Estonia to make it lively, suggest places she can visit in Estonia or other Baltic countries, etc.

Don't Hesitate to visit her blog and comment.

Experience from Estonia

They will be sad when I will leave.

    Last week we launched the exhition about our pictures and art in our organisation. We had the surprise to have some TV reporter from Estonia national channel coming to shoot something to make a short news report about our event. so if you want to watch it, just click on the link below. It should open in another window. Tell me it is not playing in your country. 

News Report on ETV1, Wednesday Sept 12th, 2012.

all right reserved.

Porcelain paiting - Tinga-tinga technique

Here is some of my artwork I did, I started during our Porcelain Days in late July. I was helped by the other participans as it was my big painting and I woul like to thanks in particular Mai Kolossova, our porcelain painting teacher who came earlier on saturday last week to help me.

Dinner's Ready!!!!

    A few days after I arrived in Estonia, I was invited to a cooking class for a dinner with a south-african Chef working in Tallinn, Paul Senosi. Uudo told me then I had to see how he was doing since I would need to do the same sometime in the future. When I was what Paul did, I was a bit worried of what I would have to do as we had a feast that night. I ended up with all the rest of food in doggy bag since nobody wanted it. I had enough food for one week!! Some months passed without notice about this until Uudo asked me to think about what I would do for a training he will have a few weeks later. So I had to think about one or two dishes to do for around 25 people.

   He advertised very soon about the French and Macedonian cooking classes as he knew since October last year. The people divided themselves like 2/3 for French cuisine and 1/3 for Macedonian cuisine. As we expected nice weather for that day, I had to prepare something really French, easy and cheap for a barbecue. That BBQ part was the most difficult one. I couldn’t think about something we are doing especially for bbq. Uudo went to France last year and he told me he really enjoyed the brochettes he had there. When he told me that, I thought it would be a good idea to do it since in Estonia, they don’t really have it the way we do in France. 

    I didn’t want to use pork in my recipe as I had enough and beef was a bit too expensive for so many people. So I choose marinated chicken as it was easier and I finally had an occasion to try it. I went online to find good recipes, mixed them somehow and ended up with something I like. I decided to try it a few days before just in case I had to change it. I used Provence Herbs and this proved to be quite successful. All participants took it in picture to try to find it in Estonia. I was sorry to break it but this mix of herbs is hard to find outside France. It is used for BBQ mainly but it is not imported in Estonia where BBQ is like a national sport in summer. Everybody participated more or less actively in cutting the chicken, the peppers, press the lemon and lime, pour the olive oil and leave it to rest for one hour at least. Then we prepared the brochettes before grilling them. It was actually the longest part of the whole day since everybody eat it in a snap!!

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.

Just a little bit more...

Hello dear readers,

    Just a reminder about our Linedance Festival. I've juct checked and we should have a normal weather, not so hot but not rainy. So please come and join us. 

    Not only we will have this record attemps but also a nice concert on sunday in Vaalikaar. Our visitors will be able to buy food and drinks from Kaia and her kitchen. I've been here 6 months and not a single time she disappointed me with the food she made for us in the organisation. 

    So please come, better if you register before but not necessary. Check our facebook page to know the latest updates.

A little help for my friend Gaia

Hello dear readers,

Today I bring you the video of my friend Gaia, an italian volunteer in Tartu. Her project is to make videos of NGOs, organisations, youth centers, etc, etc to make them visible. I asked for her help to shoot the video of our linedance festival and in particular of our Guiness world record attempt. She kindly accepted to do it so I return the favor for her project.

Please people of Estonia, share it, like it or sleep on it if you like but Help her. She needs our help.

The Porcelain Days (July 27-29th, Parnu, Nooruse Maja)

    In my early days in Nooruse Maja, I was doing some porcelain painting with a very nice lady who came earlier to the office to teach us some porcelain painting. At first I was ok, let’s do it once. But she kept on coming back. We did a few things like a tea mug, some plates and one jewelry case. The latter was proposed by her since I did something for my mum for her birthday. Mai, the porcelain teacher told me I had to do it. We did over a few weeks as it needed different layers of paint. I was a bit afraid it would continue too long as I would like to take everything back home when I will get back to France. 

    The main event for her is the porcelain days we are organising in Nooruse Maja. During days, people can come have some classes on different styles, techniques from teachers coming from other countries and Estonia. We even had a few years ago, a teacher from Japan. They made some calligraphy on porcelain and it was so beautiful. A Shame I wasn’t already here because I would have participated in this workshop. 

    Now, the porcelain days are just in a few days. People will have the chance to study how to paint nostalgic country houses, small animals and the tinga tinga technique or how to paint berries. Visitors can enjoy an exhibition of the items painted during those workshops, arts brought by people from our winter classes. The exhibition is free so you can come and enjoy a nice drink.

Estonian Linedance Festival (Aug. 4th & 5th, 2012): record broken!!!

Dear Readers,

We received a thrilling news a few days ago. A group of people in the USA broke our record by around 200 people, the official number being 2569 beating our record of 2354 people. So now we definitely need our 3000 people to come!!!!

Please register now in our website (linefest.com) for the chance to get a  discount for registration before July 1st!!! You can contact us through our website, or write us directly at kaie@estonianlinedance.com or info@noorusemaja.ee or simply drop me a email.

Come one, join the fun!!!!

Share the news with your friends, colleagues, families.

We can accomodate people in wheelchairs if needed!! 

Estonian LineDance Festival (Aug 4th & 5th, 2012)

Hello everybody,

     As Summer is coming very fast, you have to decide what to do for your holidays. Here is an excellent idea. You can come and enjoy a few days in the Estonian summer capital dancing with lots of people. We need your participation as we want to beat a guiness world record, the longest single line dance. So please visit our webpage to register or send me an email,  we will do you best to answer you as fast as possible. Do not hesitate to share the poster or any information about our festival to anyone who might be interested.

Bon Appétit: Wheat Fricassee in Provence style

For the recipe, click on the picture (in french only).

Preparation : 15min, cooking : 20/25min.

Ingredients :

150grs of bulgur - if you can’t find it, use wheat grains

1 big can of tuna in brine or oil – around 100grs or 3.6 oz of fresh tuna

(if you want to do it with meat, 250/300grs of chicken will do the trick)

2 big tomatoes

½ a medium onion

I red pepper

1 courgette/zucchini

½ eggplant

1 big can of Tomato Purée

Olive Oil, salt, pepper

Preparation :

Wash, peel (except the pepper) and cut all vegetables, and meat if needed, into small cubes.

In a big frying pan, cook until golden the onion along with the pepper

Then add vegetables, salt, pepper and stir

At this moment, you should put the bulgur or wheat to cook like rice

Just before the water is completely evaporated, add the chicken if you choose meat. In case of fish, wait until there is no more water from the vegetables.

Pour the tomatoe purée diluded in water (to your convenience) ; let it stew for a few minutes at low heat

About 5 minutes before the wheat is al dente, pour it into the frying pan with the preparation and let it stew during a few minutes on low heat.

Be careful : do not let the tomatoe sauce stick onto the pan. You should be able to have lots of sauce ; Add more water if you want.

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/

Media review: in the press (english version)

    Finally thanks to a estonian friend, I managed to translate the article a journalist wrote about me and Katerina the other wolunteers in Nooruse Maja. Now for all my fanbase, here is the article published in Pärnu Postimees by Karin Klaus on March 10th for the week-end edition. The original article in Estonian with a photo of the newspaper article is here.

Volunteer are bringing fresh air to Rääma

    In Nooruse Maja there has been already volunteers from EVS already for 3 years. During the past, the volunteers have been from France and this year they are from France and Macedonia.

    Pierre-Marie Brianceau and Katarina Petreska arrived in Pärnu on a freezing cold february day and so far they are quite pleased.

    Katerina states that she could’ve choosen between Greece, Romania and Estonia and comparing to other Eastern European countries, it seemed exotic enough. Katerina did volunteer work already back home while being a mentor in an ecology project. In the future she likes to work with young people or create her own organisation because she has always liked helping people.

    Pierre-Marie who studied international business management at home said that he joined EVS because he was looking for a new challenge, wanted to find and meet new interesting people. In the future he would like to work with European international projects and EVS experience will definitely become useful. In summer he would like to organise something with the current volunteers in Estonia because that would help to increase the co-operating and it would help solve problems.

    During the month the volunteers have lived in Pärnu they have already participated in the Ice Festival, helped to organise the Theatre festival and also have gotten to travel around Estonia and participate in a volunteer seminar in Viljandi.

Pierre is helping to the students who are learning french and he has plans to start organising theme nights to introduce chinese language and culture. Both of the volunteers have just started the Estonian classes.

    On the free time Katerina loves walking, reading and shopping. Pierre is looking for a place to play volleyball and currently he’s also keeping the blog fromparnuwithlove.blogspot.com in where he writes stories about Pärnu, including funny moments such as eating vastlakukkel (traditional estonian brioches made on Shrove day), sledging, walking across the Pärnu river on first time and so on. All that illustrating it with plenty of photos.

    To get more acquainted with Pierre, people can join the French day on 24th of March and the macedonian day will be on the 14th of April.

„Hard working and educated people“ stated the manager of Nooruse Maja Uudo Laane who said that Pierre and Katerina are assisting Nooruse Maja with current European projects, helping to organise events and do some advertising. The main purpose is to use the young people’s ideas as much as possible to get some extra value to Nooruse Maja.

During those couple of weeks they have lived here, they have already both found lots of new friends, learned how to walk on ice and etc. They also stated that though they are coming from warmer climate, with open-minded society, even though people on the street don’t kiss or hug and seems rather distant, they are very nice and kind people once you get to know them.

    Katerina was touched by the movie about the Estonian Singing revolution and she said that it was so touching that people just come together and sing. She also thinks that Estonia is much calmer and nicer than Macedonia because there is less cars and people are not rushing everywhere.

    The volunteers are gonna be in Pärnu until September and already Uudo Laane is looking for other volunteers. He says that he gets multiple applications every day and so he has plenty of people to choose from. He also states that it’s irrelevant which country the person is from but rather the ideas, initiative, creativity that are what are important for him.

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.

Mr Spring is here, will he stay?

Everything is possible, even "hot temperatures" in Estonia. Let's hope it ill stay that way.
edit: no he didn't stay. someone must have scared him away.

The weather is a tad too strange

Hello guys,

Some times we said people have nothing to talk about so they just talk about the weather. But here, it's actually a topic of conversation. The past week, it was a bit strange. well, completely strange I should say. At the beginning of the week, the snow had completely melted so we were all very happy about it since it meant the end of the winter time and the coming of better temperatures. Someone forgot to get some snow for Christmas so he decided to give some for Easter. Damn him!! if only he had made it the normal way. I might have been using my bicycle already. I really want to do it as I will be able to do some kind of sports (note to self: get a monthly card for the swimming pool).

So before we got this nice 10cm/3.5inch layer of snow, I went after work to take some pictures of some place in the city, Valikaar (the old fortress remains) and the beach. My tutor told us about an exhibition he would like to do about our views on Estonia. I really like this idea. That's why I decided to start already to take some pics I could include in this exhibition. I need to pay attention about the quality of the pics as it should be printed on A4 paper, hence the need of high quality pics to avoid a pixelisation of the images. I got one I want to include but heh, I won't show it now as I don't want to spoil the fun! ;)

Promotional video for the Estonian Linedance Festival (August 4&5th, 2012)

To my friends around the world and the others, here is a small promotional video about the LineDance Festival Nooruse Maja is organising. It will happen on August 4&5th this year in Pärnu. You will have the chance to be part of a world record, the longest single line of dancers!! We want to overdance our own record so help us beat it!!!!

For more informaiton, visit: www.linefest.com All the information needed to get registered is there!! No matter if you're valid or in a wheelchair, you can come.