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This year, the first year Master's students at ITMO University were offered to choose one subject from the soft skills block of disciplines. Soft skills is an obligatory part of the educational program, which are aimed at improving skills that are not directly related to your major but essential for an successful career. Six disciplines were offered in both Russian and English:
You can have a bottle of water and a bar of chocolate on a desk during the exam, they say, it helps the brain. Does it? I did some research and can assure you, chocolate — which is sugar — barely helps our brain.
When I was in high school, my guilty pleasure was watching YouTube videos about the everyday life of different people. When I watched them, I dreamt about being like those people, living a life like they did. And now it’s my turn to tell some guys and girls that someday some of them will really live like that.
I’m an exchange student, currently living in Brussels, Belgium. This city is full of contrasts and is proudly called "The Heart of Europe". It is a curious place to live in, I still haven’t figured out what is Brussels and I’m on my way discovering what is Belgium.
No, but really. I did. But that’s not the coolest part, although it is very awesome. But we’ll come back to that a bit later.
I am an exchange student who currently lives in Pilsen, a town you probably haven’t heard of before. It is okay because before I came here I had no idea about this place. Pilsen is the fourth largest city in the Czech Republic. If tourists come here, they do it for the sake of beer and beer factories.
It’s mid-October. Not the happiest time of year. Everything seems too cold, too dirty, too dark, too bad. However, you always have me to inspire you and cheer up. Here’s my Autumn survival kit. There are no contraindications; consultation with a specialist is not required.
This is almost the first question I ask my new foreign friends after some classic small talk. As a buddy, I always meet a lot of foreigners. And it’s extremely interesting to know what people think about our country from the other side of the world.
I have been in St. Petersburg for four weeks, and I am too stupid to know how to take out my trash. I’ve been told it requires screaming something into an intercom, but I find screaming undignified, so I have chosen instead to hoard it. There are no doubt those who would argue that hoarding trash is less dignified than screaming into an intercom, but we will have to agree to disagree.
In this first blog entry, I want to share some experiences about living in St. Petersburg as an expat. When moving here in the beginning of May 2017, I was struck by the beauty of the city, and the cold weather. On victory day 2017 it was windy and snowing sometimes, while in my home country Austria it was already 20 °C at the time. From the start I was very lucky to have a lot of support from the ITMO Fellowship program coordination, and from my university faculty.