Minha cidade Eu moro na cidade russo agora. Sua nome é Balashiha. Esta cidade fica perto de Moscovo (a capital da Rússia). Muitos habitantes da minha cidade trabalham em Moscovo. Eles chegam até seu locals de trabalho em ônibus, carros e trens. Habitantes de Moscovo vão de Moscovo para os subúrbios através Balashiha. Portanto as estradas da cidade frequentemente hão o tráfego pesado. Minha cidade é cercada por a floresta. Nesta floresta há alguns lagos e um rio. Tambem na cidade há um parque grande. Os crianças e os adultos gostam passear no parque e na floresta. No verão as pessoas nadam nos lagos e no rio ali. No outono eles apanham as bagas e os congumelos. No inverno eles andam de esquis e de patins. No quarteirão industrial da cidade há uma fabrica. O centro da cidade é a praça grande com as casas da administraçao municipal. Na cidade há alguns igrejas, muitos lojas, padarias, farmácias e bancos, um correio e duas cinemas. Além de que há muitas escolas e jardins de infância.

As praias brasileiras O Brasil tem muita praias. Aquelas praias são bonitas e grandes. Nós temos dois amigos brasileiras, eles moram no Rio de Janeiro. Aquela antigo e populoso cidade tem muitas praias e montanhas. Nossos amigos gostam as praias perto de cidade muito bem. Eles gostam de banhar-se no oceano e de tomar sol na areia. Eu quero ver as praias brasileiras tambem. Mas mais eu quero visitar as montanhas do Brasil.

Eu quero falar Portuguese! Bom dia! Meu nome é Natalia. Eu tenho trinta anos. Eu sou da Rússia, agora moro em Moscovo. Eu tenho um marido e dois crianças. Meu esposo tem trinta anos. Nossas filhas têm seis e nove anos. Nome do meu marido é Alexey. Ele trabalha no Instuto de Geologia. Ele é pesquisador da ciência Geologia. Nomes das nossas meninas são Tatiana e Ludmila. Nossa primeira filha aprende na escola. Nosssa segunda filha aprende no jardim da infância. Eu quero falar Portuguese. Eu presico Portuguese para meu trabalho futuro. Estou no inicio de seu estudo. Até mais tarde!

The Mediaeval Knights Festival (part 5) Well, don’t worry, they were not killed. Nobody was killed in the Festival :)). According to the rules of the battle (as it turned out they had some rules), if a warrior had been dropped on the ground by a sword strike, he was considered a dead and couldn’t fight again. However, I guess, that these rules reflected the situation of a real ancient battle quite well. I think that when a warrior was dropped on the ground in a real battle it was very difficult for him to survive. But this game wasn’t entirely safely anyway. Some of knights were injured and assisted by doctors from emergency ambulance, that had arrived especially for this event. There were six or seven similar battles. Two best troops, that were winners in the previous battles, fought with each other in the last one. Tired of all these events we went to our tent for rest.

The Mediaeval Knights Festival (part 4) After a rest, we left the fortress and went to the huge field nearby, where a great new festival event was about to begin. It was called “bugurti”. As far as we knew it was supposed to be real battles between troops of knights. It wasn’t a joust with strict rules. In this event the knights wanted to fight quite seriously. There were a lot of spectators, something about 1 or 2 thousands of people. Some of them were in ancient costumes, other ones – in modern clothes. Small boys and girls fought each other with wooden swords and shields, climbed up and down on ancient constructions that were placed here for the actions or just run across the field. The people sat down on the grass around a huge round place that was roped off from the spectators and the show started. We took place right in front of a rope fence. At the beginning there was a short spectacle, where some ancient warriors demonstrated the art of fighting on a horse with swords and lances. The spectacle was about a hard and dangerous life of Russian people in the Medieval Ages. In those days enemies from west and east attacked Russian towns very often. Therefore, Russian warriors had to fight well by different types of weaponry, especially by swords, lances and bows. Also they used horses in wars a lot, a horse cavalry was considered a main strength of an army. http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6083/6115725267_fb7f3b8958_b.jpg http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6090/6115731315_600d6a95f4_z.jpg http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6199/6115782693_44b84ab671_b.jpg After the Russian warriors had won all their enemies :)) the horse spectacle finished. After a while two troops of knights had arrived on the both sides of the field. Each troop included 30 or 40 knights armed with swords and shields and dressed in metal armor and helmet. Each of them had thick wadded clothes under the armour to protect his body and head from heavy sword strikes. After a signal of a justice the battle began. I think this battle was very similar to a real one in the foretime… All these guys went slowly to each other and then began to fight. Incredible sight! Awful din of swords! However the battle was over after only 3 or 4 minutes, because most of the knights were already lying on the ground… http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6195/6116332118_c0c19e1b22_b.jpg http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6087/6116334744_1a5ac75070_b.jpg http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6084/6116343774_0a6e2966c1_b.jpg

The Mediaeval Knights Festival (part 3) After some rest we left the fortress and went to the huge field nearby it where a new great event of the festival had to begin. It was called “bugurti”. As we had known it should be real battles between troops of knights. It wasn’t a joust with strict rules. In these case knights wanted to fight quite seriously! To be continued

The Mediaeval Knights Festival (part 2) While the mighty knights, defending the title of the best, fought each other with heavy swords, at a nearby meadow was held a children joust. My youngest daughter Tanya (she is six) wanted to struggle there too. Tanya was the only girl fought in this battle, all others were boys and mostly older than she. There were two teams – the Blue one and the Red one. Tanya was included in the Blue team. The rules of the game were quite easy. Participants have to protect their flag (a rubber stick) and capture the flag of the opposite team. Each game has three battles, each one lasts three minutes. If a participant gets a hit on the head by sword of the enemy - he has to leave the battle. He must sit down on the ground and wait the next round. All these rules were described to children by instructors: http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6190/6086575946_52f9d1f12f_b.jpg Each participant had a helmet, that should protect his head, rubber sword and shield, which he must use for fighting. http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6070/6086033719_d8d43e8fb1_b.jpg Well, I think Tanay struggled quite good. Before start I explained her the rules again and advised her to defend the flag of her team and try to capture the flag of the opposite team, instead of just beat her enemies on their heads! I had noticed that other children made this mistake – they wanted only struggle by swords with each other and completely forgot about the main goal of the game! http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6078/6086036771_bb0eafd3b3_b.jpg I suppose that she understood my explanations very well. In the first battle she rushed to the enemies in front of her team. http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6187/6086039347_f4f6bd682c_b.jpg Soon she was attacked by two boys from the Red team. http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6186/6086042383_d5f9bbb990_b.jpg http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6203/6086045221_4d8844af04_b.jpg After a short fight she had been hit on her head and sit down on the ground. In the second round she tried to capture the Red flag, but her attempt had failed. She struck many enemies, but had to leave the game as well. In the middle of the last battle she noticed that a boy from the Red team wanted to take the flag of her team. She rushed to defend the flag and hit the boy on his head. He hit her as well. Both were out of the battle, but the blue flag was saved and the Blue team had won! Tanya was very happy because of it! http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6197/6086047633_8dbe529c58_b.jpg

Second day. The Mediaeval Knightly Festival The Mediaeval Knightly Festival was organized by some groups of enthusiasts which are interested in the Mediaeval history and all things related with this period. Some of these people are carried away by reconstruction of mediaeval costumes and other features of usual life. Other ones take a great interest in real sword fighting making from this hobby a kind of sport. The main participants of the festival made a camp near an old church on a hill. They didn’t use modern convenient tents, because they wanted to live there as in the Middle Ages. So, they set very simple cloth tents and all the time cooked food on fire and ate it from clay tableware. http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6069/6076862795_52dac3d4de_b.jpg http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6196/6077409614_8d631aa686_b.jpg The main events of the festival were carried out in the old mediaeval fortress. When we came inside we saw a big crowd of people in mediaeval clothes, most of men had sword or bowl. Some of these people described their costumes. They demonstrated not only Russian Mediaeval clothes, but ones from Europe and Asia as well. http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6195/6077413160_6df39ba530_b.jpg http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6199/6077415842_24ee961197_b.jpg http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6206/6076880083_fab02c9a84_b.jpg One of the most exciting events of the festival was a real knightly tournament. There were something about 20 different bouts in which two men in real metal armour and helmet fought with each other by real swords. The ammunition was very heavy, so I think it was a hard work for them! Each bout lasted only 2 minutes, but it was enough to get tired. http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6201/6077424544_0ea0607244_b.jpg http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6075/6077432710_659e1759ae_b.jpg http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6189/6076898483_bf05f9f2d8_b.jpg http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6065/6077442530_20ebcdc7f2_b.jpg

Summer trip in the North-West of Russia (1-st day) We live in the Moscow Region, so we began out trip from this territory. The map of our travel you can see here: http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6207/6073748068_a80846e559_b.jpg At first day we drove rather fast because we wanted to come in time to the Mediaeval Knightly Festival in the Pscov Region "Iron town - Izborsk", that was our first goal. That’s why during the first day we made only several stops for short rest. One of these breaks we spent near the field overgrown by gigantic plants - Heracléum sosnówskyi (of Umbelliferae family). This tall weed is not native spices for the Middle Russia, but it has become very common there because in the past it was grown as fodder plant for livestock and then moved to the nature ecosystems. It’s rather dangerous plant: if its sap gets on human skin it will make there a strong long unhealed burn. So, we had to be very careful there! http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6080/6073571436_e530f93f7b_b.jpg A few next stops we made near storks – beautiful large white birds with long red legs and beak and long neck. Some people in our country tell to their children that they were brought to them (theirs parents) by storks. Maybe that is one of the reasons that people don’t hunt on storks and these birds are not afraid of people at all. We saw big nests of storks near the motorway – they were built on the roofs of small houses as well as on the tops of concrete poles and trees. http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6189/6073173153_d4bd08515c_b.jpg http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6090/6073176591_a93230ce6f_b.jpg The first night we spent somewhere in the forest and in the morning we discovered that we slept just near the home of swallows. They made small burrows for theirs young in the old sandpit. http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6085/6073720254_544a340e2d_b.jpg In the early morning of the second day of our travel we arrived in Izborsk Fortress (of the Pscov Region). We came in time – the Medieval Knightly Festival just had started. To be continued ))