Igloo or choom

When it's getting cold, it is not comfortable to sleep in the tent anymore.

But people who like camping can't stop their traveling, that's why there is another solution for overnight stays.

It's "chum" or "choom" or "igloo" sometimes when you use snow for insulating.

The big tent with fireplace and valve for avoiding smoke.

Originally they are made from reindeer skins and sticks.

Now they are made from modern materials (aluminium prop and polyester tents)  that makes it easy to use, and to transport.

We used to have some stove inside it, like that:

This stove can be easily disassembled to a few little details, and it's easy to transport it.

Because the choom is good for team up to 15 men, it's easy to distribute small parts of stove and choom to your team, and it will not be too hard to carry on.

When you have a choom and a stove, you can stop think about temperature at all, you can camping whenever you like, but anyway there is a nuisance for good sleeping.

From my personal experience in a team of 10-15 people, you will for sure have one or more musicians.

Usually it implies a concert for a whole night.

The simple rope bridge

During our hiking we (my son and I) had to cross the river.

The river is not big, it's possible to swim it over, but it almost winter, and it's uncomfortable to swim now because of temperature.

That's why we had to use some kind of bridges.

Map told us, that we have only one reasonable option: using a rope bridge. All other alternatives, were too far from our route.

That rope bridge is too simple. It's not even a bridge. It's just two ropes, one about 1.5 meter above another, that's all.

I decided, it's a good entertaining moment for our hiking.
We bring special equipment with us for safety. We used belts with small leashes with carabiners.

Two leashes for my son,the first one to buckle him to the rope, the second one to attach him to me.

And two for me, I had to change ropes during the way, but I didn't want a moment when I wasn't attached to something. 

That safety leashes were extremely useful for us.
Because the distance between ropes is long, my son couldn't hold on the upper one, and he had to act like an acrobat in a circus.
That's why he fell sometimes.
But he liked the process, after he assured that falling is safe, and he can sit and swing while I pull him forward, he played with that a lot.

Now, after we finished our hiking, he asks me to build such rope bridge somewhere for playing.

Worms farm

I love fishing, I love to grow plants, and I have a fish tank, based on that info, can you guess who is my the best assistants?

Yeah, it's worms .

I have a worms population and I grow them.

They are hybrid of two breeds:
- red Californian worm
- local worms.

Red Californian is good, they multiply rapidly, they live long, but they have a crucial flaw in my case, they love warm, and they can die if temperature is above 10C.

The average annual temperature in my place is +3C. Not enough.

That's why they were bred with local worms, and now they can bear almost zero C temperature, in detriment of other advantages of course. They grow a little slower, etc.

I bought a small box with this worms several years ago, and I have a huge population of them now.

I use them to produce vermicompost as well.
That population produces something about 4-5 garden handcarts each year. It's more than I can use.

That is  a perfect fertilizer, it's proved many times.

From time to time, when I have time for that, I'm asking for damaged and dried plants in plants shop.
I put them in the bucket with vermicompost, and usually, the magic is happened.
I gave a lot of grown palm trees in kindergarten because there is no place for them anymore.

I feed worms by fallen leaves:

And I have a good assistant for that. The one who collect all the leaves.
Leaves used for two goals, first it's the fodder, the next it's a house.
We made big pile of leaves

to keep warm inside during the winter. The layer of pressed leaves is about 2 meters in height, it's enough.

Worms live in the middle of the pile, converting leaves to the vermicompost.

When there is no more leaves to eat, they migrate to another corner of the pile. That's the time to get the compost.

Worms are very conservative, they hardly can change the food which they are adapted too.

I did a lot of experiments, before I stayed with leaves. 

Some of others foods works better, but it was either hard to sustain the constant quality or it can be  more time-consuming.

This farm is very easy to maintain, I spend only a few hours an year to manage it : only a few time an year I add the leaves, and two times an year I pull the compost. Comparing to the effort, it's very profitable thing.

The worms itself are the fodder for my fish in the home aquarium, and when I had a chickens farm, the chickens loves them too. Worms are the good source of protein for birds and fish, I use it as a supplements even when I use another fodder.

It's also priceless for fishing. 

My boy likes to use fishing rod with a float and worms as a bait for fishing. It's a simple fishing, but it can be very gambling pastime.

Have I convinced you to start your own worms farm?

Learning English by conversation-exchange

In my previous post I wrote that I got a lot of my English from podcasts.

Where did I get the rest ?

The second big part comes from conversation exchange.

It's a way to practice your English speaking with native speakers.

In the beginning it was a really hard job for me to get acquainted with native speakers. Especially because Russian is not very popular for learning, only several people in the world would like spend their time talking to you.

But as time went by I found a way to solve that and I want to share a few my tricks with you.

1. The place

First of all you need a site where people looking for partners, there are a lot, google knows about  2,030,000 results.

I tried only few of them, and found that this one : www.conversationexchange.com suits my needs.

2. The attitude

Be ready to be refused. For any ridiculous reason. People have different habits and culture  all over the world. I promise you will be surprised. Some people don't speak with person of opposite gender, some people don't like bearded men.

Don't overthink it. Don't get disappointed. Don't let you be stopped by that. 

If you got refuse from someone who you didn't know a few moments before, who cares, go on.

I've written a tons of letters at first (bad letters actually) before I got first contact, I thought a lot "what is the reason?" and rewrite and send my e-mails again.

3. The text 

The only thing what you partner know about you, it's your letter, only if this letter is good he or she may decided to look on your profile and contact you back.

When I mean the letter should be good, I don't tell it should be without mistakes in perfect English, my experience told me it's not important (moreover some people would like to correct you as soon as possible to show their expertise), but it definitely have to be understandable.

Brevity! Very important to deliver your thought concise. It's a crazy world today, you can't expect that someone will spend more than two minutes for that.

What to write about?

We have a funny proverb in Russian, I'll try to translate.

I like strawberry, but hate worms. In opposite, fish like worms, so when I go fishing better to have worms than strawberry with me.

I used this wisdom a lot. If your contact wrote something in their profile -> use it.

She likes art? show her your drawing; he likes cars? show him funny Russian car, ask about his car.

In a few words, try to imagine what do you have/know what interested to this human, and use it in your letter.

Add only a few word about you and a link where they can get more info about you (blog/profile/social network).

The only fact which I left undecided is should I write that I married when I send e-mail to woman or not. It's not a easy thing, I should admit. I tried both option, but nevertheless women refuse me because "they don't speak with married men" equally with "they don't speak with single men".

I tried a lot to predict that, I was looking for clue in their profile, but got failed.
Mostly I do it in random way now, the percent of success is the same.

4. The topic

You got contact, what's now? How to start conversation?
Well the first talk is the easiest one, you have to say your name, where you from, ask the same, pretty easy.
The problems will come later. Sometimes it's really hard to find a topic especially when you (or your partner) have difficulty with the language.

I solved it in this way: Photos! ;)
I share a lot of them, about me, my place, my town, something funny in general. And we can discuss them.

Sometimes we can't predict how the usual (for you) thing can surprise other human from another continent. 

I also write in my blog for the same reason, but it works a little worse.

5. The time

Don't wait too much. If you didn't resume contact in a few day after the first conversation, most likely it lost. I can't explain it well, but I have a lot of statistics about that.

If you interested in this particular contact, try to resume it in a next few days.

I don't mean be clingy, but don't expect you can resume conversation after the long time.

6. Does it help?

I don't know the answer, it definitely something different than having a teacher.

People will not fix your mistakes endlessly (British people never do it even once)

So if your goal is grammar, better to find another way.

What it actually do, it helps you start to speak what was a huge problem for me.

Even when I could understand 90% of my podcasts, I couldn't speak at all.

And it has changed in a few months.

7. The feeling

I've found that it's normal to feel like an idiot most of the time when you are on the beginning of your way.

It's not a quite comfortable, but think if you can get used to how useful it can be for you ;)

8. The bottom line

Let me show your some my  statistics. 

Unfortunately the site which I use, store letters only for last six month, and it's for sure not my "active" period.

My active period was 2 years ago or so, and at that time I considered a few coherent sentences in English as a big achievement.

The last six month.

I send e-mail to over 480 contacts, got answers from 90 of them ( a huge rate,  huh?) 

I got about 15 friends whom I call from time to time, often than once a month.

And I got 5 close friends whom I talk to almost each day (not about English already though).

Is it good? Well it's approximately 2.5 times more than I got in my off-line life for the same period.