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Food post
Your food post made me feel very hungry! I'd like to try making draniki. Can you give us a recipe for them? If you do, maybe lots of us will try them, and soon people all over the world will be eating Belarusian food!

I have a question. You say that machanka is a "unique sauce from meat and relish" What do you mean by relish?

You use the word culinary in your post, which is an excellent word. For those who don't know, culinary is an adjective, meaning 'to do with food,' even though it doesnt sound at all like the word 'food.' This happens a lot in English, where we have an English noun, paired up with a Latin adjective, or an adjective from Greek.

liver - hepatic
church - ecclesiastical
year - annual
brother - fraternal

Often the Latin adjective is more formal, and less-well known than the noun. The words culinary and annual are a little formal, but they are well-known and widely-used. You don't need to worry about them.

But some words from Latin or Greek are confusing for English people, who don't always understand them.

When we have no English adjective (eg like 'churchy', instead of ecclesiastical) then we can use the noun itself, instead of an adjective. So we could say 'church traditions' instead of 'ecclesiastical traditions' and we could say 'food traditions' instead of 'culinary traditions.'

Cooking pots - I was interested to hear that now people cook on modern cookers, so you'd be surprised to see an old-fashioned cooking pot. By the way, that's what we call these in English - a pot. A jug is normally something with a handle on one side, and a little 'lip' on the other, for pouring liquids. Like these two - a little blue jug and a measuring jug from my kitchen:

All about Slutsk
Here's another great phrase - you said "I used to be driven by my brother." Used to... is a very useful phrase and again, lots of people don't use it. It doesn't really sound like what it means. As you know, Veronika, if you used to do something, it means you often did it in the past. Your brother used to drive you - so we know he did it lots of times and we also know he doesn't do it anymore.

You are very good at formal, written English. Sometimes it's good to use a more informal, conversational style. You say "should I wish to see my parents" and this is too formal. It would be better to say 'If I want to see my parents.'

You showed us a photo of an ancient stone: "all that can remember you about" the ancient past of Slutsk. Here you need to use the word 'remind'. I remember, because the stone reminds me.

One more question: "There is also a bright Roman-Catholic church in the town." What did you mean by 'bright'?

The Slutsk Belts look very interesting - I agree with Pary, it would be good to hear more about local crafts.

In the village
"A change from the daily routine that makes you perceive time differently." What a beautiful phrase - again you really know how to make a complicated sentence in English! And one of the really good things about that sentence is just the little word make - it's a small word, but not everyone knows how to use it. We use it all the time in English.

'Red and green makes me think of Christmas'
'Seeing them dance made me want to try it'
'The red carpet makes the room look small'

So the word 'make' means 'to cause it to be.' And it's very useful. So thanks to Veronika for showing us that word.

And I found the pictures of the countryside very beautiful, I feel like I can really imagine the place. It's a shame that so many people are leaving the village. It makes me want to move into one of those cottages, next to your grandfather. But I suppose I would also miss the internet... :-)

Once again, looking forward to more posts!
All the best

Abigail