http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Campo/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Campo en-us Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:45:50 +0000 Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:45:50 +0000 The play started at 7 so everyone met at the school at 5 to get ready. My costume was Jamie's grey trousers a white dress shirt and matching bowtie a bottle green butler's jacket and the valenki. My twenty minutes in makeup involved a man squeezing an entire tube of hair gel over my head combing my hair into an 19th century centre parting and sticking some of my fringe to my forehead with glu http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/Yaroslavl/blog-200382.html Some pictures I took this winter sharing a flat with Nastya... http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Kyiv/blog-119393.html Some pictures I took this winter sharing a flat with Nastya... http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Kyiv/blog-119391.html Some pictures I took this winter sharing a flat with Nastya... http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Kyiv/blog-119392.html Some pictures I took this winter sharing a flat with Nastya... http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Kyiv/blog-119412.html Some but by no means all of my favourite days of the last nine monthsYAROSLAVL 2nd September 2005 to 7th January 2006 My very first impressions of Russia. A school day. Everything apart from me falling asleep on the Yartek sofa What a school day would have been like if I was born here. The middle day of a first unforgettable trip to Tatarstan. A cold afternoon in an historic town. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Northwest/Moscow/blog-85837.html What is it about Russia that makes me more tired when I get up than when I went to bedAt school there were two hours of Viktor in the morning and then two hours with giggly Olga in the afternoon. Her grammar classes give me headaches but the hard work is worth it because people respect you more when you speak properly.I went to the mobile phone shop on ulitsa Nekrasova to buy a new 'mobilnik' a http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/Yaroslavl/blog-19765.html I woke up at ten and had breakfast with Ana Lena and Valera. I was nervous talking to Valera to begin with because I have almost never had a conversation with a Russian man. All my teachers apart from one are women all of my friends are girls and in general there are much fewer men than women in Russia. He drew us a map of how to find things in Moscow wrote down his mobile number for us if we n http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Northwest/Moscow/blog-26366.html There was only one thing I wanted to do today. I was a boy who loves pancakes in a country that loves pancakes on pancake day. Today is the end of a very big Russian celebration. From Sarah Brown's email to me from PetersburgThere's a festival this week called 'Maslenitsa' which is the Russian 'Pancake Week'. It started on monday and goes right through to sunday which is the start of the fas http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/Tver/blog-44674.html My alarm was set for 8 to allow for a liein before the day started. I kept pressing the snooze button every ten minutes for two hours so exhausted after yesterday that even my thin mattress on top of wooden boards felt cosy.When I eventually lifted myself up and went to the bathroom for a shower I arrived at the first problem of my stay. Our tap water is stagnant by the time the scum from the t http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/Tver/blog-42212.html Ana had her last day of lectures at university today so she had left to get the bus for Lugansk before I got up.I spent the entire day by her computer writing in this diary. Every so often her mum would come upstairs to offer me some pears and mandarins or a glass of home made apple juice and she made me a big lunch of golubtsy parcels with meat inside. I will probably leave something behind wh http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Luganskaya-Oblast/Popasnaya/blog-33517.html The flight from London to Moscow was comfortable. At Moscow Domidedovo airport the 15 'RLUS' students met and introduced ourselves. Then we left for Yaroslavl. It appears to be just a short distance from Moscow on a map but in reality it is a 6 hour coach trip along the same wide connifer lined road. While it was light I got to know three of the people I had met at the airport Chris Jamie and http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/Yaroslavl/blog-18659.html I mentioned Katya to Tamara Aleksandrovna at the breakfast table. Apparently next time I see her I'm to take an orange with me so she can look at it when she gets home to remind her of me. I think she would prefer some English music so I might be slightly more modern and copy some of my CDs for her Tamara Aleksandrovna also said that in two days' time the first snow will come but it's been so m http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/Yaroslavl/blog-23166.html All that I have to do today is say goodbye. There is a train to Moscow at 10 this evening where I will stay with Helen for a day buy some books take a last look at Russia and get on another train to Lugansk in the east of Ukraine.I'll spend two days there with Ana who I'm really looking forward to seeing again then we'll go to her village Popasnaya for two weeks. Hopefully there will be one http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/Tver/blog-58589.html Some last photos that I thought belonged in my diary.... http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/Tver/blog-58605.html This morning in Lyudmila Giorgevna's lesson we gave our presentations of the essays we had written. Afterwards there was a leaving gettogether in one of the classrooms where myself Tamzin and Michael had a last chat with our teachers. Aleksandr Ivanovich Zhanna Elena Lyudmila Giorgevna and Dimitrii Sergeevich the director drank coffee and ate biscuits with us and asked us about our plans for http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/Tver/blog-58587.html I've been thinking about which parts of Russian life I haven't mentioned at least once in my diary. The first thing I thought of was the word '107310991074107210771090'. It roughly means it happens what Russians say when something isn't done properly but noone has the motivation to put it right. If a waitress makes you repeat an order three times then forgets it altogether http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/Tver/blog-58585.html I took my last saturday morning trip to the market today. It was busy as usual and the stalls had even spread onto the grass next to the road as there wasn't enough space for everyone to take a place on the side of the street. I wanted to buy a lot souvenirs so to speak and things that you could only find in a Russian 'rynok'. I chose two corduroy flat caps for 650 roubles as always they looked http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/Tver/blog-58584.html Lyudmila Giorgevna's lecture this morning was about terrorism but later it turned into a discussion about 'what type of world we live in'. The two adjectives that first came into my mind were American and small. Everyone agreed that it is fair in parts and unfair in others. At the end we watched a documentary about the Beslan shooting on September 1st 2004. What happened in Beslan a village http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/Tver/blog-58583.html Days have become quite similar to each other. Once I have crawled out of an uncomfortable bed at the sixth 'snooze' plus three minutes taken a tepid shower drunk about two sips of coffee with Michael and finished the homework I had fallen asleep on the night before the last thing I want to do is sit through a Zhanna lesson for an hour and a half. But that is how four of my weekdays start. Thankf http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/Tver/blog-44029.html