Finland reigns supreme in the hostel. The girls talk Finnish amongst themselves but Yulia, Yenu, Kseniya, and Natasha also have Russian as a second mother tongue. I speak in Russian with everyone apart from Michael and Tamzin. Christa, Tuuli, Linda and Haidie are also from Finland, Claire is from France, Kolya is French Canadian and Karin is from Finland and speaks Swedish too. The hierarchy is much like the winter olympics that everyone spends their evenings watching in the lounge: Finnish and Russian are going for gold, English is acknowledged but firmly at the bottom of the pecking orde [View Full Entry]

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This lesson this morning was 'Russia Today'. I don't know the name of the teacher yet, a thin lady in her fifties with greying blonde hair. We watched the morning news - with reports about Iran, bird 'flu and another Russian figure skating medal at the winter olympics - then read through some articles. Lessons are far more formal here in comparison with Yartek. The teachers had organised a 'meet and greet' afternoon for the international students - the idea was that we should be introduced to a few of the students from the university. It took place in a large [View Full Entry]

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The water in the flat was cleaner this morning and by 10 I had taken a shower and had half a cup of coffee. Just needing to go downstairs to get to class I was only five minutes late for my first lesson. It was Russian Literature with Zhanna, who is about 30 with long dark red hair. Our classroom is quite small, with a circular wooden table in the middle for seven students and a teachers' desk at the front. The wallpaper is light pink, the view from the window overlooks ulitsa Zhelyabova. For the first half of the 90 [View Full Entry]

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My alarm was set for 8 to allow for a lie-in 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 tank had run through all I was doing was washing the foul smelling water off my skin with slightly cleaner stuff. I will [View Full Entry]

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My flight to Moscow was at 9.15 in the morning. Once I said goodbye to my parents I walked to the departure lounge, but took too long talking to some of my Yartek friends on the way and by the time I got there at 8.55 I was seriously panicking about missing the 'plane. I just made it but from there the panic increased. I'm usually quite relaxed when I fly but this time I was in pieces. I had never sat on my own before, the 'plane was less than half full and I knew no-one. During the whole three [View Full Entry]

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5am: Wake up in disbelief at where I am. Put on my clothes over my pajamas, yet again without a shower, and met Chris J outside the language school to start our way home. 5.50am: Taxi from Yartek to Yaroslavl Glavnyi station. A hug and a kiss from the lady who made me the coffee yesterday. 7am: Train from Yaroslavl to Moscow. The only ticket I could buy was first class so I was eight carriages away from Chris, and slept through the added comfort. 11am: Arrive in Moscow and get a taxi, 40 minutes across the city to the airport. [View Full Entry]

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When I arrived in Moscow it was 5 in the morning. I had an awful headache throughout the night in the cramped hot room and was desperate to clean my teeth, have a shower and a glass of water. But first I had to make my way back to Yaroslavl. I found my route on the metro from Kurskaya to Komsomolskaya and then found Yaroslavskii train station. Having asked ten miserable ladies in various kiosks for a ticket and being told to go somewhere else I finally found the right desk, only to be told the first three trains were all [View Full Entry]

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I got up early, packed my things and said goodbye to Ana's mum and one babushka. Then myself and Ana went on a final minubus trip across the Ukrainian steppe, an hour to Artemovsk where the train from Donetsk to Moscow stopped. As far as I could see out of the window there was a flat expanse of frosty fields. Saying goodbye was as bad as I expected, especially because I don't know when I will see her again. Yulia Savicheva's 'Esli v serdtse zhivet lyubov' didn't help me hide my sadness from Ana. I have said a lot of goodbyes [View Full Entry]

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I got up a bit earlier this morning, and was ready for breakfast at 9. I was allowed some coffee to go with my chicken wing and three slices of apple cake, then Ana and I set off for Lugansk again. The minibus ride to Pervomaisk was much the same, only with Ukrainian 'gangsta rap' instead of Tom Jones playing on the radio and even more babushki. The feeling of being so far from home was strong, but not in an unwelcoming way. There is a very Eastern European feel to the manner in which people go to work in the [View Full Entry]

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I didn't do much this morning apart from eat. Coffee was prohibited because of my chest pains the night before but there was meat pel'meni and Ana's favourite chocolates, to go with my tea. We decided to look for a change of surroundings in the afternoon. By the time we had got a taxi into the centre of the village and a first minibus to Pervomaisk we were too late for the last one to Lugansk. So we made our way back. It wasn't an entirely wasted journey; I saw a bit more of the eerie grey blocks of flats and [View Full Entry]

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