I got up at 7. After a quick shower I left the flat as soon as possible, after a polite, insincere thankyou to Marina Ivanovna. It was still dark outside, and a very cold minus 12. I arrived at Yartek at 8, half an hour before Clare, Michael, Chris J, Chris W, Emma and Chiara who were saying real goodbyes to their hozyaikas. Our minibus left at 9. Viktor, Olga, Nina the art teacher and Natasha came to wave us off. The five hour journey to Moscow was boring, and the heating was turned up so it was also uncomfortable. When [View Full Entry]

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A last morning of being shouted at by Marina Ivanovna. My suitcase wasn't in the hall by 9 o'clock. I was going to bring it out of my room when I left at 9.15, the van wasn't coming to collect it until 3 so it made no difference, but it didn't stop her treating me like a mischief as usual. I dragged my suitcase through the snow on my own instead, so that I didn't have to go back twice. It was minus 9 this morning, and Chiara guessed closest again so she wins for the week. I will have to [View Full Entry]

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Minus 5 this today but I thought it felt like minus 8 - which is why Chiara beat me in the guessing game again! It snowed a lot overnight and it is knee-deep where no-one has walked. We chatted about our plans for next week in Lena's class, then did some grammar after the break. I hasn't sunk in yet that at mid-day tomorrow I won't be a Yartek student any more, I feel as if I have been studying here for years. Olga gave us a translation for our last lesson with her, about Soviet Constructionalism of the 1920s. We [View Full Entry]

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Minus 5 this morning, so Chiara is one game ahead with only three days to play. Our last topic with Viktor was the environment and ecology. We read an article and answered some questions about Chernobyl. During the lesson Chris J came in, to tell Viktor that he would not be in his class later. He was mugged and beaten up last night by a group of six youths, who stole his phone, 2000 roubles and left him with a cut mouth and very sore legs. It is not the first time a British student has been injured. Every girl has [View Full Entry]

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The unthinkable happened this morning; I woke up feeling awake and ready for the day! The last week's temperature game started with a draw. Minus 3 this morning but it felt considerably colder. We had our last classes with Yulia in the morning. We continued reading part of a novel by Tolstoi about vampires, translating it paragraph by paragraph then discussed what had happened at the end of a page. In the break I went to speak to Valentina Ivanovna to ask her if I could sleep on the sofa in one of the rooms on the night of the 6th, [View Full Entry]

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For once a peaceful morning. I went back to bed after breakfast to sleep off a lot of mashed potato and small sausages and got up at 1. Prospekt Lenina seems to be the most festive part of town. New Year is the big celebration (and Russian Christmas is not until the 7th January) so there are lights above most buildings that say "2006". There was new snow this morning so the square looks wintery. There are huge pine trees along ulitsa Nekrasova all the time but some have decorations on now, and the one outside the House of Culture is [View Full Entry]

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Friday night's concert was certainly entertaining. It took place in a small room in Yaroslavl's 'House of Friendship', also on ulitsa Nekrasova. The televised part was four of the girls from Oxford singing and dancing to the traditional song "Kalinka", then a New Year's greeting in five languages: Uju in Ibo, Alessandra in Spanish, Anna in Italian and Lois in French. The English part was given to Chris J - who also speaks Czech, Russian, French, Slovak and some Italian! Chris sang a poem by Pushkin, then he joined a man called Dima to sing a duet. He had a good [View Full Entry]

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Another Marina Ivanovna tantrum this morning. My "almost breaking" the taps means turning them off so that no water drips out. She is too weak to turn them back on. If she tells me I have broken it and makes me give her 1000 roubles she will find a replacement for 500. Even more insulting is her insistence on speaking in English, even though she doesn't know how. If she calls me "awful" or "terrible" one more time in that creepy accent my temper will snap. I have been unlucky. I am hard to live with in England, but since September [View Full Entry]

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Minus eight outside this morning. I win for the week again! Viktor's conversation lessons were uncomfortable. The topic was terrorism, but it was awkward listening to and reading so much Russian ignorance. In Russia people see only extremes: black or white, good or bad, rich or poor, ours or theirs, right or wrong, and to quote the booklet "the civilised world and the Muslim world". It has made us all angry learning how the majority of people do not believe there is ever cause for further thought. How can anyone answer question 6: 'Describe a typical terrorist'? In my opinion these [View Full Entry]

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I received a totally unnecessary threat this morning from Marina Ivanovna, that if I break the tap in the bathroom I will pay for a new one. I don't appreciate being shouted at hypothetically. She warned me in such poor English that I only just made sense of what she said. To make a point I repeated petulantly "I don't understand" until she had to speak in Russian to me. As usual things became much better as soon as I left the building. When we turned the corner of ulitsa Pobedy the temperature was minus 9; my guess of minus 6 [View Full Entry]

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