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 in a region near Chechnya, was terrible. It is a part of the world where people value their family more than anything, where not just one parent but mum, dad and both grandparents take their children to school each morning. That is why the gunmen could take so many people hostage. In the afternoon I stayed in obshezhitie and made some plans for going away. The second ... read more

The weather really changed today, and it rained all morning and afternoon. In Aleksandr Ivanovich's class we translated quotes into Russian, from writers such as George Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde. My favourite is from James Joyce: "All things are inconsistent except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconsistency with light, but though I seem to be driven out of my own country as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a soul like mine." My plan was to spend the rest of the afternoon writing my essay, but as I should know by now days in Russia are never so simple. Dimitrii Sergeevich knocked on the classroom door and put his head round, to tell me to go to the university's international office straight after ... read more

I woke up feeling exhausted this morning, and didn't start to feel any better. I procrastinated over my essay, had some lunch and chatted to Michael for most of the afternoon. When I went to the shops to buy some yoghurt I had to weave past two girls at the doors to Olimp who were brushing their hair in front of the glass. For every at least medium-sized outside mirror in Tver - maybe Russia - there is at least one girl looking at herself in it. I wonder how many women are late for meetings because they lost track of time while doing their make-up, and especially how many trams and trolleybuses have been missed because of high-heeled shoes. I have to confess that the Olimp entrance always gets me too, so much so that ... read more

In Lyudmila Georgevna's lesson this morning we spoke about adoption, especially of Russian children to european and american families. It was good to have another debate as a group, and the articles we were given were useful. There are more than a million children in Russia with no parents. Some have died, many have abandoned them as alcoholism or drugs have ruined their own lives. Christa used to work in an orphanage in Russia, and said that the lady in control of it was as cruel as she could imagine. Natasha invited a lot of us to her dacha in the afternoon. I felt slightly guilty for leaving the flat again when I hadn't done any work for my essay, but on such a beautiful day an invitation to a summer cottage was too good to ... read more

I went back to Moscow with Liisa this morning, to take the photos that I should have taken on saturday. We took the early elektrichka at 8.30 and were so tired that we barely said a word to each other for the three hour journey. For as long as my eyes were open the scenic route made a pleasant change to the industrial one, especially when we crossed over the lake. My first chore was to buy my ticket to Lugansk on the 17th, from Kievskii vokzal. Travelling from and around Russia is very affordable, so much so that a journey of about twenty two hours in a sleeping train with a bed cost me less than 500 roubles. Having said that I did ask for a place in the most simple carriage, so it will ... read more