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 [View Full Entry]

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I needed another lie-in today. I went to Zhanna's class after lunch still yawning but there were only two of us there so I could just sit in the corner with two bottles of fruit yoghurt and write a few more paragraphs of my essay - the Russian black market in the late 1980s. At the end of the lesson Zhanna said to me: "Jon it's our last lesson, we won't see each other again - can I ask you a question?" "Of course" I replied. "You don't like studying, do you?" I said no. I used to, sort of, but [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Again I woke up this morning feeling weak. It is as if I lose energy every night rather than get it back, even though my bed is becoming quite comfortable. My snooze alarm is now fifteen minutes rather than ten, and there are more of them. Before I did anything I tidied my room - threw away all the worksheets that I know I will never read again, sorted my books and made a 'miscellaneous' folder of presents and photos. Then I took my suitcase out of the cupboard. It's the sign - as it was in Yaroslavl - not that [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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I will tell people that a positive part of staying in Tver is how relatively close it is to Moscow, meaning it's easy to go there for the day whenever you feel like it. Having said that, every time I had been so far it had been planned a few days before, and I had someone to go with or meet me on the other side. So this morning when I woke up and had nothing to do I decided to buck the trend and go spontaneously, on my own. Luck was with me as I got to Tver station at [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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After getting back from Moscow at 2 last night I didn't make much of an effort to open my books this morning. I had a relaxed day, walked to the shops and back a few times and cleaned the kitchen. I took my work outside in the evening and sat on a bench behind the statue of Lenin. It felt a bit lonely being the only one in the park not drinking beer with their friends. I had read a couple of pages when a voice came from above my left shoulder: "And who is here looking so busy?" When I [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Today followed the same pattern as the last few. I got up late, and read and wrote a part of my essay in my kitchen without ever really getting anything done. It doesn't help that one of the books I found to research from doesn't have an index, or even chapter headings. I went back to the river with Liisa at 8. We sat on the stone wall for an hour, talked and drank beer, while the sun went down over the bridge. [View Full Entry]

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