I will be in Kazan for a week with Liisa, Kaisa and Ella. It is an attractive town of a million people, Russia's muslim capital. There won't be a chance to go to an internet café so I will write up everything when I get back. I hope that my writing and photograph taking will have improved since the last time I was there; it will certainly be a better opportunity to really see the town now that I am six months older and speak better Russian - and won't be relying on a witch-doctor guide for information! Our elektrichka to [View Full Entry]

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Another quiet day, the last of a low couple of weeks. Some photos instead, to draw a line between what has happened and what is to come. Pictures of people were taken by Nicolas (Kolya), and I have put the latest set of photos up by making a CD on his computer. Click on them to enlarge, as always. [View Full Entry]

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My only job today was to reserve two rooms at Hotel Fatima in Kazan. Finding the email address was easy enough, but I had no idea how to write a formal email in Russian. I enquired politely and received a reply almost straight away. I checked it ten times for grammar mistakes before sending it, but when I read it back to myself I wasn't sure whether I had "reserved" the rooms or "demanded" to have them. Fatima is the same hotel that we stayed in when the Yartek group went to Kazan - beautifully decorated with whitewashed walls, exotic plants [View Full Entry]

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I went to the market this morning. I looked for some fresh bread and ham, but couldn't even find the food hall building without Yulia to guide me! Instead I walked through one of the clothes markets, and decided to buy a jumper to take to Kazan with me. My voice gave me away as not Russian after three sentences talking to the seller, and we talked about England and Tv.G.U while I haggled him down from 650 roubles to 550. The afternoon and evening were very quiet, occupied with the everyday parts of Tver life. Strolling around the almost empty [View Full Entry]

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I thought a day of doing nothing would be the best plan. It was quiet, but not peaceful. My head is cluttered with calculations at the moment, rather than homework or seeing Russia. There is still time to change what I will do between leaving Tver on the 16th May and going home in on the 17th July. If I stay with Ana in Popasnaya for a fortnight (rather than rent a flat in Kiev for six weeks) it will cost me ten times less; and living with the Kovalchuks again will improve my Russian much more than one lesson per [View Full Entry]

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As I woke up this morning I was thinking about what happened yesterday within five seconds. I missed the excursion with my group, and instead spent 4700 roubles on a new mobile phone before sitting in the internet room all afternoon emailing people at RLUS to ask about insurance. I called in at Dimitrii Andreevich's office on the way back, to see if he had heard any news from the militsiya about my laptop. He was surprised, even raised his voice, at my question. As far as the international office (Tv.G.U's representatives for foreign students) is concerned the blame is with [View Full Entry]

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I woke up this morning feeling low. The last week has been hard with so many difficult feelings filling my head, and I took the day off lessons to try and think clearly again. When I got back to my flat from the post office at half past three my lap-top and mobile phone had been stolen. My phone wasn't on the kitchen table where I left it, and when I looked up my computer wasn't there either. A man walked out of the appartment as I was walking along the corridor - as I didn't know anything had been taken [View Full Entry]

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I can't remember what Zhanna's lesson was about this morning. In the afternoon Aleksandr Ivanovich taught us translation, stopping for a while in the middle of the hour and a half to guess our star signs. My last piece of homework came back with a lot of red pen on it - there weren't so many grammar mistakes, but I need to learn the proper writing style and be more accurate in the meaning of the sentences I translate. It was a beautiful evening so I went for a walk on my own, through the empty market to ulitsa Radischeva and [View Full Entry]

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Natasha, a girl who we met at the event on friday, invited myself and Michael to a café this evening. She is very modest and easy to talk to. It was sweet how she worried so much trying to find a kofeiniya that was comfortable enough for her guests! We met up with Sonia and Arianne from Switzerland and sat around a low table lit by lamps, drinking cocoa and eating ice-cream. Michael told the story of how he bought some new shoe laces earlier in the day. When he got to the front of the line in the shoe repair [View Full Entry]

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The morning lesson with Lyudmila Giorgevna was good; her class on monday is one of the few that I can relax in. Everything went quiet in the afternoon and by three o'clock I was so lethargic that all I could do was sleep. Russians say that the changing of seasons brings depression - my mood has more to do with constantly thinking about something, and not being able to switch my brain off. I woke up to go a café with Anya in the evening. She is feeling low at the moment too, maybe the weather does have something to do [View Full Entry]

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