I woke up late today. By the time I was showered and dressed Michael had returned from the market. Not having any plans fo my own I went myself after lunch, to see how it compared to the others I've been to. The Tver rynok is a long road that runs parallel to the river. On weekends both sides of it are occupied with stalls. Thousands of products are on sale from hundreds of people, from the very poorest babushki standing above a blanket with morsels on sale for just a few roubles, to tents with ladies selling woolly hats with [View Full Entry]

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There was a lecture this morning. Lyudmila Giorgevna spoke about Tverskaya oblast' (Tver region), especially the population. Of the one and a half million people here more than 90 percent are Russian. The remaining 142,000 come from the republics of the former Soviet Union. There are 3,500 hundred villages in the province with less than ten inhabitants. Some families in the countryside must have their own signpost. There are excursions each friday afternoon. Today we visited a museum of 19th century art. At the coat closet a babushka who was small and frightening even by the standard of mo [View Full Entry]

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Today I took to staring out of the window in lessons to pass the time. It is snowing again. First it started to fall very lightly, and the strong wind blew some of the snow from every roof up into the air. At 11.30 it got heavier, big flakes that settled on the fir trees on ulitsa Zhelyabova and at 1 it became lighter again, almost drizzle. After classes there was a blizzard outside. A blanket of snow a foot deep has covered the streets again. It's officially the second day of spring but the town still looks wintery. Anya called [View Full Entry]

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Days have become quite similar to each other. Once I have crawled out of an uncomfortable bed at the sixth 'snooze' plus three minutes, taken a tepid shower, drunk about two sips of coffee with Michael and finished the homework I had fallen asleep on the night before the last thing I want to do is sit through a Zhanna lesson for an hour and a half. But that is how four of my weekdays start. Thankfully on wednesdays there is a translation class with Aleksandr Ivanovich in the afternoon. First and foremost he is a very decent man; brilliant to [View Full Entry]

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The lesson this morning with Lyudmila Giorgevna, the lady with grey hair, was good. We gave short presentations that we had prepared about a piece of news from this weeks' papers. I spoke about an article on the 'day of the defenders of the fatherland' and how it was celebrated in Tver, from yesterdays' 'Tverskaya Zhizn''. In the afternoon I went for another walk on my own through Tver. The temperature was minus 10 and the air was clear blue and very still. I am learning which street leads to which square which makes finding my way across town easier. Walking [View Full Entry]

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Another useless lesson with Zhanna to start my day. After lunch there was a grammar class with Elena. The exercises weren't bad but they were of the type I have done a hundred times before. At the university we are spoken to as outsiders, not linguists. A linguist is always trying to improve his language; a foreigner is judged on his mistakes. Never good for the self-esteem, which is so important when studying languages. Natalia our RLUS rep has come to Tver for two days. Myself Michael and Tamzin showed her around the town this afternoon and talked about the course. [View Full Entry]

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The first time I have ever been to lessons on a sunday. Or done any work on a sunday, for that matter. Zhanna taught us literature in the first para. We read a passage from Stantsionnyi Smotritel' by Aleksandr Pushkin and discussed it. The lessons have been very disorganised so far but reading made me concentrate, which put me a bit more at ease. In the break there was just time for a cup of coffee from upstairs, then I had to hurry down for our writing class. We spoke about different types of dictionary then took one each from a [View Full Entry]

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After lunch I walked across the river, to see the war memorial on the other side. When I took my camera out of my pocket the batteries were frozen; while looking for a shop to buy some new ones I stumbled across a new district. It is a very grey neighbourhood. Everywhere on ulitsa Gor'kovo is untidy and icy. With the wind blowing in my face minus 7 felt bitterly cold. The floors of all the shops are soaking where people have brought in dirty snow from the street, and the shelves are half empty. The buildings are in ruin - [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday's bad mood had gone when I woke up today. I was still tired, so I got up late and stayed in the obshezhitie for most of the afternoon. I watched the Swedish ice hockey team beat the Czech Republic with Karin and Linda, eating smoked cheese and cookies. [View Full Entry]

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I walked into the kitchen this morning to find a huge icicle hanging outside the window. It looks like a giant glass octopus, that has wrapped itself around the top of the building and is trying to climb inside, away from the cold. Today is a public holiday - day of the protectors of the fatherland - so classes have stopped until sunday. I hadn't yet had a chance to see much of Tver so I took my camera for a walk this afternoon. The sky was light grey, the same colour as the snow that has been pushed to the [View Full Entry]

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