Jonny from the block.

The flight from London to Moscow was comfortable. At Moscow Domidedovo airport the 15 'RLUS' students met and introduced ourselves. Then we left for Yaroslavl. It appears to be just a short distance from Moscow on a map, but in reality it is a 6 hour coach trip along the same wide, connifer lined road. While it was light I got to know three of the people I had met at the airport, Chris, Jamie and another Chris. We stopped at a roadside café about half way and each bought a bottle of water - in Russian of course - which at the time seemed like the hardest thing in the world to do. After that I slept until we arrived.

At the language school we were taken upstairs into a room of 15 women, all in their 60s and 70s. The course organizer, Boris Aleksandrovich, read out our names and which 'hozyaika' (landlady) to walk to. It was nerve-wracking, especially as mine was the last name to be read out. I will be living with Tamara Aleksandrovna, a large lady of about 65 with thinning reddish-brown hair and a gap-toothed smile. While most of my class got to know their hosts she sent me to the corner of the room where there was a music show on TV. When I looked round I saw she was praying. She summoned me again, and the 15 of us went with our landladies into another minibus and were dropped off at our homes.

I am staying in the most horrible appartment block you could imagine. It's in the Kirovskii district, Prospekt Tolbukhina (Tal-bou-khin-a), on the 6th floor of the 21st block. The stairs smell of petrol, there is graffiti everywhere and the lift is a 7 foot by 4 foot creaking box. Tamara Aleksandrovna led me into the flat and sat me in the kitchen. We had an awkward chat - my Russian isn't fluent at the best of times and I was exhausted after all the travelling.

When I opened the door to my room I couldn't believe how comfortable it was. It was her son's before he moved out, and is even bigger than my room at home. It is decorated as I imagine a 19th century bedroom would have been, with two landscape paintings, a cabinet for plates and ornate carpets on three walls. There's even a balcony. Tamara Aleksandrovna hasn't needed a lot of money to make it so cosy. She called me to dinner, which was a sort of Russian fry-up: sausage, fried egg and cold sliced tomato. I had some tea and some Moldovan red wine. In the same cup.

By the time I got to bed at 2 o'clock I was too tired to feel stressed, despite what a massive day it had been.

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