Metro tickets

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This morning was just not going right. Despite getting up on time and having had a decent night’s sleep, my head just wasn’t on straight today. I left the flat ten minutes late and got to the metro. My oyster card equivalent was empty and I queued to get a new one. I had been told it was cheaper to buy a month’s card as opposed to the week’s I have been buying. I spent a good few minutes getting more and more frustrated with the woman behind the kiosk, who just didn’t care or try to help, trying to explain what I wanted. After a minute the man behind me (there was a bit of crowd by now) told her what it was I was asking for (exactly what I had been saying) and she then thought to tell me that she wouldn’t sell me one from that window. Aaggghh! Why!!?? Anyway, I bought a week’s card again as I was running late. Then, on the metro, I managed to rip someone’s newspaper when I took my bag off - which went down well. Then, to top it all, the queue for the mashrutka in Sennaya Ploshchad went half way around the square - I have never seen the queue that long. Anyway, it seems everyone else was having a bad start to the day as most people were even later than me.

Our new lesson plan continued and I seemed to have a moment of clarity during Olga’s grammar lesson and managed to get my head around most of it. In our second lesson we were introduced to our new ‘Smee’ teacher (sort of ‘mass media’ lessons), who is very efficient and notes things down while you speak at the same time as maintaining eye-contact (quite disturbing) before going over everything you said - which, although a bit depressing sometimes, is a great way of learning and better than letting mistakes go and them therefore just get more embedded in your head. She seems a pretty nice middle aged lady with peroxide blonde hair and is called Tatiana. We were talking about social problems in Russia, according to her (and she cited the police), many clubs in P-burg are set up as a front to the drugs trade - thus it is possible to buy pretty much anything in any club. No wonder then that the most taken hard drug in Russia is heroine (and night club songs with the intriguing lyrics: “do you want to ride the ‘horse’?” repeated over and over… it’s quite a tune actually!).

After school a group of us went to a different bistro by the Grobodeva Canal, this time to the café opposite the one we had tried before. Maria thought it wasn’t as good, but I thought it was better. I had borsch followed by a meat thing with dauphinoise potatoes and… VEGETABLES! Wow! As far as I can remember, that is the first time I have eaten veg (by which I mean veg on its own, as in broccoli and carrots) since I arrived in Russia. Happy days.

Then it was home for a 3 hour snooze (nightmares again?!) and Oleg’s very difficult homework on the word ‘it’, which is surprisingly complicated when it comes to translating into Russian. Supper was fried potatoes with fried squidgy sort of pink sausage, soup and salad. Smetana wasn’t even offered today - get in! Ekatarina told me why Russian cuisine is so much better than English. Little did she know what I would have done right then for some cottage pie and veg…

It was still around 12c today, but there was a menacing chill in the air this morning and this evening. I dread what’s coming - Ekaterina’s husband told me yesterday that it was -36c at his dacha last year, the coldest he’s ever seen it…

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Photos

A church
A church just up the road from school. Greg's pic.