Blowing bubbles and spitting feathers.

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In the literature lesson today we talked about Gogol's 'Shinel', and after the break read through a piece of paper about essay-writing technique. I will always be a lazy student, and spending evenings doing essays is one thing I cannot stand.

After classes I asked Lyudmila Giorgevna if four of us could be excused from lessons tomorrow. Maybe another weekend road trip will shake some of the lethargy away - we have found a town, but have no idea where we will be staying while we are there.

Some of Yulia's friends came to visit this evening. Vitalii knew everything about English football - including the songs of all the big teams which he loved singing to me - and Maksim was his quieter, sadder sidekick. We sat in Yulia's kitchen drinking coffee, until Ella called me into the lounge because Yaroslavl Lokomotiv were playing ice hockey. She is in love with the Khimmik captain so we were definitely enemies for two hours - until Loko won on a penalty shoot-out. Five players from each team take it in turns to skate from the centre line to the goal with the puck close to their stick, and shoot past the goalkeeper. He is the size of the goal and wears a lot of padding, so the contest hardly seems fair.

Liisa couldn't sleep, which she woke me up to tell me. We sat talking on my kitchen window sill until 2.

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