Drainpipe trousers.

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I went to lessons today, my first in five days. In Zhanna's class we made a list of adjectives to describe people's character, and with Aleksandr Ivanovich we corrected our translations. I need to develop my writing style in Russian, as I don't give constructions enough thought and everything I hand in at the moment is much simpler than I am capable of.

I went to an antique shop in the afternoon. Getting inside was a puzzle, as there was a puddle of melted snow four feet wide all the way around the front of the shop. It meant I needed to stand on a thin ledge for five minutes while I thought of a method of getting to the door. I stepped on a stone in the middle of the moat, which sank as I trod on it and left me shin-deep in cold brown water that soaked my shoes, socks and trousers.

Inside there were two shelves in the corner with hundreds of old books, from encyclopaedias of anatomy to Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers. The scripts was almost too small to read and some of the letters are no longer part of the cyrillic alphabet. The leather covers were cracked and soft, and the pages were so dusty and fragile that I was scared of breaking them. I stood browsing for half an hour - the dripping from my jeans disturbing the silence - and chose a book of Indian fairy tales ('skazki') from 1957 and a Dostoevskii novel from 1931. I also found a folder of glossy A4 portraits of the members of the 1985 Politbyuro - candidates of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin, Schevardnadze, Gorbachev, Gromyko and others. They were all taken in a very favourable light so that their skin is pure and without wrinkles, and the birthmark on Mikhail Gorbachev's forehead has been airbrushed out. Each of them is looking slightly over the photographer's right shoulder, with a determined but distant look in their eyes. As I was paying for my three books at the counter I saw busts of Lenin and Stalin in the window. I must have one, to stare at me as I do my homework.

There is another university 'event' on friday, which Yenu and Michael are presenting. Judging by their scripts it will be another evening where the staff display their foreigners and throw stereotypes around, but there is an up-side. Each group of students - from Finland, Britain, France, Canada and Switzerland - have each chosen a national song to teach the Russian students who will be sitting with us. Kolya brought his guitar to the lounge this evening, and accompanied us as we rehearsed "Sinisia Ja Punasia Ruusunkukkia", "Milen'kii Ty Moi" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot".

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Photos

Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev.
A photograph as staged as the original.