Jonny from the block.

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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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