Good friends stick together.

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I still have a cough, but my sore head is a lot better. As I was eating my kasha this morning I noticed an insect bite on my wrist. Tamara Aleksandrovna saw me scratching, and decided that the best thing for a wound like that was to rub salt into it. It's hard to get mad at her when she interferes, because she always means well.

I was a bit more awake in class, and tried to speak as much as I can to make up for yesterday. Viktor taught us about the Russian education system in the first hour, then we taught him about British schools for the second. Olga cancelled her lessons this afternoon as President Vladimir Putin was appearing on television for an interview. People in towns all over Russia asked him questions via a video link, and our class gathered around the TV in her classroom to try to understand what was being discussed. There were questions about Chechnya, about industry, about the decline of the Russian language in Latvian schools... and a little old lady from the Ukrainian border was angry that she couldn't visit her son in Kharkiv because the trains were so infrequent! It was a challenge to listen to the language for two hours; my Russian has improved since I've been here but there is still a lot that I don't understand. Olga understood everything, and wasn't impressed.

Anya came for her second lesson at 3. She is obviously very nervous speaking English so even though I don't have much free time I'm going to have to come up with a proper lesson plan before friday.

When she left I went next door, where the painting class had almost finished. I wanted to say to Nina the teacher "may I join you?", but instead I asked her if I 'could attach myself to her'! One more for the Quotes Book. Nina is a very nice lady, if I didn't already know her it would have been a lot more embarrassing!

She let me start designing a pot to paint, which I've decided will have Yaroslavl's most famous church on the top. When I know what I'm doing a bit better I want to make some Russian matryoshki dolls (that fit inside each other) like Bhavina and Sarah are designing. Tom the lawyer is working on an absolute masterpiece; it may take me a while to get to his standard!

Back to Tolbukhina afterwards for a vegetable dinner. A very healthy and welcome change, although I've already put on enough weight to make me start thinking about threatening myself with the idea of evening press-ups.

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Photos

Church of Il
Yaroslavl's most popular Church - that unfortunately never made it onto a finished pot.