Superstars.

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Another Marina Ivanovna tantrum this morning. My "almost breaking" the taps means turning them off so that no water drips out. She is too weak to turn them back on. If she tells me I have broken it and makes me give her 1000 roubles she will find a replacement for 500. Even more insulting is her insistence on speaking in English, even though she doesn't know how. If she calls me "awful" or "terrible" one more time in that creepy accent my temper will snap.

I have been unlucky. I am hard to live with in England, but since September I have tried to live peacefully and keep myself to myself, so I take no responsibility for how badly I have been spoken to. I am jealous of the rest of the students who have very good relationships with their landladies; they have been able to improve their Russian with them, and have had a home to go back to every evening.

There was no-one to walk to Yartek with this morning because Chiara was meeting friends who have come to visit from Petersburg, so in minus 4 with light snow I went on my own.

There was no-one in class either because they are friends of Ellie and Clare too, so our television lesson with Natasha Safronova was just myself and her watching the news (a programme called "Vremya") in the staffroom. I understood a lot of it and had a list of ten things written down to talk about at the end. She is a wonderful woman, it is a shame she has been feeling so upset since Jamie left.

I was also alone in my lesson with Viktor. Luckily we didn't get round to talking about society, and managed to talk for 50 minutes about my impressions of Yaroslavl. He also said that I speak Russian properly and with few mistakes. I want to improve my vocabulary too before I start in Tver. We ended by talking about the other students and he said he is scared of Clare!

Having four students being taught by three teachers in three rooms didn't make sense, so the next two lessons were cancelled. Instead we had a comfy afternoon in the staffroom, watching a Soviet musical from 1956 that Natasha Safronova chose, 'Festival Night'. It was charming and quite funny; everyone had fun at a New Year's celebration despite the old-fashioned boss trying to spoil it.

I will go to a concert this evening, where Chris J is playing the balalaika and some of the girls from Oxford are singing. It is also a New Year's party, which will be shown on television on the night of the 31st. They all performed on a breakfast show called Utrennyi Chai on channel 1 this morning so soon they could be quite famous around here.

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Photos

Louise. Clare and Chris J...
... drink in order to forget how terrible that evening's concert was!

Comments

[paul]

snow vs sun
dear jonathan, this is the first time i have logged on to your blog site since you arrived in russia. I have just read your last entry and it although you seem to be having awful trouble with your landlady (does she log onto your site?) in years to come you will look back and remember the good times! In cape town the weather is quite different and i have just come out of the pool and had a cold beer. enjoy the concert and vodka. paul