Prachechnyaya-khimchistka.

---

Minus 5 this today but I thought it felt like minus 8 - which is why Chiara beat me in the guessing game again! It snowed a lot overnight and it is knee-deep where no-one has walked.

We chatted about our plans for next week in Lena's class, then did some grammar after the break. I hasn't sunk in yet that at mid-day tomorrow I won't be a Yartek student any more, I feel as if I have been studying here for years.

Olga gave us a translation for our last lesson with her, about Soviet Constructionalism of the 1920s. We converted it from Russian to English as best we could in the first half and re-read it to correct our mistakes in the second. I was pleased with my work; there wasn't time to check what we had written but it was still much more fluent than anything I could have done this autumn. We were allowed to use our dictionaries - it wasn't so much a vocabulary test as practice in translating a text we hadn't seen before. And seeing as it was art criticism I had licence to write something that didn't quite make sense! Olga finished by reading us a poem by her favourite, Pushkin.

I walked to the shops after lessons to make a start on my 'last minute things to buy' list. I went to ulitsa Kirova and both markets, but as always a thousand things caught my eye that I didn't need and I found nothing on my list. I did find a secret santa present to give to one of the five of us who are going to Moscow. It's someone who is very difficult to buy for but I will keep my fingers crossed that they will like it. I also bought some blank disks to copy music and photos onto. I asked for dvadsat' instead of dvenadtsat', which proves how much I need a rest.

Tonight I need to finish packing. My main suitcase is staying locked in Boris Aleksandrovich's office, and I have to fit all my things for fifteen days of travelling just in my school bag. All my clothes are factory-fresh after my last ever visit to the prachechnyaya-khimchistka.

---

Photos

Festive Lenin Square.
Yaroslavl was looking forward to New Year when we left.