Blogs from Yaroslavl, Centre, Russia, Europe - page 6

I didn't sleep last night. My eyes and head ached and my heart and shoulders were sore. At 4 in the morning I was worried that I had picked up one of the Moscow metro diseases that Lena had warned me about. What made me feel worse was that I went to bed full of dinner, and the heating in our flat is on so high that my room is uncomfortably hot. My chest was burning on the inside. I didn't feel any better when I got up, but I went to school as usual. As I walked through the door of our corridor Boris Mikhailovich and Valentina Ivanovna noticed straight away that something was wrong. Boris felt my forehead and offered to take me to the poliklinika. I said I would see at lunchtime. Valentina ... read more

My 8.30 wake up call came at 9.30 this morning - Tamara Aleksandrovna still has not changed her clocks. I finished unpacking my bag, uploaded my Moscow photos onto my laptop then walked to the internet room on prospekt Lenina to write up my weeks' travels. How I had missed my life-line! It took five hours. By the time I had finished writing it was dark; today is warmer than when I left but the evenings are getting much shorter. Rain has washed all the snow away, as if it had never happened. I bumped into Chiara and we walked back to our neighbourhood, swapping stories about Moscow and Novgorod. It was just the day I wanted. As much as my Russian has improved for speaking it for an entire seven days I needed a rest. ... read more

Now that the play is over I have to eat at the flat more often. I think that Tamara Aleksandrovna has noticed that I have lost a little bit of weight from eating healthily with friends in the evening. I said that I didn't want any cake to go with my tea this morning, so she only gave me three slices. I use meal times to stare out of the kitchen window and switch my mind off. It would be so much more relaxing without having to refuse second helpings of everything in the fridge. Everyone I know has left for their holidays so I didn't have much to do today. I heard my landlady's play review over lunch. She loved the way Precious danced, and the "older man" - Chris J under a beard - ... read more

The play started at 7 so everyone met at the school at 5 to get ready. My costume consisted of Jamie's grey trousers, a white dress shirt and matching bow-tie, a bottle green butler's jacket and the valenki. My twenty minutes in make-up involved a man squeezing an entire tube of hair gel over my head, combing my hair into an 19th century centre parting and sticking some of my fringe to my forehead with glue. Then my sideburns came out of the box. They were big bushy ones that were also glued to my face - then ripped off and put in the right place. The sisters Fekla and Lukerya (Louise and Sarah) had white gowns and tall wigs, one with a ship on the top and one with a garden. Baron Velkarya (Chris J) ... read more

Minus 10 degrees walking to school this morning. I looked at the digital thermometer on ulitsa Svobody with the same disbelief as I did during the first snow. There was no wind blowing into my face, so it was just extremely cold rather than cold and painful. The snow has frozen into white ice which is slippery to walk on. When I got to Yartek the first thing I did was give my passport photos to Valentina Ivanovna. I'm a good boy for remembering them, but she told me off for not wearing a hat: "It's minus 10 outside, you will turn into an ice-cream... you're wearing red today - very handsome". Russians have an obsession with clothes, particularly when you're wearing too many or not enough. The cold weather is making her even more talkative, ... read more