Blogs from Russia, Europe - page 305

The plan was to have another lie-in but I had to get up early. As soon as I woke up I remembered that on my 'secret' santa present to Clare I had written 'love Jon xxxx' so I had to guiltily sneak into the boys' room and tear the label off before anyone noticed! It was snowing when we all got up. Moscow skyscrapers aren't a traditional Christmas scene but for us today was about doing something different, not trying to recreate what we were missing at home. We had breakfast in our room at 10, Buck's Fizz and sandwiches of ciabatta bread with spanish sausage and russkii mayonez. Then we opened our present. I think Clare liked her DVD from me. Chris W bought me a hip-flask with the Russian eagle on it - which ... read more

I got up at 7. After a quick shower I left the flat as soon as possible, after a polite, insincere thankyou to Marina Ivanovna. It was still dark outside, and a very cold minus 12. I arrived at Yartek at 8, half an hour before Clare, Michael, Chris J, Chris W, Emma and Chiara who were saying real goodbyes to their hozyaikas. Our minibus left at 9. Viktor, Olga, Nina the art teacher and Natasha came to wave us off. The five hour journey to Moscow was boring, and the heating was turned up so it was also uncomfortable. When we got to the south-west Emma left to go to the airport for her flight home and the rest of us were dropped off at the hotel, which is irritatingly named 'The Central House of ... read more

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 ... read more

Minus 5 this morning, so Chiara is one game ahead with only three days to play. Our last topic with Viktor was the environment and ecology. We read an article and answered some questions about Chernobyl. During the lesson Chris J came in, to tell Viktor that he would not be in his class later. He was mugged and beaten up last night by a group of six youths, who stole his phone, 2000 roubles and left him with a cut mouth and very sore legs. It is not the first time a British student has been injured. Every girl has been harrassed by a group of men at least once. Laura had 1000 pounds stolen from her bank account, and the first family that Anna lived with took the same amount from her suitcase. Emma ... read more

We arrived in Vladivostock, Russia on a cold dark winter's morning, having completed the longest train journey of our lives so far - a journey of 32 hours fuelled by the last of our chinese noodles and lots of coffee. We had travelled on Chinese train N23 from Harbin in northwest China crossing the border into Russia. What made the journey unique was the fact that our carriage, packed solid with enormous Russians, was the only carriage on the N23 bound for Russia. It would be detached from the N23 and joined onto a Russian train as the journey progressed, at one point even being lifted by a crane so it could be moved from the Chinese track system onto Russian tracks. At times though, the effort of keeping all the inbound Russians and tourists (me ... read more