Friday 17 October 2008

More stuff what I have been doing

So, second (and most of the 3rd) week gone and I've moved house again (I know, I know, I really need to work on staying put somewhere longer than 5 seconds) its all gone by pretty fast, mostly filled with being tired after class/going to a cafĂ© and drinking 15000 cappuccinos with either Kathryn or Verena from my class. Did manage to get out and go to the Kremlin – pretty impressive but horrendously expensive so we only went to see the various churches dotted around rather than go to the armoury or the diamond collection. The churches were pretty cool though (the architecture geek in me is having a field day here) but I noticed that inside the domes they always have a painting of christ looking down on you, and not with a particularly benevolent expression. It's quite unnerving as a grown up, and I bet if you get used to that as a kid going to church it puts the fear of god into you quite effectively.
Also went round to kathryn's house. She has one of those really irritating little yappy dogs but apart from that it was nice. She has a really lovely apartment with the biggest flat screen I've ever seen, so I think I'm gonna take some of my dvds round there to have a movie night sometime. We had ikea meatballs as a change from all the russian food and i met her fiancé and he seems pretty cool.
Next evening the 3 of us went to a movie, burn after reading. Pretty crap film, but it was good to get out of the flat in the evening and also find a cinema that doesn't dub movies into Russian which is a bit of a rarity

Went shopping to a mall with Verena to get a bag for her laptop. Was slightly staggered by the number of british shops (amongst others) including a boots which I've never ever seen before outside of Britain, got lots of odd looks taking photos of the logo. Further proof if I needed any that Moscow isn't the city I was warned about, with no shops and no home comforts.

Saturday night was fun, but a little sad. Went for drinks with the germans and introduced them all to the wonders of vodka and cranberry (although cranberry juice is really sweet here so I might have to find a new drink, shock horror) but they were mostly leaving on the Sunday so had to say goodbye before I'd really got to know any of them. Oh well, new people will come.

Sunday was spent freaking out about moving to living with a family. Having been told it was a father, mother and 30 year old daughter I was a bit shocked to arrive and find a father and 30 year old son instead. The apartment is in a pretty scummy area of town and is on the 17th floor which totally freaked me out to begin with, but I'm working on getting used to it. Spent most of Sunday hiding in my room feeling awkward and not knowing what to say. The father seems nice enough but the son is kinda weird and the only thing he seemed to have to say for himself was repeating 'chelsea, abramovitch' over and over when he found out I was from Britain before presenting me with a Chelsea baseball cap. Apart from that he doesn't really talk to me and just seems to watch tv all evening. They've got a really really cute Siamese kitten though so when I run out of things to say (very rapidly) I can just resort to petting the cat.

Also went to the pushkin art museum yesterday, in a vague attempt to do some more cultural stuff. lots of impressionist art, including some very famous stuff, but only a few by Chagall, so the hunt continues for more stuff by my favourite. there was a special exhibition on of an artist (forgotten his name) which seemed to consist of 3 rooms of exactly the same painting done in slightly different colours, it wasnt even an interesting painting to start with, almost totally blank canvases and then a sort of shrouded entrance way in one corner. seemed highly overrated but the russian woman we went with seemed to be impressed..

Classes are still going ok, although we've got the teacher who doesn't speak any english back for some of the lessons which is really dull, she doesnt make a lot of effort and we end up just monotonously going through the textbook. My english is suffering from talking to germans all day, not that im speaking in german, but ive noticed my sentence constructions getting weirder and weirder and my accent has completely reverted back to a random mush of british/american/speaking to foreigners. I also keep typing B when i mean V so i presume this means the russian is sinking in somewhere as well.
We got some new students on monday, 2 koreans, another german and a french guy... the koreans hardly speak any english and one of them is clearly way behind the rest of us in russian as well so im not sure why they didnt put him in the total beginners class. The german looks like hes about to have a heart attack at any minute, but seems ok, hes working on decommissioning nuclear submarines for the russian navy in murmansk so hes quite interesting to talk to... the french guy fulfills almost every single stereotype you can have about french people.. dismissive of everything russian (with the exception of his girlfriend, god knows how she puts up with it) and complains about the quality of the architecture, the theatre, the cinema, the food..etc etc... hes also got incredibly bad BO so me and kathryn have been making lots of hiding things from frenchmen under bars of soap jokes.. hes quite friendly to me though since he found out that i went to oxford and am therefore culturally acceptable...

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