A teary farewell

It's been very remiss of me not to post much on here these last couple of weeks. And now it's all over for the summer. We went out with the students last night and had a laugh as we walked around Moscow not finding somewhere to go. I was tired because Tim had me assessing work on my day off yesterday, but it was still great fun. There were a few tears from Sacha who is off to England for her third year and who said that this has been the best year of her life. Aaaah. They are a terrific bunch of students and if they are reading this. Do some more work!



From left to right: Tutu, Tim, Lilya, Elena, Sacha, Elena, Genia (jackie), Moi, Olga, Genia (in the red shorts), Yulia. You may have noticed the lack of male students at this point. That's because all the boys are in the army.

Here is also a photo of me dribbling water and about to pull off an amazing set of skateboard tricks such as the world has never witnessed in the corridor of the school.



Photo: Reuters

And now I must bid you adieu, for I fly back to england on the day after the morrow, but this blog shall continue in a different guise, packed to the gills with ace things and toast. Love you, bye.

In Hot Water

Here in Mockba it's pretty warm, the temperature got up to 301K the other day. That's 28ºC for you centigrade buffs. One strange custom in the summer concerns the hot water. You don't get boilers in people's homes, the hot water comes through pipes and is controlled by the state. So what they do is, they turn it off for three weeks in the summer! This is apparently some money saving thing, and they stagger it throughout the different regions of Moscow during the warm months. I'm outta here on the 28th for the summer, so I'm hoping the water stays toasty until then. Tim, on the other hand is pretty buggered.

Here is a picture of a shop. The sign says pyechat. Don't know what it means.

Back again

I'm back in Moscow again, its nice and sunny and everything looks a lot greener than a couple of weeks ago. I've just had a bag of crisps out of a machine. Guess what flavour?


That's right! It's the ever tasty mushroom and sour cream flavour. Mmm.

Back soon with more crisp flavours for your entertainment.

A clarification

Tim is a little unhappy with the previous post. He's asked me to make things clear. He washed his jumpers on 60 degrees INTENTIONALLY because he wanted to shrink them. Only it went wrong. He also would like me to point out that he is (in his own words) 'A domestic goddess'. He's gone wrong, if you ask me.

Also I forgot to put a picture on before. Its a good representation of Russian technology coupled with taste. It sums Russia up quite nicely.



Actually, this one that Tim took is probably even better.

The fall of the iron bathroom ceiling

We came home from the pub a few nights ago and the false ceiling in the bathroom had fallen down. Imagine trying to communicate that with a landlady who barely speaks any english. Tim had to phone someone at work to translate the problem for him. Also Boris Yeltsin died. The two events might not be as unconnected as you might think because Yeltsin was actually earning a few extra roubles on the side putting up cheap plastic bathroom ceilings. Ours falls down, he dies. What delicious irony. To be honest no-one seems very bothered about him dying that I've spoken to, and I can't really be bothered to go to the cathedral and check out the mourners. Not my cup of tea.

In other news, we went to this big park with all sorts of old buildings that I can't be bothered to tell you about. Highlight was this man ringing the bells. He was up a tower and was playing them by hitting the ropes that the bells were connected to. He could teach some of those jazz idiots a thing or two I reckon (about playing bells up a tower really annoyingly for about an hour).



Ps. Andre has not heard of Pacman.

Have you heard of Space Invaders?

At work the 3D tutor, Andre, listens to his eighties electro music on his laptop in the office. One song features the robotic chanting of 'Space Invaders' over and over again. We had a chat about his musical tastes and he asked me that question: 'Have you heard of Space Invaders?' What a great question. Its now become a recurring joke, in fact Tim has just asked me 'Have you heard of cars?'. Russians sometimes ask fabulous questions, but they're not as good as the answers they give. My favourite was when we saw one of the students on her bike just cycling away from the college. I aked her, 'Where are you going?' She answered, 'I'm going to ride my bike'.

I erroneously spelt the word for bye 'Puka' in a previous post. This should of course have read 'Poka', as 'Puka' is an extremely dirty word, so dirty that people won't even tell what it means.

As a final treat I thought I'd show you a tube sign to give you an idea of what you face in Moscow. Enjoy and poka!

Behind the iron shower curtain

Well, Tim's birthday was a lot of fun, the students went for it big time, much to Tim's chagrin. The cake, by the way, was odd. In the way only things in Russia can be.



We went out for dinner with Victor and his wife, Sacha. (everybody is called Sacha here, including me) There was some honky-tonk music accompanied by a 100 year old tap dancer and a good time was had. The best bit though was Victor eating Tim's prawns whole, without pealing them. Then he proceeded to eat a fish head which you may be able to make out in this photo.
He was disappointed that the eyes had been removed, though, as they are apparently the best bit.



I mentioned the rush hour briefly before, but I think you need to see it. The volume of people is unbelievable. You just get carried along by the people and they ram themselves into each carriage before people have got off. They close tubes at times in the rush hour so you have to get on at the other connected station (10 minutes away) then walk underground for another 10 minutes to get back to where you started. Its all the simple, basic bits of life which strike you as so different. I imagine it's just the same for a Russian in England.



This is around 9.30 in the morning!
Badbye.