Snyeg!!

(Snow!!)

One of my favourite Russian words so, as you can imagine, I was very excited that I could use it in October! The snow didn't really settle and Russians were complaining that it was way too early for it, but nonetheless, it was quite fun while it lasted and before it turned to rain. (and woah has it rained!) I've also experienced my first walk to the metro at -3 and could not feel my face, all is looking positive for when it gets to -20! :)

The last couple of weeks have been pretty good, really enjoying teaching and lessons weren't too shabby; I mostly learned that 'poop' is the Russian word for belly-button, if that doesn't cheer a person up, I don't know what will.

After this week we'll have a reading week which is exciting, currently planning where to go as there are sooo many options; sadly had to rule out Siberia as it would take the whole week to get there(!), but Finland and Latvia are the current contenders - will keep you posted. Love how it's such a huge country but it's actually quicker and cheaper to visit a different country than travel around Russia!

They are currently kind of refurbishing this block of flats which is quite a health and safety risk here to say the least (they randomly but bits of board or bricks or slippery paper all over the place and it seems to have no purpose whatsoever apart from to trip people over) my favourite part of the current obstacle course to get in and out of the flat requires a little drawing...

..so basically I am very glad I was looking where I was going when this appeared otherwise it could've ended very very badly for me with some sort of see-saw effect (if you can understand my drawing!). 

(Also, how odd is it that here squared paper is way cheaper than lined?! Maybe the Russians are really good at Maths or something, I really don't know)

Anyway, this leads me to my embarrassing story of the week which I'm sure you'd like to hear...I was on my way into the block of flats when I was confronted by a few builders all pointing to different places where I could and couldn't walk and speaking at the same time, I tried my hardest to follow their route but then definitely put my foot down right into some cement (so clever I know), they were of course very angry and started shouting at me which just made me laugh as I felt bad but didn't have a clue what they were saying (could perhaps guess some words!?). And well, I guess my foot print will be in the entrance of the flats for quite some time! Quite cool really...

Our babushka has gone of to her dacha again this weekend giving us a much needed break (and also a sneaky chance to hand-wash some cardigans without being told off for wasting water) so this was a bonus. The other day I dropped something under my bed and when I looked underneath it I was surprised (or maybe not all that surprised by now!) to see jar after jar of jam etc stored up for the winter...only in Russia.

But yep, it's been a good couple of weeks including a pancake party, a soviet doughnut cafe, some more fun times in the Hermitage (including a little bit of ancient rock-measuring - oh yes) and meeting lots of nice Russians. Also, I feel I forgot to mention last week that our neighbour has started playing "Rockin' around the Christmas tree" on repeat which either means they don't understand the English lyrics and don't know it's a Christmas song OR they think Christmas isn't too far away (I prefer the latter). 

Love, Лиза X

Little park I found near us - making the most of pretty parks before the rain came

Inside the Church of Spilled Blood

Ice hockey!

Puskin and a person with a leaf hat - soo cool!

Autumn

Hello :)
So, after a week of winter, autumn decided to make an appearance in St Peteys making it a very pretty place indeed. Last week was a bit wobbly, including a cash machine trying to eat my card,  a pigeon hitting me in the head (no word of a lie!) and ended at quite the low point when we managed to miss our night-train to Moscow, this was very VERY frustrating, more-so because of the queuing this involved. So, before I start my little rant, I'll just say this - I was warned about some aspects of Russian culture, like for example customer service, but thought 'hey, it can't be that bad, I'll see for myself', and now, my friends, I have seen it for myself. Firstly, we went to print our tickets at the machine, (as you would in England, lovely lovely) but this failed, so we had to join a queue to sort out our tickets, we queued for a good half an hour and it was getting very very close to the time the train was leaving, so I quickly ran over to a woman at an information desk and explained the situation, she then sent me to another queue, where I was told to go back to the first queue. Fun. Got to the front just in time but were told we had the wrong booking number, and were sent to another queue, sorted this out, but had missed the train by this point so had to join another queue to refund tickets, and then another queue, la la la (you get the gist right?) all in all, we were sitting in a coffee house at 3am deciding what to do.

But, it all ends happily. We made it to Moscow on Friday morning and had such a good time. Made friends with the people we shared a cabin with on the journey (oh yes, this was second class, the return journey was third class with no such luxury as a cabin, just shelves to sleep on), the lady we met loved talking about Prince Harry (Garry in Russian!) and asked me if I thought he was on drugs, interesting, she also said that it was a shame her son was married as she would've liked him to marry a young English girl, ha.

Moscow is a beautiful city (obviously not St Peteys though!), or at least the bits of it that we saw (didn't get to go inside the Kremlin because Putin was having a ceremony for the olympic torch, sad times), my favourite bit by far was inside St Basil's Cathedral, as well as the huge market we found which sold absolutely everything, including lots of old soviet antiques, giant samovars and bear coats. Also got to see a light show on the Bolshoy Theatre building, was absolutely stunning.

This week has been pretty busy, done lots of teaching and lessons as per, also found ourselves in Ikea again (this has got to stop). Yesterday we went to a little town called Pushkin with a Russian girl I met, was basically a lovely autumny land and was fun to wander around. Russians seem to love making giant crowns out of leaves (and I don't mean the children - the majority of people doing this were adults!) which must be some sort of tradition, it's quite a strange site seeing so many people with these hats on as you're strolling along!

Today we went to an ice-hockey match, was a lot of fun, CКА vs Vladivostok, and I definitely learned a lot of new words from the man next to me who was not best pleased about how СКА (St Petes) were playing! They lost 3-1 in the end but i'd love to go back and see them win some time!

On the Babushka front all is well, we're having lots of nice conversations and getting less told off than ever before. However, if you'd asked me mid-week how things were I would've had a different story to tell; Wednesdays drama included her leaving the house and blanking us when we walked past her in the street, whoopsies, and yesterday we were fed what some would call porridge, but oh my, it wasn't good, not good at all.

Hope you've had a nice week and that your babushka is treating you well,
Here are lots of photos to make up for the lack of blog last week,
Lots of love,
Лиза

The market in Moscow

Park Pobedy in Moscow

Autumn in St Petes, yes there's a giant rabbit!

The metro in Moscow

Light show!

The Kremlin

Inside St Basils

Arbat St in Moscow

St Basils

ГУМ Shopping Centre, Moscow

A whole month in Rossiyaa!

Yep, I've survived a month in the motherland, it's gone so quickly, but believe me there is already a whole list of things I miss from home, ranging from bacon (and most other good food, but mostly bacon) to Crunchie the cat.

 It's suddenly become very chilly here, when I last checked my babushka's thermoterything it was 3 degrees. 3! Very much looking forward to the snow, but I think that's still a while away. Heating here is controlled by the government (as far as I understood) so we'll have to wait and see when it comes on which will be a very exciting moment as scarves weren't made to be worn indoors and I left my zebra onesie in Birmingham.

My babushka has gone to her dacha again this weekend which gave us a nice little break - this week's lectures included "Liza, that is not how you cook pasta" to "Liza that is not how you mash potatoes"(both of these were skills I thought I'd mastered at uni...) and "Liza, you should be careful, Russians are dangerous" (my personal favourite). But, all is good here because a) I FOUND MY KEYS and b) we just made apple crumble and it was AMAZING. 

This week we were promoted from rock-sorting at the Hermitage and were actually allowed to greet visitors which was fun, I've perfected "Put your coat in the cloakroom" and "Rucksacks aren't allowed," and it was also very exciting when tourists looked very confused said "English, please?" really slowly and clearly, and I could just babble away. Maybe one day I'll be able to babble away in Russian. That's the dream.

Yesterday, we went up St Isaacs Cathedral in the centre which was incredible as you can see the whole of the city from the top, it was quite cool thinking "Wow, I get to live here" and I will try to remind myself of this next time I see a friend's gorgeous photos of sunny Spain, France or Italy!

Anyway, I'll leave you with some photos as I have a whole heap of homework to do for school tomorrow, I feel like I'm 15 all over again.

Love, Лиза

P.S. If you can find a way to send bacon in the post without it getting mouldy in the three weeks that the postal service to Russia takes, please do give it a go, I'll send you some gherkins or something in return.

Last week's rock sorting - oh yes.

View from the secret room in the Hermitage

Coat sale voucher! Which one shall I get?!

Found Crunchie on the metro - sorry for the blur but an old lady thought I was taking a photo of her.

I do love this city

 

A strange little week

Privyet :)

It's really lovely to know you're enjoying reading this attempt at a blog :) I've decided Sunday can be blogging day, so now you know!

Today was supposed to be find-a-Church-day for me, and I really did aim to do this, but then when I got to what I thought was the building it did not look inviting in the slightest - in fact I was a teeny bit scared for my life when I opened the door, it was that grim, and there were no people around. I'd say that was a fairly unsuccessful mission and I very much deserved the trip to Russian Ikea (ИКЕА!) that followed. And yes, we had meatballs. It was a lot of fun and I also bought a much needed mirror (there isn't one in the house and it was always quite a shock getting to school and discovering what I actually looked like each day.)

Anyway, this week has been a little bit odd; it all started on Monday (as weeks do) when I wasn't feeling very well, and I don't have a clue how my babushka found out about this but she just knew. I was walking down the corridor when I turned around to see her pointing at me, and then she said "Liza (my Russian name, pronounced "Leeza") Liza, you're ill". I just sort of nodded and tootled off. Time for lesson number one: never EVER let a Russian old lady find out you're ill, it's just not worth it. I was minding my own business in my room getting ready for school when she held a spoon up to my mouth which had some sort of medicine on it and said "Gargle" now I can't gargle so this was a rather scary experience for me, not least because she said "Don't swallow"in the end I just had to swallow it, I don't know what else you do in this situation, and I'm still alive so all is well. Throughout the day (and in fact week) she tried to get me to take various medicines and also a few glasses of warm milk with butter in - yum. She also told me that Russians don't wash when they're ill, so I shouldn't have showers, but I just pretended I didn't understand. All very funny but I'm hoping I won't be feeling ill again any time soon. Other Russians just told me that when they're ill they just drink vodka, I feel that may have been an easier solution!


More on the babushka front. I don't know what's happened but we seem to be doing everything wrong. We've been told off for not using lids on saucepans, not turning off lights, trying to tidy up, not opening curtains (I'll have you know I didn't open my curtains at uni for about 3 weeks at one point, no harm done!) and many other things, but hey, what can you do. At one point I was asked "Liza, do English people not pay for electricity?"Awkward, very awkward.

Worked some more at the hermitage this week, definitely spent two hours with my friend putting rocks in order, I try and tell myself this is good for my Russian but frankly it was dull. Another day was a lot more exciting, we were helping tourists do this sort of treasure trail thing, AND highlight of my week, we got told our English was very very good and asked how we spoke it so well. Great. I also had quite a bad moment to counteract this when I just flung my cardigan on a random table in a room..  Rule number 2: NEVER do that, it turned out to be a very important exhibit and I got a little bit told off, this wasn't helped by the fact that I burst out laughing. Whoops.

More on the job front: I got myself a job as an English teacher! I was a tad nervous about the interview, but when I got there the questions were pretty much "When can you start?" and "How many hours a week?" So that's all well and good.

Another highlight of the week. I saw a lady on the metro with her pet ferrets.

The end.

Hope you're having a lovely weekend. I'll try and make this next week a bit more interesting!

In fact. Next weeks blog will probably be quite amusing as, well, as if I haven't been told off already, I've now gone and lost my keys to the flat. My babushka will not be happy. I have spent today trying to come up with excuses or at least a way to break it to her. But the fact of the matter is that I may well be homeless this time next week.

Лиза xxx

and here's the Rye bread. No words.

...and Happy Birthday Tim!

This blog is becoming some sort of Rattley birthday reminder website...

Anyway, I'm sitting here stuffing my face with Cadbury's chocolate (nom) and thought it was about time I wrote a little bit about my second week in St Petersburg -  I still keep having random moments of realisation that I'm actually in Russia - eeeek!

So, on the babuska front I'd say all is going well, her husband returned from the dacha (summer house) at the weekend and although he seems like a lovely guy, for some reason we cannot understand a word he says, it has got to the point where we greet eachother with a little chuckle, then he says something and I laugh again (unless he has a serious face and then of course it's best to just nod) and that is how our conversations go. Lovely.

But alas, we are getting on really well in this flat and have been allowed to cook for ourselves this week which has been nice - we made a little chicken pie and our babushka looked at it as though it was the strangest thing you would ever eat but it was in fact very yummy (in case you were wondering!).

There are some house rules which we try our best to follow, my personal favourite is that we are are not allowed to wash up (something about being economical), closely followed by not being allowed to speak in English in the corridor (not too sure why, little bit suspicious!).

In all seriousness (or about as much seriousness as this blog can take) our babushka really is lovely and told us that she worries about us when we're out late, makes sure we've had a good day at school (yes I feel like I'm 7 again) and checks her outdoor thermometerthingy to advise us on whether or not we need a coat etc! Very, very sweet.

Moving on, I feel like this week has been a bit more chilled than last week, speaking (/trying to speak) Russian makes a person very sleepy, but it has been fun all the same. I got myself some volunteer work at the Hermitage which involves many things, one of which is speaking in Spanish to tourists which should be fun. On my first day I was just sent to some mystery ecological room to proofread this looooongg English text about rock formation, now, I don't see how having a native English speaker do this job makes any difference as I could not understand the majority of the words in the text, but hey, I felt important!

People seem to get quite excited when they find out we're English - had a funny moment on an escalator (probably the longest escalator in the world, takes about 10 mins to go down, no exagerration) when a group of school boys overheard us talking and asked us where we were from. When we said England they were like "woww" and then reeled off all of the English football clubs they could think of, after that they weren't really sure what to do and kind of just stood there listening to us (what do you do in this situation?!).

Today we went on a boat trip on the River Neva and it was stunning, so worth doing, I'll put some pictures up in the next post.

Sorry for the babbling, hope you're all having a nice weekend,
love Лиза xxx

A cool stone guy in the museum - wish I could tell you who but I can't say I bothered translating the Russian!

A little bit of home

Hello again :), I'll tell you a little bit about my week in a post tomorrow (mainly because I may have just watched the Great British Bake Off with my new-found access to iplayer and now have no time to write more!), but for now, here are a few things I've seen that have made me chuckle and reminded me of England! Лиза x

We went to the bookshop to buy school supplies and definitely spent at least 45 minutes in there looking at children's books - to be fair, 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' is a pretty good indicator of my level of Russian right now

Heinz Sweet Chili baked beans - what more could you want really?!

Tehee

"Tomatnoy Ketchoop" (for you Kate)

"Makdonaldz"

I know I've posted this one before but these are all over town and I can't walk past without saying "Sabveyy!!"

Garry Pottyer

Happy Birthday Ben!

(This post doesn't have all that much to do with Ben, but it's his 18th today :))

So, I've been in the motherland for almost a week now, crazy times, everything is going really well but there is still so much to get used to (not least having to eat half a cucumber with every evening meal!). This week has mostly consisted of mornings at school, afternoons exploring this beaut of a city and evenings with our babushka eating some new and somewhat interesting food! Yesterday night was a lot of fun - went into the city to meet up with some friends, and I also learned a valuable lesson that it is VERY important to listen to your babushka when she explains time and time again how to open the door to her flat as this would have prevented us from throwing ourselves at it at 3am in order to get in (which was a successful technique all the same). Here double glazing on doors and windows works quite differently - they literally have two doors and two windows about a centimetre apart!

Language is definitely another one of my struggles at the moment - our babushka doesn't speak a word of English which is definitely a good thing for us (either that or she is pretending and can in fact understand every word we say, including our comments on the food, uh oh!) but the fact that sentences like 'Da, gracias' are coming out of mouth is slightly concerning.

I'm sure you'll want to hear about food (if not I'm sorry) so here's a little paragraph about that.

It's not the greatest.

But it's not all bad - I love pelmeni which are like tortellini but dumplings and I really love blini (the little Russian pancakes) so if all goes badly from here on, at least I can live off those! The sort of food we've been eating hasn't been terrible and it's definitely not all pickled, but it has mostly been some sort of meat, a lot of potato, a cucumber between us and some more salad/veg on the side. But we always have some Russian style tea to drink which is yummy and a nice biscuity cake thing to go with it. I think it's best not to talk too much about Rye bread - nothing (from jam to choccy spread) seems to help us with that one.

Hoping to find some sort of volunteering work this week, could be interesting!

Love, Лиза x

I'm not sure if you can really see, but the flavours of crisps here are quite something - a choice of caviar, crab, spring onion, cream cheese or kebab!

The Hermitage

Church of Spilled Blood

Smiley Pelmeni!

"sabveyy"