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"

Привет!

...I made it! So strange to think that a flight less than 3 hours long can take you all the way to Russia, but alas, it did! St Petersburg is gorgeous (not that I've seen much of it) but absolutely huge, I'm starting to think I might never properly know my way around! I'm living with a lovely lady in her flat with a friend from uni and it's all going well (ish - can't say I understand half of what she's saying to us, but apart from being told off for not wearing slippers and then forgetting which flat we lived in everything is fine!) Started school the day after we arrived with a nice grammar test, just what I wanted, but lessons today went well, and only having to study for 3 hours a day isn't too shabby at all. It's not too cold here yet - I think it'll be a while before the sheepskin coat and snowboots make an appearance, but it certainly is quite cloudy and rainy so I feel right at home!
love, Лиза xxx

Round 2 :)

Hello!
So, the summer has definitely flown by but it has been rather wonderful. (Bolivia is still the highlight but since then have had a lovely sunny holiday in Turkey, a few days away in Sussex and some beauts times with family/friends/Spanish amigos). I leave for the big land of Russia tomorrow and am definitely not prepared, so much so that I've given up and decided to write this cheeky little post. I'm really excited about the next year but it has hit me that after spending about 3 months speaking Spanglish, I'm probably gonna find it a bit of a shock (listening to Russian radio yesterday was quite the scary experience!) Hope you'll enjoy reading about my little adventures, not sure when I'll next be able to update you but it won't be long!

xxx

p.s if anyone knows how to let people comment on here without having to log in, please let me know, although I do realise that may be hard to do since you can't comment... clever hey :)

Well that went quickly!

Hola hola,
So, I'm going home tomorrow... really not sure where my Bolivia time has gone but I've loved every minute of it (okay that's a little lie, I didn't enjoy being ill last week, but hey, all is good now so let's not babble on about that) Been a week of many experiences, seen so many exciting trees (I know that sounds very dull, but coconut, cocoa, mango, coca etc etc trees are pretty hard to come by in Birmingham) Met some lovely lovely people, sang many many more Spanish children's songs and got to experience life (and a wholeee lot of food) in the tropical region, this was all after a nine hour journey but so so worth it for the views on the way!
The week before that went really well, was sad to leave my English class and everyone else I've got to know, as well as Cochabamba, really hope I can go back one day.
It's midnight here and I need to get up at 5am tomoz so I'll leave it here but hopefully write a little post when I'm home :)
Love xx