Day 9-11: Proper Heads Down stuff starts....trivial post..

Day 9: September 12^th

Had to go and get some money for the landlady...bit of a misunderstanding about rent, which kinda reduced me to tears the day before. In the rain. Which is rather refreshing. The only consolable thing yesterday was that I could spend a few hours away from there just so that I didn't seem to be this wreck, and Eliza Doolittle (that Rollerblades song. Like Jack Johnson had done a few years ago, it just chilled me out, if briefly)

Got some fuck-off massive headphones and played that song down into town and then once I'd got everything, headed back to the flat....and the maniac Russian drivers that go past splash me halfway up my thighs, down to my feet. And I am wearing jeans and tiny flats. The traffic here is a bit mental, as I'd said before. And this, apparently, isn't altered by weather. I wonder what it's like during fog. At the moment, it's a bit disastrous – I am left wet and miserable.

Lyuda wants to leave the house to escape her work, so we go to a Chinese restaurant just 15mins walk away from the flat, where I was handed a yellow marigold (which is nice, in theory, though it's yellow which, by Russian tradition, means that the man is going to leave you. Though this is for my own good – otherwise, my standards sound low). While there, we piss about laughing and order food etc. I am told to play 'Durak' (fool) but not HOW to play it, which sorta angers Lyuda's mother that I'm not 'thinking for myself' – the reason being that I have not been taught all the rules, and Lyuda's mother had not wanted to even begin learning poker - HOW and WHY!!! So we play Durak and Lotto (BINGO!) which is good for me learning numbers, in needing to recognise numbers immediately when shopping when the masses get a bit annoyed by ALL THESE FOREIGNERS

Off to bed with a stinking headache and sleepy sleep, first lesson the next day....

Day 10: September 13^th

I don't really remember this day, not gonna lie. We've been told to do Russian presentations, to perform to Russian students who are going to do the same but in English (I don't much like the idea of this, but yes yes, cool...) and we do grammar with Natasha....not a very busy day, as I am now trying to work lots etc and be the good student my mother imagined me to be....mirite?

We're also given a short passage by Chekhov to do (wicked.) and I'm given my teaching stuff from Roman, for friday, which is massiiiive, lots of little sheets and a little booklet to work from. I forget what he said I had to give them for homework. I don't even know if there is homework – the students might benefit from getting the most senile of the six of us Durham students, who forgets things from minute to minute. We shall see. I wouldn't want me as a teacher, not the way I am at this moment in time anyway.

Day 11: September 14^th

Lesson 1: let's discuss Maria Sharapova which is a little boring and I zone out at points to 'design' dresses and draw.

Go for lunch, very nearly late for a lesson which I've left the work that we had to prepare at home for – not a good start. Have to say the stereotypes that we have thought up about Russia – many of them being 'cold' and 'vodka' and 'bears' – understandable – among others. I kinda drift in and out of the lesson, and see how many Harry Potter characters I can list in the 45minutes we have in the rest of the class (very very dreadful of me and a waste of time, especially due to the fact that whenever I was asked anything – 'uhhhhh...') I feel rather guilty as it was actually the lesson that got us talking the most. It was valuable.

Been told that I can't enter the house until 6pm, as no one is at home – and I have no key – so I head to the coffee house to read the rest of Harry Potter 7 (loser – this entry makes me sound like I don't have a life outside Harry Potter....) which I am reading, and translating, at the moment. Skim skim skim through it and head back on the metro, which is a bit packed, wait for the next and go home, eat and FLOP, early night sleep (Sleep for about 16hours, very on and off, and with peculiar dreams about having a little black girl who I was parent to (not biologically. I don't even understand.), partying in college, owning a dog that tried to jump off a bridge, which the child also tried to do, amongst other things that I've now forgotten....