Master and Margheritas

I’m only really writing this blog as a weekly check-in because time has flown by and nothing of enormous significance has occurred (cue my small readership closing the page and not bothering with the rest...)

Spring came to St Petersburg, which was something of a surprise. It was practically t-shirt and shorts weather. For a few days we had perfect blue skies, the sun with the tiniest bit of warmth in it, brightness and so on and it was all very pleasant. It would be safe to say that we have now come crashing back down to earth. It is -3, it is snowing, it is grey, it is windy, it is forecast to be between -1 and -8 for the rest of the week and it is not nearly as hospitable as it was a few days ago.

What have I done? Well Sunday / Monday to Wednesday appears to be the busy part of my week. I teach 4 times in those three days and I have 3 of my 4 uni classes so it’s a bit non-stop. Teaching my guys at the uni was just about passable despite the fact that we’ve now been talking about going on holiday for 4 weeks. My eight-year-old doesn’t know any words but does ok even so and my business class on Wednesday seemed to quite enjoy themselves. Uni lessons are pretty dull and uninspiring but they’re a fairly small part of the Petersburg experience so it doesn’t really matter.

Anyway, that was all a bit busy what with homework to prepare and lessons to plan while also going to the new gym in the time that was left but afterwards I had a relaxed end to the week. Thursday was about the laziest kind of day you could hope for. Evening football only starts at midnight here which meant a late night on Wednesday with the Champions League and pizza (how can one resist the allure of Mama Roma when it is so nearby and only costs £2.75 for a big and actually good pizza?). That led to a late start on Thursday, followed by quite a lot of not very much. We resisted further pizza and ate at a pelmeni place (basically dumplings, not dissimilar to dim sum) and then came back in time for the Spurs vs Benfica game. The less said about that the better.

Friday night we had our usual outing and made merry, before having a bit of a lazy Saturday. When there’s so much sport on it’s quite difficult not to just loll about watching it. With pizza. Work today, homework to do, lessons to plan. That’ll see me through until 8, at which point I’ll be subjected to watching the absolute drubbing that Arsenal are going to hand out to Spurs. Note to self: resist commiseration pizza if we lose. 

I’m still loving my time out here, still enjoying doing a bit of teaching, still very much appreciating the flat and generally I have very, very few complaints about the quality of life. Dad was right – it was always possible that one part of this trip would go better than expected (and maybe one a little worse, he said, but let’s forget about that part) and I’d have to say it’s this part. The Russia adventure looked like a strange idea of a good time. I said as much before I left.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Life, Lessons

I really don’t know where to start. I made the mistake of not writing a blog for a couple of weeks and I feel like quite a lot has probably changed / happened. In fact I just had a look at my last blog and yeah, that’s something of an understatement.

Ok so first off, I’m writing this from the new flat. I finally moved in on the 26^th February, I believe, having eventually worked up the courage to tell Evgeniya that I would be leaving. She was extremely good about it, so that was a relief. I could hardly be happier with the flat. It has everything we need and is very comfortable, plus the location is so central and convenient. This meant a small housewarming party last Friday with about 20 guests, which passed off very well, and we also had people over this Friday for dinner and drinks. Being able to have people come to visit is such a good aspect of having our own place.

On both of those nights we also sampled some of the local bars and clubs, which are all very good (for all their Russianness and quirks). Also it’s allowed me to bring out a good number of card tricks on a fairly regular basis and, as everyone knows, I always enjoy that. Hopefully the people I show them to do as well. Sorry about that grammar, "to whom", whatever.

On to other things. Ok, well apparently I’m a teacher now. I teach my uni class on Tuesdays and that seems to be going quite well, despite the boring syllabus. We just chat in quite a casual way but always in English and more or less on the right topic and then I explain stuff when it needs explaining. I’ve pretty much just defined teaching there, I realise. It’s good though – all a bit of a laugh but probably quite useful for the guys in my class as well. Aside from that, I teach a group of businessmen twice a week and an eight-year-old girl a couple of times a week aussi. There should be more jobs coming too. For visa reasons, I’m certainly not earning anything at all from these jobs and they are definitely entirely unpaid cultural exchanges but if they were paid then I’d probably say something like “it’s really nice to have a bit of income.” Hey, you can never be too careful... Anyway, it’s quite a lot of work planning lessons and stuff but I’m really enjoying it and it’s a case of so far, so good.

I joined a gym last week and I’ve been every day since. That is in small part because I enjoy it and I need to offset the insane amount of food that I’m eating in this country but it’s about 90% because not only is it the nicest gym I’ve ever been to, but it’s probably the nicest place that I’ve ever seen in the world. It’s all modern and glass and shiny and there are free towels (I don’t know why this is such a big deal to me) and there are views over Kazan Cathedral and the showers are the best I’ve ever had and it’s just generally all a pleasure.

I feel like things are finally settling down and getting into a rhythm of sorts. We have our classes and the preparation for them, I have the teaching stuff and the prep for that, I play me sports (also finally got some football going), we eat well, we play too much FIFA, we watch sport, we see friends, we go out. Usual. You come away and it’s all crazy but now it’s been a month and I can safely say that we’re doing life. The new, Petersburg life. At the moment, I just wish it wasn’t such a short time.

For now, I promised myself that I'd spend most of today and tomorrow getting a load of work done and lessons planned. Much as I don't like to admit it, blogging doesn't really count. Time to go.

Всего хорошего and счастливого всем!