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.