Receiving birthday wishes from Tom. We had to sit in the outside bit of the bar because there were too many of us! It was cold!
The view from Irina’s flat. It’s the business district of Moskva.
Ice sculpture museum.
So, this week has been a lot busier than last week... the best news is that Eva and I have found a flat! It is about four stops away on the metro from our university, a five minute walk from the metro and really lovely and modern (very uncommon in Russia!) Eva and I will be sharing a really big spacious room which has a big double bed and a desk and a humungous wardrobe! The room is separated a big by the desk, so there are two areas to the room which is really good. Also the flat has a big living room big kitchen and bathroom. We will be living with a 22 year old girl who is studying English. She is married to a Canadian, but he is doing a PhD at the moment, so lives in student halls. She is really nice, within about 5 mins of meeting us she had already invited us to go to her dacha (holiday home) at the weekend! Also her English isn’t brilliant, which is good for us as we can speak to her in Russian and also teach her English!
So, we told our babushka that we are moving out and she has been a real bitch ever since! So we have decided to move out as soon as possible. We spoke to the accommodation people at uni and they said that they would make an exception for us. Normally we would have to pay for the next month, but as the bab is being so rude and nasty they are going to let us go now without paying for October. As of Thursday, Eva and I will be in a new place! Woo hoo!
Some more cultural things I have been doing. I went to the Tretyakov gallery on Monday. There are two of them, we went to the old one which is full of portraits of wealthy, fat people! It was quite like the national portrait gallery in London, similar kinds of paintings. But also it had (obviously!) lots of Russian art, which I really liked. Lots of peasants with gruff looking faces, hungry looking children and of course lots and lots of icons and religious art. Today a friend and I set out to find this ice sculpture gallery that she had heard about. It took quite a while to find as she had been told the wrong metro stop, but it was a lovely sunny crisp day so it was nice walking weather. Anyway, so when we got there, this ‘gallery’ was in fact a single, fairly small room in the back of a very non-descript garage type building! We had a fun time though because you have to wear these gigantic duvet like coats over your clothes and fleecy little booties!
Thank you all for the birthday messages! I had a really nice couple of days actually. On the Thursday, Eva and I went round to our friend Irina’s house to watch a film. At 12.00pm, Irina came in, blindfolded me and took me into the kitchen where I was greeted by a big apricot sponge cake and some of her friends! So we all had some cake and wine and then at 2.00 decided to go out for a walk! Anyway, we stayed at Irina’s that night and then in the morning Eva made me chocolate blini’s for a birthday breakfast! On the evening of my birthday a group of us went out together and had a really nice evening! I got lots of texts from people from my class wishing me happy birthday and in the evening even got calls from Kate and Helen! So all in all a good birthday!
Love you all loads and missing you!
Next time you hear from me, I shall be in a new place!
X x x x
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