x

Hi there,
Not much to tell this week. I have had a culturally rich week though! On Wednesday I went to the Bolshoi Theatre with three other boys from my class. It was really great, we got really dressed up and went to see Macbeth. It was an Italian opera with Russian subtitles, so it was quite hard to understand, but I knew the story anyway so it was fine. The Bolshoi is amazing though and we went for 20 roubles (fifty roubles is £1, so about 20p) because students can go an hour before and get amazingly cheap tickets! Our view was fantastic as well, I could see everything. The Opera itself was fantastic, the set was absolutely fantastic and there were loads of extras. Instead of having three witches, there were about 20. They were my favourite, dressed all in black and all young slim beautiful women with really long hair which they kept swishing about. All the costumes were mainly dark, but then one of the extras would have a pair of scarlet gloves or a red flower which was really effective. It was really good and an amazing experience just to be at the Bolshoi, I couldn’t stop smiling for the first 10 minutes!
I went for a drink with my friend Maja and she brought along Kostya, a Russian friend. I introduced myself and he then asked me if I was Russian. I said no but asked him why he thought I was and he said that my pronunciation was perfect! Woo hoo! I’m getting somewhere! Anyway we had a couple of drinks with him, but after that I was absolutely exhausted because he likes to talk a lot and he talks very fast. But he was telling us about his views on gay people, it was really interesting and also really frustrating as well. He is a really nice guy, but then he was saying that if he found out that one of his friends was gay then he would break of all ties with him and most probably beat him up! I couldn’t believe it! This is why I think Russians are so odd; they have just have such strange views on some things and will never even consider changing these views because they are so ingrained into society. A lot of Russians once you get to know them are lovely and really willing to open up and offer you everything, but if you don’t know them then they will tread all over you to get what they want. It’s just crazy!
Thursday has been re-named ‘Imperial Thursday’ because we finish lessons on a Thursday and then what usually happens is that a group of people spend the afternoon in the pub occasionally drinking vodka (hence imperial lavish behaviour!). Anyway, I decided I didn’t want to do that this week, so I went to a place called Vorobyovy Gory which has a nature reserve of the same name. Anyway, I decided I just wanted to go and take some photos as it was a nice day at the time. It was so beautiful and autumnal with lots of yellow, burnt orange and red leaves. I was with Eva, so we had a little photo shoot so she could show her family and friends her black hair! So after taking lots of photos I set off in search of the nearest metro station, which turned out to be about 40 mins walk away by which time it had started raining! But still in good spirits I rang they boys to see where they were. Unsurprisingly they were in a bar about 5 mins away from school. So I went to see them, which was a bad idea, they were already on bottle number two of vodka and all a bit worse for wear. After about 30 mins, they started dropping like flies and had to go and be sick. So to cut a long story short, I had to pay their obscenely large bill and even take one of them home before going home myself! No good comes of imperial Thursday!
Tonight I am going to watch ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ at the theatre with some Russian and English friends. So, not quite sure what it is going to be like, but I know the story so should be good.
Anyway, lots of love
X x x x x x