Friday night saw us make our mighty return to Sigmund Freud,
no matter the forces that tried to stop us. The first came in the form of
Andrei dropping off a poster in our classroom advertising an international
party at the same time in Begemot. The 2nd came in the form of
Daniel writing a post on fb telling us to be there. And the 3rd was
a personal e-mail from Sasha reminding us about this international party and
how we are the guests. Needless to say we ignored all 3 invitations, probably
quite rudely actually, and thus the Brits advertised as turning up were too
busy having karaoke malarky elsewhere. Zero regrets were had of course. It
ended up being quite an uneventful night. Some lady who actually does have an
amazing voice was dancing all sexy to Burlesque.
Maddy thought she’d spotted some sass in her moves. She was mistaken. It
was skank. No-one needed to see that. What they did need to see was the fight
near the end of the night. I didn’t see it myself. My phone was unsociably in
my phone arranging a skype-date. All I felt was Maddy pull me back close to her
in what I first thought to be a romantic embrace. It was a protective embrace.
Pretty romantic to me.
Turns out some guys had gotten into a typically Russian
fight. The difference of this situation to an English situation is that, in the
motherland:
1.
There are no repurcussions for breaking a leg
off the table
2.
The barman/bouncer simply watched them hash it
out
3.
They weren’t kicked out
4.
The fighters bought eachother beers afterwards
The fight was typically Russian mainly because it involved
one man disgraces the other man’s girlfriend by pouring beer over her
(accidentally one would presume, but one might be wrong- this is the motherland
after all).
Sunday saw us visit Timeshop mid-afternoon. It was “English
Discussion Club” so us Brits got all the coffee, tea, biscuits and ice-cream
that we could muster, for free. We had some people we hadn’t met yet, including
a lady who works at the new Radission opening today; and a girl who spent the
summer in Oxford. It’s always nice to speak to people who have a genuine
interest in a land that I’ve escaped from to come to a land they yearn to
escape from.
Today Andrei had us going on a forced excursion. I’m not a
fan of organised fun. Or authority. But it actually turned out to be great fun.
Despire the 9am meeting in the pitch black. Although to be fair the sun isn’t
rising until about 9:45am right now. Walks to uni are very much the same as
walking at midnight. Or maybe walking at 4pm, because it’s getting dark by then
too.
So we arrived at the school, and as usual, the foreigners
are treated with such pleasure. Everyone is taking the chance to practice their
English to us. We were treated to a play, better described as a spectacle of
the highest order. I have no idea what happened but the teachers were dancing
around with tights on their face, rainbow wigs and the last word of most
sentences randomly in English. At one point, one of the teachers started to
take his belt off and we were all there with bated breath at the route this
student play had taken. Luckily (/not luckily?) he only used it to pretend to
beat one of the kids.
Our 1st lesson was Russian language. It consisted
of a debate between chocolate and vanilla ice-cream. Got slightly racist. Some
rude words were tossed about. Namely the N word. Being 19-22 year olds, we
still giggled along with the 16 year olds.Lunch was in the cantine, cheap as
ever, but lacking in anything other than potato, cabbage and rice for the 4
vegetarians among us. Then we moved on to literature. Andrei had told us to
prepare a small review on a book from the last 40 years. Something more modern
than the traditional Shakespeare that they all already know. I chose The Kite Runner. Probably a bit of a
mistake seeing as I have read it, but so long ago that I very well should just
say that I haven’t because I couldn’t really recall anything as close as to
what Wikipedia told me. I had a group of 5 girls, including Ksusha, who I’d sat
next to in the other class and she was an absolute babe. They loved hearing
what I said about the story and made a pretty poster with a kite and birds. Somehow
I managed to convince them that the kite was a symbol for freedom and
childhood. I have no idea that this is true or not, but they lapped it up. After
the lesson they somehow chose me to flock around and ask a thousand questions a
minute to. We ended on music and I had them squealing. I swear to you,
squealing their brains off by nodding at agreement when they said they liked
One Direction. The reaction I got just led me to reciting American and British
pop-stars/bands names so I could hear their delight in me. I gave my name out
to 6 of them and Ksusha asked me for a hug at the end. Babe.
After this whole debarcle, we were invited to the teacher’s
room for tea and potato pastries. I stuck my pinky out whilst drinking for
show. I feel like that’s what they wanted from us.
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