A Russian walks into a Bar...

So the little devils were here today for their weekly lesson with the Russian teacher who, incidentially, they seem to act like little angels for. Owing possibly to the fact she speaks Russian and they actually understand her. But, one of the wee blighters was sick! Can you imagine if that had happened in my lesson? Well let's not imagine.... eew, kiddies being sick, yuk. He was fine by the way, he carried on shouting and running around afterwards as if nothing had happened, leaving the teacher to clean it up. Well, if it was me, I'd have given him the mop and said 'clean it up you little monster' and if he failed to do so I'd have rubbed his nose in it to make sure he jolly well learned his lesson!!

That was a joke by the way, I wouldn't give him a mop, I'd make him do it with his jumper! Mwah aha hah ha!

One Russian said to another.....

Ok as promised here is the cultural delight of a Russian joke:

A Pharmacist tells a customer.
- In order to buy arsenic you need a legal prescription
A picture of this woman just isn't enough

Or how about this one:

Is it true that under communism people could order food by phone?
Yes, but the delivery was by TV

I get the first one (I think) but the second one is beyond me. Have I no sense of humour? No wonder people here never laugh when I say something funny.

In this book it also explains that the English appear rude to a foreigner in the way that they interrupt each other!
Please explain these jokes or more specifically, why they are funny!

Springtime is here hip hip hip hooray

The end of winter has arrived: goodbye snow, hello sludge! Yes it's very dirty on the streets, all the cars are covered in a layer of mud and it's time to roll your trouser legs up for the spring sun has made an appearance. I have ditched the bear coat and now feel like a normal person when walking about outside; I think I'm two stone lighter without it on!

It was outdoor sports for me again this weekend as I took to the ice rink and strutted my stuff. Owing to the holiday period it was deserted in the forest and at one point my Russian companion and I had the rink to ourselves. My ambitions to become Britain's next olympic figure skater were short-lived as I attempted to skate backwards and failed miserably each time. So, forwards it was, and as quickly as possible. If I can't be figure skating I'll do the speed thing instead. Alas, blisters have put an end to that plan as well.

So, other than the skating and the excitement of not looking like a bear anymore I've done no more gambling in dodgy establishments and no more drinking whole bottles of vodka so nothing to report I'm afraid. Oh, actually I was expanding my knowledge of all things Russian by reading a book (actually being in the country is obviously teaching me nothing!) and I discovered some Russian jokes translated into English. I may have discovered why they don't understand the British sense of humour, it's because, well, if these jokes are anything to go by, we have very different senses of humour. I'll type a couple in my next entry. I know you can't wait!

Or Alternatively...

It was Friday night last night so I went out into the town to find something interesting to write home about. I persuaded my Russian buddy to take me to one of the many casinos where I exchanged my half month's wage of 7000 roubles into chips and headed promptly over to the roulette wheel. I found myself surrounded by 5 Oligarchs who eyed me with suspicion as I placed my first bet of 1000 roubles. Naturally I won, and then I won more and eventually I had to be thrown out quite heavy handedly by the bulky Russian doorman, I think he said 'don't come back' but by this point I had lost my Russian buddy and discovered that I had no idea how to get home. I stumbled into the nearest bar and ordered vodka, I had meant one shot but the barman produced a bottle, and when I tried to explain he just demanded my money. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a 1000 rouble note from my newly acquired wad of cash. As the other people in the bar realised how much money I had they all came and sat with me. The rest of the night is a blur, the last thing I remember is singing karaoke and giving away my money. I awoke in the early hours of the morning in a dodgem car in the amusement park and crawled home to bed. It's crazy out here in this crazy town with its crazy folks...

Interesting news

It was Friday night last night and I went out into the town to find something interesting to write home about. So my Russian buddy and I walked around the town trying to find somewhere respectable to sit and have a drink and a piece of cake. We walked and walked and walked (it was nearly 8pm and many places were shutting) until we stumbled upon a dirty little cafe bar with puddles of mucky water on the floor. It may have looked slightly dubious at first but the atmosphere was inviting and the beer was cheap - We drank Baltika number 7 and it cost less than 1 uk pound for a whole pint. Nothing interesting happened; we drank some beer, ate some cake (which was stale) and chicken juliene (which wasn't stale), we talked and then went on our way. It was snowing when we left the dirty cafe bar and I had to rush home before my 10.30pm kurfew.

Not the only Brit in the Village

There's British people here in Tyumen! I mean, there always has been British people here I'm not really the only one, however I've not yet met one. But today there is a conference for 'education abroad' and a bunch of British people are in the Quality hotel next door to our office to take part in this conference. I had a conversation with a real life English person, it was very exciting. I could say things without fear of it being taken the wrong way, it was great! Have I explained about how everything you say to a Russian person gets taken personally? Especially when speaking to these temperamental sensitive women! But that's another story entirely. I'll save it for a snowy day. Won't that be a treat for you lucky lucky people...

Russian Food

If I come back from my time in Russia just a slip of a girl (ha! Idiom) then do not be surprised. On the days when I don't get cooked for at home or invited to someone's house (which is very rare I'm afraid to tell you) I have the daunting task of cooking for myself. Until this point I had tried to steer clear (idiom!) of any food I was familiar with, wanting to whole heartedly jump into the Russian way of life, and embrace the culture. I bought pilmeni and....., uh, well that's it really. I'm now officially a hater of this food, these dough balls filled with unidentifiable meat, or horrible meat as I'd like to classify it. The meat that they put in dog food probably. But it's a Russian dish and it's just about the only Russian dish that I can buy without having to ask at a counter - unless you count the typical Russian biscuits and cakes that I've been surviving on. So, I decided to chuck my principals out the window (idiom!) and I stocked up on baked beans, damn the Russian food! Now don't get me wrong - if someone else cooks it or if you go out for food it's just fine. I don't want to get caught saying bad things about the food - these Russians are very defensive y'know. I have to go now as I've just told somebody here what I'm writing about and they've become very defensive and are now giving me a lecture on Russian food and how good it is!!

Devil Children Update!

WHOOOOOT! It's a national holiday tomorrow so there's no devil children to teach! I'm so so happy. Yeeeeeeeha!

And everybody wish Cara a happy birthday for yesterday because I forgot. Oooops. I forget what day it is out here. Although I know that today is Wednesday. Happy Birthday Cara (I'd say it in Russian but I don't know how).

I'm now going to sign out for the day as nothing interesting has happened to me for at least 48 hours, soon I'll just start inventing things to make you all believe that I'm having a crazy time out here in the wilds of Russia. Maybe something interesting will happen tomorrow........

Old Russian Proverb

The Russians know how it is, they endure long and bitterly cold winters, they suffered for years at the hands of political tyrants, they philosophise over the hardships of life and love, which may be why they have such pessimistic proverbs: example one, Love is evil, you may even fall in love with a goat.
Remember that kids. Next time you're walking in the country don't catch the eye of that sexy local goat you might just be lured in by the magenitism of it's eyes.

Talking of evil and love; Rasputin, I discovered from my Lonely Planet guide to Russia, was born just up the road in a small village called Pokrovskoe. When I had asked my colleagues about him all they had managed to inform me on was the Boney M song - Ra Ra Rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen. The words of which I had never known, so you learn something new everyday.

It is getting more and more dangerous outside as the ice gets, uh, icier and I run even higher risk of falling on my arse. Yesterday I did a straight-out-of-a-cartoon slip where I think I actually ran backwards on the spot for a couple of seconds before finally thumping to the ground. I've even given up trying to look dignified after a fall, y'know instead of getting up and pretending it didn't happen and just carrying on quickly, I now shout loudly and then insult the ice before grumpily continuing on my way.

So last week it was skiing but this weekend I decided to show the Russians how it's really done and took them on at a bit of ice skating. Picture the scene; we're in the forest the sun is setting and the Brit takes to the rink with style and grace. Actually I fared alright, being outdone only by the drunk man who fell over several times, and never really seemed to give up trying. I, on the other hand, didn't fall over once - those Saturday afternoons at Altrincham ice rink in my youth have finally paid off.

My Russian family had a dinner party on Saturday which I was kindly invited to. This meant sitting at a table while everyone spoke in Russian and left me to eat the food and drink the wine, which was nice. It's true, they drink shots of vodka with their meal, although I didn't partake because I'm a wimp!

Weather update, well yesterday it was -13, but the sun is shining gloriously and the sky is a lovely shade of blue, not a cloud in sight. It's deceptive though because there's still masses of snow on the ground and it feels very cold. Brrrr, that's what I say.

All talked out..

I now have over 6 hours of lessons per week with different students who only want conversational classes. Do you realise what this means? I have to find interesting things for them to talk to me aboout.
There's my two ladies who like travelling who have now told me EVERYTHING about everywhere they've ever been and why they like/dislike it. There's the teachers, with whom I am supposed to inform about British culture/ history/ politics/ law etc and then get them to talk about it. And then there's my group of young men who all like Chelsea and skiing and who don't want to talk about important things like global warming. What can I possibly talk about now? And why do none of the UK newspapers report on the Winter Olympics?? Russia have now won 5 gold medals yeeha!

It looks like Spring is here, the sky was a lovely blue colour today and the sun definitely had his hat on. The snow is slowly melting and now the indoors of all buildings are covered in muck. It will only get worse apparently, but perhaps I'll see the spring before I leave, which will be nice.

I also discovered today, in one of my conversational classes, that Vodka is not the national drink of Russia, it's summagone (don't know how you spell it, but that's how it sounds) which is basically lethal strength home made vodka type drink. It's prohibited to sell but people make it themselves (hence the calling it 'home made' duh). My ladies who were telling me about it also mentioned that they would like to invite me to their Dacha (Russians have these little wooden houses where they have a garden and grow fruit and veg and make home made vodka outside of the cities as a retreat and they're called Dachas. They're very interesting - they build them, design them themselves and they have them in a village, all different colours and shapes, it's great - the family I'm staying with have one which they took me to but we couldn't get in because the snow was half way up the gate). Where was I? Ah yes, the Dacha, so hopefully I'll get invited and I can sample the authentic Russian country life. And the Summagone haha!

Devil Children part 5

So it was my 5th lesson with the wee devils, and I know you're all dying to know how it went..... well, I amused them for a while with some stickers in which time they actually seemed to understand what I was asking them to do, then they didn't like the rest of the lesson so pretty much did what they wanted while I tried to get them to say things like cat and dog. They liked a rap tune that I put on at the end but only danced to it, didn't speak any English. I think someone should teach their parents the old English idiom 'pouring your money down the drain'. Hahaha.

working nine to nine what a way to make a living

Well let me tell you a little something about how it is out here in Russia. Teachers are very badly paid. You get paid by the hour, but those hours only include hours when you're actually in a classroom teaching, it doesn't include all the hours of preperation and planning. Bearing in mind that all the text books the teachers here use are completely in English and they have to translate all unknown words before the lesson, which must take bloomin ages. Even I have to look up words sometimes and it's my native language. So, I've been thinking this over and it's starting to trouble me. AND they don't get paid during holidays, or if they miss a class due to illness. And this school is one of the best ones in Tyumen, in terms of pay and facilities.

Well, I thought I'd have a rant, share it with y'all.
Thanks for listening peeps, I'll be back tomorrow with more tales of hardship and suffering at the hands of these ruthless Russians. Ah yes the word Capitalism soon spread to these parts when the Iron Curtain collapsed.

Humourous Humourless

Well thank you to all those kind people out there who helped me to prepare for my business english class by sending me even more useless (and funny) phrases to use in the workplace. Your next mission is to send me jokes that revolve around the language - y'know word play and stuff. I have gathered that the impression our Great British Comedies give out to foreigners is that we all run around like Benny Hill or Mr Bean. I tried to convey the brilliance of Spaced to them but they claim that British humour is hard to get. I think this is due to the language and the fact that in Russian you can say either 'the monkey rode the bike' or 'the bike rode the monkey' - it has the same meaning. But what if the punchline of the joke is 'then the bike rode the monkey!!' Hahaha, they just wouldn't see the funny side. So, do your bit for your country, send me a joke that I can use to convince the Russians that we're dead funny, us.

I've developed a.... don't know the name for it, that problem that Jonathan Ross has with his R's, I've noticed it in my own speech. Maybe I've always had it but didn't realise becuase nobody pays any attention to what I say (including me) but now that people are listening to me very intently I seem to have a slight R problem (pwoblem) like Elma Fudd, hahaha (I'm laughing a lot today for some reason).

Winter Olympics

Seeing as the Winter Olympics are underway I thought I'd do my bit for Britain and take on the Russians at their own game, cross country skiing. Yep, there I was one solitary Brit battling it out against the professionals on the race track. Lessons? Pah! Who needs lessons when you have courage, skill and the good old fashioned British fighting spirit... Well that's how I saw it. The Russians probably saw it more as 'who let this pesky foreigner into our forest and who on earth gave her a pair of skiis (skis)???' I'm ok though, the bruises have almost healed and the only thing left unscathed was my pride. I actually made it all the way round, the second time, without falling over once. Sure there were a few 'woah almost' moments where I nearly lost my cool but on the whole, I can safely say, it was a good effort on my part.

So there I was in the Taiga, dressed up in my Ski gear, looking the part. We drove down the road to Omsk (though not TO Omsk, as the nearest big Siberian town it's a mere 11 hours away by train) to the forest. Once in the forest it was a bit like entering the twilight zone (I can only imagine) The first encouner we had was with a local dog who stood in front of the moving car and tried to prevent us from advancing any further by the power of barking like a dog possessed. It worked. He had to be escorted away from the car by a passing walker. A little further up the road we saw a man who was possibly the dogs owner, jogging bare chested. Have I mentioned that the temperature is roughly minus 20? Crazy townsfolk.

Following in the great footsteps of the exciled Dostoevsky and Stalin through this beautiful 'Sleeping Land' as it is known in Mongolian Altay language, that's Siberia to you and me... I almost had a moment of greatness myself. I felt the beginnings of an epic novel about the struggle and psychology of mankind in this Capitalist/Communist mixed up country stirring in my blood, and then I felt the need to start a Revolutionary uprising, possibly killing millions of my own countrymen in the process, but I decided not to do either of those and just fell over skiing instead.

And then I went home, had a cup of tea and watched Russia get the gold in cross country skiing! Now I'm back to work and it's been a whole month since I've been here, only two more to go. Hip hip hooray!

Snowmen nomen!

I've discovered why there are no snowmen here; it's not because the Russians don't have a sense of fun, it's because the snow is unsnowman-makeable. You can't even make a snow BALL let alone a MAN, it just crumbles, there's no substance to it.
They also don't walk through unwalked-on snow to leave their footprints but I think that is because they are lacking a sense of fun!

little devil buggers

Ok, so last week when I said me and the 5 year olds were getting along like old buddies, dancin, singin, chillin out together.... Yeah, well it seems that last week someone had given them some kind of tablet that sends them into a nice personality mode, maybe it was ketamine. But this week the devil children were back to their familiar ways ie, devil acting. Well, it's not really their fault. They're kids they like to make noise and injure themselves and generally cause chaos. But here I am speaking some kind of alien language that they don't understand, in fact they probably think I AM an alien. I'm an alien in Russia! So, we're back to where we started, at the point of them not having a clue what I'm saying and wondering why I've come to their town and where my spaceship is.

There's no I in team

I have to teach Business English! It's a good job I watched the Office so much otherwise I wouldn't have a clue. I actually have to encourage my student to use terms like 'you have to take the rough with the smooth' and 'There needs to be give and take'. There's actually a book with all these phrases and explainations as to what they 'mean'. But they mean nothing!! At least I'll be able to use these expressions when I get back to the UK, it might help me get a job. It's all a bit 'touch and go, don't you think?'
What was even better was the lesson I had with the teachers in which I had to educate them about the British legal system. Thankfully had the ever reliable Google to help me out of that sticky situation and I almost sounded like I knew what I was talking about.
But this Business English is a laugh, I can't possibly be responsible for more people in the world using meaningless unimaginative cliched expressions.

Russian Music News

I meant to write about the music earlier, but I always seem to forget. As you can probably imagine there is a lot of Eurovision style pop, yeah their music certainly is of the gay favouring variety. Also, you'll be glad to hear that Mel C's career is alive and well here, her music can be heard echoing though the streets literally bouncing off the snow with passion and style that only she can pull off. So fret not you Mel C-ers out there, she is not dead, no her music lives on, long live Mel C. And the genre of rap has not escaped these Russian musical meisters for they have created Russian rap which I think the sound of which they have stolen from Goldie Lookin Chain. Without the Welsh accent mind. It's like being stuck in a Eurovision Song Contest nightmare on loop, but it's kind of good to hear something a bit different (Said with as much enthusiasm as possible, trying to convinve myself).
And, I guess if you want to escape the Arctic Monkey hype machine then this is the place to be! But they don't play Radiohead on the MTV. CDs are only 150 Roubles which is cheap it's about 3 pounds so if any of you want that long-forgotten Mel C album for someone special this Valentine's Day, just let me know and I'll post one over to you straight away.

This weekend I have mostly....

Hey folks, it's been a while since I've written which is not, as you might imagine, because I have been sampling the delights of the local vodka and being jetted away to St Petersburg by a billionaire oil baron for the weekend. No, I've been familiarising myself with the town and reading my books and making the most of the warm weather (only -9 on Sunday). This weekend I have mostly been to the shopping centres - two of them, there's a few more still to see, and I also paid a visit to a nice coffee shop, it was very bohemian; sitting next to us were two of Tyumen's finest and most loved actors of the stage, daaaahling! They looked like very nice boys, well men, dressed like 15 year old boys. Also this weekend I finished the book I was reading, James Joyce, A Portrait... the ending of which I was particularly happy with, and I was kindly driven around the town by my landlady while she showed me all the sights, the University, the River, the Museum and the parks to name but a few. There is a nice mixture of tall modern flats in the city centre and near the river you can find small wooden cottages which are all painted in different colours, all very pretty and in summer I imagine, quite picturesque. The snow has been falling and on Saturday evening when I left work there was kind of a blizzard, although I am assured by my colleagues that it was not a blizzard but merely a bit of wind, well the wind was blowing the snow all over the place it was quite exciting. Now it seems to be cold again and the snow has stopped.

Just to change the subject back to my favourite topic - TV, I turned on the magic box yesterday and was channel hopping (I don't normally have control over the TV as the little boy is usually at the helm, but they were out and I've been told if you have cable you can get BBC News so I was looking for it) and who should I see? None other than that little monkey from Top Gear doing one of his other programmes where he gets people to test out theories... ahh, I hate him normally, but I was kind of glad to see a familiar face, and if you listen carefully you can hear the English version under the Russian dub. I couldn't find BBC news by the way.

Cor Blimey Guvnor

As there is snowy ice on the ground outside and the temperature is dropping again we have to make our own amusement here as it's too darn cold/dangerous (if you're me) to go outside....SO I've been teaching my fellow teachers phrases like the one above in this here title 'Cor Blimey Guvnor'. And to repay me for my kindness they are speaking English to me in heavy Russian accents like in The Pink Panther and other such comedy gems which use a foreign accent to get a laugh! Ah what fun we have. And news about the wee buggers is that I had a very successful lesson with them today, they sat quietly for most of the lesson colouring and drawing, we had a dance, we played some games and hey, we even spoke some English.

The result of today's efforts? -- the 5 year olds will all go on to use their new found love of the English language to conquer the world (they'll thank me for teaching them how to count backwards from 10) and in the summer there will be a group of Russian English teachers landing at Heathrow calling everyone they see 'guvnor'. My work here is done.

The only Brit in the village!

It's fun being the only British person here - I can say ANYTHING and they believe me. Now, up until this point I have told them the truth for example 'no, that's wrong, it's under threat not in threat' etc etc, but I've noticed that my conscience is letting me get lazy and I've been tempted to have fun with them. One of them asked me for words to teach a group of teenagers to describe a man who cries in the street, so I suggested (as a joke), along with 'sensitive' and 'emotional' the word 'poof'. She looked it up in the dictionary and we laughed at how funny it would have been. Hahaha, I still laugh now. BUT this evening, when I had a Russian student disagreeing with me when I told them that 'I didn't catch that' is another way of saying 'I didn't hear that' I realised that it's very important to not mess around with teaching them the correct phrases. It was in the text book an' everything! I wasn't making it up....

The roads are turning brown I miss the whiteness of everything, it looks like a normal place now! I liked my fairytale land where evrything was white and icy, now it's brown and icy - so if I fall over now I'll probably get dirty.

Wee Buggers

Thank you to everyone who has written to me about the 'devil children', concerned that the little kids will be upset by me giving them such a terrible nickname. Well just to put your minds at rest, I'm pretty certain that they don't look at this blog and if they did I don't think they'd understand it (they struggle with their alphabet). So not to worry, the kids are safely unaware of my confessions on this here blog. And just so that the general public can sleep well tonight I will hereonafter be referring to said devil children as Wee Buggers to avoid any offence.