372 days later…

So, if my calculations are correct it has been 372 days since I was last in Russia and almost 5 months since I last blogged. Woops, my bad.

I will blame this lack of blogging mainly on the TERROR of final year (which, by the way, I have now completed with a 2.1!!! *glowswithhappiness* However I also think a lack of inspiration could be somehow to blame for my blogging discrepancies. So to put this right I have done the only thing possible…

I’VE GONE TO RUSSIA :D :D :D

I’ve explained everything I’ll be doing in my last post so I don’t wanna repeat myself (… or make this blog super long)

So on Saturday Anabelle and I (along with the 22 students we are in charge of!) landed in St Petersburg. We swiftly introduced them into the Russian way of doing things by cramming them all onto minibuses way too small to fit both 24 people and 24 suitcases. Then a quick 5 hour wait in a train station and they were ready to experience their first ever overnight Russian train.

Waiting at the station.

I always think that I will sleep well on overnight trains; that the motion will rock me to sleep. But I am always wrong. The hard beds make it impossible to find a comfortable position. Anyone who has ever had to share a bed with me will know I move around loads until I am at the optimum level of comfort for sleep, but I never seem to find it on train beds! So even though I was super tired after a long day of travelling I only managed to get about an hours sleep. Sob.

On arrival at Petrozavodsk the students had to face their worst fear – being put with the host families they will be staying with. I well remember the look of fear in their faces as they got off the train from when I first went to Petrozavodsk, having no idea who I would be living with. Fortunately I lived with the loveliest woman in the whole of Russia and her equally lovely daughter – Lyudmila and Olga, who I am staying with again.

Sunday mainly revolved around equipping the students with Russian phones and SIM cards so they could communicate with Anabelle and I in emergencies. Sounds a simple enough task but it involved me buying 8 new phones and 24 new SIM cards from 2 different shops (the first one ran out of SIMs!). Good practise for my Russian though.

Yesterday the students started university with a lovely surprise test. Which, to be honest, Anabelle and I are to blame for as when the university asked us how to split them into 3 classes we had no idea so suggested a quick grammar test (sorry guys!) We spent the day organising various things with the university and then went to the cinema to see The Hangover 2 (in Russian!) with Olga.

So far returning to Russia has shown me two things:

Firstly, that being in Russia feels completely normal. Me and Anabelle both found it so weird that in fact going to Russia didn’t feel weird. We feel completely at home! Even more so for me that I am back in the first flat I ever lived in in Russia, in MY Russian bedroom! When we got to the flat Lyudmilla said, “Sarah, put your rucksack in your room,” like I had never been away.

Secondly, I am actually astonished by how capable I am in Russian. For the last year I have felt that my Russian language is pretty bad but actually it really isn’t! At university most of our assessments were centred on grammar and my Russian grammar is terrible (as is my English to be honest) and so my marks were never very high. However here I have already managed to understand an entire film in Russian, buy 24 SIM cards in Russian, have conversations with new people in Russian and liaise with a Russian university… and it’s only been 2 days!

Anyway, I don’t want this post to be any longer so that’s all for now. I promise you won’t have to wait 5 months for the next one!

Oh, PS, Anabelle has already been defacing the town with her surname tag…

(NOTE: Anabelle did not actually do this... another Smith had beaten her to it.)

Q & A Day!

Hello everyone, I hope you're all having a great day! Don't forget about Japan, they are still in a critical state of emergency. If you have the possibility please donate something!

Well today is question and answer day, but unfortunately there have been no questions or comments this week. I guess everyone has been glued to the news following the tragic events in Japan.

Get your questions and comments in for next week. We would love to hear what you think and help you any way we can.

Have a great week!

Q & A Day

First of all, Happy Women's Day to all the wonderful ladies out there! I hope you enjoy a wonderful day!


Today is question and answer day, so I will recap some of the recent question I've received, lets get started:


Question: I am considering the Trans-Siberian Express departing from Moscow in August and ending the trip in Bejing. Is that a good time of year to go? From what we read it is best to travel by 1st class cabin. The price we see (per person) is $1,000USD. Can you offer suggestions for the trip and a price?


Answer: yes, August is considered to be a very good time for the trip in terms of the weather, do you need just a one-way ticket to Beijing or would you like to make stops on the way? In this case several tickets + hotels will be needed. You can find some examples here Trans-Siberian Express, and here is another link to the train schedule that might be useful Train Schedule.


Question: Looking to travel to Nizhny Novgorod. Any advice on who do I get my visa from and what airline to fly.


Answer: Nizhny Novgorod has some specific rules, if a foreigner crosses the border at the Nizhny Novgorod airport, then he has to have an inviting organization located in Nizhny Novgorod. Express to Russia can help you with this through one of their partners, but it will be more expensive. They can also help you with booking a hotel, here is a link to hotels Best Hotels Russia. 


That's all the questions I have for today, get your questions in for next week! Tomorrow will be apartment of the week day! Stay tuned.


Happy 8th of March to all!

New Schedule for the Blog!

Hey guys, I hope you are all out celebrating Maslenitsa. I just wanted to write a brief post to let you all know what we'll be doing with the blog from now on starting on Monday. We have decided on categories for each day of the week, so on each day of the week there will be a specific post about a specific topic. So here is the schedule we came up with:


Monday - What's going on this week - On this day I will post about new events, exhibitions, concerts, shows, movies and whatever else new that is opening or going on that week.


Tuesday - Q & A Day - On this I will answer any questions that readers have, questions about anything, about something we've posted, about our company, about travel plans options ideas, whatever questions you have, I will answer them all on Tuesday so everyone can see, incase some people have the same question. You can ask a question through Facebook or Twitter or you can simply comment on the blog.


Wednesday - Apartment of the Week day - On this day I will post about one of the many apartments we have available for rent in both Moscow and St. Petersburg.


Thursday - Hot Spot of the Week day - On this day I will post about a bar or a restaurant in St. Petersburg.


Friday - Interesting Place of the Week - On this day I will post about an interesting place to visit in and around St. Petersburg, it might be a park, a museum, a store, and area of the city and so on. 


If you have any more ideas or suggestions or questions, please feel free to leave a comment! Hope you all are enjoying the holiday weekend (Maslenitsa and 8th of March here in Russia). 

We want your ideas!

We are currently thinking about ideas for different categories for each day of the week on our blog. We want categories for each day of the week, for example Q&A Tuesday, every tuesday I will answer any questions you have. You can ask questions by commenting on the blog, sending me a message or commenting on our page or group in Facebook, or by tweeting on twitter. One day a week I will profile an apartment of the week so you can see some of the great apartments we have in St. Petersburg and Moscow!


What do you guys want to hear about? Please send us suggestions for our categories!
Such as: Q&A, apartment of the week, restaurants/bars of the week, ect.


On each day of the week I will post something about the specific topic for the that day, and it will stay that way for a few months, until we come up with new categories.


Hope everyone is having a great week!

I’M GOING TO RUSSIA :D :D :D :D SMILEY FACE :D :D :D :D

Exciting, exciting news! This summer I shall be returning to Russia for two whole months!!!! I am so excited that I have caught the exclamation mark and smiley face disease all at the same time!!!! :D :D :D

I’m going to be spending a month in Petrozavodsk again, acting as a group leader for a group of first years from my university, along with my friend Anabelle (who I’m sure shall be very excited to be making a return to this blog!) I’m so happy to be returning to Petrozavodsk, firstly because I have some really good friends there who I can’t wait to spend an entire month with and also because Petrozavodsk is the best place to practise Russian! I really don’t want to leave university after spending 4 years studying Russian and then immediately forget it all, like I did after my maths GCSE (where I could actually feel the information dropping out of my brain as I walked out of the exam). A lot less people speak English in Petrozavodsk than in Moscow so I’m going to really make use of being there and try and get my Russian better. And this time it will be purely for me, not to pass an exam.

After Petrozavodsk, Anabelle and I are going to travel to Moscow for around 10 days to visit our friends there. The thought of returning to Moscow fills me with giddy excitement! Especially because it will be the summer. Moscow without snow. My favourite kind of Moscow.

After that I’m going to be travelling to St Petersburg and then Estonia to help at a few charity projects there which I’m really looking forward to. I’ve never done these projects before so it will be a learning experience, but one that I’m ready for.

As the end of final year creeps closer and closer I’m thinking more and more about what I’ll be doing next year. I’m completely concentrating on my degree at the moment and so not looking at jobs at all. I’m definitely not done with Russia, so maybe having 2 months there will help me to decide what on earth I’m going to do next!

So yeah, basically… I’m going to Russia and I’m a liiiiiittle excited.

Here’s a picture of an excited me holding a Russian doll.

Let mi spik from may khart, in Inglish.

According to an article I read in The Guardian last week the Russian government has decided that Russian officials must speak a foreign language by 2020. The reason behind this is that recently Russians have had a few embarrassing slip ups with their foreign languages, most famously the speech by sports minister Vitaly Mutko for Russia’s World Cup bid in Zurich…

Now, let mi spik from may khart, in Inglish: this got me thinking about how when learning a foreign language you have to be prepared to be laughed at (although not necessarily by thousands over the internet!) Just like Mutko I have had some very embarrassing moments because of my lack of language skills, so I thought I’d share some of the funniest with you.

The first language struggle I had was when I lived in Petrozavodsk at the end of my first year in university. The woman I lived with asked me what we do for children’s birthday parties in England. I wanted to tell her about bouncy castles but obviously my limited vocabulary didn’t quite stretch to knowing how to say that in Russian! In the end I started jumping up and down in her kitchen pointing to the floor shouting “BIG BALLOON!” I still don’t think she knows what I meant!

In my year in Moscow there were many MANY language slip ups which I have already blogged about, but I’ll share with you my favourite again: the flour/fly incident. At the beginning of my year living in Moscow I asked my flat mate if we had a fly in the cupboard. I wanted to know if we had flour in the cupboard, fly = mykha, flour = myka. She still finds this hilarious!

Even in England I’m still embarrassing myself with my Russian slip ups…
Recently I met up with a Russian friend to practise my Russian and I was telling her about the time I spent in Petrozavodsk. I told her that I saw a bear outside the State University; I meant to say I saw Medvedev, the President of Russia. Bear = medved.

Oops.