Nothing interesting happened this week. But I saw some nice photos.

The longer I live in Moscow the harder it is to blog. I feel that just retelling my day to day activities would be extremely dull for you all to read. Since I’ve been back I’ve basically… been to lessons and hung out with my friends. Not an epic difference to life in England. Although yesterday I was at a café near Red Square and Lenin and Stalin walked past the window. That made me LOL.

My lessons have got more interesting this term. Although I enjoyed my lessons last term I felt a bit put out that the higher groups got to study history, literature and the media, but this term I think my group have finally proved that we have moved on from nursery standard Russian and we are allowed to study the grown up subjects! Yay! But more subjects = more teachers = more homework. Boo.

My mission of getting the most I can out of Moscow in these few last months is ongoing. I went with Toby (my friend from Birmingham who has just moved to Moscow) to see the Picasso exhibition at the Pushkin Arts Museum last week. This year many exhibitions and concerts are taking place throughout Russia to celebrate ‘The Year of France in Russia’. I thought the exhibition would just be a couple of pictures, nothing special, but it was huge! Apparently it’s the biggest collection of Picasso’s work in Russia in over 50 years… no wonder it took us 2 hours to get round it all! We couldn’t take photos so I’ve found you a nice picture of the Presidents wife having a look…



Today Anabelle, Sinead (another Birmingham friend who has just moved to Moscow) and me went to see another exhibition in a clearly VERY cool art warehouse/gallery type place (Birmingham peeps – imagine The Custard Factory. Only cooler.). The exhibition was a collection of photos from a competition called ‘The Best of Russia’. The competition ran for a year in 2008 and Russian photographers (both professional and non professional) entered photos of the image that best described Russia to them. Here’s a few of the winners:





It was interesting to see Russian peoples’ interpretation of their country. A lot of the time I felt the photos (although very good pictures) could be from any country and weren’t particularly “Russian”, but then... I am English, so cannot judge. I wonder what photo I would take if I wanted to show my view of Russia? Probably the guys who dress up as Stalin and Lenin sitting on the metro… holding Russian dolls, soup and pancakes.

And on a different note, I have started my fundraising to be able to do some work with Love Russia in the summer. Being in Moscow is making it a lot harder as having cake sales are pretty impossible… and being sponsored to speak Russian for a day is a bit… pointless! SO this year my theme is Dress Me For Charity!
On this blog: www.dressmeforcharity.wordpress.com - you will find pictures of every single item of clothing I have in Moscow with a number and a description.
From this you can build me an outfit and then sponsor me to wear it for a day!
The sponsor form is at - www.justgiving.com/dressmeforcharity so when you donate money just write your clothes selection in the comments box.
You can check on the blog or the facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=393784670624) to see pictures of me wearing the outfits.
This is probably the craziest idea I’ve had to raise money so please get involved!
SPASIBA!