I am here! I have to be quite quick as I am in a rather expensive internet cafe, so this may be all in a jumble and rather difficult to read.

As yet I don't have a Russian phone, it seems you need to fill in all sorts of forms to get one, and I don't fancy doing that just yet.

My hostess is lovely. She's probably in her fifties, has a grown up son who is married, and she has had 3 husbands. She is utterly obsessed with healthy eating, I am encouraged to eat cooked vegetables at all three meals, but I normally manage to avoid them for breakfast. We speak Russian the whole time, although she knows just about enough English to help me out if I get really stuck. The flat is comfortable and homely. My room is small but fine, I have an excellent view over top the mountains the other side of the river - I think we have an "excursion" there next week.

Lessons are fine, we have several teachers, and one of them is taking us to an exhibition of fur coats tomorrow. I desperately want a fur coat, but I have no ide4a if they're likely to be afforable or not.

Food is interesting. I was given fish mince on the first day, which was pretty horrible (don't try it at home), but not as bad as the beef pancake I was given yesterday, which I just couldn't swallow. I had to wrap it in a napkin and take it away with me to throw away somewhere else. Then Ruth ate it... Nick is being given two steaks for breakfast every day and another large meal whenever he shows his face, so his most dreaded word is "кушай" (eat!) and he doesn't really want food the rest of the time.

Lucy and I are both in the same area outside the main bit of the city, it's called Академгородок which means academic mini city. It's a really nice area, lots of plots of woodland, very quiet, my route to classes each day takes me right through 2 patches of woodland (a mixture of silver birch asnd fir), it's about a 20 minute walk. Lucy and I are running ever other morning, and Lucy is an a strange accomodation situation wherreby, after many confusing conversations and near-arguments with her host (I have been involved in several of these as well), it transpires that his wife DOES ACTUALLY EXIST and was just on holiday - why didn't he tell us? And she only came back yesterday. So he is moving back into the nbormal flat with her and Lucy gets the guest flat to herself, which is very convenient for the rest of us as it is just over the road from the building where we have our classes, so we can all cook lunch there together every day (pelmeni cost about 40p for 3 or 4 meals' worth).

Time is adding up... more soon, probably some time nest week. Lots of love to all. xxx