Rosy has asked me, her mother, to bring her blog up to date as she has been unable to get onto the internet for weeks so we've been having long talks on Skype to mobile.Mostly she seems quite happy, though has been a bit homesick when there wasn't enough to keep her busy; she has mostly been very well. All the members of the group continue to look after one-another which is lovely and very reassuring.

Communications and casinos
I'm not quite sure what the problem is with getting access to the internet; I think just that there aren't many internet cafes and they are expensive. It is also somewhat un-nerving to a westerner to be followed into one by two policemen who stand behind you for the entire duration of your time online watching everything you do. This is probably because the authorities have closed down all the casinos in the city, but some have re-invented themselves as internet cafes, so the police are watching them carefully to make sure no gambling goes on.Rosy and her friends have also noticed that sometimes their telephone calls appear to be being intercepted, but their hosts say this is normal and nothing to worry about! No more jokes about going to a fancy dress party as Marx (actually Groucho not Karl) and the Queen of Spades - that might be misunderstood!

Language and social life
Rosy and one of the other girls got sent to a (former) gulag actually, one that is used as a summer camp. First impressions were pretty grim, but they ended up having a lovely time.They went to help teach English on an immersion course, mostly for 18-20 year olds.She said this was the first group of young Russians they had met who were both normal and nice - up till then they were either too clingy and possessive, expecting Rosy & co to spend every minute of their spare time with them; or they just stood around a bit too close, in silence, grinning at them.But this lot they felt entirely comfortable with.

She and the others with her from Durham are all finding that they have not made as much progress as they hoped they would have done by now in improving their spoken Russian, largely because the classes have been a bit disorganised so they are being resourceful: she and Philly been going to a church that meets in a theatre; it's a sort of Russian Holy Trinity Brompton, with a congregation of 600 of all ages, and they have joined house-groups.She has found that listening to a visiting preacher from, say, Canada, having his sermon translated sentence by sentence a good way of improving her Russian; ditto singing repetitive choruses!She has been to the cinema a lot, including an all-night session starting at midnight (3 films back to back; she says this is a very Russian thing to do!); and she has seen the new James Bond film in Russian with Russian friends.She was going to a dance class with another friend.

Cultural differences
They have been to concerts and the ballet….but when invited to a social evening at a Christian English-speaking club they found the people terribly serious and easily shocked - they couldn't understand one another's sense of humour at all. (The other thing that seems to shock all Russians everywhere is the sight of anyone sitting on the ground, or even on a low wall... -why?) They are finding Russian men a bit of a nuisance - still a lot of kerb-crawling and unwelcome attention to endure. She finds this hard to understand because all the Russian women they meet are desperate to catch a man (the ratio is something like 800 men to 1000 women) so they spend enormous amounts of time and money on their appearance, and are very critical of English girls for not dolling themselves up all the time. Hence a conversation with (I think) Rosy's landlady about our queen when she was young: "she was ugly and did not deserve to have caught a man". Rosy tried to explain that no, she was the perfect English rose, young and naturally pretty, and that a lot of heavy makeup and glamorous clothes would have spoiled the look; but to no avail.

Rosy said how sad it is that most young women are just longing for a baby, but cannot get a man; and even those who do marry often only have one child because the flats are so tiny, and their marriages often end in divorce. This has been going on for two generations now, so most people do not have uncles and aunts or cousins; the extended family does not exist. They have found it quite extraordinary that Rosy has 11 cousins and another on the way.

TV interview
Rosy was chosen as the spokesperson for an interview on the local news channel.But she had no warning and was mortified because she had bad spots that day and no time to cover them up!

Rosy & co got fed up with being given funny looks whenever they smile and say please or thank you in shops, so they tried doing their shopping with Russian manners - sullen, pointing at things and saying "Give me that" or "I want a …". Instant relaxation and friendliness. They have explained to Sacha (Lucy's host) who is very keen to improve his English, that in western Europe we all say please and thank you the whole time - it is expected, compulsory and much appreciated. He refuses to co-operate.

The Russian for a ladybird is "God's cow".

Food - always very important to Rosy!
You can get Earl Grey tea everywhere, the bread is excellent, varied and substantial; she has learned to like buckwheat in various forms, and they often make beetroot soup which is very filling.She was given some very nasty meat she couldn't identify - there were lots of tiny bones with pale meat on them, discs of flat bone in between - so it must have been the tail of something - but what???They often all meet at Lucy's flat to cook lunch together.

Travel plans
Thanks to bad organisation the trip to Mongolia will sadly not now take place - they were told to get the wrong sort of visas in the first place, but getting them altered took so long that it is now too late (cold) and too expensive to go. Rosy & co are furious about this, as they mostly chose to go to Kras for the sake of that trip…but they are going to Lake Baikal. The train leaves at 3am and arrives at 10pm. They will be in 3rd class trucks - open plan with bunks lined up along the sides, and tourists are not really supposed to travel on them because of the rough company (mostly soldiers) they may meet. But Rosy & co will all be together in the same carriage, so they should be alright. At least there is a loo and a hot water urn in each truck. They will be staying in a village on the lake shore; some will ski, Rosy says she will try out the sauna.They will also visit Irkutsk. And they have begun planning their return journey to the UK: they will take the train back to Moscow and fly from there, but stop in Perm (where Rosy spent such a happy time in her gap year) and Novosibiersk on the way, probably for 24 hours each. Plus a couple of nights in Moscow, funds permitting.

The media - state controlled
Rosy says the reporting of news from Europe is very limited and unbalanced.For example one week the only thing she saw reported was that one of the Princesses (Eugenie?) had visited an orphanage in Rumania, so there was a photograph of her crying.Another week the report was of a man in Southshields or somewhere equally insignificant who had lost his dog.Even if he had bitten it, it was hardly the most important thing to report. The group have only heard about the banking crisis from their parents. Putin visited Kras recently. The papers reported that the people were terribly happy to see him, lining the streets to welcome him, and the traffic system was so marvellous there was no disruption. In reality people were saying they hate him and complained about the horrendous traffic jams that prevented them going about their normal business.

I recommend looking at Krasnoyarsk on Google Earth. The area where she lives, to the west of the city centre, is in very poor resolution, but you can see that it is fairly wooded. It is fun clicking on the camera icons to see people's photos of the squares and streets she walks along every day - she pointed out the cafes and cinema they go to; their usual meeting point is either Lenin's statue or the fountains in Theatre Square; the building where she works is very near there.The church in a theatre is between Red Square and the railway station.

She will be home around 20th December, and leaves for 6 months in Cairo at the end of January