I'm typing this while waiting for the next episode of Downton Abbey to finish streaming, so forgive me being distracted - I keep checking the progress. Since the last entry here, I've just had a list of bullet points of things I wanted to include, so I'll go through them pretty much in order and it will be hopelessly structure-less and nonsensical, but you're all wonderfully forgiving people so I'll get away with it.

The escalator at my home metro station (Timiryazevskaya, northern end of the grey line) takes nearly five minutes if you just stand on it, and is too steep to be worth walking up or down when carrying books etc - makes you horribly worn out on the way up, and I'm frightened of overbalancing and falling on the way down. So I just wait it out.

Nearly a month ago (is it really that long?) I went to a language club on Sunday evening, and got chatting to a chap from New Zealand, aged about 50, who introduced himself as Dave. We were talking, exchanging work stories (doing very similar jobs), and then he said "but I've just come back from Libya, you see..." I won't trouble you with the intricacies of the conversation, but we realised we had actually met in Tripoli. Very small world.

The aforementioned language club has kept me out of (or in? There is free beer...) mischief the last 3 Sunday evenings and I plan to go again this week. It's free, it's fun, I meet people. Doesn't take much to make me happy.

My wonderful college daughter from Durham, Lucy, put me in touch with a friend of hers from their journalism course last year, who has recently arrived in Moscow to work for Russia Today, one of the big news agencies / channels / things / don't know because I don't understand the world of journalism. Lynsey and I met up a couple of weeks ago the day after she arrived, and got along very well. She has since invited me over to her flat, where she cooked me a delicious dinner and I met 2 of her 3 South American male journalist flatmates. The only one I can really claim to have spoken to is Jorge, from Puerto Rico. We keep each other busy with banter battles, taking it in turns to win. Last Sunday Lynsey and Jorge came with me to the language club.

Denis, the enigmatic admin guy from the Inlingua office, has been very useful in helping David and I end the 3-week internet drought (which finally finished just a few evenings ago - I'm still in the honeymoon period of being reunited with my beloved internet), but alas Denis and I have wildly differing opinions on pretty much everything except the importance of the internet, and seem to be almost unable to keep a conversation calm. A couple of weeks ago we ended up having a 2-hour debate in Russian, about everything. The trustworthiness of various, or even any, news agencies, what counts as news and what's a waste of people's time, blood donation, the morality of the war in Libya, charitable donations or activities, politics, and even how to do laundry and get it dry. Of course, I knew I was right on all the subjects we covered, but I was only able to prove it with the laundry one. "Denis, who do you live with?" "My parents." "And who does the laundry?" "My mum." "I've spent most of the last 8 years living away from my parents and doing my own laundry. Do you think I might know what I'm talking about?" No answer.

David and I are getting along a bit better, but I'm not sure if that's because we're getting used to each other or because we see so little of each other that for each of us it's like living alone. Our conversations are generally more successful than the ones with Denis.

Enjoyable teaching moment: the word "hilarity" came up in the textbook, and Anastasia asked what it meant. I explained that it was a very funny situation. "Like Hilary Clinton?"

I've finally started my classes at Merril Lynch / Bank of America - 8 hours back-to-back, twice a week. It's hard work, and I'm exhausted at the end of it, but it's enjoyable, and I like all of my students. Even the one or two I wasn't sure I would particularly like have grown on me in the last 2 weeks and we all get along well. Everyone's very nice to me, and I virtually have my own PA as the room I teach in is between an important man's office and his PA's desk, and I teach both of them, so Sasha (the PA) quite frequently looks in on me between classes for a chat, to pass on bits of news, and offer me tea or coffee, as Konstantin has sent her to the kitchen to get him something anyway. So far I haven't taken her up on the offer. I would feel mean. The office is open plan and all the desks have those racks of computer screens that make them look like hoards of giant extra-skeletal creatures, like you see on the news when they're talking about money things. I've never been in an office like that before, and I don't have the first idea what any of them does (is Merril Lynch a bank? I don't know what they do!) and about half of my students tell me they work in the finance department (and none of my students there is below upper-intermediate level so they know what they're talking about), but this makes no sense to me as Merril Lynch is just one big finance department, isn't it? I swear I'm learning more than any of them - it's all business stuff and I have to study the teachers' book very carefully before each lesson just to understand the subject matter, but it's second nature to them. One of my advanced students told me he regularly reads the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal and only has minor comprehension problems. How am I supposed to teach him anything? I have major comprehension problems with the FT and have never dared try the WSJ.

Hannah has arrived - another teacher at Inlingua, has worked here previously (for Inlingua I mean), was also at Durham, and we have mutual friends, although we'd never met before. We get along very well. Which is just as well, really.

Russian winter is famous but really the autumn should be too. It rains a lot, and the idiots never built drains. Countries that rain a lot should know that large areas of flooded pavements etc cause severe problems to pedestrians. Particularly those who are trying to look smart because they have to go and work in Estee Lauder's HQ and look the part. There were similar problems in Libya, just more stormy there, and not so bitingly cold on your umbrella hand.

Last Saturday I was in a large bookshop (Dom Knigi for those who know and love Moscow) and saw a boy standing a couple of places in front of me in the queue. And I knew who he was. He was one of the Russian children I'd taught over the summer, at Dauntsey's, while working for EF. He didn't recognise me at first, but once I mentioned EF he knew who I was. We were both so surprised that neither of us really knew what to say, so we just had a slightly awkward conversation and then said goodbye.

One of my Merril Lynch students recommended me to a friend of his, who has now enlisted me as a private tutor (shhh) to her 13-year-old niece, who bizarrely lives on the same courtyard as me (for those unfamiliar with Russian apartment blocks - they're mostly built around courtyards which are full of children's playgrounds. I've never seen so many children's playgrounds anywhere else in the world), but alas our lessons have to happen in her Grandmother's flat, an hour away, due to the nature of both our timetables. I essentially help her with her English homework, which is from a pretty dire textbook, and then do some real teaching from a much better book I chose for her.

Dave, the guy from Tripoli, kindly took me along to a choir rehearsal last Tuesday evening after I finished at Merril Lynch, and it was good fun and I would dearly love to join, but alas I simply don't have time. I've been so exhausted this week, I don't think I can afford the time for 2 rehearsals a week, especially as the membership fee is 2500r (about £50).

I seem to have covered all my bullet points. And Downton Abbey has almost finished streaming. You will forgive me the haste with which this was written. At least I did it, I could have been lesson planning...