From a year of revolution to a year of … more revolution?

Once again, I have been slack in getting down to this. I'm telling myself it's because my life is just so exciting; you can believe that too if you want. Having said that, my life is a little more exciting at the moment than it has been previously.

In early December, I went home for 10 days - ostensibly to get a new visa. I didn't do anything particularly exciting, just enjoyed the comforts of home, and went to see the new Twilight film at the cinema. Make of that what you will. Izzi and I laughed most of the way through it, as did the 6 other people in the cinema. I returned to Moscow a fortnight before Western Christmas, and went straight back into work, which was easier than I expected.

On the Thursday before Christmas, I was teaching at Bank Of America / Merrill Lynch. When I arrived in the morning, I greeted Sasha as I passed her desk, and then started setting up as usual. After a few moments, I looked up when I saw people approaching the classroom out of the corner of my eye. Expecting it to be my first 4 students of the day, I was confused when I saw students whom I teach in the afternoon, and couldn't work out what was going on. More and more of my students, from all times of day, came into the conference room that I teach in, and stood there making small talk. I slowly backed into a corner by the window, trying to cover up my desperate thought process of "is there something I've forgotten about? Do I need to take charge in this situation? WHAT'S GOING ON?" until finally Nina came in, looked quickly around the assembled crowd, and called for quiet. She made a short speech that basically said "Happy Christmas and thank you for teaching us", with some heckling from some of the others (who knew Russians could heckle?), notably Ilya, who found it necessary to translate into Russian for me in case I hadn't understood, and then they gave me some wonderful presents, which they'd clearly chosen carefully. They gave me a big, beautifully decorated children's book about the history of Father Christmas and of how Christmas has been celebrated in Russia over the years (in Russian - it'll be a serious read when I get around to it!) and one of the traditional woollen shawls with flowers on them. I had 2 already and love them; this one is in colours which go perfectly with a lot of my work clothes, so I am happy. And have worn it almost every day since. I was a little overwhelmed, and must admit to having felt a tear come to my eye…

Christmas Day was just an ordinary Sunday for Russia, so I tottled off to Church in the morning, which was very empty because most people had gone home for Christmas. Then at 2pm the language club I go to had a "Christmas special" - we got free mulled wine and played a silly version of Secret Santa, whereby everyone had to bring something they already possessed but didn't want any more. I almost ended up with a horrendous, fluorescent cuddly toy, but was thankfully relieved of it (complicated rules - you could steal presents off other people - just why Liza reckoned she wanted that thing is beyond me, but I was incredibly grateful when she took it) and ended up with a gadget I didn't understand. Something to do with Bluetooth and GPS. I spent a quiet evening in my flat with a film, as far as I remember. The next Tuesday, my friend Mairi Jane came over and we made imitation Christmas Dinner together - and were impressed with the result, as it proved difficult to get a lot of the necessary things.

Many of you already know about the issues I had with David prior to him moving out; for those of you who don't, suffice to say it was unpleasant, I shan't go into it here. But he moved out rather suddenly over Christmas weekend and took the last of his belongings a few days later. Just in time for Frances and Izzi to arrive for New Year…

On the evening of 28th December, I spent a long time entertaining myself at Domodedovo airport, while Frances and Izzi were trapped on a plane that hadn't found a bus to take them to the terminal building, or something … and then while the passport control people didn't believe that Izzi was the same person as her passport … but they made it in the end. We took the airport express train to the city centre, and then the metro from there to my flat, ate pelmeni (well I had to welcome them in true Russian style), and went to sleep. Fortunately, all my Merrill Lynch classes were off that week so I had Thursday free, Friday was my last working day and as it turned out, all but one of my students cancelled that day so I only had to work for an hour and a half the whole time they were here. I won't attempt to go over everything we did, but we did a lot of fun things and ate a lot of delicious food. On 2nd January we took the train out of Moscow to the north, to SergievPosad -the nearest of the Golden Ring cities. Look it up. It was there that Panda Curry was invented, but I'm afraid you won't find that on Wikipedia, and if I tried to explain it now I suspect I'd end up with one of you kind people consigning the three of us to a loony bin. Or maybe 3 separate loony bins to prevent any further ridiculousness. Observations on changes at SergievPosad since I was last there 10 years ago: a) there is still a McDonalds opposite the main entrance to the monastery; b) there is still lots of snow; c) the icy hill the monastery is built on is less treacherously slippery, and I managed to avoid sliding down it whilst dragging a market-lady's stall of matrioshki with me; d) it's gone up-market a bit and there are posh expensive shops selling posh expensive icons etc. in various places inside the complex; e) the toilets have improved greatly. It's now possible to walk in without being forcibly repelled by a wall of stench that makes you violently sick.

For midnight itself on New Year, we tried to get to Red Square, but weren't allowed on in the end - we never found out exactly why - so settled instead for a friendly crowd in good view of the Bolshoy Theatre. On the metro on the way there, we were pleasantly surprised by the company we found ourselves in. Never before have I seen Russians being so extroverted, happy and friendly in public to people they don't know. While waiting on the platform, when the train arrived, everyone cheered and waved at the driver, so he tooted the horn and waved. It was fab and we laughed a lot. With a lot of people we didn't know. Very shortly after midnight we returned to my flat and had a feast of "olivye" salad (a Russian favourite), more champagne, lavash bread, etc. etc. Frances made friends with some Russians from my balcony … with no common language, and 8 floors between them. It was noisy. The next day we spent the afternoon sliding around Gorky Park and playing with the army of snowmen which some of you may have seen on the BBC news website sometime around then.

After the Panda and the Bhuna left, I felt a little bereft for a few days, while I adjusted to living alone for the first time in my life (David had left so shortly before they arrived that it didn't really count). It's taken me a while to get used to it really, but I'm learning to accept that most noises are from the various neighbours and not from intruders. I'm quite enjoying the independence, but it's clear that living alone isn't something I should include in my long-term life plan. It doesn't really suit me all that well.

After weeks and weeks of ridiculously warm weather which rarely dropped below minus 2 and rained far too often, it finally got a little colder about a week ago, and has stayed that way since. For the last few days it's been in the region of minus 10. Still unusually warm for this time of year, but an improvement on the disgusting weather we had before (it was slushy the whole time, the air was damp, and everything was permanently dirty). I've remembered about the terrible gap you get between your hat and your scarf, around your ears, and that it can get quite painfully cold. And if the wind's blowing, your whole face freezes. Ouch. Time to get the furqa out. I'm torn between my two coats - my pukhovik (closest English translation would probably be a duvet coat - it's stuffed with 100% feathers and down and has a raccoon fur collar) which covers my legs almost to the tops of my boots, or my fur coat which is warmer than the pukhovik but only comes to just above my knees and tends to flap in the wind, so I get very cold legs. Just realised how pretentious it sounds to be complaining about a fur coat - DISCLAIMER: I bought it for £25 on Ebay. There isn't a huge amount of snow at the moment, but there is some, and fortunately it is still clean even after several days, because it's cold enough.

Russian Christmas (7th January) was also a bit of a non-event for me, and right now I can't remember a single thing about it. Maybe that was the day I met up with Mark (new colleague) and we walked around the centre and went to the Soviet Statue Cemetery (loads of fun) and then went to the cinema with a couple of other friends. Having never been to the cinema in Moscow before, I've now been twice in quick succession. First, 4 of us went to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier,Spy in English and couldn't follow it at all. Then last night a different 4 went to see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo in Russian and got it pretty perfectly. What does this say about the state of our brains?

Last Friday evening was Old New Year. Yes, you read it right. Old New Year. The Russians are greedy and want two of everything - 2 Christmasses, 2 New Years … I can't keep up. It's because of the Orthodox Church working on a different calendar to most of the rest of the world. I have, however, discovered that my birthday is a public holiday in Russia - it's Protection Day or something. Basically men's day.Army day. Wahoo!

Work continues pretty much as usual, with a couple of minor changes. I no longer teach at Estee Lauder, as they've had to cut all staff training for the next 6 months. It's sad, but it does make my Monday and Wednesday evenings a little easier. I've also thankfully lost the one student I didn't get along well with, he's going to have a new teacher and I'm keeping the other 2 in his class. Their attendance rates have shot up since he left. No comment. I'm trying to plan a themed lesson to tie in with Burns' Night next week, but with the internet in the flat suddenly deciding to go down, that could be easier said than done. I'll do my best though. With several of my classes I've been teaching a unit entitled "Story", which covers various things including jokes. My acting skills are getting tested as I have to find the same jokes funny every time I teach them. However, none of them has made me laugh as much as the surprise Somerset accent which came up in a listening extract a week or so ago. I lost all control.

My classroom in Merrill Lynch is a conference room at one end of a large open-plan office containing the trading department, the HR department and maybe others but those are the ones I know about. It's a rectangular room - the 2 short walls are solid, one of the long walls is an outside wall and has 2 windows in it looking onto the Aurora Marriott Hotel, and the other long wall is made entirely of glass and looks over the rest of the office. I can also see into part of the director of BAML Russia's office (one of my students … definitely not a name-drop…) and all of another conference room. I tend to forget that people can see everything I do when I'm in my fishbowl, and occasionally catch myself demonstrating a piece of vocab which, to someone not part of the lesson, would look utterly bizarre. The best moments are when the big important people are having meetings in the other conference room. One morning this week I realised that the 2 very serious (might not be, I've never spoken to them, but they work in BAML so they must be, right?) British guys in the meeting opposite both looked over at me just as I held up a piece of paper which said "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" in large letters.

On Monday evening my cousin Alice is coming to stay for a week, which will be lots of fun as long as I can keep on top of things! And then it'll only be 6 weeks till the end of my stay in Moscow, and the rest of the world will await me…