The End of The Beginning and The Beginning of The End

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I'm feeling pretty tired and my homework is doing my head in so while I wait for my macaronis (chakaronis) to boil it seems an opportune moment to kick back and post a new and well overdue nugget of moscow blogglington.

So put on your safety bloggles and prepare for another little trip through snowy wastes, past barking dogs and funky car alarms, to the humble little abode of Yours Truly and my trusty sidekick Glen, the one off of post number 1.

Weather or not you're interested

After promises since August that this is going to be the coldest winter ever according to indisputable scientifically proven meteorological true facts, on Monday it was still stubbornly 13 degrees C outside and I was a bit sweaty (a detail for the ladies). Here are some stimulating (mildly interesting/relevant) statistics:

"Russia is experiencing an unusually warm November, with four temperature records set in Moscow this month.

The capital reached a temperature of 12.3C on Monday, breaking the previous record of 11.7C set in 1923.

Meteorologists say temperatures have hovered around 10C above normal, due to warm air moving north from southern parts of Europe. The average temperature for this time of year is just 1.1C."

and, most importantly,

"The high temperatures have caused problems for wildlife according to ecologists. Hedgehogs and badgers have been unable to go into hibernation, while some species of red squirrel have not changed into their white winter coats."

The poor red squillies!

So the upshot of all this is that for those of you who hadn't guessed yet that stuff back in October about snow and bears roaming the streets, although partly true, was mostly bollocks.*

However, from 12 degrees on Monday it dropped to zero today plus wind and the latest is that it's going down another twelve for next Tuesday. So maybe my sweaty cynicism is a bit premature. It is still only mid November after all. Better get ma long johns on!

The next exciting piece of news is that Ostrich in Persian is camel-chicken! I've already told some people this in my excitement so if you're one of them and it's not news to you just chill your beans and skip this bit. If you study Persian you may say "Nay, it can also be translated as camel-bird" but firstly nay is what horses say and secondly camel-bird doesn't sound as good in my opinion. In Russian ostrich is strauss. Dunno why. Did Mr Strauss discover ostriches or did the first ostrich discovered look like him?

Apart from the fact that I'm not doing my dull and boring homework for tomorrow, and aside from exciting animal discoveries, my studies are going pretty well. In any case, whether they're going well or not is not really relevant to anyone, as basically whatever progress or not I am making I am a convenient tool to spur on my Russky peers either by the old prod "look how well mark is doing and he doesn't even know russian" or booster "look how badly mark is doing and he's from cambridge which is supposed to be good, well done, keep it up, he can't handle it here". This weekend I am entering myself into the all Russia Persian olympiad which will take place on 22nd and 23rd January 2011 so look out for me on the International BBC sports headlines as I wrestle my opponents to the ground.

I've not only been studying. My English teaching has been fun and "rewarding" although pretty tiring. My rich kids have gone off to the UK to have a stab at the common entrance, and today I almost took on some more refugees but I'm going to think about that because I don't actually have much time. I've also got myself a decent night job at a top secret nuclear bunker 60 metres beneath the ground:

my night time call-centre job at the Top Secret Nuclear Bunker

So, I've got a proper niche going on. I have some friends now and I know my way around pretty well, I even show Russian people to places. I've now thought I've finished with bureaucracy at least three times, so I won't say that again, as no doubt the time will come again to stand in another queue or two to take a piece of paper to tell one office in this building something from another office which they obviously couldn't have just told each other. But I have managed to set up my accommodation til the end of Jan for a haggled fee (kaching!), and my visa is being extended. My inter-window fridge is fully functional. I find it harder and harder to work out what is weird or hard or menacing or foreign about Moscow life, and now that I have Marmite, Lea and Perrin's and Frank Cooper's Oxford Marmalade from some generous friends, not to mention a hefty bottle of Scotch for when it really gets cold, apart from occasional late night longings for bacon it's difficult to remember what I missed so much about England to start with.

happy chappy

Obviously within reason though, because I will always miss my friends and family (gotta keep my readers sweet!) (joke, I do actually miss you!), but I mean the place. So it's the end of the beginning. The middle, really. And as such also...

The Beginning of the End of ma emgay ooo good times!

How and when this Russia bit of my year abroad ends depends on the beginning of the Iran bit. You could even say that the whole year will end up a bit of a weird hybrid linguistic ostrich (linguostrich) made up of camelrussia and chickenran. Sorting out the Iran bit has been another of my main occupations over the past months. I'm relatively confident I should get there eventually, and I'm hoping for early 2011. There's also a high chance now that I'm back in the UK for an as yet indefinite period of time from the end of January.

So much for what's past and what looms on the horizon. In the longer term, I've not made my investments on pots, pans, rugs, accommodation, work, a working timetable. Now, life is hectic and spontaneous, squeezed between lessons and homework, and firmly rooted in the present. I busy myself with meeting people of different ages and backgrounds and exploring different parts of the city and its population. I'm fortunate, as a poor student from an educated background doing a weird subject can mix with pretty much anyone -from Central Asian refugees to Naval Attaches- and I'm eager to get the most out of this. Moscow's an exhilarating place to live and I'm jogging to keep up. Life now is characterised by involuntary little smiles, as when I jog through the birch woods, the moonlight glinting off the leafy carpet, listening to the wolf-like howling of stray dogs, or, further down along the embankment of dilapidated concrete slabs, city lights glinting off lapping ripples, a lone workman welding on his makeshift platform.

*there had, in fact, been a couple of snowstorms, and there were also a couple of big fat old bears dressed in people clothes who came to visit me from England