Pompey to Moscow....how hard can it be?: Confusion with the Russian psyche...

Our Metro stop 'Hunter's Row' - pronounced 'Okhotny Ryad'

I admit to some confusion when it comes to understanding the Russian mind set. Having explored the wonders of the Tsars, then experienced a Stalinist park in celebration of communism and then watching a banned communist rally from my window, I feel unable to narrow these people down. They have lived through many types of government and yet it would seem that at this moment in time they are teetering on the edge of a world of lost identity. Where do the people of Russia today belong? If you get rid of your history, banish it to a corner then you must be careful of what will take its place (Putin..?!). I find it weird that people here would hold up a picture of Stalin in adoration and yet for some people, those times were the most certain that they had experienced for a long time and they felt looked after by the communist state so they are willing to forget an atrocity or two. Heh, it's not that simple and the Russian is a complex beast so I judge not - but because I'm English, I like to put things in neat boxes and label people as our history and government is fairly straight forward with few extremes....well, I just want to know more about your typical Ruskie....my curiosity is on high alert. I have asked many long term expats and also a few Russians to try and explain the Russian psyche but no one is able - it is a mystical beast that you can only guess at and most have told me that by the time I leave I will still not have a grasp of this elusive thing. I shall keep searching though....

Good old Communist Rally!

On the subject of our good old mucker Stalin, there is a building being renovated next to Red Square - it is from a design that was signed off by Stalin when he was still leader and has a very funny story (funny now, not so funny then...) attached to it. The architects gave Stalin two designs for him to choose but he didn't realise and so signed off on both of them. The architects and designers were too frightened to tell Stalin that he had made a mistake and so they built the building with one design used on one half and the other design on the other half! I hope that you can see the different halves in my picture -

Left and right sides different designs....

Most of the main streets have Stalinist buildings where the older buildings were demolished. There are still some beautiful older buildings down the side streets which I much prefer -

I have started my Russian Lessons with Olga - I did spend the first hour and a half thinking of ways to throw myself from the window as it dawned on me how similar Russian is to Latin. I remember in my first Latin lesson at Uni, the teacher said that Latin was like a mathematical crossword puzzle and thinking - 'oh well, that's me done for then' - anything being similar to Maths is just not going to get past the guards in my head. I felt like I was back in class at the age of 13, reading out bad Cyrillic and getting flustered by letters and words that the day before I knew fine but now in a test situation my mind had gone blank. I do understand the way the language is constructed though because of Latin and so she commented that I was already very knowledgeable and this seemed to excite her but made me tremble in horror as the grammar is so complex that I think I will spend every lesson trying to remember what has to agree with the subject, the object and what ending the adverb has - holy cow. Graeme and I are having separate lessons and Olga is teaching us completely differently. As I have studied many languages before, I have a need to start with grammar and then to build on top of this - unfortunately, learning this way does hinder the amount you are able to speak in every day conversations. Graeme on the other hand is being taught useful sentences to memorise and has been told that they will try and avoid complex grammatical situations! I think that Graeme will probably be babbling away much sooner than I as I'm such a stickler for detail in Grammar which will no doubt be my undoing! I'll be trying to conjugate verbs at the shop and the shop keeper would have served 40 people by the time I remember the right ending. Anyway, at least we are trying and I did enjoy my lesson and using my rather cobweb filled brain! Graeme was sitting in bed trying to learn his homework last night and so I called him a teachers pet to which he replied ' If you are going to do something then you must try and be the best you can at it' - oh blah blah blah, turn the light off GEEK! I get the feeling Olga is going to prefer the 'Committed Graeme ' to the ' Lazy Chloe'.

Arthur is well, growing taller by the second and causing chaos around the house - he's decided that going to sleep at 7pm is too late and so he usually goes to bed at 6.30pm and then sleeps until 7am! Children go to bed quite late here, in fact you still find children in the parks at 10pm and so I think people think we are a bit strange for Arthur's early bedtime but I can't keep him awake any longer! He has a good hour and a half sleep at lunchtime so I think he has taken after his mother in his love for bed. Good lad! His art and music classes at nursery are going well - the head teacher was impressed that he can concentrate on a puzzle for up to 20 minutes by himself - unlike his mother who has the attention span of a gnat. He is still just babbling words - we realised the other day that he was saying a Russian word but because we didn't know it we thought he was just talking jibberish. I think his brain is slowly trying to distinguish the two languages and I am awfully jealous of the fact that he will speak Russian like a native and will not have moments wondering what endings go where. I declared out loud to Graeme yesterday that I thought Arthur would grow up and then get recruited as a spy because of his fluency in Russian and then he would never be able to tell us and then he would get shot and we would never know all the brave and wonderful things he had done in the name of Great Britain! Yes, my friends, I have the ability to go from 0 to 100 when my brain gets going! I'm watching two spy related programmes at the moment and reading a spy thriller - hence my spiral into crazy land. I always wanted to be a spy - yeah, yeah to all the people that know me and are now laughing hysterically at the thought of big mouth Guthrie actually managing to keep something secret. You don't know, I might have always been a spy and this is a double bluff...errrr, no I don't think so. As soon as anyone threatened torture i'd be - ' So, those secrets I said I knew nothing about...well, if you pass me a computer i'll give you the codes of how to blow up Britain with one button. Now, where can I get a nice cup of tea.'

I'll finish with a few videos and pictures of Arefei (supposedly the Russian equivalent of Arthur ) and wish you all well and good day....

Art Class with Daddy again...

He has found a new place to sit and contemplate the complex differences of Russian and English...