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That friday feeling again.<br /><br />Six of us went to the biker café at lunchtime and ate at a low table in the corner sitting on bean-bags. The real bikers don't come 'til the evening, and the Russian rock music they play isn't too bad - a few guitar solos never did anyone any harm. It's more like a beer garden, and the girl who works there even puts on some pop music for us.

Ludicrous.

Jonathan Campion
2006-04-15 17:32:22

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That friday feeling again.

Six of us went to the biker café at lunchtime and ate at a low table in the corner sitting on bean-bags. The real bikers don't come 'til the evening, and the Russian rock music they play isn't too bad - a few guitar solos never did anyone any harm. It's more like a beer garden, and the girl who works there even puts on some pop music for us.

After classes I had my first lesson with Anya. I'm not sure who was more nervous to begin with: I had never taught English before, and she had never spoken it apart from at school. Her grammar is good but she speaks with a very thick accent, so I thought encouraging her to talk would be better than working from her textbook. We had a conversation about her family, about Yaroslavl, about Russia and what she knew about 'my country'. Then for the last ten minutes I explained to her how we tell the time - but realised half way through that I didn't know myself! To help me out she drew me a diagram (in English) on the blackboard. I'm proud that I was able to teach her just by having a chat on a sofa, not lecturing her and being strict as I get the impression her teachers do.

In the evening we found a Baltika tent, and while I was getting my round in - 250 roubles (about 5 pounds) for 15 plastic cups of Baltika beer - Bhavina and I met Mashrab. He joined us, where he told us for an hour about how much he loves MTV. We didn't believe that a boy from a village in Uzbekistan could be into hip-hop and r+b; but he proved us all wrong... by climbing onto our table and rapping two verses he wrote in Uzbek-Russian! He would have looked just as good in a million dollar rap video as he did outside a beer tent in northern Russia. Words don't really do him justice, I suppose you just had to be there.