Apologies for horrendous delay

Phew! I have done 700 million things in the last few days. The Russians really really love charging you loads of money, and making it an enormous hassle for you in the process as well. Bastards bastards bastards :) but I love them.

I am getting a flat! Very exciting. It's wee and lovely and right on Sennaya Ploshad which is an absolutely amazing area, millions of wee weird places to go and millions of equally weird people wandering around. It's excellent. For the first month Becky and I will live there with its current tennant, a woman called Maria who is the niece of the woman who owns it. She is qualified to teach Russian and took the piss out of us magnificently yesterday for not knowing any vocab and pronouncing everything completely wrong. It is going to be a challenging but very worthwhile month I suspect.

I have made some barmaid friends close to where some pals live. They are wonderful and so nice and SO patient about my still highly shite Russian. They want to learn English though so having them talk almost as much bollocks as me is quite nice. They let us stay there until 3 in the morning. It's really fun.

I saw the bridges open last night. It looks utterly unbelievable. I also had a really gay moment along one of the canals, it was all lit up and so gorgeous and all the buildings on either side of it were so amazing and it just reminded me that I am living in this city and that it is SPECTACULAAAR.

I really can't remember anything else I've done. And I'm not going to ramble because it will be really boring. Thank you to anyone who reads this, and I hope you're all happy and healthy as bumblebees.

All going swimmingly :)

I really really really really really really love it here. It hit me that this is literally a holiday year. Yeah I'll be going to uni and stuff but I get Fridays off therefore can go away for long weekends every week pretty much and have a very tolerable number of hours (well, I assume, Becky has my timetable because I couldn't go in today due to puking central this morning, but I feel better now it's fine).

Everyone I've met is so lovely. Lida is GORGEOUS and so nice and I'm going to try and get her to move in with Tatum and me after New Year. Also all the ones going to the uni are fab, Becky, Duncan, Tomasz, Duncan's crazy German housemate, Hamad, Josh..and loads more. Met some people going to the Benedict's School as well who are all lovely.

On Saturday night I went out with Lida and her boyfriend and a few of her other pals. They were brill and didn't mind how totally shite I was at attempting to natter in Russian. They all seem to have amazing English so any time I'm clearly talking complete balls they can correct me and stuff. I was very proud my second night here was solely with Rooskys :)

Otherwise I've just been wandering about the place with people really. Had our registration day at uni yesterday and I'm very pleased to say that after our test thingy I got put in Group 2 with Becky and Duncan. Go the retards yay!

We went out last night and all I can say is wow St Petersburg nightlife..and I haven't even been clubbing yet!! Also WOW guess what the first concert I go to in Russia is going to be..Tiesto on Saturday night! Yeooo!!!!

This year is going to be good.

First night...

I LOVE IT here. At first I was down to live with a woman who wasn't actually aware that somebody was meant to be coming to live with her. First obstacle. Then I saw that she had a horribly enormous ginger feline. Having put down on my form that animals cause my entire head to explode, I didn't really fancy staying there. So I swapped with Iwona and have ended up in a gorgeous apartment with a couple and their 20 year old daughter Lida, 5 minutes away from the Hermitage!! They are apparently planning on purchasing a cat creature in the near future... I'm sure I'll be able to persuade them otherwise with my drunken charm tomorrow night when Lida's taking me out on the town hooray.

Am missing everyone horribly but am really excited about the next year. It's really cool having another young'un to live with and bring me out (she also studies at the State Uni so we can go in together). She also speaks English which is good and bad but I am here to rant away in Rus so I'm sure I won't take advantage of her bilingualness too much.

Meeting Will on the Nevskii Prospekt at half 10 tomorrow. Exploring a plenty will be done!!