My Russian family

I have been planning to devote an entry to one of the major factors that have made my first months in Moscow such a success, which is the lovely Russian family that I have been living with. I know them through my colleague (and friend) Sergey Dorofeev (not to be confused with my other colleague and friend Sergey Shilnikov), who is a friend of Ilya.

The family Baryshev consists of mum Svetlana, her sons Ilya (21) and Sasha (20), Svetlana's brother Gena, and two cats. They succeeded in making me feel at home from the moment I arrived. Svetlana has become some sort of second mother to me, cooking for me, taking care of me when I was ill, and helping me improve my Russian. Despite the fact that she only speaks Russian, I am really happy that we managed to get along the way we do. Ilya and Sasha are both great as well. They have been extremely kind to me, helping me settling in in Moscow by showing me around the city, meeting their friends (who have now also become my friends) and helping me in so many different ways. A good example of this was Ilya coming with me early in the morning on my last day in Moscow to buy some souvenirs after he had been out all night. They have become some sort of combination of brothers / friends to me. Gena is also a great guy. Always smiling, joking around and up for anything between drinking a beer or reading Russian poetry together (and trying hard to explain it to me). I have a love/hate relationship with the two cats. On the one hand they can be very funny when they play around, while on the other hand they can get on my nerves when making noise throughout the night and their hairs.

I count myself very lucky that I was able to live with the Baryshev family for over two months. Apart from being great people, they have allowed me to get to know Russia far better than I would have had I lived on my own.

Update

Well I guess I owe it to my one and only true reader Agust to keep this blog vaguely up to date, so this will be the first of hopefully a couple of posts filling him in on what has been going on in Moscow over the past month.

For now, suffice to say that I am in Brussels at my parents' house, celebrating Christmas with them and my sister. Got back on Saturday, although I nearly did not make it onto the flight. For the first time I was confronted directly with the phenomenon of overbooking a flight. I thought this only existed in Africa (where apparently passengers are made to run three laps around the plane to see who are the lucky ones that get a seat), but guess that is not the case. Arrived at the check-in and got a little suspicious when a procedure that usually takes three minutes took at least ten. At first I thought it was the incompetent guy checking me in, but after having waited for ten minutes (without being told anything, in the true old-fashioned kind of providing services in Russia) I started asking questions. Turned out the airline had overbooked the flight by about 20 seats. Unfortunately for the guy, I speak some Russian now and I really wanted to fly home. So he had to endure a rant in a mix of Russian and English. No idea if it helped, but I did get my ticket and that is all that matters really.

After a rather uneventful three hour flight I arrived in Brussels. Was really glad to see my parents and sister again! Will spend Christmas here and travel to London on Thursday to celebrate New Year there with some of the Warwick crew which should be great.

After that, I will work from Brussels during January as I wait for my visa for Russia to come trough as I have agreed a one year contract with Lighthouse! Very excited and happy that I will get to work in Russia for at least another year!