Здраствнйте! I am still finding my feet here but Peterburg is treating me very well indeed. Fortunately, despite what I said in my last post, my classes did indeed start this week, meaning that I was able to meet all the other students and make some pals. I had my first night out here last night and crashed out on the surprisingly comfortable floor of said pals. This was not the fault of all the vodka consumed but instead because the only downside of living on Vasilievsky Island is that all of the bridges go up at night to let big ships through, leaving me stuck in da club on the wrong side.

In sum, almost everything is still extremely confusing but I am slowly learning to accept that there is nothing wrong with that. Before I left I always dismissed people's comments about how brave I was to be setting off into the unknown. However, during a stroll to the Winter Palace yesterday morning I realised that it is actually quite scary to move somewhere where you know no-one and not all that much of the language, but scary in the most exhilarating way imaginable. And when everything is just that bit too overwhelming or I am ever so slightly hungover, I always have a Russian cat to cuddle.