Am I back? Well, sort of...

The holidays are over (for us, anyway), the Potski family are back in Moscow, and Boys #1 and #2 are back in school which, after 9 weeks with them 24/7 is - I have to admit - a bit of relief.

It's not that I don't enjoy spending time with my children, you understand.

Just that it's quite nice have a bit of time myself.

I have a long list of stuff I need to get sorted, not least of which is editing Draft #1 of The Great Work*, and which I have promised myself I will have finished by the end of September.  There's other stuff happening too; planning for the future, putting the pieces in place to make that future possible, and of course, losing the holiday weight.

I know, I know.  You're supposed to lose weight over the summer months, not gain it, but put yourself in my shoes; I live in Moscow.  7 weeks of being away from Russia and the somewhat limited treats available here and then, come the end of June, being thrown into a life where suddenly fresh French bread and croissants are on the table every day for breakfast, delicious Dutch deep fried treats are available as appetisers to accompany all that gorgeous and reasonably priced wine back in the EU, not to mention un-fettered access to Green & Black's salted milk chocolate when we were in the UK...  It was never going to end well, was it?


*Not its' real title, obv...

J'accuse...

I started my month-long intensive Russian course yesterday morning.  On Sunday night I had the following conversation with my Husband, who speaks the language fluently.  (Of course.  Ruddy annoying, I can tell you.)  Anyway...

Me:  "The thing I'm really worried about is the cases (fyi, there are 6 of them in Russian, including Accusative, Dative, Genetive and Nominative), because that's what did for me last time when I tried to learn it.  I always hated them, even when I was 14 and trying to learn German at school."

Husband:  "I think you might be overestimating how much you're going to learn on this course.  It's only 4 weeks - you won't even reach that level of difficulty.  Don't worry about it."

Me:  "That's the best news I've had all week."

I arrived at the language centre yesterday morning to find that after my pre-course assessment test, I had been dropped into an existing beginners class - 3 weeks in.

And the very first word that the teacher wrote on the white board?

'Akusativ'

Marvellous.

Staging my own intervention; 'If it is to be...

... it is up to me.'

Cliched, huh?  That's certainly what I thought 2 years ago when this was trotted out by someone at the Boys' school in a speech made to children and parents at the start of term.  And yet, I heard it again yesterday - from the same person - and it struck a chord.

Expats everywhere will know peers who refuse to engage with their local environment.  They hide away from the reality of where they are living, simply existing from one holiday to the next, and not venturing out to see what lies beyond their temporary front door.

I get that.  I understand that.  We all feel like that sometimes.  And I have to admit, I'm struggling at the moment.  Struggling to regain my equilibrium in a hard-to-live-in city, in a country that I don't know I'll still be living in one year from now, 1500 miles from my family and friends.  

We just returned from a fantastic break with a summer spent taking it slowly, away from the battle of the daily Moscow grind.  Sure, I was still food shopping, cooking and washing, sorting socks, packing and unpacking and repacking every week or so, travelling through airports, train stations and car hire outlets,  fitting in 6 months' worth of dental and doctors appointments, stocking up on any school uniforms, children's shoes and underwear we are likely to need before Christmas, and then working out how the hell to cram it all into our suitcases and stay within the weight limit for the airlines, but ultimately we were on holiday, and somehow that made it all OK.

Now, though, we're back in Moscow and even though the thermometer hit 27degC today, I know that in around 8 short weeks we'll have freewheeled down and be bumping along the bottom of the scale for a short while before we nose-dive below 0degC around mid-November and then don't come up above it again until the middle of April next year.

Add to that the fact that the start of the school year is earlier here than it is back home - we're in the first week of term already - and despite the fact that I'm majorly in denial about the shortness of the summer (wearing every short sleeved dress I own in turn until it's too damn cold not to), I'm already experiencing GroundHog Day type symptoms.

However.

I may have less than one year left in Russia.  That in itself is a scary thought (what - and where - next?), but I refuse to let this year pass in blur of worry and wishing I was somewhere else.  Why live somewhere like this, surrounded by the wonderful people I do, if you don't push yourself out there and experience it all properly?  

So I'm staging my own intervention.  I've signed myself up for a months' 4 hours a day, 5 days a week Russian course (the straw that broke the camel's back on this one was not being able to understand a telephone operator at the company we buy our drinking water from - not my finest moment after living here nearly 4 years), so that whatever else happens in the next 10 months or so, I may at least be able to make myself understood.

I am going to enjoy this year.  I am.  But like the man said; if it is to be...

And in other news...

Both the Boys are now well and truly back in school; we're just over a week into the new term, and things seem to be settling down considerably after a summer of European nomadism.

Boy #1 is chafing a little under the yoke of daily homework but is getting on with it manfully - most of the time.  He's been given 100 multiplication questions each day this week so far, but before you gasp at a still 8 year old dealing with that AND an English comprehension exercise, you should know that they were all on the 2 x table.  Consequently, he breezed through them in less than 15 minutes which a) completely validated my efforts to keep his maths head intact over the summer, if I do say so myself and b) led to an admission on his part that actually, perhaps the time we spent doing that was not completely wasted.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is a result.

Boy #2 is now well into Grade 1 (Year 2 for those in the British system) and whilst I have yet to see evidence of homework for him, there are other ways in which he is showing his new 'grown-up' status.  Joining the local soccer league for the first time last week was one of them; if I've ever seen a small boy prouder to put on shin pads, football boots, and team strip before racing around the pitch for 40 minutes or so as one of a tight knot of players who followed the ball everywhere like flies around honey (whilst the rest of the pitch was eerily empty), I can't remember it.

There are other ways he seems to be growing up, too.  Yesterday he told me that the girls in his class use 'the kissing defence'.  I've yet to get to the bottom of this one; defence against what, I wonder?  Boys being boys?  Or are the girls in question following that old adage that the best form of defence is attack?  Who knows.  Whatever, it put me in mind of a conversation a friend had with her 5 year old son recently.

"I'm going to marry Susie" he told her seriously.  "Really, darling?  That's nice."  "Yes.  Well - she's not who I originally wanted to marry.  First I wanted to marry Paul.  But we changed our minds when we realised that if we did that, we would have to adopt."


Thankyou very much, I'll be here all week...