Ice walk

Walking on ice over the River Neva or a n-ice walk one might say Shelley. My puns are running dry, apols. I've walked over twice now, enough for me I think, could be third time unlucky.

More drawings, started doing some international journal editing too, which is great as I get to learn the background to the pieces of pottery I'm drawing. I hope to join the Hermitage archaeologists in August (all going to plan) for a minimum of 2 weeks to draw and dig at the site near Smolensk. It would feel like the conclusion to the experience, to go to the place where the pieces came from. I love that from such a long time ago, pre-farming, the creative desire can be observed in patterns on these pots. Drawing rope under a microscope on Wednesday, I never thought I be so excited about such a thing.

My local market which took ages to find, and hard for foreigners with good Russian, some things can be hard to see here due to small or non-existent signage. Fast food places and shops above ground level that appeared, particularly since 2000 are easy to see, but there are a lot of basement and unmarked places. Bought some lovely pears and a bit of cheddar

Went to see Boris Godunov at the St Petersburg opera, another modern version think I'll focus on to ballet and concerts. Gorgeous stage

Yusopov's Palace and the Rasputin murder tour, in Russian. I can understand quite a bit but speaking not so much T. Lots of false doors, I liked. I had Tati to translate for me too.

And the Artist's Union, where they had an exhibition of animal artists and an interesting courtyard

Below are some I overlooked from the week before. Jillian came over to bake banana bread and we drank champanskia (cheapo sparkling about 4 pounds a pop not bad), rather a good Monday. Apart from having to go to my Russian class after, tee hee. The weather was gorgeous.

A bundle of branches in my local park

Jillian in the kitchen-bathroom. The shower at margarita borisovna's is in kitchen. It's quite funny (planning permission violations and OH&S nightmare, where's Stef?), but people used to live in shared apartments and go to the banya to wash, so I guess showers were often squeezed in later. I LOVE the banya, steam room, pools, sauna and very hot showers.