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February 22nd 2018, Thursday

I’m sitting in my French Literature period and I can’t concentrate on it, so I wrote the book review. After the last book which review I haven’t yet written, I decided to take a rest from the books about Fandorin. Not because I’m bored, just because each time it’s more difficult to write reviews. It seems that I use the same words all the time. And, moreover, I went to Bookvoed on Monday just to waste some time there and instead I wasted 700₽ too - I couldn’t hold myself back so I bought two books by Neil Gaiman one of which I at once decided to stay reading.

Today I’m going to buy a present to Ilya. I hope I’ll find the thing that I want to give him. Andrew an Mum bought him a backpack and I’m a little ashamed because I wanted to give it to him for New Year, but I hadn’t bought it. I hope to find good headphones because his are rather bad already. And by the way, they are really not his, but Cate’s. I’m going to meet Cate today too - I’m going to visit her at her workplace and we’re going to eat Wok like businesswomen. And, probably, some pizza. I’m passionate about Wok again after Sunday. Mum and I went to have a snack after the wedding exhibition. We couldn’t go to some KFC or McDonalds because we looked like princesses (well, I started to look like a princess when I washed that horrible pink lipstick off of my lips and stopped to look like an old prostitute). No, the makeup was not good at all this time. But I found a lot of different make up schools where it is possible to get a makeup for free. I’m thinking of going to one of them sometime. And next Saturday Mum and I are going to go try on some wedding dresses.

I really want this day at the university to finish (two periods are left). And then I’ll have a small vacation and I’m going to see my Belorussian relatives for the first time in five years. I miss them. I’m interested in what they are going to say when they see me. Mum told me that for Uncle Misha I’m still little Natul’ka. He’s going to be surprised, I guess.

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BOOK REVIEW #17

Boris Akunin “The Coronation or the Last One of the Novels”

This book is mind-blowing. Honestly. I’ve read a lot of books about Fandorin in a row and sometimes I was very close to figuring out who the criminal was. Reading “The Coronation” I was confident in my strength and I felt like Sherlock, but the end of the book is so unpredictable that I’m still processing it.

For the ceremonial coronation of the Emperor Nikolai, his uncle Georgiy Alexandrovich comes from Petersburg to Moscow with his younger son Michael (it the family they call him Mika) and his daughter Ksenia. Tired from the long journey, the children decide to go for a walk in the empty park with the butler Afanasiy (from whose point of view the story is told) and their governess Mademoiselle Declick. The walk finishes with the attack on the children and the kidnapping of Mika. Not only the life of the small prince is under threat but also the coronation, because the kidnapper demands for its inherent attribute.

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February 15th 2018, Thursday

Well, it’s really easy for me to read Akunin, as his books are very interesting and amusing. Yesterday I finished reading another one of his books, but I didn’t still write the review, I’ll do it later. I just feel that with reading all those detective stories I will become a detective myself. I’ve already started. While I’m reading the books I try to figure out who the criminal is and in many cases I am right or really close. It makes me feel good. Probably I should forget about English and become a private detective. I’m joking. By the way, I’ll write something about English a little bit later, but now I will write about something more pleasant - the preparation for the wedding. Now it’s the last thing I think about before falling asleep so it’s often that I can’t fall asleep easily. But I really like thinking everything over. Either way, it’s more pleasant thinking about this than about studies, though there are still a lot of things to do. I’ve even bought the journal “Wedding” for inspiration. There are a lot of really beautiful photos there. The one below is not from the journal, it is from the leaflet of a photographer. I’ve got a lot of such leaflets, I collected them at the wedding exhibition at the end of January. This week there will be one more exhibition and I’ll go there with my Mom. We’ve already chosen the restaurant and the host so it will be a little bit easier there this time. The most important thing for me at this exhibition is to make a trial makeup and hairstyle, and also to search for a perfect dress for me. It will be a little difficult because you can’t usually find a lot of such dresses I want. But I hope that everything will be OK, still there is enough time left till the wedding. Everything goes according to the plan. On Saturday we’ll probably buy the rings. Mom has found a shop where there are 60% discounts for everything! The main thing is to get there in time for the most beautiful rings to not be bought already. I can also look for some jewelry for my hair there because I’ve wanted to get married in a diadem, like a true princess. Obviously, I’m a little nervous about the wedding. No matter how stupid it may sound, sometimes I have such thoughts as “What if Ilya stops loving me sometime?”. But then I remember how Ilya went to his best friend’s wedding last year. I had to remain in St.Petersburg. I remember Ilya telling me that some girl asked him to dance with her. He was really nervous about it. He drank a lot then and when the guests started to go home, he decided to walk to his house to freshen up and at the same time to call me. He told me about dancing with that girl and at once added something like “But it was she who asked me to dance with her, it would have been bad manners to refuse. But it doesn’t mean anything, Natasha, know that you are the only one I love”. And it was then that I understood that he really loves me. That’s why the memories of this phone-call really calm me down.

And now the time has come to tell something to my descendants (if I have any, but of course I will, because why shouldn’t I?). Dear descendants, if you want to enter a university in St.Petersburg but not somewhere on Mars, I warn you: never ever enter the Herzen State! This is the hellish place which will suck out not only your soul, but also all your money. The diploma isn’t worth it. If I had a possibility to go back in time I wouldn’t have even applied there. Ilya resents: what do I pay such large sums of money for? And I don’t even know what to answer. The reason is the following: the second week of studying after the vacation is almost over and we haven’t had any periods of English yet. John Konstantin was supposed to be our professor (she’s actually a woman called Natasha too, but I think that she doesn’t deserve my beautiful name, and her surname is Konstantinova, that’s why we call her John Konstantin). But for some reason she has refused to conduct our periods and has passed us to Julia who was our professor last year. Julia told us that John wanted to change groups with her because as she told Julia, she already knew our level and now wanted to find out the level of the other group. But we think that she doesn’t want to counduct our periods anymore because she has become aware that we complained about her to the dean’s office. This fact, by the way, has triggered a big discussion in our group chat. But the main thing is that because of the misunderstanding among the professors, we have been deprived of English periods for two weeks now. I wish everything settles because it’s rather annoying. Today I felt so stupid that I was even surprised about it. I forgot that the periods were to start several hours earlier and I got up when the first one was about to start. And I spent a lot of time trying to understand what I did wrong. Well, stupid. So I had to stay home. But I made pancakes - it’s a Pancake week!

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BOOK REVIEW #16

Boris Akunin “State Councillor”

An Adjutant General Khrapov is killed in a train coming to Moscow. The killer was so cunning and resourceful that they left him alone with Khrapov without seeing anything suspicious in it. When it came out that the General for whose security Fandorin should have been responsible in Moscow, was dead, it appeared that the killer used the appearance of Erast Petrovich. Now Fandorin has not only to find the killer and expose the terrorist group to which the killer belongs, but also to try and circumvent Prince Pozharsky who has come from St.Petersberg to investigate this case.

/A special commentary for my English speaking followers. In the picture you can see two Russian policemen near the wall in which the General telephone number of the police is painted. It’s 02, like in the USA/UK (and probably some other countries) - 911. There also such inscriptions can be seen as Major Utkin, the abbreviation for the district department of internal affairs, 2nd Department, 6th Department and some surnames and ranks. It’s just a funny picture😀/

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BOOK REVIEW #15

Boris Akunin “Special Assignments”

The first case Fandorin faces in this book is a case connected with fraud. More precisely, the series of crimes committed by someone calling himself Jack of Spades, or Momus. Momus used to rage in Europe and now he decided to conquer Russia. But this time the fate is not supportive of him because he has to try and fool Erast Petrovich Fandorin who takes the investigation of his case. Will Momus be able to avoid punishment or will he answer for his crimes and spend the rest of his life in prison?

Several years after the case of Jack of Spades dark times come. Either Jack the Ripper who used to commit horrible crimes in London moves to Moscow, or there appeared his copycat in Russia. Either way the killer attacks prostitutes and street children, cuts off their internal organs and leaves his horrific mark on their faces - a bloody kiss. It is Fandorin who will have to investigate this truly terrifying case.

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BOOK REVIEW #14

Boris Akunin “Achilles’s Death”

This is the fourth book of the series about Fandorin.

Erast Petrovich returns to Moscow six years after the case of Azazel. He stays at a hotel where he finds out his old friend General Sobolev is staying too. He hasn’t seen him for several years, but to Fandorin’s great surprise General appears to be dead. And the death looks like it has become due to the natural reasons - a heart muscle paralysis. The case would have been closed if it were not for Sobolev’s friends and Fandorin himself who knew perfectly well that Sobolev was strong enough to not have any heart problems, so he couldn’t have died on his own.

Who benefits from the death of the Russian General known by the name of Achilles? Has someone managed to commit a crime without any evidence or has the General still died due to the natural reasons?

I liked the book very much because there are a lot of thoughts of Fandorin himself, so it is easy to follow the course of the investigation.

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BOOK REVIEW #13

Boris Akunin “Leviathan”

I decided to continue reading the series about Erast Petrovich Fandorin. I’ve read “Leviathan” in two days - it was that interesting.

The commissioner of the French police Gustav Gosh faces a difficult and a really scary crime: there are ten people killed in Paris in the house of the famous collector, and two of them are children. Among those ten there is the connoisseur of rarities himself. Of a great number of the pieces of the collection the killer has taken only the statue of Shiva and one of the bright shawls with the picture of a bird of paradise.

The only evidence that the killer has left is the golden badge shaped as a whale. Those badges were given to the passengers of the first class of the newest steamer “Leviathan” where the investigation of this case leads the commissioner Gosh.

Will he be able to find out who the killer is and will the accidentally traveling with the same steamer Fandorin help him?

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January 31 2018, Wednesday

Well, I haven’t written here for a long time, but there are a lot of thoughts in my head, so now I’ll write them down.

Today Ilya went to work and yesterday he told me he didn’t want to sleep at all. I was glad to hear that - I thought that I would finally be able to fall asleep before he did because I was already sleepy. Recently because of the fact that I’m on vacation and I get enough sleep, it’s hard for me to fall asleep at night. Moreover, we’ve started to prepare for the wedding more seriously and I’ve got a lot of thoughts which start spinning in my head when I try to fall asleep. Yesterday I thought whether I could fall asleep before Ilya does, because it happens very seldom, you could count it on fingers. Well, I thought that if Ilya told me that he didn’t want to sleep, I had a chance. In the end, I was thinking about our relationship and the forthcoming wedding and Ilya was sleeping peacefully and watching the third dream. It was so unfair. Though, I really don’t care about it very much - I’m on my vacation so I don’t need to get sad over the fact that I can’t fall asleep fast. I still have a rest. And by the way, I read books.

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January 12th 2018, Friday

I have an exam today. I’m writing it on my way to the university, so I don’t know how it will pass. But I just can’t wait to write it because I have a lot of thoughts in my head. I understood that I hadn’t known a lot when I had enetered the university. I thought about it this morning when I saw in the chat the text from my group mate who was asking whether we will buy flowers to the professor who conducts the exam. I’ve never understood that though from my first year we’ve been buying flowers to the professors conducting exams. I always thought that I wouldn’t like it if I were a professor, because it looks like sucking up. I still think so. And still if the majority decides that we should buy flowers, everybody gives their money. And then I thought - what if it is the tradition I don’t know about? Because I’ve already faced such things for a couple of times. I didn’t know something (and something really important) about the university life. In my first year during the period of Latin our professor asked us to turn to some page in the textbook where I saw some Latin poem, but everyone else saw the students’ anthem - Gaudeamus. And everyone was like “Oh, let’s sing it!”, and I was like “Huh?”. I’m glad that I sat with Arina and it was only her who heard me because she was so surprised to hear that I didn’t know the students’ anthem. Another such moment happened in a talk with Cate, so I wasn’t so much ashamed. I was at the end of my first year, and Cate was at the end of her second year, so it was the half of studying that has passed for her. And she’s like “We’ll celebrate the equator in summer”, and I’m like “What’s the equator?”. The half of the studying happened to be called the equator. Why didn’t I know that?! Why didn’t anyone tell me about it? When I told Olya about it, she didn’t know about it either, but Nastya S. did and she celebrated it last year (she studies for 6 years to be a Specialist). How can that happen?

There had to be more such moments, I just can’t remember all of them. But it still bothers me. I’m glad that the studying is coming to an end and I won’t embarrass myself anymore. I hope.

Now I’m writing in the evening. I passed my exam and had a “B”.

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BOOK REVIEW #12

Stephen Chbosky “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”

I wanted to read this book for so long, I’ve been hunting it down for two years. And thanks to my dear sister, my wish has come true and I finally read it. Better to say - swallowed in a day and a half.

The book is a series of letters written by a teenager named Charlie to some good person the talk about whom Charlie has once overheard. Charlie writes these letters without indicating the return address - he doesn’t want the recepient to know who he is, he just wants to tell the story and to share his feelings about his first year in high school. Charlie is going through a hard period in his life - his best friend Michael has recently committed suicide, that’s why Charlie needs friends whom he finds in Sam and her brother Patrick known by most of the people at school as “Nothing” and his teacher Bill who gives Charlie different books each of which becomes Charlie’s favourite at once.

No matter how bad you feel, Charlie thinks, remember, that there’s always someone who feels worse. But sometimes you should stop, forget about everything and just feel “infinite” - especially when you have the best people in the world with you - your friends.

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January 11th 2018, Thursday

I finished “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” yesterday and I wrote the review. I just didn’t want to write it down here yesterday because I wanted to give it a special space.

I’ll definitely reread this book, it’s so wonderful and it’s impossible to not sympathize with Charlie.

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BOOK REVIEW #11

Harper Lee “To Kill a Mockingbird”

Jean-Louise and Jim are the children of an honest but principled lawyer Atticus Finch who takes the case seemingly pre-doomed - a black guy is accused of raping the white girl. The events are happening in the America of 1930s, after the war between the South and the North when the society is still full of prejudices towards the coloured people. The story is told from the point of view of a small girl - Jean-Louise Finch. She doesn’t understand a lot of things but sometimes she sees the things that the adults can’t see anymore.

I’ve always liked the books in which the narration is from the point of view of a child. They are always interesting and easy to read - it’s pleasant to feel like a small child and to look at the things from another angle. That’s why “To Kill a Mockingbird” has enlarged the list of my favourite books.

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January 10th 2018, Wednesday

When you are on a vacation it’s difficult to say what day of the week it is, I’m always confused. But it wasn’t the thing I wanted to write about today. I wanted to write about how important it is to apologize. Meaning not saying the right words, but just not to be that proud to admit your guilt. When I was a child and Olya and I fought I could make her hurt because I wasn’t able to realize my strength. Olya took offense immediately and I was too proud to come up to her and say I was sorry. It’s just that I always thought that she was being over dramatic, and I was stubborn. Olya used to say then that she wasn’t going to play and even talk to me until I say I’m sorry. I used to sulk at her for some time then because I thought that she wasn’t serious and she was doing it just to annoy me. But finally I asked her to forgive me. I got used to it gradually so now if I do something wrong I at once say I’m sorry. Olya taught me this, and I taught Ilya this. Yesterday when we went to bed we were fooling around and when he wanted to kiss me in a cheek he accidentally kissed me in an ear which was not pleasant at all and even hurt because it rang in the ear. But he said he was sorry at once because he knows that I can be sulky sometimes over small things. On the other hand, sometimes it’s harder to forgive than to say you’re sorry. The same example. When Ilya said he was sorry, it seemed to be OK but I wasn’t at once ready to forgive him, just because it still rang in my ear. But Ilya made it right immediately - he silently hugged me. And everything was OK. Sometimes a touch is more eloquent than words.

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January 8th 2018, Monday

The vacations are passing by, and I still have nothing to do. Well, I have something to do - I need to prepare for the exams and write my diploma - but these things are not being done. The only thing I want to do is to walk and entertain myself, I want to manage to have fun before the studies start. It’s hard to imagine that I have only 6 months left of the university and then that’s it - f r e e d o m. Obviously, then the work will start, but there it will be different - I won’t need to learn anything, I will actually DO something. I’m tired of wasting my mental resources. And I really am sorry for those who will continue studying for the Master’s degree. Waste two more years and a great deal of money for the diploma? Thanks, but no thanks. I just want to finish these 6 months. I already feel like soon I’ll be ready to kill. Especially those wild professors who can’t leave us alone while we’ve got a diploma to work on. They were not loved a lot in their childhood or they went mad at the university, that’s why they want to torture us. I can’t explain it in any other way. Well, we’ll be fine, we’ve gone through worse.

Last two days were really fed up. The day before yeaterday Cate and I went to a very interesting place - Rediska (/Radish in English/) shop. This is the shop where they sell different hand made jewelry, toys etc. There is also a café there where we drank coloured coffee (I had it violet) with marshmallows and ate cosmic doughnuts. They were tasty and beautiful.

And yeaterday Ilya and I went skating. I always like to go skating with him, I just like to watch him doing it. I’m always so proud of being his girlfriend at those times because he the best skater. It seems that yesterday all the people watched us and were jealous.

When I lived in Chita, apart from writing in journals I had other hobbies that I liked and some of the people thought strange. For example, I copied the History textbook on my computer. I hoped that I would remember at least something because I was not very good at History. I also copied the book from the series “I Want to Know Everything” (/that’s the literal translation from Russian/) about treasures. I copied it in black ink and with a fountain pen. I liked doing it like that because I felt like I’m being so excuisite, like a lady living somewhere in the 19th century, wearing fluffy dresses, living in a mansion and reading books about treasures.

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January 5th 2018, Friday

The new year has finally begun, but I still haven’t got the New Year’s mood. Even the New Year’s night has passed as any other regular night. The only difference was that we were dressed beautifully, drank some champagne and went to bed at half past one in the morning. And the next day Ilya went to work. I don’t have any holiday spirit at all; it seems that the studying has pinched me out of any. For some reason (and, by the way, not for the first time) this term it was more difficult to pass the credits (which were even supposed to be without any mark) than the exams. Though I haven’t still had my exams - the first one is in a week - but I think that they will be very easy to pass. I’m not nervous at all. That’s why I haven’t even started preparing. Most part of the time I spend lying in bed, watching films and playing games on my iPad. Though tomorrow I plan on going for a walk with Cate. And the day before yesterday Ilya and I went to opera. To be honest, I used to think that opera is boring, incomprehensible and loud. But it happened to be the opposite (except for the incomprehensible, because some arias - or whatever they are called - were in Italian or French). It was the New Year’s concert in a small theatre on the bank of the Fontanka river. There were only four opera singers - two ladies (they absolutely cannot be called any other way) and two men. They had such beautiful voices, I wanted to listen to them over and over again. So I dispelled one more myth for me - opera is something amazing. It’s so wonderful that there are different kinds of art. What would happen if there were no pictures, poems, music, theatre or cinema? It’s hard to imagine such a boring life. People wouldn’t have any entertainments, they would only have home and work (or studies). Though, some people live like that now and it makes me sad. But they, at least, can watch TV in the evening, so it’s not that sad as in my imaginary world without art. I’m glad that it doesn’t exist. And there is only the world we live in, the world where there are books, for instance. Yesterday we received the parcel from Olya where there was “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”. I’ve been dreaming of it for so long, and Olya made my dream come true. I can’t wait to read it, but still I need to finish the book I’m reading now - “To Kill a Mockingbird”.

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December 25th 2017, Monday

There is a week left to the New Year and I still don’t have the New Year’s mood. All because of my studies. I’m not saying that it’s a depression or just a bad mood. It’s just that the amount of studies is so great now that I don’t have time to rest and feel that New Year and the vacation are coming soon. That’s because on the vacation I, as usual, have my examination period. Though today I felt some relief. Because of the fact that I’ve been a good student and I haven’t missed any of the periods of the teaching methods and I gave in all the works, the professor let me remove from my exam either the theoretical question or the analysis of the article and the methodical task. I removed the question because learning the theory is very hard for me. So, despite the fact that I still have two but not one tasks at the exam, it’ll still be easier than three. This week we have only two days left for studies. On Thursday we get (I hope) credit for the translation and on Friday we get credit for stylistics and also on Friday we write the final test on the practice of the oral speech. Why I wrote “I hope”? Because I have a strong feeling that the professor of translation doesn’t like me. Firstly, because she calls me Nina. And thanks to her some of my ghoupmates call me so too. And secondly, because she said (to me of all the people in our group) “I didn’t like your report” about my presentation on Maria Spivak. I was offended, by the way. But I hope that all will go well and she will give me credit and I’ll never see her again in my life. I have only one text to translate. I wanted to do it on Saturday but I completely forgot about the Father Frosts Race. Actually I wish I stayed home and translated the texts and did other homework because despite the fact that we left home three (!) hours before the race we managed somehow to show up late. I wish Ilya and I went there by bus. Next time if we participate in such an event we’ll go there on our own. This time we went by car with A.B. and his wife. We stopped by Maya’s house and waited for her to get ready. When we came to the Palace Square the Race has already started and Mom, Ilya and I were still not ready because we still didn’t have our costumes of Father Frost on. In the end Ilya decided not to take part in the Race. My mood went bad and the only thing that managed to raise my spirits was the heaviest snowfall ever. It was so wonderful though we had our clothes wet through. I adore snow. By the way, at the finish line of the race they gave us medals shaped as snowflakes. Mom’s snowflake immediately fell off and got lost. And mine didn’t come home bodily. When we got home we found White having somehow unhooked himself from his chain and running happily around the garden. While we were catching and hooking him again he jumped so hard that he broke a couple of rays of my snowflake. But I still kept it - it seems that it’s my first and only medal.

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December 18th 2017, Monday

And it’s Monday again. It feels like I’ll have to put up with the fact that I don’t have any time to write anything on other days of the week. Even on Sundays. Yesterday I spent the whole day doing my homework because on Saturday Cate and I were celebrating her birthday. At first she planned on going to the cinema to watch the new “Star Wars”, but as I’ve said earlier new films to me are not what they should be. So we went to “Floors” to look at the foxes. They didn’t have much fun there. Though they were in some sort of cages, everyone still wanted to touch or feed them. Everyone wanted to take a photo of them. And the foxes were bored. They had some toys there but they didn’t play with them because they were tired of the attention of lots of people. I’ve never seen foxes so close. They are very fluffy and their tails are long and several times thicker than their paws. The phrase “a pipe of a tail” happens to have appeared because the foxes’ tails are sometimes called pipes (/I actually don’t know what they are called in English or if they are even called something except tails/). And I also heard what the foxes say (“What does the fox say?” - at once I remembered that song). They squeal... loudly. One of the foxes didn’t like it when another one came near her so she showed her teeth and squealed. It sounded like some monkey’s squeals.

After seeing the foxes we went for a walk around the centre of the city and then we went to the chocolate shop. We didn’t order much but everything was very sweet. We ordered cocktails and fondue with fruits, marshmallows and brownies. I liked it but you can’t go there too often. And I’m really glad that all the birthdays are over because Ilya is right - we’ve spent way too much money on the presents this month. I even want the New Year holiday to pass. We need to save money but we can’t manage to do it now. I’m very upset about it. I hope we’ll be able to save enough money to make a first pay of the mortgage after wedding. Yesterday I told Ilya: “I wish we were rich and could at once buy a big flat”. And he answered: “But we have something more”. And it made me thinking. It’s true that a lot of people say that the rich miss something which is obviously not money but something more important than it. So, to my mind, it’s better to be loved and happy than to be rich. I’m not against paying mortgage for several years when I know that when I come home there will be someone whom I love waiting there. And maybe a cat. I really want to take a cat to the new flat because life is boring without one. If he is black, I’ll name him Lucifer in the name of the cat from “Cinderella”. Especially if he is a fatty. I also like lizards. There is one blogger woman in Instagram who has a lizard and she sometimes posts very funny videos with it. The funniest thing about lizards is that they can be motionless for a long time. It makes them very mysterious.