This is the entrance to our new gaff....honestly it is, marble staircases are so now. Its so hard to get good help to hoover the carpet though!


This is my room, complete with chandelier number two (one is never enough dahling!) Its interesting to note that even though the walls are very thick and its an old building, I can hear the man next door, a total stranger that I've never even seen, snoring gently every night! (This pic is especially for you Ciara, sorry it took so long!)


This is our kitchen radio. It has only one station. The government channel. Almost all of the ads start with 'dear pensioners'. Oh dear.


This is our kitchen, complete with soviet stylee oven (it works, thats all that matters!!), surpisingly low sink and a red scrubbing brush with a suction cup on it, clearly a must-have purchase from IKEA!


This is our bullet-proof, fully padded double front door(love the dodgy marble paint effect!). Not entirely sure why there's a safety chain, to use it you would have to open the first door, then open the outer door, swiftly close the first door and slide the chain across ensuring that whoever was trying to break into your flat would be in the kitchen, boiling the kettle for a cup of tea and rooting for biscuits at that stage! Clearly the horse had to make the move from our previous abode, she doubles as a bouncer for undesirable guests! Note also that we've turned Russian and all shoes are shed at the door, we maintain its so the wooden floors don't get damaged, we just don't fancy getting the hoover out!


This is Anna's room, complete with bedside table that she assembled herself!

This is Anna studying in our living room/Lui's room, it was the night before the fateful test! Yes that is a chandelier you see hanging from the ceiling, we are decadent westerners after all!!


Lessons learnt by the occupants of number 57 Konstantin Simonov Street (thats us!) in the past few days....
1. If you try to run the washing machine and the kettle at the same time, it blows a fuse and all power is lost in the apartment, though inexplicably this doesnt happen with any other combination of appliances.
2. Having people over for a quiet dinner on a thursday night won't end any time before 5am the next morning, not good when there is work and college to stay awake in!
3. You may live close to the metro, this does not mean the the metro has the ability to travel at warp speed just because you left ten minutes after you are supposed to be in town! (We are embracing the Russian philosophy that you aren't technically late until you are 9 minutes late, not sure who came up with that number....we are often technically late here!)
4. We live beside the motorway where Liam Lawlor met the great tribunal in the sky.
5. Surprise history tests, this time on Russian history, written in scrawled Russian lecturer handwriting and being the same test as the Russian students had to take (they can speak russian, so not fair!) are very easy to fail. We got praised for getting 2 out of 10 questions right, Lui got 4 out of 10, the boy can do no wrong in this country!
6. We live upstairs from relatives of Mikhail Gorbachev, we have to be careful when we have people over, the last thing we need to do is piss off a former leader's family.

We are the only people complaining about the lack of snow in Moscow, apparently we have been having unseasonably good weather, it rained yesterday for the first time in weeks but we want snow dammit!