It seems that in my haste I did a great disservice to the genius of Pushkin in my previous blog entry. As I explained the story of Eugene Onegin, rambling like an excited schoolgirl, I appear to have confused the plot, and omitted great chunks of important information essential to the understanding of this epic poem. I took the liberty of reading the actual poem, not wholly trusting my own feeble attempts to interpret the opera from it's original and untainted form. So even as I will have grasped a mere semblance of the original that would lose multitudes of it's brilliance through even the most professional translation, I seem to have been unable to decipher even the simplest plot from the opera, that being the love... I will stop, for fear of again doing it an injustice. Let the blog-reader go and find for themselves the delightful Pushkin poem, if they are not already familiar with it, in which case I am sure they are laughing at my lame retelling, as well they should, for such a clown was I to not even familiarise myself with such a splendid poem before making myself acquainted with the opera.

The weather has remained full of surprises, just when you think it's safe to go outside in white jeans, the clouds crash together as if they had been lying in wait and wish to announce to the world 'She's left the house!', and masses of rain falls, dust evolves into mud and before you know it you're not wearing white any more but a two-tone effect which may be popular in the big cities but not here. Not with me. 'They' lured me back here on the premise that it would be warm, 'oh it gets so warm here in summer' they cooed. What they omitted to tell me was that practically every day there is a tropical storm. However, such endurance of bad weather can only be admired. When we Brits complain and say 'oh, I can't stand this weather any more Trevor, I'm emigrating to Spain' just because it rains a bit and there's not very good summers, take a moment to think about these folks who live here in Tyumen. Not once have I heard somebody say they want to move to another city, let alone another country, and believe me I give them every opportunity to express this wish. Yet here they are, in winter shovelling snow just to get out of their front doors, and in summer losing 10pounds of weight every week through sweat, getting eaten alive by God knows what kind of insects and standing under trees when there's an electrical storm (please! Somebody tell them they shouldn't do that!). Do they talk of emigration? Do they complain? No, that's right they just get on with it – ignore it even. The Russians are famous for arguing one day and being best buddies the next, as if all memory of the disagreement was erased, well, so it is with the weather. Day after day you see the same scenario – women put on white sandals and white trousers only to be caught in a rain storm. You'd think they'd learn, but no, they just carry on as if 'oh, it won't rain today!' Optimism, that's what I like about these people.