How are you? I'm fine.

Let us talk a bit about my busy schedule. Because of this, I must apologize to all my CAE and FCE students for cancelling our session on 15th of November.
BC Potaupchuk asked me to go to Astrakchan in order to make two talks there for some teachers from the city and the region. I couldn't refuse and thus had to skip our last session. I'll be with you on November 22d, usual time.

Let me tell you more about Astrakchan. It's a small city near the Volga River and the Caspic Sea, rich in fish, caviar, oil but above all, good people. Their chef - Olga Aleksandrovna, is a really friendly and pretty woman who helped us around and managed to gather 200 people in the lecture room. People were nice and friendly. Greeted us with beaming smiles, which is very rare in itself. I did my job well in the morning, so could relax after noon. The most striking thing, though was that the school was so amazingly well groomed and equipped that I even asked people there the question:"Why's that?" The answer was quite predictable and slightly disappointing - "It has recently been visited by our president V. Putin and D. Medvedev"; computers everywhere, projectors, interactive whiteboards etc.

I wish I could study at such a school in my school years. I loved their food, too: delicious 'beluashi' and borsch', kindly given to us by the local cooks after presentations . Now, I can say that I'd like to go there again in summer so that I could see more than on the two dark and short autumn days. Look at some photos made there.