Mad March

Much of March was taken up with travelling around promoting Learning Stars, the three-level course for very young learners of English, which Jill Leighton and I have written for Macmillan. First stop was Dubai for the TESOL Arabia conference at the very plush and v large Hyatt Regency Hotel. My only previous experience of Dubai was of stop-overs at the airport, which screams BUY SOMETHING NOW! So I was expecting a glorified mall and there is obviously a lot of money around-all the cars are big, new, clean and shiny. But there are also colourful old wooden dhows in the harbour, kids playing cricket in car parks, men haggling at shabby stalls and so on.Plus the trip got off to an excellent start when I arrived at the hotel just before midnight and found that not only were the Macmillan team still up, they were all in the bar drinking wine.

Conference was v well attended and TESOL Arabia gave us all v snazzy delegate bags, filled with goodies :) The only downside was that we all had very short slots for our talks-30 minutes each so you had to cut things down to the bare minimum. 

From Dubai to Cairo. Cairo is pretty chaotic to say the very least-the traffic is crazy and I don't think I've ever seen a car without a dent or a scratch-most are completely bashed about. It's the kind of place where you think, 'Yes! Let's meet at the air-conditoned mall! That sounds perfect!' 

And here is a pic of me and Amany having a delicious bun in the huge mall next to the Holiday Inn. The choice was limited; you could have tea and a bun, coffee and a bun or hot chocolate and bun. But in fact the bun was great :) 

This was my fourth time in Egypt and so it was v nice to meet up with the Macmillan Egypt team again. How do they stay sane in the midst of such muddle? Well, they do and, as usual, arranged amazing events at three luxury hotels in Cairo, Giza and Alexandria. 

The trip ended in Alexandria with a meal at a Bedouin restaurant with the Macmillan Egypt team. No wine at this meal of course, but plenty of tea!

And then to Russia! I had a quick trip back home to change all the warm weather clothes to jumpers, jeans, Uggs and a warm coat and off to Moscow. Then immediately off to Samara . Well, not quite immediately-I had a six-hour wait in Domodedovo Airport which has, incidentally, been done up and is now v modern and spacious, free Wi-Fi  and nice restaurants everywhere and the awful queues at immigration and passport controls are much reduced. My colleague Sergey and I arrived in Samara around 23.00 and scooted off in a taxi to meet Irini, who had persuaded a local restaurant to stay open just for us, where we had meat and olives soup and tea. Then to the Hampton Hotel-which is a perfect exanple of a business hotel which has got it right-everyhing you need when you arrive late at night after a long trip, including a little tray thing for your laptop on the bed :) 

Event the following morning in Samara was in an old theatre and we had a full house of lovely teachers. 

. Then off to the airport again and back to Moscow for the evening, staying at the fabulous Garden Ring Hotel-more luxury! 

Moscow event the next morning was in a huge old Soviet cinema-packed to the rafters. Also talking was my dear friend and colleague, Malcolm Mann, He also lives in Greece but of course I never see him there-we have to meet in Moscow :) 

And then, straight after the event, off to Yekaterinburg in the Urals. My last trip there has passed into Macmillan Russia legend as the temperarature then was -30C and I had to be lent a fur coat :) This time it was milder-only about -6C but we arrived to steadily falling snow It was like arriving in Narnia-so beautiful. 

I was with another Macmillan colleague now-Natalia and we had a late dinner in the restaurant which, rather bizzarely, had those lightbulbs which give out a daytime glow. It was nearly midnight when we ate but it felt like ten o'clock in the morning. I had a cheese platter! 

Next morning the event was at the Urals University-dept of Humanities and also v well-attended. 

Many of the teachers remembered me from previous talks on Brilliant and had brought along copies of the book to be autographed, So that was v nice and very kind of them. 

And then for a quick car ride around Yekaterinburg in the bright, cold sunshine with Natalia and our other colleague, Natasha. We went to the site of the murder of the Romanovs-there is a church on the site and (rather weirdly if you ask me) they have been canonized now. There are statues of Nikolas Romanov and his family and people crossing themselves and bowing to them in the church. The church is mixture of piety and commercialism-stalls as you go in selling very expensive and not very nice souvenirs and, further back,  a priest telling you off if your head is uncovered (mine, for example! )I'd actually deliberately taken off my hat thinking that would be respectful but no-that would have been respectful if I had been a man. For a woman-no!