Chapter 1, where I introduce myself and talk about the weather.

Hello, Salut, Guten Tag, Buenos Dias, Salva, Ni Hao, Konecheva, and, of course, Preved Krasavchegi!!!

These are all the greetings I know to met the international audience of BBC Learning English. I'm very glad to get a racing baton of blogging from Chittisa and I hope I'll bear this gift with honour. I also believe all of you will help me and we are all shall get lots of fun studying this wonderful language.

First, let me outline a bit my background for you to get more familiar with the situation. I live in Russia, in a town named Nizhny Novgorod. It's situated four hundred kilometers east from the capital Moscow, at a junction of two great russian rivers Volga and Oka. I plan to tell you more about my town in my further posts. I'm "an IT-guy", a software ingeneer. I write programs for computers and I like it. It's extremely creative job. I've got a family, a wife and two childer which are boys. All of them learn English as well.
So, what else? Oh, yes, my age... I'm thirty five. Well, not too young for learning, but I can do nothing about it. I think that's enough for the first introduction. Stay in touch with the blog and you will know more. ;) And now I'm going to proceed with discussion of what's happening around. Let's roll!

What shall we start to talk about? The weather, of course! Actually, the weather is ugly. It's cold and windy and rainy. And it's not "raining cats and dogs", but coward pouring rain which sneaks under your collar and makes you shiver. By the way, I got understanding of phrase "raining cats and dogs" from one of the previous bloggers, Antonio Tanzola, which indicates that the blog is quite useful. Well, generally speakig, I've allready heard such a phrase, which is popular, but I always thought it stands for something weird and unusual. And it was a discussion between Antonio and correspondent teacher blogger (I'm sorry I didn't remember her name) where I picked up the correct meaning. So, long live to the blogging! Ok, let's get back to the weather. Vivid colours (thanks Tricia for this pattern :) ) of early autumn are getting paled and we are all looking forward waiting for snow will lay down the ground and (should I put additional 'will' here?) make the environment white and clear. Actually it is snow falling down behind my window at the moment, but it is not constant yet. It's a 'test snowing' of nature and the snow melts touching the ground and just adds water to soil mud. Well, I think we'll survive. At least, thanks goodness, my job is indoors. The main disadvantage of our local climate is that the weather varies significantly during the year and you have to have lots of different clothes to cope with these fluctuation. And you have to glance at outer termometr to check the temperature outside and put on apropriate clothes. Otherwize you're at risk to get influenza.
But there is also a slight relief in the current season specific. All the bears have fallen into their winter sleep so they won't jerk pedestrians while rambling down the streets untill spring. Well, it'a joke, actually. :) There are no bears in my town, besides those two-legs bears who sometimes like to stand upon your feet in a bus. At this funny point I'd like to stop for today.

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