Where to live

View over Sochi, southern Russia

Where you live on your year abroad in Russia is an important issue and it can make the difference between feeling part of Russian life and feeling like a foreigner. The options generally available to students travelling to Russia are families, student hostels, or renting a flat either alone or with English or Russian friends.

Most Russian language courses for foreigners give you the opportunity to live with a Russian family; you can also often make private arrangements to do so, especially when the family has a child learning English. Living with a family means that you hear Russian spoken all around you all the time, and when you first move in it can be very exhausting having to think in Russian all the time. However, you soon get used to it and even start to dream in Russian. It's the best way to practise your language; you'll learn all the colloquialisms and even everyday language that nobody taught you at school or university. You can often meet other Russians through your host family.

Host 'families' in Russia tend to be made up of one or two elderly people who want the extra money and some company. If you're arranging the accommodation through a university you can generally specify the sort of family you want to live with, down to children and pets; some students want to live with a babushka while others prefer families with small children and sixteen cats. Arranging it through a university is good because the families are known by the organiser and other students have lived there before; you can always move out and find another family if it goes wrong. If you arrange things privately, don't pay all the rent for the whole year at once when you move in because if things go wrong you might not be able to get it back.

If you live with a Russian family you will not go hungry! Breakfast is considered a very important meal, and depending on the family you might be fed kasha (thick porridge), omelette, toast, cereal, yoghurt, cold meats, cheese, or in (thankfully) rarer cases tongue and stewed vegetables or raw onions. In other words, anything and everything. Remember that you do not have to eat absolutely everything that is put on the table; at first they are probably trying to find out what you like (so don't eat something you hate just out of politeness or you might be given it all year). My khoziaika quickly found out what I would eat and what I wouldn't and we compromised on the amount of breakfast; remember that Russians expect you to tell them if you don't like something, there's no need to be English about it.

Find out more about Russian food here.

Staying with a family you get on with can really make you enjoy your year abroad; I had a wonderful time and spent hours chatting with my landlady in the kitchen about everything from the weather to world peace. However, some students are not so lucky and either spend a year trying to stay away from the flat or move out. If you're unhappy, try to do something about it because experiencing Russian family life is a great opportunity; it can improve your Russian, help you to meet people and stop you feeling homesick. However, you do always have to remember that you're living in someone else's house and have to respect that; you don't have the kind of freedom you would have in a student hostel.

Fish drying over the stove

Read about what students thought about life in a Russian family here.

When you first arrive in Russia and don't know anyone, the easiest way to start is living in a hostel with other foreign students and it's a great security blanket for the first few days. Some Russian language courses insist that you live in the hostel for a couple of weeks while they register you, while others will arrange accommodation in families from the outset; it depends on the regulations of the particular city you are in. Lots of people then move out of the hostel, others stay for the whole course; that depends very much on you. The main advantage of a hostel for foreign students is that the conditions are generally better than hostels for Russian students, although this is not always the case and if it is, then accommodation costs more. Security is generally better and in theory you have more freedom than you would living with a family, although sometimes these two considerations cancel each other out: there might be a midnight curfew and restrictions on guests in order to have greater security.

The danger with hostels like this, however, is that everyone sits around watching the BBC and speaking English. Even if you're there with foreigners who are not English, people don't always mix very much and you can quite easily spend the entire time there not speaking a word of Russian. You can end up feeling as if you might as well be anywhere in the world and you don't experience Russian life at all.

Hostels for Russian students are much better in terms of the amount of Russian you will speak. These hostels are also much cheaper, but conditions can be very bad; most Russian students live at home with their parents rather than living in the student accommodation provided. Security is not great and sometimes hot water is rare or non-existent.

Living in some kind of student hostel allows you to meet other students easily and practise your Russian; you also have the freedom to come and go (more or less) as you please. However, security and hygiene in these hostels can be an issue and you'll soon learn the best ways of dealing with cockroaches. You'll also have to share a room with at least one other person.

Read about what students thought about life in a student hostel here.

If you're working your company might provide a flat, or you could rent one on your own or with friends. The main advantage of this is that you have complete freedom; disadvantages can come in the form of expensive rent or problems with landlords and visa registration. Some landlords might require you to register your visa elsewhere, depending on the regulations of the city you are in. As anywhere, make sure you read the contract carefully and that you know what is included in the rent and what is not. You can find out about flats to rent through various agencies, or take the advice of friends and people who have lived there before.

This option may give you the most freedom, but it provides the least security especially if you are on your own.

Read about what students thought about life in a flat here.