e spent almost one whole hour waiting for the only bus in that district, strenuously tamping the earth that was called
the bus stop. But the bus didn’t come. So we walked to the tramway, which the locals said was fairly close: only some thirty or forty minutes of walking. But because we weren’t familiar with the area, we spent an hour and a half getting there. But nobody paid attention to those unpleasant circumstances. Everybody passionately shared impressions of the training.
“So,” said Kostya smiling, “are we going to the next training?”
Almost simultaneously we all said, “Yes!”
“I don’t know about you,” said Andrew, the biggest fan of martial arts among us, “but I think I found what I wanted, at least for now. Cool training!”
“Yes,” Kostya interrupted him, “today I learned a lot more than during all our visits to different schools.”
The guys nodded in agreement. Suddenly Slava stopped, tapped himself on the forehead, and said with horror, “Shoot! We forgot to ask how much it costs!”
Andrew placed his hand on Slava’s shoulder and reassured him, “Don’t worry, old man, I’ve asked Sensei. He said: ‘The more the better. But not more than five rubles. Preference will be given to the pure gold of royal coinage’.”
Everybody laughed. Slava even took a deep breath of relief, which was understandable because he was a good guy but from a poor family. He could not afford to pay for the training in the other schools. To get fifteen or twenty rubles a month meant a real fortune for him. Loudly recalling some episodes that happened during the training and the Teacher’s funny jokes, we didn’t even notice how we got to the tram stop.
