Last night I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. Tolya and I talked about our life up here; I took the conversation close to heart — mainly, I spent a long time thinking about it, analyzing, weighing things. In short, I probably didn’t fall asleep until one in the morning. Tolya wasn’t sleeping either; he was in the transfer compartment, probably watching the Earth. Woke up today not well rested. And what is sleep? Don’t get enough and you’re completely wrecked — even the face is slightly puffy, mood is off. I ask myself: what next? It’s only been 10 days. I made breakfast.

We ate. After breakfast we have a TV session, a meeting with the families. We set up the lights, positioned the TV camera. We’re passing over the Mediterranean, and we can clearly see that familiar boot — Italy. We entered the communication zone. We hear them say: “A visiting expedition has arrived for you.” We believed them and started calling out to our guys — Dzhanibekov, Chretien, Ivanchenkov, who are supposed to come to us soon.

But it turned out our families had come and, as a joke, called themselves a visiting expedition. I hear Lyusek, my darling, in a cheerful, lively voice calling us. And what I liked most was that she addressed both me and Tolya. Vitalik also addressed me and Uncle Tolya — good boy… Then Lyusya passed along greetings from everyone and said the bird cherry was already in bloom and that they’d brought my favorite spring wildflowers — buttercups — to the meeting with us. They have a wonderful fragrance — ever so delicate. I remember as a child swimming across to the other bank of the river to smell them.

Then we put on a little show for the kids, demonstrating weightlessness: we did somersaults, floated in the air, and they kept shouting: “It’s like the circus!” We said: “Exactly!” So went the first session of our meeting. In the second session, we showed the families the view of the Earth through the porthole, but unfortunately it was almost completely covered by clouds. Then the wives couldn’t help themselves and, laughing, said: thank you, the main thing is we’ve confirmed that the Earth is indeed round. And though that’s certainly interesting, we’d really rather look at you. That’s how our first TV meeting with the families went.

After lunch, visual observation experiments were scheduled, and they showed that orienting yourself by the Earth is possible, but requires careful preparation with maps. I identified the Aral Sea and saw cyclones in the Pacific Ocean. I was particularly intrigued by what appeared to be, above the Gulf Stream, enormous moving masses of cloud with breaks in them resembling mighty blue rivers with steep, high, snow-white banks, and along those rivers an ice drift of uniform floes shaped like white rings, like smoke rings from a cigarette, only against the blue background of the gaps.

After the visual observations I went to put order in the transport ship. The thing is, after docking we’d left everything there in a mess, and we needed to sort the documentation, spacesuits, restock food, and clear out all the excess so the ship would be ready for descent at any moment. I looked up and Tolya had come to help too. Then we started an inventory of the station; we worked together. Today the cargo ship entered orbit, and on the 25th we dock with it. Tomorrow — tests.

Zhenya Kobzev communicated a code: column 1, item 7 from our code table, which we’d put together before the flight so we could know what you can’t ask and can’t say in front of everyone, so we’d understand the situation on the ground, and he’d know the true state of affairs on board.

| Columns | I | II | III | IV | | Digestive issues | 1 | 7 | 9 | 2 | | Poor sleep | 2 | 4 | 8 | 1 | | Lower back pain | 3 | 10 | 7 | 4 | | Heart pain | 4 | 2 | 6 | 12 | | Irritated | 5 | 1 | 4 | 6 | | Difficulties with the ground | 7 | 11 | 3 | 5 | | Crew difficulties | 8 | 9 | 2 | 7 | | How are reports being received? | 10 | 3 | 11 | 9 | | How is TsUP/industry perceiving us? | 12 | 5 | 1 | 3 |

I’m writing already in my sleeping bag. Tomorrow is a working day, a tough one. Before bed Tolya turned off the anti-dust filter fans. They’re noisy, and we still haven’t adjusted to the station. Sleep.