During the space vacation I slept so much that this whole night I lay remembering home, Lyusya, Vitalik, Mama. How wonderful it will be when I return — to go for a walk together in Moscow, take a trip to the countryside. My dear ones.

So I don’t forget, a few words about French cuisine: Jean brought us national products in two boxes. Little jars of chocolate cream, real white bread in small slices, crab, grated cheese, some other canned goods, marmalade and sweets — and there we were hoping for French cognac.

I say: — Jean, our selection is still better, though.

— Yes, — he answers, — more variety and tastier. I really like your food.

As for Jean and the toilet — he only managed to go number two two days before landing. When he arrived, on the third day he floated over to me and asked: “Valentin, on which day does the urge appear up here?” I ask: “You haven’t gone yet? It’s about time.” During meals we noticed the poor fellow was starting to suffer: good appetite, but no movement. We gave him prunes and rhubarb root — nothing worked. On the sixth day I said: “Jean, now you’d better just hold out until Earth — this has never happened before.” But eventually everything resolved itself, and what a joy the relief was! We all congratulated him.

He’s very good-natured. He eagerly helped us, signed photographs and envelopes.

Today was all geophysical and applied experiments. Five zones — a bit tough, since we had to shift from astrophysics to Earth studies, but we managed without errors. We’ve established a tradition: at the end of the day the comm operator calls home and asks for news. Lyusya said she’d been in Star City at a reception hosted by the French at our recreation center.

Everyone loved it. Jean’s brothers came; the older one gave a fine toast. They kissed all our wives.

We’ve introduced another tradition: at the end of each week we ask what mistakes we made, so we know our scorecard (we need this to draw conclusions about where we stumble). Though today the shift supervisor told us we’d worked the week without any marks against us.

Today I gave myself a heavy workout on the treadmill and bike ergometer. Got real pleasure from it. The medics watched the session on TV and were pleased. They said: “We really liked how you look — good loading, no atrophy.”

Tomorrow is a hard day. We get up at 6 AM for an experiment.