Day 4

Corinne, Danya, Maria, Galia, Aliona, Katrien, Andries and Sara
on the bank of the Angara River

So far been here for three days, and things are definitely starting to look a bit more promising, I now understand more of what people are saying and am starting to get used to the idea of living here for 10 months! Yesterday we met up with a couple of Russian girls whom I met after my last post (Aliona and Galia - the belgians; SN, CR and AB cooked a meal for the six of us), who were very excited to be able to show us around the city - Aliona insisted in my using her camera and so I took quite a lot of photos with it - none with mine, so no photos yet, although I'll try and get hold of some of them to put up here - all seven of us who have already arrived on the corridor so far decided to go along, so was quite nice. Galia and I spoke in Spanish too, which was handy for me to understand any words which she said in Russian which I didn't understand. We got the tram into town, near the statue of Lenin, and from there walked for quite a while, visited a museum, the river, and had lunch in a restaurant too - we had had 'pozi', small packages with meat on the inside with soy sauce filling the rest. You eat them with your hands, lifiting them up and drinking the contents before digging into the meat.

With Danya and Andries by the Angara

Afterwards we walked back to the residence along Baikalskaya street and managed to see a lot of the sights along the way. A few ponies wandering around too (just remembered, it is probably of interest to mention that AB showed me a video he took on his camera the other day of some Russian person walking his pet tiger down the street here in Irkutsk - I'm really jealous that I wasn't around to see this!). Afterwards we went back to the residence and MM brewed us all some tea which she brought from her holiday to Morocco, which was very nice, and we cooked our meal (just as we did the other day, pasta of some sort - still not confident that we can cook in the Russian style!) - for the second night in the row, we decided to watch Dexter and we got through two episodes, then sat up talking to the Russians until three in the morning (yesterday I just stayed up talking to AB for three hours) - I was gradually getting more and more tired, so Russian just seemed to drop out of my brain... We also had a bit of a fright when the babushka from downstairs, who owns the residence came to patrol the corridor to check there were no Russians around - we hid Galia and Aliona so that they woudln't get into trouble - they then told us that the reason for this is because the Russians (floors 1 - 3) are known to steal things from the foreign students (floors 4 - 5). They decided to leave not long after and we all went to bed (stayed up talking to AB for another hour).

Corinne, Sara, Galia, myself, Maria, Katrien,
Danya and Aliona

At 6:34 in the morning, I got a bit of a scare as I was awoken by Luís who wandered into our room, thinking it was his own (I'm in room 405, he's in the room directly above mine, 505), who shone a light on my face, and then realised his mistake and ran from the room, apologising profusely! (The residence doors close at 23:00 and open again at 06:00, so as they went out to party with some Russians of their acquaintance, they had to wait outside for a couple of hours in the cold. Fortunately its not that cold inside the residence, as we have two sets of windows (a kind of primitive double glazing system..) and plenty of blankets to keep us warm at night. Today has been quite  chilled out day - I awoke at about half past 10, AB at 12, breakfasted (just cereal for now), showered (the shower is actually fairly good, plenty of warm water for the 7 of us - the taps are slightly more suspect, especially as after I turned one on, the water came out first yellow, then pitch black for a couple of minutes - unpleasant to say the least... needless to say, we're only drinking bottled water!), looked through my new Russian course book (all in Russian - eugh) - I still need to buy a Russian mobile and get a book to do my homework  an claswork in. Will probably do that once I leave the Harat's... Not really any other plans as of yet, except to get to bed slightly more early tonight, as everyone save for mehas lessons in the morning (I only have lessons in the afternoon!) - I think I also have wednesdays off!

Aliona, Andries, Galia and Katrien by a statue of Gagarin

Just to finish off, Galia told me that her boyfriend (Ivan, his grandfather is German, but he knows not a word of German, or so she tells me), whom she met at an archaeological dig, is a keen climber and has climbed a bit in Mongolia and in China - he studies in Tomsk, but she's promised to help me meet him next time he comes over and has suggested we go to Mongolia to try and go climbing there at some point - this is obviously very pleasing to me, as MM is also keen to get into climbing, and AB has told me that he'd quite like to try it out too - Galia has told me that there are a few places which might have indoors climbing walls in Irkutsk, so next weekend, the three of us are going to go and see if we can find one of them so that I can start getting back into shape! Photos to go up on this post soon I hope!