Legend of Olkhon

The rock marking the beginning of the Angara
(Taken from Wikipedia)

Today was relatively uneventful until lessons took place - once there, Rima laughed at the fact that a lot of us had not been there on Friday (she did, though, mention that I am a very good student and come to lessons often, despite my having missed a couple last week!!). Then, after getting us to regale her with a tale of our trip to Olkhon, she told us one more legend about Baikal, which I shall mention here so that it comes close to the other legends about the lake. Supposedly a long time ago, the god Baikal had 337 daughters, and his favourite one was named Angara. But Angara fell in love with a human, Yenisai, and when she asked her father if she could marry him, he refused, as he did not want her to leave him. However, Yenisai and Angara were very much in love, so they decided to leave in the dead of night whilst her father slept, and they ran far, far away. When Baikal awoke, he noticed that his favourite daughter had gone, and, in a fit of anger, hurled a rock away from him. This is the rock, called the 'Shaman's rock' - not to be confused with the rock which the shamans worship, mentioned in the previous post, marks the point at which the Baikal ends and the Angara begins. So as to help people to understand this, the fact is that there are 336 rivers which go into the lake, and only one, the Angara, which leave it, heading north to the Arctic Sea.

Student card (inside)

Student card (outside)

In one of the breaks, Yoonah, Soojin and I went to the dekanat and asked if they had our student cards ready yet. Yoonah and I were lucky and we were given our student cards, but Soojin was less fortunate and was told to come back on Friday. By chance, I also saw that Juan and Luís's student cards were there, and I told the woman there that I would come back to collect those at some point, as Juan and Luís have gone back to Spain. Hopefully, I can get the woman in the dekanat to agree to this, and pull a few strings so I can take them back to Spain for them... After lessons, I once more went climbing, and once again made a friend whilst working some of the routes there. One of the women there, Marina, will give you a route on request, and I was slowly working a number of routes. Fortunately this time I managed to get back without having any bus issues, and the bus driver didn't try to create a third lane this time!

Since getting back have only really had dinner and have been trying, with French Lara to learn the lyrics to Katyusha, a famous Russian song. Over dinner, though, we took great pleasure in seeing the reactions of Danya to our English turns of phrase. Fizzy drink in particular, had her rolling on the floor in a fit of laughter, so I left Emily to carry on torturing our poor American friend.