Climbing cancelled...

So I haven't been very active on the blog for the past few days - the reason for this is that nothing of much interest has happened, save for my buying a large number of postcards (I decided to do this after being put to shame by several good friends and future housemates in different countries in an amazing five-person skype conference the day before) and trying to think of things to say to people. Its hard enough without my writing, but with it, I need to waffle on for ages (as I do here in my blog) in order to fill such a small sheet of paper... It took me a while to find semi-decent postcards anyway - most postcards here are just incredibly tacky - either large, basically A4 sized postcards (not a chance of me filling  whole one of those in!! Or just incredibly bad pictures. I found one shop with semi-decent postcards (atkritki) in it just by the Lenin statue, in the small museum-like building which we went to early on with Aliona and Galia. Now that I look at it just over two months on, I notice that it looks a lot more like a shop than like a museum, but at least it had what I was looking for.

Some of the more tasteless Russian dolls

Nonetheless, despite having the least tacky postcards I've found to date in Irkutsk, the shop had a few very unpleasant-looking dolls (I saw one old woman buy one of these - she must have had problems with her eyesight, as I can't see any other reason for her buying one), and eggs and Russian dolls with Disney princesses (or something similar) designed upon them. Now, I have nothing against Disney, and even less against his imaginary princesses, but when you put their faces on Russian dolls (not facing you either, more of a sideways, coquettish turn of the head), you find a very, very disturbing item. The shelf above the Russian dolls was scarcely any better - they had nightmarish creatures there which had no purpose whatsoever and which I would have been surprised to see anyone buy!

More of Maria's amazing cooking

Moving on from my going to the shop, today was a normal day in class, although with the added benefit of being allowed out half an hour early because Rima decided that we were tired and needed rest (what an amazing woman). Instead, I headed for the other university to go climbing once more. Sadly, however, despite getting there at a very reasonable time (only three minutes after the session usually starts), I went downstairs to find only five people there. Marina, who is the woman who helps out there came over to me and we had a comprehensible discussion in Russian, in which I was informed that there is to be a climbing competition held here on Saturday (good climbing) and Sunday (speed climbing - oh dear), and as they're changing the holds for the competition, there was no way that I could climb that day. So, I turned around and returned to the bus (a very long bus ride ensued, when the bus driver actually got bored and decided to take a shortcut (why on earth not?) although I did finally get home).

As for this evening, nothing much seems to be happening - the Belgians on the corridor are not yet back, the Americans have gone to the theatre with Emily, and Maria and Lara and the new Polish girl have all gone to the Lingua Café (not really my scene). Fortunately, the three Belgians from upstairs are hopefully coming down to watch 'Misfits' with me. Something to do for the rest of the evening, at least!