Dasha and Dali

Yesterday, being Dasha's birthday party, we stayed in - I had a few things to do, so I went into town to buy her a present too - I also decided to get a few photos printed off to decorate the wall of my room, so firstly I went in search of somewhere to do this on Karl Marx street - wandering around in -7ºC for a few hours wasn't the highlight of my day, although it felt very good to get into Kodak Express, where it was far warmer than any other building I've been in! The woman there seemed to be implying that I needed to pay 15 roubles per photos, but eventually I pointed at the 8 rouble option and after some further explanation I managed to convince her that I'm not just a stupid foreigner and that I wanted some photos printed off. After this, I went back down to the Central Market, where, after failing to find some more yarn of the right colour in the 'Targovi' centre, I went into a bookstore and bought Dasha a book of classical English phrases and quotes and their translations into Russian, which hopefully she appreciated!

Dasha, bowling

After buying some things, I got the marshrutka back to the residence, where I had a quick meal, before Dasha arrived to go with us all to the bowling place where we she had decided to go for her birthday. We got the tram there, and upon arrival we met up with Ingrid, who had also been invited. The bowling, for me at least, started off well (I took all the pins down on the first three rounds), and then gradually went down hill, taking no pins at all in the next six. I did, however, always win as the fastest bowler - I guess this is better than nothing at all! We stayed there for a few hours playing in two groups, and having a good time, especially Dries and Katrien, who started playing with a little boy in the play area and drawing pictures with him.

Dasha, Lara, Katrien, Lara, Danya, Sara, JungHeum, self,
Ingrid, Dries, Emily and Corinne

Once we were done there, we went back to the residence again and had cake with Dasha before giving her all our presents, which she was really pleased by. I walked her back to her own residence, and we insisted that Ingrid stay the night too, as we're conscious of the mugging which occurred just outside our residence a few days ago, and didn't want either of them to walk home alone in the dark.

'The Past' from Dali's Time series

This morning, Ingrid left early, and the rest of us, after having a lazy start, eventually decided to go into town to have a look at an exhibition on Dali in one of the museums on Karl Marx street. It is a privately owned collection by some rich Russian person, but it was quite nice; quite a few sculptures as well as paintings. Taking photos was 100 roubles more, but I decided to ignore this and take photos anyway, and nobody paid me any attention. We stayed there for quite a while, all going at our different paces and in different orders. There were an amusing number of spelling mistakes or mistranslations, including a 'gurafe aflame' and a 'mountain of piece', which amused us, although we didn't bother to tell the people in charge about these.

Corinne at Café Express

After the museum, the eight of us (Corinne, Danya, Emily, Lara, Lara, Maria, Sara and I) went to the Café Express just around the corner, where I ordered borsch and pozi along with a cup of hot chocolate (the large was tiny, which was slightly upsetting) - whilst we were waiting to be served I ran down to Kodak Express and got my photos. When I got back, these were the first things to go up, and my wall is now covered head to toe in them!

This evening, a girl called Mila came around, so some of the people here who knew her watched a French film with her in the kitchen, whereas I stayed in my room, skyped for a while and watch one more episode of Friends, despite the best efforts of my Internet to stop the page from loading... Most of the others have a Russian exam for their Russian business lesson tomorrow (sounds boring, and, most likely, is - good that I'm not doing it!), so there's a very studious atmosphere around at the moment!