Corinne's farewell

Danya and Corinne at 04:30 am

We woke up early at 4 am this morning to bid adieu to Corinne, who has decided to leave us and go back to America (she'll be in St. Petersburg next semester, so her blog will be moving on to cover the western part of Russia). Tearful farewells all around, and it certainly put a damper on our day, and we've all been a bit sadder not having her around, she will be missed. Either way, I'm sure she'll do very well and will enjoy her Future as much as she's enjoyed being here. The cobra was the babushka last night - not particularly glad to be woken up at half past four, and bleary-eyed, told was waiting around trying to get everyone back to bed, and was wondering why all these silly foreigners were awake at such an hour. Of course, once she'd left, we all went back to bed (not all that many things we could do at half past four on a monday), and Emily was in Corinne's bed before it had even grown cold. I'm sure this would have pleased Corinne though, to know that her bedclothes were being put to good use for one more night before the babushka reclaims them!

Lara, Maria and JungHeum with our Korean meal

It took me longer than usual to get to lessons today - there must have been a crash or something on Lenin street, as most people were at least slightly late (Jakob was quite pleased with himself that he had arrived first to class that day). We had a small dictation, which I believe is what our grades will be based on, and which I think I did fairly well in, and a lot of vocabulary. I made the mistake of wearing the new thermal underwear to class, and suffered for it in relative silence for the whole four and a half hours we were sat in there, as it is very, very warm indeed! We finished and came back on a bus which was absolutely jam-packed full of people. One rather rude old lady pushed in front of us to get a seat which I was about to offer to Lara, and people were pushing before asking us if we were getting of the bus. So very Russian... Back home, instead of dining on leftovers, as I had expected to, I was very pleased to hear that JungHeum would be cooking for us, as indeed he did, a very tasty Korean meal. Since then, I've only been looking up what to see and do in Vladivostok, as we will be going there two weeks from now, and it would be nice to be pre-prepared for this with some knowledge about their monuments and sights!