Goodbye Gloria!

The stalled electric bus on Kirov Square

Today's trip to university was a little bit more exciting than usual. Admittedly, the electric bus went a lot slower than it should have because of the insane amount of traffic, but I still arrived in Kirov square on time. However, just before we arrived at the stop, there was a loud sound and we ground to a halt - apparently the cable attaching the bus to the electricity had come off, and was just dangling behind us. I gave the man his money anyway, as he had taken us the whole way here, before going to class. Sadly, I had only slept about five hours - I woke at 6 and was unable to go back to sleep again, despite staying in bed for a couple more hours. Therefore, when Elizabeta surprised us with a test, I wasn't very happy, and spoke extremely bad Russian, messing up all my cases, and saying things which I otherwise know incorrectly. Very infuriating, but at least I can blame it on the lack of sleep! She also started teaching us a Russian Christmas Carol - "In the Woods was born a little Pine Tree"

The meal cooked by Lara

Belgian/American Borsch

Coming back home was also a nightmare - the bus took an hour to get back to the residence, which I spent standing up and smelling the stench of humanity. People are extremely unpleasant when it comes to buses and are always pushing you out of the way! At least I haven't yet been robbed, which is a relief, as some of the other people here - Jakob and Yoonah at least, have both had their mobile phones stolen whilst on the bus! At least, once I got back, it was pleasing to find that Lara had cooked dinner for us - on skype to her parents afterwards she found out and told us that by coincidence, her parents had cooked exactly the same meal for lunch earlier that day! We also sampled some of the borsch which the Belgians and Danya have made - it looks to be enough to last them for quite a while!

Self, Cristine, Gloria, Jakob and Bekzat in Harat's

Another snippet of news - Gloria is going back to Spain for the holidays. She had initially been planning to go and spend the holidays travelling around China, but the plans fell through, so she decided to go home and spend Christmas with her family instead. This seems to be a fairly last minute decision, as yesterday she was still talking about China, but I guess that if there were so many problems, it can only be a good thing for her to go and spend time at home. This evening, just to say goodbye to her, a few of us went to Harat's for a goodbye drink (Cristine, Gloria, Jakob, myself, and a Kyrgyz guy called Bekzat, from Osh). She'll be coming back soon enough, but I think that by then Jakob will have already returned to Belgium, so that's the last time they'll both be here in Irkutsk!