Listvianka again

The beach in winter weather

Again, not very much can be said to be happening right now in Irkutsk - I'm still ill, so am doing less things, which consequently gives me less to write about! We did, however, all go to Listvianka on Tuesday, which was nice - it was slightly windier and colder than when I went with Gloria and Guillaume, and the ice was not covering as much of the shoreline as it had been covering then. Still, as soon as we arrived, we stopped for a meal - borsch and a pirajok for me, before walking to the beach which Gloria showed us last time - once more we met the black dog who accompanied us last time, who got into several vicious dog-fights along the way, but none of the dogs seemed too worried about us. We went down to the end of the beach before several of us scrambled up a rather steep and unpleasant slope to join up to a path further up the mountain. The ice and snow and loose rocks all made the climb rather unpleasant, and has now been classed by Emily as a near-death experience - I can't say she's all that far off the mark either, it was fairly horrendous going...

A bit more winter photography

Once we'd rejoined the path, however, we walked back around a bit and then started up the mountain, arriving eventually at a number of observatories which I'd noticed before standing at the top of it. There was nothing in particular to see up there, but I clambered up one of the structures to get a good view before carrying on. We walked down the mountain by a different path which fortunately linked up with the path through another section of the village (more dogs, more dog-fights...), which we walked through until finally getting back to the tourist-y section of the village and hurriedly mounted a marshrutka back to Irkutsk.

Thursday, I had planned to be lazy, but needed to go into school to collect my visa for the upcoming trip to Vladivostok - fortunately, I got there just on time, and managed to talk my way in, despite security threatening to have me throw out because the school was closing (I don't understand why, it should have been open at that time, but they seemed to be closing stupidly early, and I definitely hadn't been told to go in and collect my Visa before lunchtime, despite what Iraida said!). After collecting it, I got the 61 from the university over to Emily's neck of the woods to go to a bookstore and buy a book for the 'Secret Santa' we had that evening in the 'Lingua Café'. In the evening, of course, there was nothing left to do but to go to Lingua Café for the 'Secret Santa' - I had hoped to be there as short a time as possible, but seeing as there were only five of us, this became quite a lot harder until more people arrived. I gave Marina her scarf and book, and got my present from Tanya. Once we'd exchanged gifts, however, we quickly headed off out, and were lucky enough to catch a 2c which was just departing from the University.