Chocolate fondue

Corinne with the golden cow

E and Ë

Today, everyone arrived back from Arshan, whilst Corinne and I had gone out to the shop to buy some peanut butter and have a look around the shop full of foreign products near the statue of Lenin. Whilst we wandered around there, we saw what appeared to be a sculpture of the Big Ben next to a statue of a cow and a castle of ice blocks (I saw a boy run into the castle, probably hiding in it, although not entirely successfully, as his silhouette could still be made out through the ice!). As we left the store, also, we saw that all around the square there were a series of letters with the name of an animal, creature or machine by each with the same letter. This greatly excited Corinne, so I took a picture of each of them for her, although by the end of this, my hand felt as though it had contracted frost-bite and I had to stick it inside my coat for a few minutes to warm up. As we left to go back again, we walked past the statue of Lenin, where there is a new poster which shows a scenic walk around Irkutsk - I'm surely going to do this at some point - it looks really good! I may need to get a new pair of boots first though, as my feet have started to freeze a little within my old ones! Fur-lining will probably be the way to go, hopefully synthetic, but I shan't complain if it isn't!

A Russian Sunset

We got back and found everyone lounging around in a semi-comatose state - apparently the trip back, although not very long in Russian terms, had taken it out of them all. They had a great time though, all of them there together - the Belgians braved the trip to the waterfall, which has almost completely frozen over now, and they all got to see the Buddhist temple there. Maybe I shall just wait until the summer so I can go and climb the mountain and see the temple - apparently the temperatures were pretty unbearable, and considering how I'm handling the cold in Irkutsk, I may not be that great at handling the cold anywhere else!! I've carried on with my second scarf, now already in its second ball of wool (a slightly different shade, but no matter, its hardly noticeable), and have been proudly showing my creation to anyone who would praise it...

The chocolate fondue

Dries, Danya and Corinne toasting the fondue

This evening, after we had all had our meals, the Americans once more surprised us with a chocolate fondue dessert. Seeing as fruit is not in great supply here in Irkutsk, we dipped only apple and banana into the chocolate, but it was very, very good indeed. I felt very filled up by this, but it was pleasing to get some more fruit inside me, as the quality of the stuff is not great here, and so I've only been having token amounts now and then, something which, to many people who know me, is not something I like to do - fruit being something I enjoy immensely! So far no more post has arrived, although hopefully it will arrive fairly soon - I've also asked Cristine and Gloria if they could find out anything else about the Circum-Baikal just in case I can get it for something cheaper than the 2300 roubles!