Chen Chen's birthday and other stuff

At risk of running off and leaving my blog unattended for several days, I've opted to post slightly earlier than usual. If all my plans come into fruition, I shall be heading off to Krasnoyarsk tomorrow either early in the morning or at about four o'clock Irkutsk time, hopefully to spend a couple of days there. It is, after all, meant to be one of the most beautiful cities in Siberia, and one I'd like to get a look at! I did, of course, come up with several alternative plans for what to do over the course of the week (my students have a few days off, so I've asked for Thursday and Friday off to go for this little meander), either going further, into Khakassia and Tuva, or to go up to Severobaikalsk, drive over the ice to Ust-Barguzin and then combe back to Irkutsk via Ulan Ude. However neither of these plans seemed to be working out because of a lack of time, and the more I looked at them, the more ridiculously expensive they became for just a simple train journey. Granted, I'm sure they're nice places, but not places I'd like to rush through, I'd rather have the time to look around and spend a bit of time in the places as opposed to just traveling through Russia at break-neck speed and not seeing anything!

Emily, Antonetta, Danya, Suvda, JungHeum, Lara, Marina,
Cristine, Chen Chen, Ricardo, Maria Elia, Julia, Monika, Ana
Maria, Maria

Hence, as tomorrow the plan is to head of to Krasnoyarsk (I still need to buy tickets, but hopefully this shouldn't be a problem!), I'm going to push my plans for the blog slightly ahead! On Saturday, we celebrated Chen Chen's birthday (as the Chinese use their own calendar, she still claims her birthday is on several different days, but we decided to go for this one!). We didn't do very much during the actual day, but in the evening, several people cooked different components of a meal, which we ate together, and then, shortly after dinner a load of people came round to celebrate the birthday - pretty much the same people as came to Maria's birthday the week before, although the Italians, Jeannot and a couple of other Russians came along as well..

Irkutsk Music Theatre

On Sunday, I remembered, quite by chance, that the Korean girls in my class had bought me a ticket to the ballet, although this one was a lot cheaper than the Swan Lake. After debating for quite a while whether or not I wanted to go, I decided I may as well, as I had spent three pounds on it, and it may be interesting. It turned out to be very different indeed from the Swan Lake, and, as I eventually realised, was in fact, the Nutcracker - meaning, of course, that the number of famous ballet's I've seen over the last week has risen by quite a bit! The first half of the play, was mainly performed by children, which I failed to understand until the interval, when Rima (who was also there, having asked the Koreans to get her a ticket), explained to me that the children in the first act were studying at the ballet school in Irkutsk, and that the second half would be performed by professionals. All in all, very nice, and I got to see inside of one of the most obvious buildings in Irkutsk, the Musical Theatre, which I had never been inside before, but which I've driven by almost every day on the way back from university! Its a huge, bulky building, with lots of angles which gives it a very odd look indeed, and I can never make up my mind whether it pleases me or not...

Spring has also started this week, or so it would seem, and the streets, although now covered in a thick layer of sludge and dirt from the melted snow, are warm and pleasant. Hence, after the theatre, and the fact that Anya, one of the girls from I.G.U. who went to Peak Cherskovo with us, was busy and couldn't meet up in the centre, I decided to meander back to the residence on foot, which was far more interesting and fun than getting the bus back. It also took me through a slightly slummier part of town (the part where I live can be quite slummy, and this was one of the streets leading to it), but it seemed quite quiet and tame during the day, so I didn't encounter any problems. The same cannot, I'm afraid, be said for Lara, whom, whilst she was out walking by the river had a run-in with a dog who bit her leg. Obviously, she hurried to hospital to have some vaccinations just in case the dog was rabid (these mean that she wont be able to drink alcohol for a year, as it can have negative side-effects), but it still made the day a bit worse than it should have been! However, Lara hasn't bitten any of us yet, nor does she have appeared to develop lycanthropy, so I'm certain she'll be OK (j'éspère que M. et Mme. Nidecker ne s'inquiétent pas - nous allons prendre soin de Lara pour vous!).

After that, nothing much has happened! Today, in an attempt to go to the bus station to find out if there were buses going to other places on Baikal, a man came up to me and more-or-less mugged me. I was sure it was bound to happen at some point during my stay here, so I'm thankful I've got it over with at least! He'd grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go, and he seemed to be insisting that I give him money and that I didn't move away. I decided that the wise thing to do was to give him the money, but even then, I decided to try and get the best out of a bad situation and I insisted to him that all the money I had was the money for the tram. Despite this, he insisted that I give it to him, which I decided I'd rather do than end up with a broken nose or knifed in an alleyway (my mind took a strange and morbid turn as I wrote that, it never actually passed through my mind at the time, particularly as we were nowhere near any alleyways!). Accordingly, I dug into my pocket and dragged out the grand total of 12 roubles (ammounting to 26p, which, to be honest, I could just have found on the street). After I handed it over, he glanced at it, let me go and swaggered off. I hung around glaring at him for a bit, debating bashing him over the head with something heavy, and then, admitting defeat to myself turned and went back to the residence to mope over the  sad lack of any self-defense skills and to take a few artsy pictures of the nails on our windowsill...