Theresa's birthday-farewell

The past few days kicked off in an odd way - for once I arrived at class just on time and with all my work done, all the correct books packed into my bag, just to find the door was closed and locked, and there was nobody else there. I hung around near the door then for a few minutes, feeling puzzled and lost, until I eventually decided that nobody was likely to turn up, so I picked myself up and took myself back home, feeling that I could have got a lot more done had I just stayed in bed.

Over the past few days I've also been going through the extremely long and tiring process of getting hold of visas. I had heard from other people that getting a vietnamese visa is a long and tiring process. These people have clearly never tried to get hold of a chinese visa. Thorough, yes, but also something akin to everybody's worst bureaucratical nightmare. However, once I've finally got it, I may write a brief post on what exactly you need and what you need to do with it (particularly if you're stuck in the middle of a country which is not your own). Suffice to say that it is one of those experiences which must included in any ticklist (maybe I should wait until the visa actually comes through before I say that, as bad luck would have it that I may jinx myself...

On a far more positive note, these past few days have seen a noticeable diminishing in the quantity of snow in Irkutsk. One of the few places where snow still remains is, however, right outside my bedroom balcony. I have a peek every day, and I think I shall take winter to be well and truly over when the snow down there finally melts away! As it is, I've seen temperatures as high as 18ºC (this is way warmer than in Exeter at the moment, I believe!), and only as low as -1ºC in the past couple of weeks (I don't really go out in the coldest hours, so this may be why..!).

Lara and Guillaume with Shashlik the dog

A couple of days ago, I received a mysterious packet from Spain, which carried within some tasty delicacies. Hence, having received the Spanish jamón from my grandparents, I informed Guillaume that in order to taste the difference between Russian meat produce and Spanish jamón, he would have to come and try it (when in Krasnoyarsk, he asked what difference there was between REAL Spanish meat and non-Spanish substitues). Hence, he came round to supper and along with Chen Chen, Lara and JungHeum tried some of the jamón, which disappeared immediately! Having come, however, and after we debated watching a film at our place, Guillaume went downstairs, and somehow managed to convince the babushka there to let him stay for the night. This then resulted in us watching first Hot Fuzz, and then Un Monstre à Paris (Katrien's uncle was one of the executive producers of the film), the latter of the two in Russian without subtitles, but easy enough to understand regardless!

Un Monstre à Paris

Sergey, Nastya, Frederick, Pierre, Christian, Ben, Nathan,
Theresa, Guillaume, Eva, Felix, Isi, Italian man

Saturday morning, of course, after a rather long lie-in as a result of staying up so late the previous night watching films, Guillaume headed off, whilst I cleaned the room from top to bottom so that Dries would come back to a nice clean room on Sunday morning, and put a load of things I shant be needing any longer in Russia into my suitcase so as to get them all out of the way! In the evening, after supper, I hurried out to go to Theresa's leaving/birthday party. Her birthday was on Saturday, and, today, Sunday, she was heading off to Mongolia before flying direct back to Austria. We met up in Christian's appartment, which was quite a pleasant little place, although by the time I had found it, there were only 20 minutes or so left before we were meant to be moving on to Harat's.

Sasha and Nick about to perform

At Harat's, we hung out as more and more of Theresa's Russian and foreign friends arrived, including everyone from my residence. Once there we all hung out for a fair while, although the extremely loud music made it hard for us to talk. One surprising character was Andrei, a chap whom I met early on in the year whilst climbing at the Politechnical university, so it was nice to renew that acquaintance and to meet a few more people, mostly other foreigners, as we didn't seem to be hanging out with the Russians as much, I at least because I didn't know any of them! At about one in the morning, the band finally stopped playing and then Nick and Sasha went up onto the stage to play a song (Nick playing the electric violin and Sasha singing) for Theresa, which was amusing, although dreadfully hard to photograph! After a while, the pub started to get a lot emptier, but we got talking to a few locals (and a Lithuanian living in Irkutsk) who were quite friendly, but seemed a bit too interested in Eva (from Austria), who was quite tipsy, and whom we had to convince to come with us to the Barack Obama café, despite two of the Russians trying to convince us to go with them to another Harrat's pub not far away. By this time, most people had left, so we called a couple of taxis and negotiated a price of 170 roubles total to get us to the other side of the river, by Harat's pub, where I went with Dasha, Nathan and Nick, whilst Eva, Felix, Mila and Theresa came in another taxi.

Self, Nick, Dasha, Eva, Felix, Mila and Nathan at Barack
Obama

The next few never-ending hours were spent at the Barack Obama café (so called because it seems to have an obsession with American presidents - pictures of Barack Obama on the table-mats, and plenty of portraits of all the American presidents since George Washington hanging from the ceiling, much to our amusement). However, we were all fairly tired, so after a short while we all collapsed into chairs in the quietest of the several rooms and chatted. At one point, in which Nick was lying down and staring up at the ceiling, I happened to glance two of the people who worked there point in his direction and start to come over, so had to quickly get him out of his reverie and sit up so as no to be thrown out! Eventually, however, feeling quite emotional for the whole evening, Theresa slipped out quietly, just whispering to me that she was leaving now and refusing any offers from Nathan and myself (the only two to succesfully say goodbye to her) to allow someone to walk her home. Once Theresa had gone, we took it for a sign that the party was over, so we left the café and went to the bus stop, although Dasha and Nick both left a bit ahead of the rest of us, and were not at the stop when we arrived. Once there, the five of us waited for Eva and Nathan's bus for about an hour, and, when it finally arrived, we said our farewells and walked back to my our residences (Mila lives at 138 and I at 132). Felix decided to accompany us and then take the bus from our place (which was about 35 minutes walk from the centre). Once we were back, however, and after walking Mila back to her place, I had a quick shower and then collapsed straight into bed!

Dries, newly returned from Moscow

During the morning, which I did sleep well and truly into, despite receiving a load of phone calls from one of the Russian guys we met at Harat's (which I ignored because I was in dire need of sleep), and Dries's arrival back from Moscow (obviously a brief struggle ensued as he had to wake be from my sleep by knocking on the door, which was very odd, as I had been dreaming about somebody knocking on the door anyway, and so took reality to be a continuation of the dream and didn't think to open it!). As it is, Dries and his family seem to have a had a great time in Vladivostok and in Moscow, although suffering from a load of jet-lag, he too followed suit and took a morning sleep.

My new camera

Today, obviously most of the day was spent asleep in bed! However, in addition to this, I finally went out and bought a new camera, so hopefully photos as of this post will be a little bit higher in quality (any high-quality photos before now have probably not been taken on my camera! Either way, its a relief to once more have a camera in such good working conditions! After going to buy the camera, and I do this merely as a form of revenge for the slander of my Spanish on Gloria's blog, I must mention that as we were walking back to the residence, she pointed out a Russian girl to me, saying 'Look, that girl looks like she has two feet!!' Obviously, this was met with amused sarcasm from me (she was just sat in such a way that her friends' feet appeared to be coming out of her lower leg as well), but, I feel that after she laughed and doubted I would write this here, I was well within my rights to do just that.