And only 2 weeks to go...

And Siberia continues to amaze me with its strangeness and its beauty. Every time I walk down to the lake, it never fails to completely take my breath away. On clear days, the water reflects a cool blue-green tropical color, and it's so crystal-clear that from the shore, you can see straight through to the stones at the bottom. The other day I went for a long walk along the beach, and when I got thirsty, I drank the water straight from the lake. It's still icy cold, and in certain areas there are still piles of snow on the shore, but I remain determined to swim in the lake before I leave!

The weather has been beautiful, but the wind is chilly enough that I'm still wearing sweaters on a daily basis. At nighttime it's uncomfortably cold, but almost every night there's a bonfire and guitar sing-along either at Nikita's or down at the beach. I've managed to make some transitory friends as tourists come and go and have also become good friends with Dima, the guy who's in charge of the internet and wi/fi at Nikita's (by the way, he is one of 5 "Dima's" that I'm friends with). A few years back he spent a year in Texas, and his English is so good that at first I thought he was an American. Unlike most Russians I know, he has excellent taste in music, and we spent a few hours the other night exchanging music (I'm in desparate need of new stuff; I go on so many long walks with my iPod and I think I've listened to my iTunes library more than 3 times).

Luckily, my friends from Irkutsk have been passing through every few days, so I've gotten a chance to say goodbye to everyone one last time. My best friend Anna is coming today and will stay for a few days, which will give us enough time to plot our next adventure together (we decided we want to travel somewhere together; I mean, after navigating Eastern Siberia, everywhere else will be so easy!).

In the two short weeks that I've been here, my Russian has actually gotten a lot better, and after having a conversation with a fellow worker during lunch today, I noticed that I didn't have to ask "what?" even once! The man I was talking to was asking me if I'll return to Russia after I graduate from college. When I told him I would have to work for a while to earn money before I could return, he responded, "Money isn't necessary. Just get married to a Russian man. And have children. This is the most important thing in life."

And then there are the conversations that I have with locals on my way back and forth from the store. Yesterday evening, I was walking in the village and a car stopped to ask me for directions to a restaurant I've never heard of (which is surprising, because there are only like 3 in the entire village). After hearing my accent, they immediately knew I was a foreigner and asked me where I was from. When I told them I'm from America, the guy in the passenger's seat, who was holding a beer in one hand and a small child in the other, jumped out of the car with the child, took a last gulp of beer, threw the can into a bush, and when I asked him what he was doing, told me that he wanted his son to meet a real American. I stood and talked to them for a few minutes and then told them I needed to get back to work. The encounter was both hilarious and incredibly sad; I just hope that they made it to their destination in time before they were too drunk to drive. The little boy was sitting on his father's lap in the front seat without a car seat or even seat belts. Luckily, there is literally no traffic in Khuzir and not a whole lot to crash into either.

Overdue pictures

I get kind of aggressive when I play sports and accidently tripped my friend Paul!

A project seminar for GBT. We built a walking trail in the botanic garden.

Manual labor.

Dima and I

A few days later...

So here I sit in my cold drafty shed with a hot morning tea and space heater that my co-worker set up for me before I got here. I just ate a delicious breakfast of kasha and blini, and I'm well-rested from a good night's sleep following a few hours at the banya. I've been taking evening walks along the shores of Baikal, watching the last of the ice melt away into clear blue water, and I watch the sunset at midnight (yes, I'm that far north!). Although I've been a bit bored and lonely, I've also been busy with the tasks that I've been assigned, especially laundry collection, which has turned out to be particularly difficult. How can laundry collection be difficult, you ask? Well, I'll tell you: I have a list of women who volunteer to do laundry for some extra cash, and new ones are coming up to me each day telling me that they would like to do laundry too. Although I have nearly ten women on my list, there are usually only 3-4 bags of laundry each day at most. Because these women have volunteered primarily because they need the extra money, they come up to me hourly, asking me if there's any laundry, if there will be any laundry, if there was laundry and I gave it to someone else, etc. I've realized that it's very important to distribute the laundry evenly so that no one gets left out, but there just isn't enough laundry to go around. I've even considered pawning out my laundry just to keep them busy (even though I've been washing my laundry in a sink for 4 ½ months now and I'm pretty much a pro). In addition, these women are from the village of Khuzir, and village Russian is extremely difficult to understand, even for native speakers from the city. Oh god, I can see one of the laundry ladies approaching right now…

Other than laundry collection, I занимаюсь (one of my favorite Russian verbs that can't be directly translated into English; it means "occupied by" or "kept busy by") teaching English to 7 and 8-yr-olds. Oh my god are they adorable. They know a few phrases, but I have to teach mostly in Russian, which has turned out to be extemely rewarding given that they don't measure my intelligence by how well I speak Russian (I feel like this is the case when I'm speaking to adults). I teach them simple phrases, which they repeat in unison, and play silly games like "Simon Says" and "I spy." Secretly, Matvei is my favorite. He's this adorable 7-yr-old with two front teeth missing and wears a skull cab with bear ears on it. Another thing that I find completely adorable is that they all address me with the formal "you" ("vui") and greet me with a formal hello ("zdrastvuiche") every time I see them.

Although these things keep me reasonably busy, I spend most of the day sitting at my desk with nothing to do. The other day when I told Alexei (the Russian construction worker who comes to visit me) that I was bored, he told me to make a birthday card for the owner's younger son Tihon. I told him that I can't draw very well, but he still insisted that I make a card. Naturally, I got my computer, got on the internet (which is so fast here, thank god!!), and starting looking for a picture to look off of so I could draw something. When he caught me doing this, he said "Katusha [diminunitive of my name], what are you doing?? When I was in the army, we didn't have the internet! You have to draw something from your mind!" He then made me close my computer and told me to draw "uz dushaa" ("from the soul"). After he left, I managed to outsmart him by drawing a replica of the map hanging on the wall, and wrote on the card "Happy Birthday from America, from Europe, from Africa, etc." When he came back and realized I had done this, he almost fell over laughing, saying, "See, you just have to use your head! You don't need the internet! The internet is for stupid people [dyraki]."

Aside from Alexei, I've had other interesting conversations with Nikita's staff. One older man with whom always end up having meals because we happen to be on the same schedule, told me the history of the tribes that used to live in this portion of Siberia thousands of years ago, and then went off on a tangit about eugenics. After spending a year and a half at Wesleyan, it is, admittedly, a bit refreshing to hear what people actually think, minus all that political correctness nonsense (even though I completely disagreed with what he was saying).

So that's all I can think of for now, but I'll keep you posted…