Thursday, September 13, 2012

First 2 weeks in Irkutsk, Russia (Siberia)

First of all, it was a very long flight and lay over from Orlando, FL to New York to Moscow and finally to Irkutsk. 18 hours in total for the flight, not counting the layovers. There was one delayed flight, but I still got here when I was supposed to; 5 am landed, got to the dorm by 6 am. Got maybe a couple hours of sleep before getting up to take a shower, I couldn't sleep. There was no toliet paper provided, so I went without toliet paper for a couple of days...I'm finally used to the bathrooms here and the shower isn't too bad either. I met Iraida and the rest of the SRAS group at 3 pm the same day. We filled out some paperwork, had a tour around the school, and then went home. Except for me, that meant getting lost and going to another city near Irkutsk. I hadn't figured out the bus system yet and I have a horrible sense of direction. I walked for miles and spent many rubles trying to get back to the dorm. I finally called Iraida and she gave me directions back. I am never (I hope) going to get lost here ever again. Let's see... we went to Lake (or Sea, as they call it here) Baikal last Saturday, including Lisviyanka (Idk how to spell it) and that was a lot of fun. Lake Baikal is the main reason I chose Irkutsk. We're going to the local History Museum next Saturday, should be interesting. I love history. I've been skyping with my bf, Christian everyday, at least once. And now I have WiFi in my dorm so now I don't have to get up as early most days to skype! Oh. and they have Saturday classes here. I'm taking one this Saturday. Hopefully it'll be good. It's a 3rd year course, but it has some English in it, it's a translation class. I think it'll be helpful. I'm also taking a Russian Speech Etiquette class, Practical Grammar of Russian, Russian Language (of course!), and Russian Applied Art. That's just for IGLU (Irkutsk State Linguistic University), the Siberian Studies program for SRAS starts next week I believe. We're meeting with the teachers tomorrow morning and evening to discuss schedules. It'll be a history class and an ecology class on Siberia.

Till next time!
Kara

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