My new home

Yeah, so – I was so beat last night that I didn’t even attempt to start another entry because I new if would be completely incoherent. The good news is, I woke up this morning after 8 hours of wonderful sleep refreshed and ready to go! And what a wonderful day it was.

We met downstairs at 9 a.m. for breakfast. The breakfast at the hotel was actually quite good, and offered many traditional Russian dishes – sliced meat, cheese, breads, kasha (porridge – both buckwheat and another kind), crepes… all kinds of good stuff.

After breakfast, Olga, Vlad and Uri came and picked us up for a quick driving tour of Irkutsk. We saw some really beautiful Russian Orthodox churches, including the first stone building in Irkutsk. I’ve got some good pics – we’ll see if the uploader works any better from here… We also visited a church that has a shrine w/ the body of the first Christian in Irkutsk. It is still an active church, so the girls had to cover their heads with scarves to go in. I didn’t even ask if it would be okay to take photos or not, because it just seemed wrong. It was very dark and beautiful, though, with gorgeous wall hangings and art work. I bought a candle (50 rubles) and lit it in front of a portrait of Christ, and said a short prayer for the health and happiness of my family and friends, and thanked God for the amazing opportunity He has given me to be here.

After the churches, we went back to the hotel to meet our host families. I was scheduled to stay with Yelena, and Mark with Natasha and Sasha (you’ll have to excuse me for not knowing last names – I’m doing good to remember the first ones at this point!) Sasha’s mother and Yelena are good friends, so Sasha, Yelena’s son, Mark and me were all riding together. They took us out to Lake Baikal for some sightseeing and lunch. I had some very good fish and Mark had sashleek (pork shiskabob). Sasha helped me order because the menu was completely in Russian. Then, back to the city to see the Fabriege egg exhibit at the museum. All of the items on display are from the collection of a man here in Irkutsk – the entire collection is valued at $500 million, and the items on display constituted about $70 million worth of the collection. Natasha shared a lot of information about the pieces, and Mark was kind enough to translate for me.

We then headed to our host families’ homes. There was a little bit of shuffling, and Mark is staying with Yelena’s son and I’m staying with Sasha and Natasha. Sasha speaks English, Russian and German – and is only 19 years old. She did a year study abroad in Germany and learned English in school. Right now, though, she’s not here, and neither Natasha nor her mother (who also lives here) speak English, so there’s a bit of a language barrier… good excuse to finally take some time to blog, though!

The apartment is very nice – the outside belies how beautiful the apartment itself is. Mark said these apartments were probably built in the 80s, but to remember that at that time, they were running about 30 years behind us here, so from the outside it looks like the units would be very stark and poor. In reality, I’m in a room by myself, with beige, textured walls and hardwood floors. The entry way is a diamond checked marble, and the other rooms are also hardwood.

So, this is my new home for the next five days, and I think it’s going to be great!