Gotta write this fast, since I want to remember and relate as much as possible. Though I’d rather be reading The Stand – I’ve got it on my computer here and I’ve started my sixth reading! Muah.

So I haven’t updated in almost a week – gasp! This is because we had our big group trip, starting last Thursday night and ending early this morning (Wednesday). Everyone in the Middlebury program in Irkutsk went, so four Midd kids, five kids from other schools on our program, and our RC Elisabeth. It was up there with the Leonya visits in terms of amount of fun had so far in Russia.

We left at around nine Thursday night on a train for Ulan-Udey, a town whose size I am unaware of on the other side of Baikal from Irkutsk. It is a big part of the Autonomous Buryatski Republic there located. Russia has lots of different smaller units instead of our ubiquitous states – they have stuff like oblasts (fairly regular) which are divided into okrugs (if I’m getting this right). Also there are autonomous okrugs (very small) and autonomous republics (usually representing some nationality inside Russia). I may have gotten okrugs and oblasts backwards. Anyway it’s not that important to this story!

We spent all night on the train, which was fun except for I lost my quilt and was freezing once I finally tried to sleep which was late in the night, of course, so I was very tired the next day. We rolled into Ulan-Udey at like eight-thirty, met our guides (who were very funny, terribly athletic, and creepily lecherous by American standards – in other words, Russian), and then had two free hours which I used to sleep. Then we started our wandering around which began with seeing a big Lenin monument which consists of a replica of his head about the size of a small cottage on a pig pedastal. Though I am not a communist any more, I still have a soft spot in my heart for Lenin and like him, and if you think he was a monster than, as Garrison Keillor says “Hell to you and take an enema!”

After that we drove around (I liked that and listen to music) and say various religious sites of interest, like Buddhist temples and an Old Believer village/church. We also visited some cottage where like twelve old women lived with a young boy and girl. Here we listend to, frankly, an uninteresting lecture on traditional Russian peasant life, and ate. Eating is the first of our recurring themes on this trip. The second was shortly thereafter established, wherein Russians offer us any alcohol ranging from rum to vodka to moonshine vodka and Elisabeth, bless her soul, has to patiently explain that our new glorious program rule forbids us from drinking when the RC (her) is together with us (the students). What’s this supposed to accomplish, Midd? Tell me. Midd doesn’t even try to forbid us from drinking when we’re NOT with Elisabeth, which would of course be ridiculous. It really seems to me they’re forbidding the safest situation for us to drink in – which is also legal! Anyway. The third recurring theme was the creepy lechery, and it was represented in this situation when the babyshkas staged a mock marriage between Susanna and one of our guides. Let’s just say Russian standards for gender inter-relations are different, and feminism does not exist. I’m not going to rip on them for that – this is of course ridiculous. Behavior is taught. “Good” behavior is behaving the way you were taught to, which is what these Russians are doing. I will not back down an inch on this, despite the fact that I consider myself a feminist (and a staunch one). The point is that when American and Russian ideas about behavior in this sphere encounter one another, the result is often uncofortable (and admittedly, little more). Much the same with the word “nigger”, though I’ll talk about that later.

So other highlights included the all-day drive over terribly rough roads to the mounrtain we hiked up and swimming in Baikal (it was probably five or ten degrees colder than the coldest water I’ve ever been in before, making it high thirties).

The hike was really amazing. It ranks up there with working on that gravity drain in Guatemala as some of the hardest work I’ve ever done. It was about three or four hours up, often on rocky slops of forty to sixy degrees. I was coated in sweat when we reached the top, sore as hell (I still am!), and really enjoying myself. Listen carefully, children.

Then we ran back down it.

One guide hung back some with other people. The other one started literally running down those forty-to-sixty-rock-encrusted slopes, telling us to cut and leap as though we were skiing. He says to Natalie and I (after we’ve left the others behind) «полетели» - here meaning, «let's fly». That's exactly what we did. We fucking ran down that mountain in maybe an hour. I hit several trees. Natalie and the guide totally wiped out. The guide's wipe out came after we were most of the way down. Natalie and I are panting and going «Oh God» alternately in Russian and English, and he goes (quoting something? Possibly Брат Два) «Are you crazy? No, we're Russians.» And then he sprints off and leaps off this giant rock and crashes into the ground and shreds his pants.

The point is this trip almost killed me and was a crazy amount of fun. Also niether of our guides were sweating or breathing hard at any point on this trip, and they were both carrying heavy packs (I was carrying a light one, just my backpack). It was the most impressive display of physical endurance I have personally witnessed, and I know some serious athletes at Midd and knew some in the Boy Scouts.

Anyway that trip was a whole lot of fun.