To Irkutsk...and Beyond!

Irkutsk at last, vacation at last. After a long train ride (we thought of it as a four-night, three-day tea party, bed included) we reached Irkutsk on Monday morning. The first impression I had is of course that Siberia is huge. You can just sit and watch the landscape roll by. The other odd thing about the train is that it stays on Moscow time no matter where you are. I knew this on an intellectual level, but it wasn't driven home until we were on the train and the sun came up three or four hours earlier than it should have.

As for Irkutsk, its a pretty cool city. There are lots of old buildings in the center of the city where are hostel is. That said, it's also clearly a Soviet-Russian city with its industry and fair share of ugly buildings. There's also a lot of influence from East Asia, with Asian cars, products, and people everywhere.

We're leaving tomorrow morning to begin two weeks of camping and working near Lake Baikal. We're going to be near a small village called Tankhoi. It might be a while before I get to post again.

Last Vladimir Post

It's hard to imagine that almost a year has passed, but today is my last day of living in Vladimir. Tonight, Molly and I are catching a train to begin our month in Siberia before we return to the States. Since I wrote last my birthday passed; my parents, sister and family friend visited Moscow, Vladimir, and Petersburg and have safely returned home; and I have packed stuff and said goodbye to people for about three days straight Not surprisingly, they really enjoyed Petersburg and I think they now have a better idea of why I am so interested in Russia. (Even if they think me a little crazy still.)

I will try to update a time or two from Siberia, but I'm not sure when or where I'll be able to use the Internet. After three days in Irkutsk, we are embarking on a two week camping trip near Lake Baikal. As you can imagine, no Internet.

School Update

School is going well and very quickly. The summer session is intensive. Instead of twice a week for 3 hours total for 15 weeks, the summer is 3 times a week for almost 7 hours, but only for about 6 weeks. It's the same number of hours over the semester, but two 2hour 15 minute classes in a night are pretty exhausting.

Midterm exams are this week and then we'll have class until June 27, the final day. (We do have one short vacation of one day for Russian Constitution Day or whatever.)

All in all, while I'm going to miss lots about Vladimir (host-babushka, co-workers, etc) I'm really excited to travel to Siberia and also to begin school in the fall. August 21st will be here before I know it and I feel like a little kid getting ready to go to kindergarten for the first time!

Speaking of Siberia and Baikal, we got accepted into the program and so we know where we will be working: Great Baikal Trail Project Our project is called "The Jungles of Kamar-Daban," sounds pretty awesome to me!

Lake Baikal Adventure

Call me crazy, but at least hear me out. This July, Molly and I are going to pay money to work hard. But it will be completely worth it because we will be working on the shores of one of the most unique places on the planet. Most people have never heard of it, but it's amazing.

Lake Baikal is the found in Siberia, some five time-zones from Moscow and European Russia. It contains 20% of the world's fresh surface water. Yes, that's right: 1/5th. That's because it's a big lake coupled with the fact that it is over 1600 meters deep.

More than that, it is home to thousands of cool endemic species of plant, animal, fish, etc. Included it the plethora of flora and fauna is the Nerpa seal, the world's only freshwater seal.

Unlike most parts of the environment in Russia, Baikal is in comparatively good shape. It has its problems, but overall is cleaner and better cared for than almost anywhere else in this vast country.

So, you ask, what are we going to do there? The answer is: build trails. Here's the website for the program: http://www.greatbaikaltrail.org/.

Their goal is to build a network of trails that ring the lake and make it more accessable to people who will enjoy the natural wonders that the lake and it's surrounding areas, which include several national parks open to all.

Here's a link to the Wikipedia article on Baikal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_baikal.

Here's a link to an image of Baikal from space: http://www.irkutsk.org/baikal/space.htm.
If you want more about it...Google it!