Russia Week 12: Springtime Snow and Singing

This week was much more eventful than last, and I have plenty of multimedia extras to include with this week's blog.

On Tuesday, I woke up and looked out the window. I was in a merry-state-of-shock. It was April 21st, and there was 6 inches of snow on the ground. The week before I had to buy a windbreaker because my wool coat was too warm--and then it became winter again! I was ecstatic. I went to school slowly and merrily--I was going to be late to class, but I didn't care. I just kept taking pictures and enjoying the clean, wintry air. Below is a video I took of Square Kirova, right outside my university:



I took plenty of pictures, too:

Anyway, after I slowly made my way to class, I ran into my professor. He told me that we didn't have class today because of our inter-university competition within our faculty. It was 8am, and I didn't have to be at work until 11, so I called my friend Sasha and tagged along with him on some errands. He was leaving the next day for Ekaterinburg to go to the American embassy there, so I spent as much of the day with him as possible before he left. He is going to be away until the middle of May, taking this trip as an opportunity to visit his parents in Nizhny Vartosk and then his brother in Krasnoyarsk. He called on Friday to tell me that he received his visa, so he'll be working in San Diego, CA this summer. Congrats, Sasha! Поздравляю тебя!

After the snow came a disgusting period of rain. The streets of Irkutsk are no fun when wet and not-frozen. Wednesday was muddy as I woke up to participate on my faculty's team for our inter-university Olympiada. Russians love competitions, I've noticed, and they regularly have competitions on language. This was the competition for students Russian as a foreign language. We put on a play about Pushkin and I was asked to sing a Russian romance (like a French or German art song, for those of you who may know classical music). The thing is, I never practiced this song. Ever. I had a karaoke track and notated music that didn't quite match the karaoke track that I was given a week before the competition. Needless to say, the trained singer in me was having a freak-out moment. I couldn't even find a quiet place to warm up in the morning, and when I finally did, I had five minutes to warm up before performing. It was nerve-wrecking. Apparently, no one noticed the flaws, and I got nothing but compliments from students and teachers. I just really wish I could have done it right, with my mom accompanying me on the piano after hours and hours of rehearsal. ;-) I have a video of the song, but it's too big to upload on this blog. If you're interested, ask me when I get back. I have a video of the entire play, too. :)

Below are some pictures from the Olympiada. My friend Tsinya and I are posing near the IGLU emblem in our awesome 80s prom dresses (we each played one of Pushkin's wives in these awful creations). The second picture is of our team---we won first place, by the way, beating all the other schools!

That about wraps up Week 12. On Friday, I went to a rehearsal for a Russian folk singing and dancing festival that happened this past Sunday. I'm saving that for Week 13, so stay-tuned for more videos!