Week 16 in Russia: Meeting a Long Lost Relative

Svetlana and I at the Chita train station

Last week, my 16th week in mother Russia, I was fortunate to meet a member of my family whom no one in my immediate family has ever met, my second-cousin Svetlana. When my Babushka left Russia for Germany when she was a teenager, her brother followed her and worked in Germany at a hospital there. When he returned to Russia, he was sent to Siberia. There, he worked as a surgeon and raised a family. Last weekend, I met his daughter, my mother's cousin. My babushka has been in contact with her for quite some time, but has never met her. I am the first one in my family to return to Russia, and thus, the first one to meet her. I was ecstatic, nervous, excited...

The morning I left, there was snow on the ground in Irkutsk. It had been 80 degrees the day before, but I quickly learned that the weather changes on a dime here (it just snowed again today, by the way). I arrived in Chita to sunny weather and Svetlana, holding a copy of "Liza" magazine so that I would recognize her. She took me on a tour of Chita by car, then we went to her apartment to drop off my bag. We ate a little bit and looked through photo albums. I recognized many of the faces, and even saw some pictures that Babushka had sent her brother and Sveta over the years. I also gave Sveta a photo album with more recent pictures of my family. She was grateful, and I felt very comfortable with her. She left to go to the hospital, where she works as a children's surgeon and professor. When she cam back a few hours later, we took a walking tour of Chita, and came back to her apartment to make dinner.

The main square with a Lenin statue, of course/The train station/The main Russian Orthodox Church

The next morning, I awoke to a thick layer of snow. The weather from Irkutsk arrives in Chita a day later. We went to Sveta's dacha after breakfast, and then as guests to a few of her friends. We also drove all around the countryside to take pictures. I had to borrow a warmer coat, shoes, a hat, and scarf from Sveta because it was so chilly with the snow on the ground. We went back home to make dinner with the onions we picked and stayed in for the night. I even got a little work done on a research paper for one of my courses. It was relaxing.

Sveta and rhododendron/Me and a Reindeer Statue/Sveta's bright green dacha

The next morning, the weather went bonkers. It was sunny for our trip to the Decembrist Museum, the World War II park, and to a lookout point over the whole city of Chita. After that, we set out to a natural mineral water spring, but the weather didn't want to cooperate. It was sunny and warm before we left, then turned cold and windy, to rainy, to hail, and back to sunny again. It was bizarre. We were happy to come home to warmth and make dinner.


View of Chita from a lookout point/Me in front of the water well/The mineral water source

I slept in the next day while Sveta went to the hospital in the morning. We spent the rest of the day running around Chita. I went to the hospital where she works and finally saw her office and met her collegue, whom we were visiting after dinner that night. We went to register my visa, get souvenirs, and go to a few churches. We went to vespers in the Russian Orthodox Church where Sveta was baptised (the blue church pictured earlier). It was a really neat experience. After vespers, we went home to fix a light dinner, and then went to visit her colleague at his brand new apartment. It was a beautiful flat, and I wish I had taken my camera. It was walking distance from Sveta's, so I didn't bring anything with me. I enjoyed the conversation and promised to come back next summer to visit.

The next day, Sveta and I visited a the regional history museum before eating lunch and heading to the airport. The weather was gorgeous--almost 80 degrees and sunny. When I arrived in Irkutsk, it was 40 and raining. Oh, Siberian weather.. That sums up Week 16, minus an end-of-the-week photo session with Sasha and Hannah, which I will add to facebook/vkontakte rather than here. Next time: building a trail in the Botanical Garden with GBT!