Winter Olympics

Seeing as the Winter Olympics are underway I thought I'd do my bit for Britain and take on the Russians at their own game, cross country skiing. Yep, there I was one solitary Brit battling it out against the professionals on the race track. Lessons? Pah! Who needs lessons when you have courage, skill and the good old fashioned British fighting spirit... Well that's how I saw it. The Russians probably saw it more as 'who let this pesky foreigner into our forest and who on earth gave her a pair of skiis (skis)???' I'm ok though, the bruises have almost healed and the only thing left unscathed was my pride. I actually made it all the way round, the second time, without falling over once. Sure there were a few 'woah almost' moments where I nearly lost my cool but on the whole, I can safely say, it was a good effort on my part.

So there I was in the Taiga, dressed up in my Ski gear, looking the part. We drove down the road to Omsk (though not TO Omsk, as the nearest big Siberian town it's a mere 11 hours away by train) to the forest. Once in the forest it was a bit like entering the twilight zone (I can only imagine) The first encouner we had was with a local dog who stood in front of the moving car and tried to prevent us from advancing any further by the power of barking like a dog possessed. It worked. He had to be escorted away from the car by a passing walker. A little further up the road we saw a man who was possibly the dogs owner, jogging bare chested. Have I mentioned that the temperature is roughly minus 20? Crazy townsfolk.

Following in the great footsteps of the exciled Dostoevsky and Stalin through this beautiful 'Sleeping Land' as it is known in Mongolian Altay language, that's Siberia to you and me... I almost had a moment of greatness myself. I felt the beginnings of an epic novel about the struggle and psychology of mankind in this Capitalist/Communist mixed up country stirring in my blood, and then I felt the need to start a Revolutionary uprising, possibly killing millions of my own countrymen in the process, but I decided not to do either of those and just fell over skiing instead.

And then I went home, had a cup of tea and watched Russia get the gold in cross country skiing! Now I'm back to work and it's been a whole month since I've been here, only two more to go. Hip hip hooray!