Lake Baikal - Listvyanka

Recently I learned that McDonald's, KFC, and HJM have all of Europe locked DOWN. They are everywhere. Similarly it has come to my attention that the missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have the city of Irkutsk locked down. They have this place scoped OUT. I only say that because I ran into them on five separate occasions in the past 3 days.

My first day in Irkutsk, my guide was just finishing showing me the city after a few hours on a walking tour and I see two white shirts running at a very swift gate ahead of me. Ha, it's the missionaries. I didn't run up to talk to them and was feeling kind of guilty. No worries though.

One of my favorite things to do is to go unrecognized. I don't know why. In Mongolia I taught an entire semester of 3 English classes not speaking a word of Mongolian. On graduation day I walked into the classrooms, wrote a message on the board in Mongolian. As everyone started whispering, hoping their worst fears weren't true (that I had understood everything they had said about me) I began to read the message to them and then added a few words of parting of my own. The looks on their faces was priceless.

Anyway, yesterday I visited the wooden architecture display on the way from Irkutsk to Lake Baikal. It has original buildings, and recreations of a lot of the original city of Irkutsk. They transplanted it to the hills so that it could be preserved. It kind of reminded me of going to Nauvoo, or Kirtland. They've got houses, the church, the blacksmith's shop etc. all built out of logs as it would've appeared in Irkutsk in the 19-20 century. As we were walking from one of the exhibits to another I see 4 elders, 2 sisters and a senior sister missionary walking across the path. They all pass in front of us as I decided to have a little fun with one of the elders. I cut off the very last elder from the group. "Hey Elder, how is the work going?" Looking a little confused he answered, "Good, a little slow though." "Too bad. Russian coming along well?" And so on until he stops me and says, "Hey wait, who ARE you?" I told them I was from U.S. No way. Utah, in fact. No way. I'm LDS. No way. I served a mission in Mongolia. No way. Anyway, I chatted with the group, the entire Irkutsk Zone, in fact before we parted ways.

A few hours later, I ran into them again at the Lake. We snapped a photo and went our separate ways. As we left I mused, "Running into the missionary's on p-day at Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia." And in the immortal words of Elder Zinger, "What are the odds?"

I stayed in a cabin a little ways off of the lake. I had some shish kebab. I told you, I'm powerless to street-meat, and a Mongolian rice and beef dish. Oh yeah, I saw a seal show too. Nope, not Heidi Klum's, but Slippy and Slappy at the dome, down just a little ways from my cabin. Lake Baikal has (among many species unique to it) the Earth's only fresh water seals. These two were found injured, by poachers, when they were taken in. Now trained, they clapped, they danced to music, they played the trumpet, they jumped out of the pool and hit the ball. They were great. The funnest part though was to watch the face of the little girl, who is about my niece's age (4 or 5-ish), in complete surprise at each new trick they did.