Spring excursion

I think it's Spring for real this time. I can hear birds singing outside the window and even saw some buds growing on a tree today. It has been above 10 degrees all week, today was 15 and sunny. Today the department for teaching Russian to foreign students organised an excursion to the home village of Krasnoyarsk's most famous writer, Viktor Petrovich Astafyev.


(The village of Ovsyanka is about 20 km outside of Krasnoyarsk, shown in the rear of this picture.)

Victor Petrovich Astafyev was born in the little village of Ovsyanka on May 1st, 1924. His parents died when he was still young. He then lived with his grandparents in the village. The village was a place of childhood joy for Astafyev. Sadly, before his childhood was over his grandparents died too. For what ever reason, he was moved to an orphanage in the far north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, in the town of Igarka. In his early working life he worked in factories and on construction of the railroad. In 1942 he went to the front in the war against Nazi Germany. After the war he settled down in the town of Chusovo in the Ural Mountains.


(The house of Astafyev's grandparents, restored.)


(Winter sled.)


(Winter sled.)

Astafyev began his writing career while living in Chusovo. He had a long writing career spanning fifty years until his death in 2001. His favourite themes were nature and the simplicity of village life, but he wrote on many other contemporary topics.
In 1980 Astafyev bought a little house in his chilldhood village of Ovsyanka, on the banks of the Yenisey River, as close to his grandparents' house as possible. He lived there a further 21 years while continuing his writing career. Astafyev had a successful career which enabled him to pay for the construction of a library in his home village. The library is of a high standard, considering Ovsyanka's size. In 1998, after the fall of communism, Astafyev also paid for the construction of an Orthodox church in Ovsyanka.


(Main street of Ovsyanka.)


(Church built in 1998.)


(Disused truck.)


(Locals in Ovsyanka.)

Once seeing all the sights in the village, Melody and I thought the excursion would be complete. But according to Krasnoyarsk pride no excursion within vicinity of the town of Divnogorsk is complete without a visit to the Hydroelectric power station.



(My Chinese class mates amusing themselves at the Yenisey River.)

One more compulsory stop, so the students could buy dried fish.