Last week was pretty good for the most part. I enjoyed going into the HOPE office to work. The ladies there bring a different sweet snack in every day. It's just the best thing. Ukrainian desserts are rocking my world right now.
I took a couple more trips into the city and talked to some strangers. I stopped by McDonald's again. Something about how American it is keeps drawing me back. I've had more McDonald's since I've been here than I had all of last year. I've been told that fellow ex-pats refer to it as "the Embassy." It's fitting.
By the end of last week I was starting to get a little restless. I haven't felt very lonely--for the most part I've really enjoyed the exorbitant amount of time by myself. But I'm just not the kind of person who stays in every night. So I opened my window and stuck my head out to see the snow and feel the cold (Dani and Jess are familiar with this practice of mine--but I promise I don't throw food out the window like I did in Doane). Just when I had started saying to myself (yeah, it turns out I talk out loud to myself a lot here), "okay I'm going to need to do something with other human beings really soon" I got a phone call from Steve asking if I wanted to go to a basketball game on Saturday. It was almost eery. But I was so happy. I've never been so excited to go see a basketball game. I'm not really a sports person but for some reason I feel the need to go see some games while I'm here. So I met up with Steve & Jo and two more ex-pats (Bailey and Rachel-who are here with the Peace Corps) to go to this exciting game. We hopped on the marshrutka (after a helpful Ukrainian man stopped us from getting on the wrong one) and went to the stadium. It was pretty dead when we got there...which we soon discovered was because the game was actually an away game, despite the "countdown to home game" on the website. But the evening was saved by Jo's fantastic sushi and some good old fashioned Dutch Blitz.
I've now been living in my apartment for 2 weeks and it's feeling pretty homey. So it's about time you got a tour.
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| My little kitchen |
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| My kitchen window |
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| Lots of birds hang by my window. |
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| Strangest couch I've ever seen. It's not actually padded...that's what the pillows are for? |
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| I also have a little enclosed balcony - every single soviet style apartment complex has these. |
