I'm in Kyiv, soon to go to Zhytomyr and not even bothering to go out with Tanya because I am too tired. Mind you, I've gone from the insane amount of work I had to do before I left Zhytomyr to the Extreme Marathon to the Moby concert to the camp in Sevastopal to three intense days of Russia lessons and now I'm ready for a break. It makes me wonder if I'm getting old: I have a month long trip planned to start in July and I really hope I burn out after two weeks like I'm doing right now.
In any case, I have a full eight days in Zhytomyr to relac. Mind you, I'm still working at my institute and will be until July 3 but I don't have to get on another marchrutka or train for over a week and that's a good feeling.
Two funny stories from the past few days:
As I got ready to got to bed on the train to the training I realized that I had left my toiletry kit in Sevestopal. Nothing was really urgent, and someone could bring it to Kyiv within a few weeks, but I did have this problem: what about my contact lenses? They were in my eyes and I had no solution and no case and was going to a backwater training area for four days. Amy had contact solution, but we still had the case problem: where could I find two small, water-tight containers that I knew wouldn't break for four days? I think my answer to the problem was elegant: my contacts are currently inside two condoms, one knotted twice to mark it as the right lens.
Second story: in the middle of a Russian class, Irina, the head of training for Peace Corps Ukraine, bursts in and asks for me. She's breathing hard from coming up stairs and in rapid Russian (the entire training: classes, announcments, everything, was in Russian) says: "you have to call Peace Corps Medical. They want to talk to you." She hands me her mobile phone.
We're in the boonies and there's no reception inside the building, so I hurry outside where it's raining and walk around in the rain until a couple bars appear on the mobile's screen. I'm anxious: a few weeks ago I had all those tests done for the stomach virus and I went ahead and had my quarterly STD tests done. I had recieved an e-mail saying I was all clear, but what if they realized they had missed something? I was also annoyed because I knew that the most they would tell me would be to come into Kyiv, because for some reason it's policy not to say these things over the phone.
So there I was, huddled next to a tree out of the rain and trying to keep the phone pointed towards the barest of reception and when I got through to to Peace Corps Medical, this is what they said: "Can we use your article for our saftey training session tomorrow?"
Anyway, some more pics from Sevastopal. When I come back through Kyiv, I'll do a batch upload of the best of that, Moby and Extreme Marathon.
Playing football with the kids. I'm playing the role of shirtless, yelling quarterback
Chilling on the beach in Sevestopal
Students climbing up to the ruins of Balaclava, a 14th century castle
Smoking the hookah in a Turkish-themed bar
Some of the Greek ruins at Hirsonese
The students and teachers from the sumer camp (I'm bottom center)
The Orthodox church at Hirsonese, seen through an arch from the Greek ruins
More of the Greek ruins. These are all building foundations