Katie, a friend of mine from Britain, flew in on Thursday to take an extended weekend trip in Ukraine. When you live in the UK and make the pound, you can do that sort of thing.
I took her around Kyiv on Thursday, back to Zhytomyr on Friday, and then gave her the cultural experience: we bought food at the bazaar, went back to my place and canned pickles and applesauce. Then I took her out to the fields where, unfortunately all the summer crops have been harvested so that was not a lot to see. I forced her to speak to one of my English classes and tell them about Britain and show pictures before she, Diana and I went out to a club. It's difficult having to dance in a club with two attractive girls, but someone has to do it.
Today is was back to Kyiv to see some places that were even new to me: the Caves Monastery, where you we toured the catacombs by candlelight and saw the mumified remains of monks. Katie was required to wear a head scarf and had to buy one on the street. Ironically, there were many women in see-thru shirts that barely obscured their breasts, but they had on the head shawls and so were fine. Then we went to see Rodina Mat, otherwise known as "The Big Metal Mama", the huge statue of a woman holding a sword in the air that you can see from much of Kyiv. Surrounding her is a bunch of Soviet military weaponry, including tanks, helicopters and an intercontinental ballistic missle. Seriously.
Tonight, believe it or not, we're going to a Brian Adams concert. He's playing for free in the middle of Kyiv (how low he has fallen) so we'll give him an hour before grabbing dinner and getting on an overnight train to Odessa...
It's a tough life.