exams, fortunes, and Christian cable TV

9a took their exams today. I have never seen anyone look as nervous as some of my girls did when they walked in, picked up their card with their question number on it, and then promptly forgot how to say their numbers in English. (Speaking of numbers, it was Vova's birthday, and he told me he was "fifty-ten".) But Olena told me the history of Balaklia, Alina asked me if I had a true friend, and Oleksi sang something by Linkin Park. Oh, and Roman proved that he actually understands English much better than he had led me to believe throughout the semester. Encouraging.

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Did you all ever wonder what was going to happen to me? Well, the school cook read my palm last week (not my idea, Nelya's), and I am going to have three children, no major health problems until I'm 60, and only fall deeply in love once in my life. Nationality of the gentleman in question not stated, although she said that if he was Russian, I'd always be happy.

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Surreal experience of the last couple weeks: does anyone from Brockway remember the film put out by the Billy Graham Association in which a man's wife develops Alzheimer's, he starts to have an affair with a neighbor but then realizes it's wrong, his wife has a miraculous recovery (which maybe was temporary), and then his daughter gets married at the end? (No, I don't mean The Notebook.) Anyhow, there's a Christian cable channel in Ukraine that the Y family gets, and we caught the end of the film dubbed into Russian. It was an odd realization when I realized what we were watching...small, small world.

Speaking of church and small worlds, yesterday we had a girl from Belarus visiting. After church, someone took a picture of the five of us young women that were there (unfortunately, I think it was the camera of the Belarussian girl, so I probably can't get a copy). In that picture, there were girls from three different countries, all at this one little church in Ukraine. Cool moment.