summer's ending and school's coming!

We're gonna howl at the moon, shoot out the light
It's a small town Saturday night
It's a small town Saturday night

(Hank Ketchum, "Small Town Saturday Night")

No howling or shooting involved, but I did have a Ukrainian-style small town Saturday night on...well, on Saturday night. Having spent the day doing basically nothing, I bought myself ice cream and walked around the park near my building for a little while. On the way back, I ran into my neighbor Oleg (see previous posts) and he, his wife Lesia, and I decided to go hang out by the Palace of Culture in hopes that the postponed fireworks would happen. They didn't happen, but we millled around among the teenagers who had been at the disco (my 11th form boys ignored me, no surprise there) and the young couples pushing baby carriages, and had our last hurrah before Lesia and I start teaching on Friday (she's a piano teacher at the music school).

An older guy who Oleg knew was chatting with us and asked me in Ukrainian, "Aren't our girls pretty?" We all sort of looked at him like he'd gone a bit crazy, and then he said, "Well, aren't our boys pretty?", except that he was trying to use Ukrainian instead of Russian and used the word stem for "boys" and the plural suffix for "girls". We got a good laugh out of it after he left. And then we, along with another couple, bought cheese and peach juice and tomato juice and vodka and found a picnic table for Bloody Marys (which translates, amusingly enough) and peace juice for the non-drinker. We talked about my life in America and other stuff, and then sang folk songs in our respective languages. Then, we headed home and I hung out in their apartment until 12:30 watching a DVD of their recent wedding.

As I was walking to the post office just now, I heard "Miss Sally!" and saw Dasha and Alina, two of my soon-to-be-third-formers, bearing down on me. They've missed me, they are looking forward to English class, Dasha's birthday is tomorrow and Alina's is next week, and they had been at Grandma's. I was also presented with two bouncy balls, a scented pen, and a scented tissue. It's nice to be loved.

Andrey and Ira from the church in the center of town are coming over for dinner tomorrow night. I was going to make fried rice, but apparently this is not the week to buy fresh mushrooms or carrot salad (two of the main ingredients) in this town. I think pizza's the backup option.

Finished Les Miz at 12:20 this morning, crying heavily. I confess to skipping some of Hugo's long tangents, but the story itself is wonderful.

School on Friday! Where did the summer go! I think I want to go back... Hard to believe I've been here almost 11 months already.