I am a goldfish.

While I've spent a great deal of time online this week, reading sites on all sorts of topics (mostly pointless), I don't seem to be blogging all that much more. Time to remedy this.

Tuesday night was my friend Natalia's birthday party. About a dozen of us were at a cafe near her house...a mix of her friends (mostly teachers) and former students. A lot of her former students spoke English a bit, and once they got over staring at me and being shy, we had a nice conversation. It was a fun party...good food, watching Natalia do an impression of a popular Ukrainian singer while dancing, and just a nice chance to be social.

However, around 9 pm, as the bar crowd was starting to collect in the front of the cafe, two of my 10th form girls came in. They were with older (ie mid-20s) guys and drinking beer. One of them, Maryna, is one of my wilder girls, so while I was disappointed to see her, I wasn't surprised. But the other girl, Natasha, is a "good girl"...does her homework, behaves, etc. She's the sort of pretty, romantic girl who wants a boyfriend and so is willing to settle for the first relationship she can, whether or not it's the right one. Sigh...

Four different students had seen me over the course of the evening, and so yesterday at school, kids kept asking me, "Miss Sally, were you at the cafe in Novoselivka (the neighborhood where Natalia lives) last night? Why? Did you like it? What did you drink?" I felt, as I often do, like a goldfish in a big tank. I have no private life, it seems.

Dealing with allergies and sinus headaches this week. Ugh.

I stopped at a shop on the way home today and found cinammon bread with raisins, which is very similar to a cinnamon roll, but the size and shape of a loaf of bread. Yummy. :)