kyiv, the money pit

I'm in Kyiv, doing my COS medical, shopping for Christmas presents for everyone I hadn't gotten yet (I'm quite fond of the t-shirts I found for various male relatives, having been able to match interests and shirts), hanging out with friends, and just generally feeling poor, as it seems to be impossible to do or eat much in Kyiv for less than 25 hyrven.

Facts of interest:

~a group of us have a very nice apartment just off of Maidun Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), which has worked out to about $17/night/person. Not bad, especially for Kyiv. If my sofa-bed didn't fall apart quite so easily, it'd be even better (and I thought I lucked out when I was the only person with my own bed!).

~COS medical was not a particularly pleasant experience, at least not the parts that I generally find unpleasant when doing a physical. However, Dr. Sasha was nice and gave me Valium to help me relax. I hate to think what it would have felt like without it.

~Related to that, when you're on Valium, don't try and find your way up Andrievsky Uziz (a twisty, turny little street with lots of art stands) by yourself to meet friends, especially when they think they're at the bottom of the hill but they're really halfway up. It's confusing.

~Last night, I went out for coffee (okay, hot chocolate and tea) with John, a guy I was a camp counselor with six years ago. Since then, he's converted to Orthodoxy and for the last three months, he's been in Ukraine serving as a short-term missionary at an orphanage for severely disabled children. We'd been hoping to connect up while we were both in the country, but hadn't been able to until last night, the night before he was leaving to go back to Michigan. It was neat to see how his experience here has compared to mine.

~I'm going to go take my LPI in Russian now. I'm still a little loopy, so this should be fun...