Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev

Today, I'm asking all my faithful readers for advice. As you probably know, I'm coming back to the US in four weeks (eek!). As you probably also know, I'm a voracious biblophile. So now I'm debating the best way to get my books back to the US. I probably have 20-25 books I want to ship back, many of them fairly small. The majority of them are in Russian or Ukrainian and would be hard to obtain in the US, and the remainder are ones that I particularly love or have sentimental value to me.

So...shipping. Because I really don't want to haul them in my suitcase, nor will I have room. I seem to have two options. The first is to go through EMS, a shipping company that some of my fellow PCVs used. They have a branch office in Kharkiv, so I'd have to haul my books up there, but it's closer than the main office in Kyiv. They charge a flat $40 to begin with, plus $4.17 per kilogram after that. It seems likely that I would have no worries about my box getting lost.

The other option is to go through my local post office. They said that the price goes up for each kilo, so they couldn't/wouldn't tell me how much things would cost exactly, but it would be roughly $30 for two kilograms. I'd only have to haul my books to the center, rather than two hours away. I've never had a package I sent to the US get lost, although some of them have taken their own sweet time in getting there (and let's not even talk about the postcards from Odesa, shall we, Mom and Tif?). However, if anything happened to my books, I would be a sad Sally.

(I would also, at my post office, have a very good chance of having to deal with the Mean Post Office Lady...Tif, I'm sure you remember her. She's one of the people in Balaklia who irritates me the most, not so much for her perpetual grumpiness and lack of helpfulness exactly, but that she goes to Andrey's church and is, as far as I know, a Christian and is STILL grumpy. I always want to say, "You know, we're sisters in Christ here. Can I get a smile?" It's not just me...she's like this with everyone. I think she must really hate her job.)

So...what do you think? Do I take a day to travel to Kharkiv and pay extra, or do I go to the post office and hope for the best?

~*~

I was at the copy center at the library today, this time for my own projects for the teachers' seminar, and Serhii Danilovich, the music teacher from my school, came in. He said that he'd seen how nice the booklets for the teachers' seminar I'd had printed at the library came out, and he also wanted some done the same way. (Except that he already had a dummy copy set up that just needed to be copied and the covers laminated.)

I'm not sure if the copy center ladies are going to hate me for sticking them with more booklets or love me for drumming up more business.

~*~

Serhii Danilovich and I had a nice chat after we got our copies done--a month or so ago, he'd requested a CD of American songs that dealt with topics other than love. I'd really gotten into the project and made him one with songs as varied as Alabama's "Forty Hour Week," Elvis Presley's "In the Ghetto," the Weavers' "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?", Nina Simone's "Work Song," and Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," plus a few more. Translating them is a bit beyond my skill, but we sat down one day and I told him a few sentences about each song.

Well, the current topic in the 8th form curriculum is "Modern Music," and apparently all the kids were like, "Ukrainian music sucks and is boring but music in English is cool." Serhii Danilovich played segments of the songs I gave him and asked the kids what they thought the songs were about. "I don't know but it sounds cool!" was a popular answer. So he told them what the songs were actually about--social problems, the working class, etc.

He said that the kids looked horrified and are now avoiding conversations with him, as if talking to him will somehow make all their other "cool" music turn into musical political statements.

I love it when stereotypes are broken down!

my writing style suffers when I'm sick...I apologize in advance

Ugh. I'm sick.

I'd had a sore throat/runny nose/lots of coughing the first week Tif was here, and while it got somewhat better last week, it never really went away. Add to that the 46 hours or so I spent on public transportation (electrichkas, passenger trains, buses) last week, and I have pretty much no immune system left. Today it all hit, with exhaustion, chills, over-heatedness, and a fever. I ran a few errands before it all struck, but when I came home, I went to bed and stayed there for about 4 hours. I want to get healthy enough that my first few days in Donetsk aren't spent in bed recovering, so today and tomorrow I guess I'm taking it a bit easier than I had originally planned.

I think my body's been trying to tell me to slow down for the last month or so, and I haven't really been listening. Oops.

Anyway, I loved L'viv. It was small enough that we could walk everywhere easily (although we did take the 50-kopek tram from the train station to the center once, which ended up giving us a nice little tour of the outskirts). The architecture was beautiful--it really hit me that when you build something, you have a choice. It can either be simply utilitarian, like much Soviet architecture (or large and grandiose), or it can be pretty. For example, a concrete balcony versus a wrought-iron one. I'll try and work on posting pictures if my Internet connection is happy with me in the next day or so.

I also liked staying at the hostel. First off, of course, there was a hot shower and a bathtub with even better water pressure than the shower. :) But really, one of the neatest parts of the experience was meeting people from all over who were also staying there. While we were there, there were people there from Great Britain, the US (other PCVs!), Finland, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, and Australia. Most of them knew little/no Ukrainian or Russian, so I helped some people out with understanding their train tickets. It was interesting to hear some of their stories--the guy from Switzerland, who was probably my age or a little younger, had spent the last six months in India and China, just backpacking around. He had then gone to Kazahkstan and flown to Ukraine (to avoid having to get a Russian visa), and was now going to travel around Eastern/Central Europe a bit, although he said he was a bit tired of travelling by now.

[Side note: Tif didn't end up shooting an AK-47 after all, as it was more expensive than she'd hoped for. You can all breath a sigh of relief/regret (take your pick) now.]

Tif and I also had a good day in Kyiv, although Andriivski Uziz, a street that usually is packed with souvenir stands and art booths, was pretty much deserted, and we couldn't figure out why. We met up with my friend Tanya and went out for milkshakes, which were very good. The only bad part of the day was that we had been planning to get a hotel room at the train station, but there weren't any available. The receptionist, who spoke English, wasn't very polite about it all. It was raining, and we didn't know where we'd end up. I was on the phone with Tanya, who was looking up Kyiv hotels online and sending me the info. Kyiv is notorious for being expensive, and we were trying to keep costs down, which added to the frustration. We ended up renting an apartment for a night (a common practice in Ukrainian cities, as apartments are generally nicer than most hotel rooms...PCVs often chip in together as a way to cut costs), which ended up costing us the same as if we'd stayed at the train station, plus the landlady was very friendly and impressed that as young American women, we could speak the language and were capable of taking care of ourselves in a strange country. :)

Friday morning, I said goodbye to Tif, who took the bus to the airport to begin her long journey home, and after lunch, I headed out to Zgurivka to see the Malkos. Sasha had left for L'viv the day before (trains passing in the night?), but I had a good visit with Mama Luda and Tato Kolya. Saturday, I took the train home from Kyiv, and I got back to Balaklia around 3:45 am Sunday morning. No, I didn't try and go to church later on...I was asleep!

The one thing I'm sorry that I didn't get to do on my vacation was go to "Festival of Hope", the Franklin Graham crusade in Kyiv last weekend. I wanted to, and I considered taking a later train Saturday night that went to Kharkiv and then taking the elektrichka home Sunday morning, but I decided that really, I was tired and needed to get home. Based on how lousy I feel today, that was a smart choice, but I still wish I could have gone.

This week has included being interviewed by a 14-year-old for the local newspaper, dealing with a burned-out lightbulb that appears to be corroded and impossible to remove from the light fixture, trying to get money off my US debit card, and hanging out with my neighbors last night. Today was mostly spent in bed. Hopefully I'll feel a bit better tomorrow and can get a few last-minute things done, and then tomorrow around midnight I get on a train to Donetsk for the English-language program down there.

I think I'm going back to bed now!