This Week's Highlights

This week has been rather slow in regard to metaphysical discovery:


Getting Heat
Ukraine has been hit by a cold wave which is unfortunate when one has central heating. With central heating, the heat comes on once a year and goes off once a year. Really efficient. Luckily, I have a stove at home so I'm not subjected to subfreezing temperatures at night, but up until Friday my school was really cold. I felt a tad ridiculous wearing two pairs of tights, long underwear, and my coat during lessons in early October. The rumor was that the government would turn on the gas October 15th. I don't know why our school broke this hearsay on Friday. I like how one PCV put it:

When I think about it, I imagine a crotchety old Russian man sipping from a vodka bottle and playing chess alone in a basement deep underground gets to decide when to lift the lever that supplies Ukraine with heat.


Being Surrounded by Fatalists

With the heat discussion, as usual, there was a lot of unbearably loud chitchat in the teachers' room, the mecca of my cultural integration. In response to someone saying that Kyiv has heat because it has to, it's the capital, an older teacher said, "Все равно, скоро конец света." (all the same, soon is the end of the world). For some reason, I found this really funny. I constantly feel like the bright eyed and healthy grinning female lead in a 70s Woody Allen film, a steady pessimistic commentary marking my every move. One thing that I'm worried about with my eventual return to the states is that I'll be less proactive when it comes to decision-making and problem-solving. Here, I''m surrounded by a mentality of predetermined fates that is slowly wearing away at my ability to demand and expect something to change.