I may be in a village but I'm only 4 hours from Odessa

I'm grateful that my regional center is Odessa, considered by some the most cosmopolitan city in Ukraine. I don't go there too often other than to catch a train or do paperwork at the bank. When I'm in Odessa, I typically bolt from one stand to another in the bazaar district, getting foods that aren't available where I live or is much cheaper than in the village. It was nice to spend some time in the city last weekend with some friends, acting like a tourist. We had some amazing food and saw a ballet. The production was quite good, better than anything I've seen in Kyiv. I took a picture of the inside. The theater felt vaguely familiar, then I read an excerpt about it's construction and realized that it was done by the same architect as the Dresden, Budapest, and Vienna theaters which I've all been to. I've gotten around central Europe.



Other highlights this week:

School is really slow in part because we're nearing the end of the semester and testing is taking place. It's been hard to go to school this time of year, acting as a human tape recorder for oral exams. Yes, it's my fault for not finding other things to do at my site, but honestly other than the mornings when I sit at the school, the rest of my days are filled with group and individual lessons.

I get to see my family in a little over a week! It's been something like 15 months since I've seen them and I can barely wait to be around people that I don't have to explain myself to.

I think "teeth" is one of the ugliest words in the English language.

Here, there are a lot of people born around December 8th, which I find kind of funny because March 8th is Women's Day. I hate Women's Day, it's a poor excuse at gender equality that includes giving the women in your life flowers and then the same women spending the whole day in the kitchen preparing a feast. I like to think that December 8th babies were conceived in an old spirit of socialist camaraderie.