End

So, my time in Ukraine has come to an end, but I will remember it forever.  Leaving was especially difficult.  As I looked around my room, devoid of all personality again, I felt an overwhelming sadness come over me.  I had known that my time to leave was approaching weeks before, but I ignored it out of self-denial.  Ukraine was my home for nine months.  I grew comfortable and attached to the people and the city where I lived.  I thought differently and I was exposed to a new way of life.  Living in America is a truly odd thing.  When you're there you don't think about the rest of the world too often.  The country is so big that news from around the world doesn't get a chance to be presented.  People go through there daily life without giving Ukraine, or any other country for that matter, a second thought.  But the fact is that there is a whole world outside our borders.  A world filled with people that are similar and different from us at the same time.  For me, living in Ukraine made me feel like a world citizen.  I wasn't an American, I was a human being.
I realize that traveling abroad isn't possible for everyone, but if the opportunity ever presents itself you have a obligation to accept.  Not in that you'll die if you don't, but that you will limit yourself of a possible experience that could change your life forever.  I know that Ukraine has changed me forever.  At times it was difficult being so far from home, but when I look back I don't remember those times.  I remember the good times.  I remember going to Kiev, Lviv, Odessa, and living in Chernivtsi.  I remember long train and bus rides.  I remember terrifying taxi rides and walking across the Ukrainian-Romanian border at 8:30 at night just to get to class the next day on time.  I remember playing paintball in an abandoned army barracks, going sledding on Orthodox Christmas, walking through the park as the last winter snow fell, visiting the Odessa catacombs, sipping Ukrainian beer, getting lost in housing complexes at night, seeing live bands at Public,  walking for hours in the spring day with friends, my birthday and all the vodka it entailed, countless conversations with people where I either understood everything that they said or nothing, my frustrating Russian classes, my awkward experiences in the International Office, the labyrinth of Kalinivsky Market, the Kiev metro and its long escalators, the difficult to pronounce street names, the cake dance, and all of my friends.  I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. 
People always used to ask me why I decided to study in Ukraine and for a long time I didn't have an answer, but now I do.  I decided to study in Ukraine because it has the most amazing culture, cities, and people.  I can't wait until I can go back again.

Europe is open for Business

So, once again it's been forever since I've posted a blog entry.  I apologize for that, not really.  Anyway, the other week I found out that I can leave and reenter Ukraine as I wish.  It's a long story filled with anger and betrayal.  As soon as I found out, I made plans to leave as soon as possible.  I'll be going to England over Easter, which I'm pretty excited about.  I''m going to tour London and visit family that I haven't seen in like 10 years!  I also want to go to Poland and Romania since they are they are right by Ukraine.  I'll be sure to post lots of pictures when I do. 
My time in Ukraine has flown by.  I'm leaving in a little over a month, which is crazy.  My classes are going well and I finally feel like I have grasp on Russian.  Obviously I still have a lot to learn, but right now I fell like it's just a matter of memorization.  My class on the history of Russian is getting more and more epic every week.  We're quickly approaching the 20th century, which is what I'm most interested in learning about. 
I have also finalized my plans for the summer.  When I leave Ukraine I'm going to travel Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris for a week with my cousin.  After that I'll finally be going home, but there will be no rest for me there.  I'll only be home for about a week before I move to Pittsburgh where I'll be taking a Summer Russian course at the University of Pittsburgh.  That will run until the middle of August and then I'll be going back to Lock Haven to start the fall semester. 
The budget cuts to PA universities has also had a major impact on me.  Lock Haven is loosing faculty, staff and students, which is really making me question whether or not I should finish my education there.  I mean, who want to have a degree from a University that may not even exist in a few years?  Oh America, how I've enjoyed my time away from your crazy politics and problems...

What happened to February?

Well February sure did go by fast.  For the past two weeks it has been snowing all the time.  It never amounted to anything huge, but I would say that there is about half a foot of snow on the ground now.  Because of the snow, road conditions have been poorer than usual.  As I told you before, Chernivtsi seems to use the time method of snow removal.  This means that they just wait until the snow goes away on its own.  Last week on my way to cross the street to get on the bus, I was almost hit by a car.  It was no fault of my own, I hadn't even started to cross the street yet.  Out of nowhere this car comes at me.  It is literally spinning out of control and stopped spinning about a foot from where I was standing.  I didn't see my whole life flash before my eyes, so I guess it wasn't really a near death experience.
Anyway, my classes are going well.  I have Russian language, Russian history, and Ukrainian Government.  You may think that that sounds boring, but I like all of them.  I have a second teacher for Russian this semester, and she has been really good so far.  She has me doing Russian tongue twisters, which she seems to find hilarious.  I can't remember if I've ever talked about Russian.  I'll do that now.  I think that I can sum it up with one word; hard.  That's really all that needs to be said about it.  It is really hard and frustrating, but at the same time very rewarding to study.  We move so fast through the language that I can never seem to get my mind wrapped around what it is that I just learned.  As soon as I think that I have a grip on the language, 10 more things are added that make it harder than ever before.   You see in English we have a strict word order, but in Russian they use the case system.  This means that sentences can appear in any order, because the endings of words will tell you where they correspond in the sentence.  It's really hard to explain in text so I'm just going to stop.  All that you really need to know is that Russian has 33 letters, six different case endings, and most people, even native speakers, will consider you crazy for trying to learn it.
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Here are some more pics for you...

 Odessa Opera House

 Odessa Art Museum

 Odessa

 Statue at the sea terminal

 Independence Square, Kiev

 The Hotel we stayed at in Kiev

 Kiev Opera House

 same

 St. Volodymyr's, Kiev

 The Goobers at the Opera

And so it begins.

So everyone keeps reminding me that the last time that I posted anything was the beginning of January.  This may true, but I have a legitimate excuse, oh wait, no I don't.  I'm in Ukraine, I do what I want!  Anyway, nothing exciting has really happened to me at all between my last post and now.  Well, I guess my other brother and his wife visiting counts as something.  The came in on the 15th of January and spent about a week traveling with me around Ukraine.  Ok, so we didn't really travel, but I took them to Kiev and Odessa.  We started out in Odessa, the Pearl of the Black Sea, where we attended a concert at a bar/club that our Hostel's owner told us about.  There were two bands, and the second one was really good.  They had a female singer, but she sounded exactly like Freddy Mercury, in a good way.  The music was really loud, but we drowned out the sound with some good beer.  The next day we arranged to tour a portion of the Odessa catacombs, which are the largest in the world at over 2,500 km.  It was an interesting experience.  We got a taxi to the museum and Maria asked him if he spoke English or Spanish, both of which he shook his head to.  It was a fun and incredibly awkward situation, only made better by the fact that our driver didn't really know where the museum was.  We eventually found the place and our tour began.  It was led by a little old lady who only spoke Russian, and without any kind of warning or safety talk we dove right into the catacombs.  This is Ukraine! Through her over dramatic hand motions, and my small vocabulary of Russian, we basically understood what she was telling us.  It was a good time over all.  It went a lot like this: Tim or Maria: "What did she say?" Me: "I don't know."  Eventually I just started making things up to make them happy.
After spending about two days in Odessa, we caught a night train back up to Kiev, where we spent the rest of our trip.  One of the things that I loved about Tim and Maria's visit was their spontaneity.  Maria thought it would be cool to go to an Opera, so we saw an Italian opera at the Kiev Opera House.  Our hostel ended up being really bad, so we stayed in a hotel for the last two days of the trip.  We were worn out and soar from walking all day and carrying our heavy bags, so we all got massages.   The whole trip was lighthearted to say the least, and even though all the pressure was on me, I didn't notice it because it didn't feel like we were on any type of schedule.  It felt like a vacation where I wasn't in charge, even though I was.
Anyway, Tim and Maria left on the 21st around noon.  My train didn't leave until around 6:30pm, so I had some time to kill.  Luckily, I had noticed that there was a TGI Friday's in the city.  Let me tell you, I haven't eaten anything that unhealthy since I came to Ukraine.  It was amazing!
Once I got back to Chernivtsi I had about two weeks until classes started again, so I lounged around and did nothing most days.  I did, however, visit the two graveyards in the city, which were quite interesting, and creepy.
Now my classes have started again and everything is back to normal.  Don't forget to COMMENT!

Here are some pics for you...

 House of the Chimeras

 Independence Square

 St. Andrew's

 St. Sophia's

 St. Michael's

 St. Nicholas Cathedral (where we went to church)

 The Lavra

 EPIC

С Рождеством Христовым и Новым Годом

So last time we talked I was about to embark on a trip to Kiev to pick up my brother and sister.  ONWARD!
My 15 hour train ride to Kiev was fine, and I arrived at 7:43 in the morning on the 21st of December.  Nick and Jess weren't going to arrive until 4:50 that afternoon so I had some time to kill in the city.  I took the metro into the city center where I found a place with wifi to check on airport delays.  There were none so I explored the city and got something to eat until it was time to head to the airport.  I arrived at the airport just as their flight was coming in, but after an hour of waiting for them to come through the doors I was starting to get nervous.  Eventually, Nick found me and said ", what are you doing here?"  It turns out that since I arrived in Kiev in September, a new international terminal was constructed across the parking lot.  How was I supposed to know about it, Google maps didn't show that it even existed!  Anyway we headed into Kiev and caught out train a few hours later to L'viv. We arrived the next morning (22) and walked to the Hostel.  Once we arrived we were shown to our room (after waking up the attendant).  We immediately showered since we all hadn't for almost three days, and after that we got something to eat.  We climbed the city hall tower (again), and walked around the city for a little before we got something else to eat (i think).  We did a lot of eating, so if I don't remember what it was that we did, i'll just say that we got something to eat.
On the second day we took a tour that was very informative.  Jess took pictures of everything and was generally insufferable, but I made it through. After the tour we ate.  Early the next morning we took a cab (their only cab experience, thank God it was a good one...)to the train station, and about 6 1/2 hours later we were in Kiev again.  We headed to the Hostel, that we were staying at up town, on the metro.  I had gone there once before, but unfortunately this time I went out the wrong exit at the metro station and was lost right away.  Nick started to get huffy, mainly because he and Jess over packed.  After about 15-20 painless minutes we found the Hostel and were soon out the door again to eat.  I really like eating.  That night Jess and Nick began feeding their addiction.  You see, when we were in L'viv we all tried Ukrainian hot chocolate.  It basically tastes like your drinking melted chocolate bars, probably because that's what it is.  Their addiction got so bad that we would just randomly stop at Coffee House, the Ukrainian Starbuck's, and get hot chocolate.  Anyway, the next day was Christmas.  We took a tour of Kiev at 12 in which the guide kept trying to convince me that I was going to find my future wife in Ukraine.  I even rubbed a bronze cats tail to make it come true.  The tour was really good, which made Jess slightly more bearable.  We ate and then went to church where I had a typical Ukrainian public bathroom experience that was saved by a Christmas Miracle!  After church we ate Christmas dinner ie pizza. 
The next day we went to the Kievo-Pechersky Lavra, or crazy big monastery thingy, and the Great Patriotic War Memorial, or epic Soviet thingy.  Jess had to use a squaty-potty that day, which she completely blamed on me for some reason.
On the 27th Nick and Jess left after we did a little souvenir shopping.  It was sad, but I had a 15 hour train ride to cheer me up.  This is really long, and I didn't even get to talk about new years... New Years: drinking, dancing, eating, laughing, avoiding dancing, falling asleep...
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