Brrrrr!

School has been closed this week because of the cold. Supposedly we’ll have school tomorrow, but I don’t know; it’s still really cold. Yesterday morning it was –24 c. I think it warmed up to –20 c. during the day, but I’m not one hundred percent. Regardless, it was still freezing cold. I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced such consistent cold before in my life. I’ve certainly never experienced the thrill of snot actually freezing in my nose as I walk.

On Saturday, I went to Vinnysta and bought some shoes for playing basketball. I went to a store called MegaSport. The sales assistant mostly spoke Russian and since I mostly speak English and a tad bit of Ukrainian, our interactions were mostly through mime. In the end I bought some Adidas. On Monday, I went to the gym and played basketball again. The gym was cold though, and I never really got warmed up even as I played. A couple of my students were at the gym playing too so it’ll be all over school that I was there. There are no secrets in Bar, not that playing basketball is a secret. The day after I played the first time, I went over to Jennifer’s house and her host dad told me he heard I was at the gym playing and that I was pretty good. Like I said, there are no secrets in Bar.

After basketball on Monday, Roma, Yulia’s friend and my basketball buddy, invited me to come eat cake and drink tea with a couple of Yulia’s other friends. Since I didn’t have school on Tuesday, I agreed thinking, cake and tea, how long could that possibly take? By now you’d think I’d have learned…

We took a taxi a few minutes out of town to their friend Sergie’s apartment. Apparently it was his birthday, a fact I failed to gather in the conversations beforehand. We arrived and Sergie’s mother immediately began cooking food in the kitchen. Then she brought out the table with the nice tablecloth and plates and shot glasses and of course, vodka. It turned out that we ate and drank for more than two hours before we even got to the cake and tea. When I finally got home at midnight, I was so tired I could barely climb the stairs. Anyway, you’d think that by now I’d have learned that here, it’s never as simple as cake and tea.

Though it’s been cold, the sun has been out and that’s been nice. There’s nothing like blue skies to lift the spirits in the dead of winter. This week I’ve been waking up early but staying in bed late. It’s too chilly in my room, even when the space heater, to get up and at ‘em. I finally received my first mailing from the Peace Corps office, so I’ve been reading my Newsweek and drinking tea in bed and dreaming about two months from now when I’ll be on the verge of getting my own place. I can’t wait.

My host family is nice. Yulia is great. My host mom is a bit nuts but I’m learning to deal with her. Mostly it’s hard because I don’t really have my own room here. The room that I sleep in is the music room. It has Misha’s piano and guitar and keyboard in it and it’s the only place he has to practice. My room also has Yulia’s desk in it, so every afternoon she’s studying in there. She doesn’t bother me, but the situation isn’t exactly the homiest for an American used to personal space. Only two more months though, and then I’ll have lots of personal space.