End of Summer Fun

The weather is cold in Bar today. It's windy and rainy and cold. I guess summer really is over. I had a great summer, I have to say. Summer in Ukraine is incredible, as those of you who come to see me next year will find out.

I got back yesterday from my last summer trip. I went to Kiev to celebrate Ukrainian Independence Day with a bunch of my friends. It was a lot of fun. There were tons of people in Kiev for the holiday. It was really neat. There were no official celebrations however, because of the Russian airplane that crashed in eastern Ukraine. The country was observing three days of mourning, so all festivities were postponed until the day after the actual holiday. Still, there were a lot of people in town that day walking around with Ukrainian flags, drinking beers and generally enjoying themselves.

Early on in the day I bought two small Ukrainian flags and I spent the rest of the day waving them around exhuberantly. Sometimes I would flap them like crazy, other times I would make graceful circles in the air. It was quite fun. A few people even mistook me for a Ukrainian probably thinking, surely only a Ukrainian would flap around flags with such gusto.

In the evening, my friends and I went out on the town. It was then that I purchased some more accessories. Along with my flags, I spent the evening walking around wearing a headband with two big, orange, foam pigtails sticking out of it AND a clown nose. I bought both at a stand in the center of town. Sky bought a headband that had two foam hands sticking out of it. One was making a peace sign and the other was making a "hard rock" sign. Hailey, Dave's friend visiting from the states, bought a pink, shimmering wig. We were quite a trio, though I was the only one wearing the clown nose. Ukrainian girls generally, always look picture perfect. Appearance is uber important here. Seldom, if ever, would they try to look foolish just for laughs, so you can imagine the stares I got on the street. It was great fun. The more people stared, the more ethusiastically I waved the Ukrainian flags at them.

After Kiev, Dave and I took a quick trip down to Crimea and spent a couple days by the Black Sea. Our trip was fun. We stayed at a "bed and breakfast" in the home of our friend Marilee's host parents from training. At 10 dollars I night, I thought it was a pretty good deal, though Yulia thought it was funny that I paid even that much. We stayed in a town just outside of Sevestople, I forget what it's called though. We got in on Saturday afternoon and spent the rest of that day lounging by the beach. In the evening, night we took a fairy back across the bay to Sevestople and watched three really cool firework shows.

Sunday we spent entirely at the beach. The water was warm and clean. The beach was rocky and beautiful. Late in the afternoon we rented a paddle boat and paddled out until we were the farthest boat out on the water. There were hundreds of small jelly fish way out there, and we jumped (well, I jumped and Dave flipped) into the water from the back of the boat and swam with them. Then we just paddled around looking for bigger jelly fish, which we did see. At one point I got really excited because I thought I saw a stingray, but it turned out to be a backpack.

We left Monday morning. My train left at 11:50 in the morning and didn't get in until 8:45 the next morning. It was kind of a treck, but I had picked up a bad book when I was in the peace corps office and it occupied me during daylight hours. Now I'm back in Bar. School starts on Friday, though really, it probably won't start for a few weeks. It takes that long to iron out schedules. Maybe by the end of September I'll know my schedule. I plan on being back in Kiev this weekend. I'm going with Jennifer to take her sister to the airport. I intend to post more pictures on line when I stop into the office. Everyone deserves to see me in my Independence Day attire.

The pictures I posted before are of my street sign (I live on Karl Marx street); my kitty pheobe; my host family during training in traditional Cossak dress; my friends in Bar, Anya, Yulia, Ira and Roma; and me smelling like a lot of old wool.