A rainy Monday

After living in Kyiv for almost three months, I find myself unable to keep up with emails (internet access is sketchy at home and there's very little, ie NO time at school). I'm taking the plunge into the advanced technology (for me, anyway) of creating a blog. So...live from Kyiv, here I am!

Winter's on its way but not here yet. The temperature drops to freezing and it snows, then it gets warm again and I open the windows and mosquitos buzz around, even here on the seventh floor in November in Kyiv. (flypaper strips are still hanging all over the place) The first freezing spell was the week of October 15. Coincidentally, October 15 is the date that city workers begin to turn on the heat in apartment buildings all over the city. However, it's turned on over a period of two weeks, neighborhood by neighborhood. All of the ex-pat teachers were asking each other "did you get heat yet?"

I hadn't, and by Wednesday I felt colder in my apartment than out of it. I finally gave up and went to Mega Mart (the local version of Wal-Mart) to buy a little electric heater. Usually I carry a Ukrainian/English phrasebook, but in my rush to get out of my arctic living space and into a heated store, I forgot it. Then I couldn't figure out which appliances were heaters and which were fans or dehumidifiers or whatever...juicers, for all I knew. Luckily, one of the clerks spoke enough English to help me out. Basics like "hot" and "cold" are really words I should have known by then! I know them now (haryachyy and kholodnyy).