I had a really good time this weekend traveling to Donetsk. I haven't stayed much in Konotop on the weekends and I am bummed about that but my trips have been for work and have been unavoidable. I just have to work extra hard during the week on my relationships which is proving to work out just fine. Which is good because I have a few more trips planned before the end of the year. I have become quite the train/travel expert but there have been one too many lonely nights on the train.
Speaking of trains and lonely nights my first train ride on my way to Donetsk I met a nice young man traveling home from Kiev to see his mother. He is young around 20 and studying at Kiev National University. We both had a top bunk and he speaks English so we started talking. He told me about himself and his family and a lot of history about Ukraine. He has traveled to many places near Ukraine and is a really smart young man. He had a lot of information for me for Crimea which I plan to spend a lot of time in next summer. We traded emails and in the morning when we arrived in Donetsk at the ripe ol hour of 7am he was already gone. He had gotten off at an earlier stop so I didn't get a chance to say goodbye. But to my surprise on the table that sits between the beds was two candles in two mugs with a note from my new friend Revaz. He had left me a gift. These are the things that really make you smile and help you remember why you joined the PC. It was very sweet of him to leave me such a nice gift.
When I got to Donetsk I got on the trolleybus and I heard RUSSIAN! I was so happy. Everything is in Russian here. EVERYTHING! When I heard the trolleybus digital speaker talk in Russian instead of Ukrainian I thought I had died and gone to Russian heaven. It is so refreshing being around the language that you are learning and being able to understand!!!!!!! You have no idea. People usually speak Russian or some type of Russian/Ukrainian/Curjik mixture in my town but nothing is in Russian and no one speaks pure Russian so sometimes I understand and then I don't know if I am learning new Russian words or Ukrainian ones. It is annoying!
I wasn't meeting Larrissa for a while so I found myself a nice little cafe and had some breakfast. I ordered all the good stuff off the menu and then rolled out of the cafe to meet my hostess. Larrissa is a woman that runs the Typhloid Center in Donetsk which is a center for the visually impaired. She is doing what I want to do in Konotop and I went there to meet her and see how everything works so I can do it in Konotop. The center was great. She has 9 students, most pensioners and half are completely blind. She teaches them English for the first two hours and then the second two hours they have computer training with a program called JAWS that helps them by reading the entire screen contents to them. It is pretty amazing. Watching these people and their willingness to learn especially at their age was just something you have to see with your own eyes and it was truly amazing.
After she loaded me up with information she took me to the gym! Oh yeah that is right there is an Equinox in Donetsk. Donetsk is a big city so I am not surprised that they have these things but I am certainly not used to the luxury of using them anymore. We did some swimming training for an hour and then we went to do some SAMBA! Now before I get to that it must be said that this gym ain't cheap. Oh no to go to this fine venue you must pay 600 UAH per month!! That is more expensive than my gym in NYC. So back to Johnny Castle. So we were doing moves right from Dirty Dancing and it was awesome. We had so much fun with this. They guy (Victor) was so fantasticly gay and so much fun. And of course he loved the American that couldn't really speak Russian and looked like a silly ass trying to do these moves. Now I wasn't completely bad. There isn't anyone in this world who has seen Dirty Dancing more than I have, well except my cousin who liked it just a little bit more than me, so I know those moves and I am quite certain I tried them when the movie first came out in my living room but doing them in a dance studio was a whole other thing. It was great. I wish I had taken pictures! I have Victor's number and apparently his fellow school mate that studied dancing with him in Kiev lives in Konotop...uh oh! "No one puts Baby in the corner." There might be a "last dance of the season" in Konotop in June 2012 stay tuned!
That night I stayed with a friend of Larrissa's. Her name is Nadia and she and her granddaughter Alia put me up and fed me. We talked for a while over some chai and then we went to sleep to the Ukrainian version of "You think you can dance". It was a good day and I was exhausted.
Up bright and early the next day we have some good breakfast and more lovely chats over some chai and off to site seeing we go. We didn't have much time because Larrissa wanted to take me to English club at 1pm so we rode around the city in the car. I got to see the Ukrainian version of WalMart or Costco and then we went to the new KICK ASS STADIUM FOR EURO 2012. Apparently the richest man in Ukraine built this stadium for Donetsk and it is the most modern stadium in all of Europe and the best one in Ukraine. It was pretty sick. I have some pics of it on facebook. I didn't get to go inside but we checked out the museum and the cafe and I took several pics of it.
After the site seeing we went to English club and discussed the political system in Ukraine. I can't talk politics so I didn't say much but they asked me all kinds of things even about our pound and SPCA. Stray dogs is a real problem here so I hope I helped give them some ideas on how to correct it. That's how we did it anyway. The two days were so cramped with stuff it was difficult to stop and smell the roses but I stayed after the club to talk to some of the people. Everyone spoke great English and it was nice to be there amoung so many people who wanted to practice. I wish we had that kind of following in Konotop!
I met up with Conor and Amy afterwards and we got a beer at a local pub. Then we went to this really delicious Turkish restaurant and stuffed our faces with good cheap food. It was a great weekend! I am tired now so to bed I go. I will update this post with pics. Good night.
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