Summer Stuff!

Hey guys. So for those of you who don't know I go to Ukraine every summer. Including this one. And I expect a lot of boredom. And even though no one really goes here anymore maybe something cool will end up happening to me and I need to write it down so I can remember it later. (I just read the things I wrote last summer and realized that I didn't remember half of them)

I just finished calling everyone and saying bye to them so if I missed anyone, or they don't know about it

BYE

Hey guys.

So i'm back in Ukraine. Great. I've never realized how vital some
kind of video game-playing, internet-compatable device was to
these kind of trips until now. I've had to use my grandfather's
computer so far and it's a pretty old model. Hell, I mean I can
fucking play Warcraft one on this thing! But hey, better than
nothing, right?

Anyway, about my flight. I have some pretty mixed feelings about
that. To be more precise, I liked the first half of the trip. That was pretty
good. But the second half sucked major ass. And that was the longer
half of the trip. The first thing that I had to do was fly out to New York
with my brother and my dad. Then I had to fly with my brother to
Ukraine while my dad stayed in a hotel that night and flew back the
next day. We were supposed to get a flight attedant to help us out
with our documents and stuff. Let me start with the flight attendant,
because I like to have the bad news before the good news. The first
flight attendant we got annoyed me because of the fact that he wasn't
very good at speaking english (understandably, anyways). Now this
wouldn't have been as much of annoyance if he could actually
understand russain. Which he couldn't. He couldn't clearly speak
neither the language of the origin or the destination. This wasn't as bad though, as
the other flight attendant. She was absolutely horrid. What did she do?
Basically, she treated me like I was five. Did I look like I didn't
know how to put on the seat belt? Did I LOOK like I needed a
five-minute explanation? She left us alone when I was sitting down,
but as soon as I get up, she HAS to know what it is that I want. Still
in a bad mood cause of that.

Another thing that annoyed me was the wait at the New York airport.
See, our next flight was in eight hours. We also had to reship our baggage
because we couln't ship it directly to Kiev. So we decided to take care
of that first. However, when we went to our airline's security checkpoint
they said it was too early and we would have to wait for an hour.
The thing was that those assholes wouldn't let us out of the checkpoint
until we get our seat number and check in our bags. So we were stuck
there. Which sucked because there were no bathrooms, places
to buy food, ect, in the checkpoint. The flight there went pretty well,
though. The airplane had cable and all that, and you could also
switch to radio which had ninety stations as opposed to standard
in flight radio which has twelve. Also there were screens on the back
of all the chairs so everyone had their own tv screen. That was pretty
cool. Saw some funny stuff there. The bad thing about cable is that
all that is on around 2 to 4 am are infomercials, and it was a late night
flight. I actually saw a commercial about penis enhacement. The radio
had some good music on. I found out that if I have some good
electronic/dance/techno/instrumental/ect. to listen to then I can happily sit still
listening to for about ninety minutes. Then I fell asleep. The visuals were
pretty good too, by which I mean that it was dawn and I got to watch
sunrise at a pretty high altitude listening to dance/electronica/whatever.
It was cool. Also watching sunrise/set is awesome if your window
is facing the right way because when the light hits the first clouds
they go from red to yellow to white in like a minute. It's like 'whoosh'.
Watching stuff from planes is fun. A thing I noticed over woody/hilly
semi-populated areas is that everything is in squares and other weird
shapes. You know what I mean if you've seen it. Another thing I saw
while we were flying over Poland was a lake with a very peculiar shape.
Taking note of the peculiar shape, I decided to give it a name fitting
to it's shape. After some deliberation over what to call it I settled
on calling it Penis Lake. Soon after I got to Kiev, and everything was
more or less going as usual. Baggage claim was a bitch, but I guess
that's also usual.

Anyway that's what happened to me. Maybe something happened to you.

Shit, I posted something but it didn't show up. I know I kept it somewhere...


Grrrrr, no comments.

Okay, I just got back from a five day trip to a village way off into the country, so I've been pretty quiet. I'll write about that later. I found the stuff I wrote earlier and I think I should put it up now.

What, still no comments? Common guys, be more active! All this stuff I say is interesting, right...? Ah fuck it, I'm still writing it even if it isn't. Like I have anything better to do.

Written July 9nth 2009

Okay. So still in Ukraine. Won't be back till' august. It's been getting a little slow lately. I was sick for a few days. Which sucked, cause' I had to spend three days in the country, and the most important kind of recreation there is swimming in the river. Which, of course, I couldn't do. The second best form of recreation is card games. When I get back to California I'm gonna bring you guys a deck of cards from Ukraine. Also, more importantly teach you guys how to play Idiot (Jalyn, you remember this, it's the game you lost to my conscience). It's better than Thirteen. Especially if Thirteen is all you play. Remind me to do that.

Anyway, I've been doing pretty much nothing for the past three days. One day I watched TV for five hours straight. It was horrible. Remind me to do my impresion of Ukrainian television when I get back. Also, I've started using my aunt's computer, which is more modern, and can run the games I bought at the market. Yes, we have a market. More than one, actually. This one had a section of it dedicated to games and dvds. It's pretty cool. Especially since the games are alot cheaper and sometimes come in packs on one cd. You could buy about ten games there for the equivalent of 20$ when in the US they would cost about forty dollars each. I know a friend who would love it there. We also got
my brother the dvd of ice age three, with Russian translation (pirated, of course). Now he watches it all the time. And I have to say, it is NOT a very good movie. Yeah, you can tell i'm getting pretty bored here when I start talking about games and movies. But the thing is, the only people to hang out with are my cousins and their friends, and they're on vacation. Oh yeah, I heard Micheal Jackson died, more than a week ago, actually. I just didn't say it in my last post.

Written July 16nth 2009

Yup. Nothing much happening here. Or maybe there's stuff happening, but i'm just not paying any attention. I had to go back to the country to pick cherries from our trees that we have over there. Not fun. Cause we have alot growing over there, and not only do I have to climb up a tree with a pan to pick them, I also get to carry them from our country house to the bus stop and from the bus stop to our place in the city. It's about a mile & a half. They're not as heavy as apricots, though. And guess what. We have a few apricot trees over there too. And who got to pick and carry those last week? I don't want to look at another cherry or apricot right now. But I think that's all over, at least for now. I think i'm gonna
have to go visit some more of my relatives soon, these ones live pretty far in the country, all ruraly and all that. And then my cousins get back, so i'm finally going to get to do something fun.

Yeah, so... hoping for more feedback, I guess. Hopefully someone has something interesting to say.

Oh God, I remember Idiot .___. What was your conscience's name? Peter, or...something...? I don't even remember D:

Sounds like you're doing okay in Ukraine. Have fun for us stuck in the States!

Fred. His name was Fred. And yeah, it's been good... but you know, it gets a little boring here when you don't have much people to talk to. Although my cousins are over here but im gonna be gone from here soon, visiting the rest of my family in another city and all so... yeah.

Oh yeah, Fred. Bummer about your cousins. At least you get to trek around another country for the summer

Okay, so finally have time to write something. Was busy for a few days, had to help out at the country house on Saturday (fucking apricots). My cousins also got back last week, and now i'm actively hanging out with them on a regular basis. We went to the movies yesterday, that was pretty fun. They don't have movie theatres like we do over here, they show movies in movie halls located in malls and other kinds of mass public places. Today probably gonna go hang out somewhere too. And tommorow. And probably as much as I can until I leave.

Anyway. So about the country. It's great. Basically the place we were staying at was a village. I mean we had the basic benefits of civilization. Running water. A bathromm. Even a TV (12 channels). But all that aside, it's a village. We lived in a wooden house with a traditionaly styled Ukranian oven, the kind you would see in the movies if you knew which ones to watch (which you don't) Had all the basic farm animals. Chickens, s rooster, pigs, rabbits, a dog, a cat, and of course a few flies and mosquitoes. Oh yeah, the dog was great, he's about an inch or two taller than my brother (when standing up) and is kept in a 3 by 4 yard area which contains his doghouse, his bowl, and a few personal bushes and is surrounded by a low, rusty fence which he seems like he could push down but he can't. His name is Vulcan (volcano in Russian). The reason i'm describing him is becausethe first thing that came to mind when I saw him was Jacky shitting his pants as I yelled "Sic him, Vulcan!". He was pretty friendly
only when he sees someone he doesn't know he barks and throws all his weight against the fence. But he gets pretty tame as soon as he gets to know you.

They say it's silent in the country. Thats true, if you don't take into account the cries of farm animals in the morning as they wake up. Or the roosters, which just don't shut up. And the mosquitoes. There aren't that many, but there's nothing more annoying when you're trying to go to sleep than a mosquito buzzing in your ear. But besides all that, the country's a pretty relaxing break from school, where everyone always wants you to do something you don't want to do. Had some fun over there too. My oldest cousin Aleosha, whos 22 years old, showed me a cool place where you could jump from a cliff into the local river. We got "lost" in the woods once, in qoutations because we weren't really lost, my relatives couldn't decide which way to go and we basically went back and forth on the same road about
five times. All in all, it was pretty good. But i'm not there anymore and i'm already counting down days until I get back (26).

So, that's all.

Sorry for the delay, just didn't have that much time on my hands.

Okay, so. Sevastopol. Nice place. Lots of sun. Beach. Great. The problem is that by the time you get back from the beach to our house, or even the beach to the bus stop, you want to be back on the beach again. The beach itself is a pretty fun place (although we've only been for three days and gone to only one spot (two times)). It's a rocky beach, not that comfortable to lie down unless you bring a few extra towels. But I did it. I think I still have marks on my back. Swimming is good though. The water's really clear, and it's fun to dive down and swim around for a few seconds and dive back up. The fact that the water's salty makes you a bit lighter so you can swim around farther. I think I want to take a camera, put it in a ziplock back and take some pictures underwater. But other than the beach, I haven't really done anything yet. The train was boring, as usual. The thing I'm looking forward to the most is going off for one day with my cousin and aunt to another city, Yalta. That's gonna be fun. But until then, just the beach.

19 days left to go.

Okay, so. I promised pictures but I don't have 'em yet, I probably won't get them up until i'm back in the US. Which won't that long, as a matter of fact only three days And I'm happy about that. I didn't go to Yalta yet, the trip was postponed till tomorrow. And the next day i'm getting on the train back to Kiev, and two days after that I'll be at the airport in Kiev. Also at the JFK airport in New York. And also our airport in San Francisco. Cause that's what happens when you fly against the timezone thingy. Anyway I'll be over in California at 8pm this Saturday.

Just 3 days left

I've been to JFK Airport before!! 8D I hate New York

Haha! I finally have all the photos! Sorry for the extreme delay, I just needed to wait for my relatives in Ukraine to send them to me. Anyway, instead of talking about them I'll just post them.

These first ones are of the place I lived at in Kiev. We owned a house-sized space on the tenth story of a huge building. (and by house-sized I mean 3 bedrooms, 1 livingroom and a kitchen. And like 6 closets.) This is the view from the parking lot below.



Welcome to our house! This is basically what you see as you walk inside the front corridor.



And this is the living room, although we cleared it out so I can sleep on the couch-bed.



Now let's look out the window. What do we see?



If you look up you get a nice view of a typical street. There's a Mc'Donalds around there somewhere, but you can't see it here. Oh, and that bigass building is a library. I know, I wish our library was so bigass too.



If you go into another room (which I didn't bother to take a picture of cause it's pretty boring.) and look down from the balcony there you can see the aforementioned parking lot.



This balcony also provides some pretty cool views of the city.



And finally here's something I found written on the elevator wall. Sorry for the low quality, but the elevator doesn't have good lighting. If you can't make out the words it says "anime".

I've decided to post these pictures by category so they're easier to look at. These are from that trip to the country/village that I mentioned.

Here we have the road running near our house and the fence which separates this road from our property.



This our cat (who we call Cat) eating a piece of fish I gave him.



This is our dog, Vulcan, in comparison to my brother (who is, for some unfathomed reason, shirtless in this shot. But he's five so it doesn't matter.) My brother is actually taller than he looks in here, and so is Vulcan. They're both about up to my stomach. Also, if you look closely, you can see a chicken near my brother's right hand.




Here is our actual house. Once again, bigger than it might seem. Two bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen. To the bottom right is a corner of Vulcan's fence which keeps him in his specified area, and his doghouse.



In this picture you see the infamous rooster which wouldn't let me sleep in mornings.



And finally, the bunnies. They were great, would always hide in corners or behind the door unless you had food. In fact, if I remember correctly, I had to bribe them with carrot leaves just to pose for this photo.

Okay, last batch. This is from my one-day trip to Yalta. It was really great there, that place made my summer vacation. The only thing I regret is not getting to stay longer.

What you see here is the beach on which the next shot will take place. It was a really fun beach, not too crowded, you also get to dive off of the rocks. Fun.



And here it is; the epic conflict of Me vs Fish. Who shall prevail? That I will not say, but I will say that that fish went down really well with the beer and bread that I drank and ate respectively. (For those of you who don't know (meaning all who read this post) beer, bread, and fish on the beach is a Ukrainian tradition. Seriously.)



Here is another shot we took when we were leaving.



Unfortunately I could not photograph the great taste of the food we ate at a nearby restaurant, so I didn't. But it was really good. Anyway, after eating we decided that we had to climb up a cliff. Well, by climb I mean walk up the steps carved into it for climbing purposes. But still, it's not so easy. There is a peculiar legend associated with these cliffs. Once, a traveling monk saw a woman bathe herself in the nude on the beach where the cliffs are now. The monk, instead of traveling further, hides behind some bushes and watches. All this was observed by a cat, who in a flurry of divine retribution, attacked the monk and drove him away. Then the woman, the cat and the monk were made into stone cliffs, the woman as punishment for being naked, the monk for watching a woman naked, and the cat for attacking a monk (as per punishment standard for the catholic church). Anyway, the Stone Woman is the cliff that we climbed up on. (as it is the only cliff with steps carved into it).

This is me at the base of the steps. (the woman on the bottom right is my aunt)



Climbing up the steps... (that's my cousin to the left of me) This one turned out weird for some reason, don't know why. That's Cat Rock behind us, although you could only see the tail and part of it's back.



This is me and my cousin (who looks nothing like me) at the top.



The view was really cool, the beach you see is the central beach in the area. Pretty crowded.



And this is the entire cliff from the bottom. Once again, crowded beach.



This last one has nothing to do with the category, but it's the last picture that was taken of me in Ukraine. It's me in the airport, at seven am, sleepily holding my documents.





So... this is it. That was my trip to Ukraine. Hopefully you guys enjoyed taking a look at what I did this summer. I have to go now, it's almost 1am and I have a chemistry test tomorrow.