And Then It Was Winter

It is snowing. The past couple days have been in the 40s, with cold windy rain. Ick. Tomorrow it is supposed to drop to -3*C (about 26*F). For some reason my office is colder than the other offices…but today Lina, the energetic, chatty woman I share the office with (she is the head administrator…basically she knows everything.), busted out a space heater that is shaped like a pile of burning coals…The heater and the 6 cups of tea (and a cup of the instant coffee that is the norm to drink here in place of regular coffee) I’ve had today are finally starting to warm up my fingers. It seems that when it is cold, even less work gets done here as more time is spent warming up on cigarette breaks (in the bathroom), and tea breaks around the space heater…more opportunities for me to drink tea with old ladies. My job is hilarious.
Luckily I can put off dealing with the cold for another week as tomorrow I am heading to Crimea, to Yalta specifically, for a week! I am going with Hillel for a Western and Central Ukraine Hillels conference…I’m not exactly sure what this means, but I am going for free and Sasha and a bunch of her friends are going so it should be very fun! We are taking an overnight bus there. I think it’s about 11 or 12 hours…After my 14 hour $14 overnight bus ride experience from St. Petersburg to Riga I swore I would never do a long overnight bus…alas, overnight bus to Yalta, here I come.
I have to admit I was a little surprised to learn that when I say “Crimea” to some of you folks at home, you don’t know what I’m talking about…I forget that not all of you have had the extensive Russian and Eastern European language, history, culture, and geography education that I have…Erin and Greg get gold stars for knowing what and where Crimea is. Could this be because Erin is an International Relations major and Greg’s family is from Kiev and he majored in Russian History? Hmmm. Dana and Evan on the other hand acted like they knew what Crimea was and then when I asked if they knew what I was talking about they both laughed and replied, “Crimea river.” (Cry me a river…) Haha. One of my Kiev based American friends wished me a good trip and told me not to sign any treaties. Again, I think maybe only Greg and Erin will understand this joke…

Here is a history and geography lesson for you: (thank you Wikipedia...)
Crimea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea

Yalta: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta

Yalta Conference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference

Of course, I will take lots of pictures and post them for you enjoyment and education.