Around the World...and then some

One week in Ukraine

So, the reason I haven't posted in a while is because I spent the last week in the Ukraine on a trip with Middlebury. All the kids on the Midd program who are in Moscow and Yaroslavl (except one, who went home to Turkey for the week instead) took a group trip together. We were in Kiev for most of the time, but also spent two days in L'viv, which is a town in far western Ukraine. But because I can't even pretend to sum up the whole experience in one post, I'm going to fall back on the oh-so-classic highs and lows format, and hope I hit all the important stuff.


lows: to tell the truth, the lows were few and far between, but let's see... our guide sometimes deciding we didn't need to eat and just continuing with the tour for 6 or more hours without lunch. being super tired most of the time mostly due to overnight train rides and customs control waking us up in the middle of the night to check our passports. realizing that with a group of 14 people, it is next to impossible to make any decision such as where to eat for breakfast or which way we should turn on a street.

highs: ok, let me just begin by saying that the trip was AMAZING! ukraine is like russia, except the people were friendlier, and the city prettier. it also gave you a bit of a more european feeling, especially in l'viv. my favorite part of kiev was the main street, which they close to cars on the weekends, so people are just out and about and walking around. we caught a free Tarkan concert (Tarkan is a famous Turkish pop singer) which was super fun. we saw a million and a half cathedrals, each one more beautiful than the last. i really, really enjoyed l'viv, though. the city felt very european, with skinny, little, cobblestone streets. it was a much smaller city, but absolutely beautiful. my favorite few minutes in l'viv were probably when our guide announced to us that there are very few traffic lights in l'viv, so people just cross the street wherever they want, and then proceeded to run out into the middle of the street, held out his hand to stop the car speeding towards him, and we all ran across as the car patiently waited for us to cross. we travelled a few hours outside of l'viv as well, and got to see a lot of very pretty ukrainian countryside, and a couple of cool old castles. my friend kathy and i also took it upon ourselves to learn the entire ukrainian language in the week we were there. while this goal was not exactly realized, we did have fun writing down words and trying to figure out why they're spelled the way they are (ukrainian and russian are very similar, and for the most part we were able to understand signs around the city, menus, and things like that). and when it came down to it, none of us really wanted to return "home". i think we all could have spent much, much longer in the ukraine, and together, if we had been able to.

smilehigh: no doubt about it, the smilehigh of the week were the people on the trip. i feel like we all really bonded, even the kids from moscow, eventhough we all already knew each other pretty well. but we also really bonded with the yaroslavl kids, and the two groups seemed to work really well together. i had a great time being able to be with friends constantly, and definitely realized that's one of the things i miss most from college - just having people around all the time.


p.s. my shutterfly site has been updated with pictures from the trip, if you're interested! :)

posted by Becky @ 4:34 AM