Michael Jordan, #23

I went to the gym in Pavlograd today for the third time.  It's nothing special.  Basically, Antares Fitnes Klub is a girl gym, with a big room for dancing and aerobics, several elliptical machines, one treadmill, two benches, and two weight machines.  That's basically it.  But it's totally worth it, since I have been able to exercise about 4 times in Ukraine before joining Antares.  Winter here renders jogging outside impossible.  Not pretty much impossible or impractical, impossible.  The sidewalks either have 6 inches of snow or 3 inches of ice on them all winter, so that doesn't really conduce itself to running.  I played basketball twice in Vasylkiv, went to a gym once there, and jogged outside in the fall maybe 2 or 3 times.  The problem there was that I had no time for anything, as busy as training was.
Anyway, I had noticed last week that after essentially 4 months of physical inactivity, I was able to work out and lift weights that are basically equivalent to what I could do when I was 15 and started going to the gym semi-regularly.  So I had lost 7 years of muscle strength.  After my workout today, I decided to weigh myself on the scale in the gym.  66 kilograms.  Hm, I know I've lost weight, but I can't figure out exactly what that was in pounds.  So after using the unit converter on my phone, I realize, holy crap, I've lost about 23 pounds since I left America.  I now weight about 146 lbs.  Which, coincidentally, is about what I weighed when I was 14 or 15. 
So in strength and weight, I've gone back to freshman year of high school.  It's both bad and good.  It's probably mostly (60-70%) fat, since my 32 waist pants all have enough space around my waist now to stash a Nalgene bottle.  Also everyone comments upon seeing my passport photo, "Is that really you?"  Mostly because it looks similar to Nick Nolte's DUI mugshot, but I guess I've lost weight since August when that was taken.  But my muscles are also smaller than normal, so I suppose there's been some atrophy as well.  I'm just shocked that it was 23 lbs of loss.  As you know, I wasn't exactly fat in America.  Well, not fat at all.  Basically average, maybe even on the thin side of average.
I'm off to cook hashbrowns and smother them in ketchup, sour cream, and sausage.  And wash it down with baklava.

Water Day?

So, I've had school canceled for snow before.  I've gotten days off for ice on the roads.  I've had days canceled for what they thought was snow but turned out to be nothing, not even rain.  In 2005, school across Georgia was canceled because of a gasoline shortage stemming partly from Hurricane Katrina but mostly from people panicking.  Today, however, was a new one.  School was canceled because the town's water supply wasn't working.  So the cafeteria couldn't cook lunch, and the bathrooms wouldn't work, and so on.  No one told me, so I went to school at 11, ready to start my lesson, walking through weather colder than anything in Georgia, weather that would cause any county south of the Mason-Dixon line to cancel school, church, and even football.  Not to mention that the entire walk to school is snow packed so hard it's almost ice.
I woke up at 9, went to the bathroom to take a shower, and there was no water.  Great, I thought, I haven't taken a shower in a few days and now I can't.  Maybe it'll switch back on in a few minutes.  After all, the same thing happened yesterday around the same time when I tried to shave, and the water came back on about 20 minutes.  I waited around, but the water never came back on, so I ate cereal out of my only clean bowl, brushed my teeth with bottled water, and decided that my hair didn't look greasy at all, at least definitely not by European standards.  I got to school, and I greeted the lady at the front and the security guards as usual ("Zdrasvuyitye").  I went up to my classroom, and only when I was about to enter did I notice, Hey, there's no students in the hallways, am I late?  Nope...well, that's odd.  I got into the classroom, and Natasha, one of the teachers I work with, was sitting at her desk with the students' chairs all stacked neatly atop their desks.  No school because of the water, but teachers still have to come in.  Which doesn't really mean me, since the school doesn't pay me.  The U.S. government and money raised by the students' parents do.  If you can call what I get "getting paid." 
Anyway, the water seems to be working now.  I'll teach tomorrow.  Another interesting day in Ukraine...