Or, the winter is a lie.
I was expecting a cold winter with lots of snowfall starting in October or November. Early flurries and a rapid cooling in mid-autumn seemed to confirm this. However, the first full week of December has come and brought with it highs well above freezing for the next seven days, even though December 1 itself saw heavy, albeit brief, snowfall. I can't say I'm complaining.
Things have been going well, although it's been a bit dull and routine-like. Wake up early on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. Guzzle instant coffee. Teach until 2:30. Sleep in a bit on Thursday and Friday (9 AM). Teach until 2:30. Russian lessons on Wednesday. Occasional basketball after school. A sporadically-attended English club on Thursday afternoon. I've punctuated the monotony of my schedule and the gray, joyless weather of the last month in several ways. I worked at a collaborative camp for the volunteers in my province last weekend at a college in Krivoy Rog. It was a hit, and my lesson on Coca-Colonization seemed to be well-liked. We're going to bring the same idea to my school in February, so I've made it a goal to sort out the whats and whens of it with my colleagues by the end of this week. I've been compulsively listening to "The History of Rome" podcast, along with periodically reading and working on stuff for Camp Republic II, next summer.
But all that was a bit of a bore, so I decided to eat contaminated food and enjoy a few rounds of food poisoning to keep myself and my vomiting and evacuation skills in tip-top shape. I hope you enjoyed reading that last sentence (and the following ones) as much as I enjoyed writing it. Something was rotten in the state of our school cafeteria last Wednesday, as both the American teacher and around twenty students in the school suffered similar ailments and were absent from school last Thursday and Friday.
I shan't dwell on the particulars of Ukraine's third assault on my digestive tract, but I am actually thankful it. There's nothing like a little sickness to make you thankful for good health and, barring that, a doctor on call and a support network. Besides, I getting way too cocky, what with my pleasant looking forward to my return to America by Christmas and my presumptuous supposed understanding of Ukraine. The borderland must have felt obliged to take the arrogant American down a notch or two.
If good winds hold, I should be back in Atlanta on December 22, take a short side trip to Colorado on December 31, and return to Europe on January 6. If you're an American at home reading this, I hope to see you during that short time. If you're someone else, then Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. And so on.
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