Too Many Last ___s

I returned home yesterday from my last trip in Ukraine, excluding my journey to Kiev in a few days to close out my service and leave for India. What I had hoped would be a thoughtful, reflective bus ride back to Pavlograd from Dnepropetrovsk was not exactly that, as I sat in an incredibly uncomfortable seat in a cold, crowded bus and enjoyed having rain constantly drip on me from the emergency exit. Quite the sendoff, but thankfully my roof is finally repaired and my walls/ceiling no longer leak at all when it rains.
Our school's fall break was last week, and I took the opportunity to travel to western Ukraine one more time. I met some friends out in Ternopol and Lvov, which are both amazing places. My itinerary included everything from a banjo concert at a bar in Ternopol on Monday night to making sugar cookies for a Window on America Halloween party. It was quite a week with some amazing people, in particular Natalie, Colette, Avital, and Asia. As you might have guessed from those names, it was a girl-heavy week, which was fine by me. That's a bit of a departure from my normal travel group demographics, but a break from routine is something everyone needs.
My impending departure has really started to sink in. Everything I plan to take home is currently laid out on my pullout couch, and I've started to give away some things that may still be useful but I won't take with me. I gave a bunch of seasonings and spices to some other volunteers last week (including some gravy mix for Thanksgiving), and I plan on taking a bag with me to a farewell dinner this weekend to give to Kym, a volunteer who works at an orphanage in a tiny village near Pavlograd. Hopefully there are kids roughly my size (I am somewhat on the tall side for the average Ukrainian), but at the very least, they'll get some sweet new t-shirts to sleep in and some oversized winter coats for...I don't know, building a snowman?
Today I went over to my counterpart's apartment for tea and cake with a former student who was back in town from university in Kiev. We stayed and talked for several hours, and on my way home I decided to take a brief stroll before it got too dark. I walked through the rows of small houses behind my apartment, chased off a particularly vicious stray dog near the Catholic church, and then decided to poke my head in the graveyard near the much larger Russian Orthodox church. I took in the gravestones, which look somewhat different from the standard Western European/American ones--it's common to have some kind of image of the dead person on the stone. I was just about to get a closer look at the headstone of a twenty-year old who seemed to have died in the Soviet war in Afghanistan in 1986, when SOMETHING MOVED! Turns out there was a bum asleep on one of the graves. It was a nice jolt of adrenaline. I'm not sure which thought is more unsettling: that he is just some hobo sleeping there, or that this might be his mourning method for some deceased loved one. Anyway, I went home quickly after that since it was 4:30, which means sunset now. Gotta love those northern winters.

photo of me, Anand, and Kurt camping in Estonia in August

banjo virtuoso Ryan Murfield at his concert

making sugar cookies at Ternopol's Window on America Center Halloween party. I was Mr. Rogers. Natalie (red headband) and Asia (blue headband) were the brothers Klischko, the famous Ukrainian boxers

who took out their frustrations on Mr. Rogers