Belated Update

Ayayay, it has been so long since I've updated this blog!  The past couple months became especially busy, plus it became increasingly important for me to prioritize studying Russian, and blog-time was my greatest casualty.

But I would like to renew my blogacious fervor, beginning with this post just to recap some of the changes from the past few months:

• IT'S WARM. No, IT'S HOT!!!  REALLY, TRULY, UNCOMFORTABLY HOT!!!  I never thought I could be so excited to see flies in the house, have trouble sleeping from heat, or sweat through my work clothes.  It's a joy.
• I moved!!  Due to complicated circumstances, I was moved into a house with a Ukrainian family.  The family is really wonderful, and it has been helping my Russian, but I definitely sacrificed a lot of privacy and convenience.  I will have the opportunity to move back into my old apartment in another two months so right now I'm weighing the pros and cons.
• I'm a little bit better at Russian!  I still have a loooong way to go, and it's incredibly frustrating, but I know I can't let myself get discouraged.
• I'm significantly worse at English.  Even though I speak English 100% of the time at my job, 97% is with non-native speakers, and their mistakes are starting to sound very normal.
• I just got back from a two-week trip to Kiev and the Baltics!  It was really amazing, I will write more details in my next post.
• I'VE EATEN PEANUT BUTTER!!!  Unfortunately, it still seems that no place in Ukraine has it, but my mom sent me some and I found some in the Baltics.  And then I gave myself a stomach ache.  No regrets.

At the moment, we are about to start our third semester at AEC and I'm very curious to hear which levels I'll be teaching.  I'm still enjoying my life here, but I miss home terribly, which hasn't been helped by the fact that I haven't had much time to communicate with people.

That's about all I have to sum up at the moment.  I'll leave you with a picture of one of my new roommates: