after a long day of class...

hello hello dear blog followers. i apologizefor not writing...it has been an intense week of russian language training and i have been dead by the time i get home around six or later. i then usually have an hour to two hours of homework to do...and by the time eat, get ready for bed, read a little harry potter, and journal...i am done. i didnt us theinternet on my kindle for a few days...which was kind of nice! so let me do a recap of the past few days.

i think i blogged monday. so tuesday...was not a good day. it was our first time to get to take public transportation here in oster or ukraine for that matter. we rode a bus (prob with 45 seats?) to kozelets to visit our link cluter. it cost around five grievma which translates to seventy fiv cents. i was so excited to be on the bus going somewhere i didnt realize i was getting car sick. let me explain how public transportation works here. even if every bus seat is full...you can still have people standing in the aisles or in the doorways. and by standing i mean packed in lke sardines. brendan ( one of my group mates) basically had a lady sittng on his lap. i had the same ladies bag of cold beer (lol it was 8 am....) pressed against my thigh. we were super dredssed up to go meet the administration in kozelets (our link clustr)...so i was wearing a skirt and tights. it was way colder in kozelets than it was in oster...so upon arriving in kozelets i not only felt like i was about to see my breakfast for the second time that day...but my lips were bue because i was so cold. the building that we met in already had their heat turned off...so the room was just as cold as outside. sweet jamie (one of my cluster mates) looked at me and knew i felt awful...and then we sat in a meeting of questions and answers for the next hour and a half. my toes finally gained feeling in them with about ten minutes left of the meeting. i felt horrible because i wasnt contributing...but i was concentrating on not blowing chow. it occurred to me early on in the meeting that i had no clue where a bathroom was...and there was no trashcan in the room we were in. awesome lol. made it thru the meeting and then we had an hour to kill before our bus left for oster. we got coffee and tea from a stand on the street...and headed for the bus station. my toes began to refreeze (and i didnt have my sweet brother to put his toasty hands on them and defrost them like he did whem we were skiing.).the time finally comes for our bus to head back...this time we would be riding in a mashrutki. my best description for this is a dodge sprinter van...with two seats on one side and then an aisle...then one seat. i knew i needed to be able to see out the front of the van this time...and there were babushkas sitting in the front two sseats. so i chose the one seater on the right side of the vehicle. bad choice. there is no limit to the number of people you can cram on a mashrutki...and all of the extra people stood in front of me blocking my view. i put my head down...tryin gto convemvtrate on other things. we finally made it home and i headed home to grab a book i forgot for our russian language class that wouldbe starting in abit. i made it home just in time before my bresakfast came up. lol but i felt much better...as is always the case after you puke. then i got to sit thru four hours of language...o an empty stomach...altho i did have some bread then. jamie and i went on a walk after class to follow one of the twprovers here in oster. it defnitely helped to clear my mind of the days lovely events. my teacher keptelling me i looked green...how wonderful! all that i te on tuesday was bread and hoot tea. two things i coukd live on!

yesterday was pretty noneventful. we were supposed to observe at he gymnasia...b the teacher whose class we were to obsrrve was taken to the hospital for blood pressure reasons. hope shes okay now! thi put a little glitch in our plans because we are supposed to give lesson at the school next week...but we habe et to see how a classroom would operate. hoping it all gets worked out.

today we had a visit from theukraine peace corps director. he had tea with us...sat in for some of our russian class and then was off to another site to visit with that group. i had my tutoring lesson today with my teacher zhenya. i am quite excited to start my self directed learning project...which will involve my picture a day project here in ukraine. more later.

well i need to do homework and hopefully eat soon. toodles blog world!