jeremello

Ok the fact that I haven’t blogged in about a month is a fine testament to the fact that New Year’s resolutions don’t work. This month has been quite exciting; not cause of a continuous level of activity, but mostly because of specific trips and events that we’ve had. Unfortunately that has to wait until next time, cause this entry is about New Year’s and our post New Year trip to Lviv. New Year in Ukraine is a pretty big deal. It’s sortof like Christmas in other countries, where there’s a big tree set up and decorated, presents exchanged, big meals prepared and obligatory family time set up. And of course, the numerous parties. Ukrainian people just like to celebrate at this part of the year I think. There’s western Christmas (which isn’t too big), New ... read more

So moving on from last week, I felt like I was really starting to settle in a bit more. Getting lost sortof helped me find out more about the area, and the place that I'm at is pretty close to the city centre, so I can walk around without getting too lost, as long as I can get back on to Karla Marksa, the Queen Streen of the area, if you will. I guess I should start off with the good news. After I did the English Speaking Club over the weekend, I mentioned to Marina that I was still trying to work out issues with my job, and that the director of the company was being quite bleh. So the next day, I ran into her at a restaurant, and she found out that I ... read more

I think that as time goes by, the frequency of my blogs will decrease steadily. Hopefully I can still continue to post photographs though. Sadly there will be a lack of photos for a while, since my camera broke already.. but hopefully I can fix it or get a new one for cheap.. So I finally arrived in Dnipropetrovsk at 7am, by train. There I was pleased to see a smiling reception waiting for me, of Era, Ola and Ola (will try to get photos soon). I soon discovered that names are a bit confusing.. There's the Russian name, the English variation of that name, and then the English name too sometimes. So my 'buddy' assigned to me is Olya (i think), but she says I should call her Ola, or Helen. She explained how it ... read more

So although I didn't know when I was leaving when most people asked me, I managed to get a good deal with tickets on Tuesday, get my Visa on Thursday morning, pack frantically on Thursday night, and finally leave on Friday morning. My first flight was a long one, to Japan with Air NZ. Needless to say, there were a lot of Japanese people on board. I was sitting next to a pretty talkative NZer, on holiday, and a Japanese guy who (I'm not making this up) spent the entire time studying and playing asteroids. I had planned to watch a few movies on there, but couldn't focus long enough, so spent most of the time watching Simpsons, or listening to strangely addictive Japanese pop music.. Once I got to Narita in Tokyo, what was immediately ... read more