No water? REALLY??!!

When I got home from work on Tuesday, I was dismayed to find that I had no water. This has happened before, so I just cooked something that didn’t require that much dishwashing and went on with the night. The next morning-still no water. And that night. This has never happened- 2 days without water- so I asked Luba, my counterpart, what was going on. Apparently her father lives in the same building as me, and he told her that we wouldn’t have water for a week!

Now, normally, had I been able to prepare for this by filling my bathtub with water ahead of time, I would be okay (not happy, but would be able to survive). However, since I had had no warning, I was not prepared at all. So I actually had to go to Luba’s house to shower, since I, like a good Peace Corps Volunteer, hadn’t showered in 4 days. The next day my landlord stops by and I asked about the water again. She responded with, “didn’t you see the sign downstairs?!” Well, no! And even if I had, it’s in Ukrainian, so I wouldn’t have understood it anyways! Sheesh! According to Luba, the sign says that because of a lack of money to pay the entire water bill, the water is going to be turned off during the day and only turned on again from 8pm-8am. Great. There go my relaxing nights! It’s a good thing I’m a solid time manager, because realistically with only 3-4 hours a night to do laundry, shower, cook, clean my apt and wash the dishes. Oh Ukraine! You never stop testing my survival skills, do you?!

Ps. Even though the sign says I'll have water every night, tonight I was without water yet again. This could be problematic in the future should the situation not remedy itself.

Easter part 2

So, I was informed by my very good friend Justine while I was in DC that I’m a terrible blogger and need to update it more. So here this one’s for you, Justine.

So, I got back to Ukraine two days ago. The flight to Kiev from London was half empty, because, honestly, who (besides people visiting Peace Corps Volunteers) want to come to Ukraine? So I got a whole row to myself and took a nice little nap. After a nice long sleep and day of drinking tea and schmoozing at work, I called my friend Galya, who promptly told me to get my ass over to her house and hang out with her and her friend. I show up and she’s trashed! Apparently in Ukraine, Easter doesn’t last one day- it lasts three! And all three days you drink and eat and drink and eat. So what did we do yesterday? We drank and ate, of course! I show up and immediately an fed a shot of vodka. And then another. I drank 6 shots of vodka in an hour (although technically after the first 3 you’re not supposed to count shots. . . bad luck). Galya then turns to her friend Sveta and asks if she wants to go for a walk. I follow behind, and once we walk Sveta home, she asks if we want to come in for a drink. “I have gin upstairs”, she says. So we go up, and I look at this so-called “gin” and notice it’s brown. Then I look at the bottle and realize it’s not gin it’s whiskey! 3 shots of whiskey later I finally found my way home (with a little help from Galya, who walked me there).

Moral of the story- this Easter is up there with last Easter, where we started drinking at 7 in the morning and where Rachel ended up in a village wearing a Santa Claus sweater!