Ice. One thing it does do is keep you honest. Don’t pay attention or respect it enough and you will fall. I fell.

Winter as I heard it described has finally started to descend on Ukraine. After an unusually warm start here I didn’t even need my heavier coat, snow has started to fall. My feelings on the topic are mixed; on one hand the now whitewashes just about everything and gives it a clean look. Ukraine isn’t known for its beauty in winter when there’s no snow. Summers are nice, but once most of the plants die off, the brown season isn’t all that pleasant. On the other hand it is cold and that makes travel a lot more treacherous. This is one time of year I am happy to let other people drive. I have no real desire to have to drive on ice-caked roads I know are not that good to start with.

It also means I need to get serious about buying a hat. I brought a hat with me to Ukraine, but Ira recently vetoed it, saying it was completely unstylish. I would dare say I in general am unstylish, but I don’t think she wanted to be seen in public with me wearing that hat. That’s my personal conclusion, not her words, but she did veto it. She may just be trying to give me some style. However, my attempts at getting her to just buy me a hat has been rebuffed, something about the need for me to try it on.

While my bare head isn’t bothering me too much yet, it is the rest of the country, as I am asked why I don’t have a hat or told I need one. I can’t hold them off forever. I finally broke down today and bought one, but not before I was told by a man while I was looking at hats I needed to buy one, was mistaken for a Polish person and told by the woman selling hats I needed one. This follows last night a woman at the school basically commanding me to go to the bazaar today and buy a hat. I’m glad everyone cares so much about the condition of my head.

As for the day-to-day activities, I spent the entirety of last week either in Kyiv or close to it as I worked on the volunteer newspaper and attended additional language training. To read the newspaper, direct your browser to pcukraine.org and follow some links in volunteer life to download a PDF version of the entire newspaper.

The language training was also useful, but especially this time I felt stronger coming into it, but felt even more humbled as some of the basic grammar things I struggled with. It does give me some extra fire to go back and focus my studies more. The other fun part is seeing all the other volunteers who I don’t see too often, hear the gossip and see who has stuck it out so far.

But as with everything else in my service those times ended faster than I expected and I am back at site, but am now starting up an ecological club to plan a tree-planting project in the spring. I sure feel useless a lot of the time, but at least I tend to find something or another to keep me busy.