I am writing this on the morning of May 19, at 7:17 AM. I am due to give a presentation today.
The gravity of that statement will become clear shortly. Anyway, yesterday, we arrived in Odessa and took a bus ride to our dorms in Kherson that was about 5 hours long. We arrived in Odessa at about 1:15 and we finally got to Kherson at around 6. Woo, that was crazy tiring let me tell you. The roads in Ukraine are pretty terrible for sleeping on buses, but somehow I did anyway, probably because until that point I had only slept for 4 hours aggregately.
Then, we slept until about 3 PM to go and get a tour of Kherson State University, and Kherson itself. Kherson is a beautiful city, and the history of KSU is quite impressive in its own right. It was established in 1914 and suffered through two world wars and various other threats to its existence. It also produced a couple gold medalists and other athletic guys. Our hosts spoke very good English generally, and I cannot express my gratitude enough at that… I can’t read ANY of the signs here unless they are price tags! While touring the city, we stopped at a Pub to eat, and talked with a student named Andre, who is an Economics Major, about various sports things in Ukraine. Apparently its one of his pastimes to go to the pub we were at, drink beer, hang with friends and watch Football (thats soccer, sillys.) I tried some Shrimp Salad, which was good, some Borshe (traditional Ukrainian Soup that’s amazingly delicious… I really don’t know how to spell it though) and some chicken steak.
Two days later:
We went to the Black Sea, in Lazula. It was beautiful. I have had some trouble with my sinuses the last couple days…. GAH. I seem to be getting better now, I think it had something to do with the rooms we were in. I’m not sure though.
In Kiev, 21 May 2009
Okay, so I’ve totally been without Internet the past couple days, but its fine, It just means that I have a large post to make now. Hahaha. Its rather difficult to post blogs when there are few Internet connections, but can you believe that $80 has gotten me this far? We bought A LOT of stuff too, some of that stuff shall remain nameless.
Anyway, I slept very well on the train, mostly due to Benedryl, but also because I could actually freakin’ breathe. I am not effected nearly as much here, and I think its because this place actually has ventilation and is cleaner.
So, we got here, met with the American Foreign Service Workers (Diplomats): Karen Wobly and William Klein. They were very insightful as to how bad Ukraine really has it in these hard economic times. And the truth is, that they are having it pretty bad now, but in the long term it appears that they will become a great asset to the world. Ukraine’s government is actually very, very democratic, but it has a lot of populist/socialist things like pensions and subsidized energy that take up half its budget. So it borrowed from domestic sources/banks and those banks borrowed from banks outside of Ukraine. So, when the economic downturn hit, there was a freeze in the system of sorts. Because of the ripple effect that could occur is Ukraine’s economy collapsed, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) approved a $16 billion bailout for Ukraine, paid in chunks. $6.8 billion has been paid out so far. The loan to Ukraine was conditional on them making changes, such as not subsidizing energy and improving upon their pension plans. So far, however, Ukraine has not done such things. There is an election coming up, we’ll see what happens then.
Right now, it is 5:30 PM in Kiev, and I am fresh out of the shower and in my hotel room. Ready to take the Ukrainian capital by storm… or just sleep, depends on how I feel. Leaning toward sleep. I’ll post this when I get my butt up and pay for the usage.
Also, the speech went well, my brevity in my worked worked for my benefit! 
Cheers,
Connor
