Warmer Weather!!

My prayers have been answered. The morning after I literally cried like a child for a few minutes bc I was so sick of snow I woke up to sunshine. The high yesterday was 32. Today, the high is 42! This is the first day I have seen anything in the 40s. I noticed on my weather tracker that the high today here is still below the low in Gvegas, but there is very significant progress being made.

Unbelievably, tomorrow, the high is supposed to be 50!!!!! 50 DEGREES. AWESOME.

After having spent most of the morning trying to figure out how to get to Kharkiv next week and IM'ing with my good friend Alissa in England, I am about to go to Acer gym to work out.

Check out vul Olga Koblyianska!

I really enjoyed walking around Chernivtsi today. Here  is the park right across from my building:

...the Ukrainian Orthodox  Cathedral of the Holy Spirit (1844-1864) I pass everday:

I love walking pass there on Wednesdays after my language lesson ends. I can hear music and the priest's chants, and sometimes, I go in.

Today (Thursday), as I was walking around, I heard (for only the second time) music coming out of 2 different buildings. Chernivtsi is known for having excellent music schools, and today some people had the windows open and so I could hear what sounded like a violin lesson and a piano lesson. Beautiful.

I was famished when I returned, so I took a lukewarm shower and then made dinner. I was rather creative tonight. I had 2 red onions that the grocery store lady mistakenly told Mykola were beets, a head of cabbage (which I had never cooked before), some leftover varnyky, an apple, a pear, and some tomatoes and cucumbers. So, I cooked tomato and cucumber salad, followed by boiled cabbage and varynky with sauteed onions and baked apple and pear slices. It was delicious, and healthy, and now I am very full.

Afterwards, I received an email from a listserv I am on calling for Fulbright application for American historians. It felt good to know that I have already completed this process and am in the midst of enjoying it, especially when I looked at the places and didn't even recognize one of them. Anyone know where Burkina Faso is? I didn't and had to look it up. It is a landlocked country in West Africa with the lowest literacy rate in the world...less than 25 %. Wow.  I guess there are places that could be more challenging than Ukraine.