For the next week, I'll be wandering around Ukraine with my sister. She booked a trip a couple of months back and this past Wednesday, she arrived in Kiev. We've spent the past couple days in Konotop. I showed her around the city and made sure she saw all the major monuments. We even tried our ...
Yesterday was Victory Day here in Ukraine. For a while, I thought it meant it was the day WWII ended (or as they say here, the Great Patriotic War) but a student explained it as something slightly different recently and now I'm confused. The Great Patriotic War was explained as a portion of the war ...
Kim and I dared to grill again today. She missed out on burgers last week so I promised her that we'd grill before she heads home. We barbecued up some chicken wings and legs, using up some grill rubs she had lying around. Not only was the food a complete success, we also walked away with a little ...
Today, I was working on a Peace Corps side project and I realized that I needed a way to batch resize photographs using the GIMP. I've used scripts in both Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro but unfortunately you can't easily create them with the GIMP. So I set out looking for a way to do ...
Today has already been a great day. We started the day with an American football camp at Jeramie's school. Pat, a volunteer in our neighboring oblast, has taught his kids flag football and now is partnered with a Ukrainian NGO to travel the region teaching kids to play. We were his third stop, and his ...
Earlier this week, I had a run-in with a cobbler. No, I did not have a delicious dessert fiasco, rather I and to get my shoes repaired. How many of you out there knew that the person who repairs shoes is called a cobbler? Most of us know that a tailor mends and alters clothes. What about ...
While I was vacationing in Spain, I realized that I was taking a lot of photos. It happens when I go new places. I have visual overdoses and I feel the need to capture it all. While I'm sure I could go on for ages about how digital photography has taken something away from the ...
Due to an issue with timing, my regional manager was not able to pick up my glasses yesterday and deliver them to me tomorrow. Fortunately, I had a friend who was in Kiev today and her train home stopped in Konotop briefly. She was able to bring the glasses and hand them off to me ...
One of the highlights for me when I was on vacation in Spain was when we stumbled upon a classic car show. I'm pretty sure the girls didn't enjoy it, but I certainly did. I don't know what it is about classic cars, but I love looking at them. I think there's something about the curves ...
This morning I chose to wake up at 3:00 to stand outside for a little over an hour so a priest could dump some water on me. Why? Because it's Orthodox Easter today and we had to get our food blessed. So we went here: I did this last year and it makes me wonder why ...