"I Can See Russia From My House!"

Well, not really, but it's only about 150 kilometers away from where I presently sit.

So I would like to first congratulate my father on a very successful 65 years here on planet earth, its quite a feat and all of us here in Ukraine wish him another 65 healthy ones!

Next I would like to note that I have passed my first month of 27 here, and it flew. The whole month flew by and though I feel like I have been here for a while already I cannot believe that it's already been a month. The last week has been very busy and this week proves to be even more busy! I did a little fishing in Kozaletz on saturday which resulted in one lost BlackWollybugger and my first solo bus trip, no biggie.

Yesterday our while group cruised up to the capital of our Oblast; Chernigov, the big city. My excitement rivaled some of the first scenes in "Fievel Goes West." It wasn't a very long trip there, about an hour and a half with one stop in Kozaletz and sporadic stopping on the side of the road to pick up people hailing down the bus. As we were a few kilometersaway from the city a half dozen golden cupolas breached the horizon and gave way to an immense church that greets visitors on their way into Chernigov; quite impressive and one of many there. As we drove in, it donned upon me that until that trip we had not seen any other americans or Peace Corps Trainees since we had left them in preservice training orientation.

The city was just that, a big sprawling city with multiple story buildings, cars and busses wizzing by, people everywhere, and of course the American Embassy aka McDonalds, no city is worth calling a city without one int he modern world. We met up with a number of other PCTs at a spot that they frequent called "Two Geese." As we walked in we were struck with a heat wave of techno music and a large number of other PCTs on computers since the cafe provides free wifi. After meeting new faces and updating older ones we set out for the catacombs.

As you can see by the pictures they were pretty much sicky sicky gnar gnar. It was hard to get much history about what each room was for and who's bones were strewn about the area, but our guide Anna, who had previously visited the old monastery provided us with lots of tasty tidbits about vampire parties, powerful electromagnets, tying sick people to crosses for extended amounts of time to see if they go crazy or not, acoustics, and a ghost, that I swear to ghost; we actually saw, (see ghost picture for further proof.)

As I looked down a gated hallway I saw this; a 5 foot waft of smoke that would not move, to be safe I called other volunteers over to make sure I was not crazy. My friend Rob got a better picture so I will try to swap this one out. Anna said that this was not present on her last visit and that her guide had said it was a haunted hallway. Not my first ghost, but super cool. Don't believe it? Well... Haters gon' hate.

We started out in the back of a huge group of Ukrainians taking a guided tour an they must have disappeared into the depths of the caves or dipped out early because we hardly saw them as we explored the caves with almost free rage to walk anywhere. Its equatable to the first time you step into one of those McDonald Play-places as a child and you are just overwhelmed with all of the cool new rooms, that wind and intercept. You find yourself getting lost, running into people and finding dead ends in almost pitch black. It's so exciting you almost forget about the 33 guys who had just been stuck in a place like that for almost 2 months.

After reassembling where the caves and monastery become one again, we thought we had lost one of our group members to the cave, but we found her dafe outside. Overall it was the coolest trip so far.

Upcoming events, tomorrow; safety session in Kozaletz, Thursday; Kyiv, Sunday; back to Chernigov!

I hope all is well at home, dispute the fun and crazy russian classes I am having I miss you all greatly and look forward to seeing some of you very soon and all of you soon after that.

Спокойной ночи!