Lutsk

Well, the people in my compartment from Kharkiv to Kyiv thought I was from Western Ukraine, and the people in my compartment from Kyiv to Lutsk thought I was Polish. If the trend of thinking I'm from just west of wherever I'm going keeps up, I will apparently be German if I go visit Jes in Cracow in July.

Lutsk is very nice. Via the recommendation of my trusty guidebook, I booked a single standard room for three nights at the downtown Hotel Ukraina, which cost me in total about $30 less than one night in Kyiv. In addition, both the room and the attached bath are about 3x bigger than my hotel room in Kyiv, plus there's a fridge and a comfortable mattress. As breakfast is included in the deal, I think I lucked out.

I also lucked out with my interview, which was with someone who was not only informative and interesting, but also gave me several books of materials used in teacher recertification. Apparently, I was their second researcher to come through in the past month...the other one is a PhD student at UPenn in Educational Linguistics, who I'd run across a mention of while looking at UPenn's program. I should email her at some point to see what particularly she's interested in (although that will wait until I'm using a computer where the keys don't stick like the dickens).

I wandered around Lutsk a bit yesterday and plan to do so more today, including visiting the town castle. Tomorrow is church in the morning and the opera Carmen in the evening, as I got a 3rd row center aisle seat for about $3.33.

Will post more when not battling keyboards.