Well... that didn't work

Alright so now I'm home and back from Lviv and the cruise.  And I didn't keep this blog updated.  Being in Ukraine, I got way too busy to actually post in this blog.  In Ukraine, we had a lot of class each day (around 5 hours!).  Also, since everything in Ukraine was so cheap, we always went straight from class to dinner, to the club, to sleep, and then started it all over again.  However, even though I didn't upkeep a blog, I have enough pictures from Ukraine to last a limetime.  I'll post some up occasionally and add descriptions.  As for the cruise, there wasn't any wifi so I couldn't really post at all.  Just like with Lviv though, I'll add pictures from time to time.  And I'll make sure to keep up my Prague blog (I kind of have to since I'm doing it for UW Madison's study abroad website anyway).  See you in Prague!

Love in Lviv: wedding addition

First theme-of-the-day: marriage!  The first day I arrived in Lviv and toured around the city, I noticed that everywhere I turned I saw girls dressed up in white toting men in tuxes.  I don't know if they were taking wedding photos or actually got married that day (or both), but they were everywhere!  Lviv is a beautiful city, so I would expect a lot of young Ukrainians to get married here.  The one problem was was that they all looked so young, like 15 years young.  A friend of mine later told me that women in Ukraine tend to get married around the age of 18 and usually to older men.  Naturally, I looked it up and found that the average age to get married is 25.9 for men and 23.1 for women (compared to 28.4 for men and 26.5 for women in the United States).  Maybe this past Saturday just tended to be a younger crowd.  Either that or Ukrainian women just tend to look younger.  Check it out for yourself:

20 year old?

can't see her face in the photo but she looked about 17

traditional ukrainian "vyshivky"

ummm 15?

girl= 17.  man= at least 25?

hmm maybe this one is about 23

and this lady tended to look a bit older, i guess.  and that dude in the background was totally lovin all the camera time.

creeper shot

biiiiig dress

really love to top of this dress :)

Being Ukrainian, I'm sad to admit I don't know fo many of the wedding traditions.  However, I'll be sure to ask my grandma and report back!  I do know that many of the customs are similar to American ones, and that holding a bouquet with even number of flowers is bad luck!  And, just like Americans, the divorse rate among Ukrainians is about 49%.  In some parts of Ukraine the "unofficial"divorse rate was even as high as 98%.  It has been said that the economic situations tend to get too stressful.... or something like that.  I definately wouldn't move to those areas as a young couple.

First Day of Class

Sorry there is no theme-of-the-day yet.  I'll have to wait and sit down to do that when I have time.  I've been meeting everyone on the program and going out to eat and drinks and to the bars and clubs so I haven't had much time to just sit down and blog. So this post will be pretty short.  All the people on the program are pretty cool, even though all the boys are 18 and all the girls are 20+.  The Ukrainian language class is so long but pretty easy.  I was placed in Intermediate but at the end of the day was moved up to advanced (thank God cuz I really need the 5th semester of a language credit for my International Studies major!).  It's Olya's birdthay today so we're all getting ready to go out.  It's going to be my second big night out so I'm very excited.  I'll leave here with a photo of everyone on the program:

Rain

My super nice boyfriend told me this blog was boring (meany!), so I decided that every other day I'm going to have a theme-of-the-day showcasing something weird or different about Ukraine.  I don't have one for today, so expect one in the next post.  Will that spice up this blog, Daniel?!  I'm only kidding, but I already do have a lot of ideas in mind for the theme-of-the-day so keep reading!
But anyway, it's been raining here all day so far.  I still have a bit of a headache from last night lol :/ too so I guess I don't mind staying in and watching movies on my laptop for now.  I might walk over to the supermarket later to see what they have.  First supermarket experience!  I've only been here 2 days and all I've done was go out to eat so I think it's time to take advantage of my huuuuuge kitchen.  Photo:

modern TV... not

Well anyway, here's a quick recap from yesterday.  3 main highlights: climbed Lviv City Hall Tower and got a panoramic bird's eye view of lviv.  That tower was pretty scary, though.  It's so old and I seriously thought I'd fall throught the tattered, wooden steps.  Here's a pic of me at the top as well as a pic of the view.  I made a video of the bells going off while at the top (also made me think I'd die).  I'll post it shortly.

Next I went to the Lvivske (львівське) brewery, or "Museum of Brewery."  The museum was very, very small but I learned about Lviv's local brewery and got a taste of the filtered and unfiltered beer.  Considering I know nothing about beer brewing even after visiting the museum, I have no idea what filtered or unfiltered means but they tasted the exact same.

my 2 beers and the $2 ticket to visit the museum

And, at night I hit up my first club for some crazy people watching and a tiny bit of dancing.  Ukrainian party people are hilarious and wear the strangest things.  I drank my first Black Russian there (kinda good but very strong).  Came home around 4:30am and still have a headache.  In fact, I might go take a nap.  Peace!

First Meal

Before I go out for the night I'll quickly recap my first meal here.

ok so the borsch doesn't look that appetizing in this picture, but it was actually pretty good

mushroom pie?  i'm not too sure what this was, but i felt rude not eating it cuz it came with the borsch (even tho it looked gross and was made of mushrooms) so i just mashed up a little on my plate to make it look like i ate some so the waiter didnt feel bad :P

varenyky

gotta add the sour cream :)

classy

the bill.... handwritten. $9 for the two of us

So after walking around for a while and only seeing pizza places (weird?) we wanted traditional ukie food so we settled on this restaurant.  It's called academia or something like that.  It looked super fancy but the prices seemed cheap which was pretty confusing to us.  Like a glass of wine was less than a dollar?  And the whole restaurnt was completely empty and we felt kinda akward about eating there at first, but we decided to stay and had a good meal for $4 a person.  The borsch or varenyky weren't to die for or anything, but they were pretty good.  I'm gonna have to hit up all the other varenyky and borsch places soon and find out which is the best.  

I'm Here

So I made it to Lviv (finally) after basically 24 hrs of travel if you count the time change.  I feel like I should be more jet lagged... maybe I'm just too excited or too hungry.  So far I don't really know what to think becuase all I've seen of Ukraine so far has been the inside of the airport and the super ghetto computer lab at the university.  The apartment I'm staying in is super nice and even came with a complimentary bottle of wine :)
Here are some photos of the flight in, the scary airplane, and the fabulous computer lab:

view from the plane

flying over vienna

ghetto computer lab... happy i brought my laptop

6 Days

The week has come.  I leave for Ukraine in about six days.  Haven't started packing in the slightest.  I'm still in Madison as we speak, but I am leaving to go home to Park Ridge Monday to begin to prepare for the upcoming 5 weeks.  I will be spending 3 weeks in Lviv to take an advanced Ukrainian language course with Olya, and then am heading off to Barcelona to meet up with my mom, sister and aunt for a 10 day cruise to Italy, Greece and Turkey.  Needless to say, the next six weeks of my life and are going to be pretty unforgettable.  I have heard for 20 years about Ukraine and finally am going to visit.  I am starting this blog to document my time over there and to share all my pictures I plan on taking.  I'll probably post again once I'm though with packing!