вы упали в хорошем месте

I guess it's been about a week since I last posted, so I think it's time I got to it. It hasn't been because I've been too busy, as Grandma surmised, but just to opposite in fact. Things have been really slow lately and I just haven't felt the need to really write about. I'm still in a bit of a slump as far as getting going on my project, as well as getting involved with other - for lack of a better word - extracurricular activities, but it looks like things should be picking up in both those regards soon.
The most exciting thing I've done since you last heard from me was take a day trip down to Yalta, which I did last Saturday. It's really easy to catch a ride at the bus station a few minutes from my apartment. You don't even have to go through the bus station itself, because several trolleybuses and marshrutkas come by on their way out of town and you can just hop on like you would for a ride around the city, and it only costs about $4. I hoped on a marshrutka and settled in next to some guy whose jacket was taking up part of my seat. The drive takes about and hour and fifteen minutes, and is quite pretty especially now with leaves turning. About two fifths of the ride to Yalta is along the coast, starting at the town Alushta and going by smaller towns like Gurzuf, Nikita, and Massandra. The mountains rise pretty quickly out of the sea along Crimea's souther coast, and so the highway is set up above most of the towns, which lets you look down at most of them as you drive past but doesn't afford you the same overview of the place like a drive through the town might. These towns are usually set on a nice bay or inlet and all seem pretty nice. I'll have to find the time to take a nice slow tour of the towns along the southern coast from Alushta (or even further up, like from Sudak) to Sevastopol.
I was in nostalgia mode most of the time in Yalta, thinking back on the time I was here two years ago with fellow St. Petersburg study abroaders. I made a beeline for the waterfront as soon as I got into town, walking the fairly long distance from the bus station. In fact, it was quite a bit longer than I remember it being last time. The waterfront was just as I remembered it, but the weather was much nicer this time and the town was still just coming down from it's summer high season, so much more people were out along the waterfront and most of the gimmicky rides and games were still all set up, unlike last time (it was March when I went before). I sat on the edge of the dock for a bit, enjoying the view, the sun, and the cool sea breeze. I don't remember being able to do so last time, but I thought I could see all the way to the Swallow's Nest down the coast. It could have just been a rock that looked like it from that far of a distance, though. I strolled along the promenade for a while, taking the time to walk down piers and sit on a small rocky beach for a while. It was by no means an ideal beach; very small, right off of the busy promenade with no sense of privacy, and there was a speaker pointed directly at the beach that would blare a pre-recorded message about tours of the surrounding area every few minutes. It was nice to sit there for a bit though, and I even got to go wading in the water. I had a swimsuit in my backpack and I probably could have found a place to change into it and go for a swim (the water was a little chilly, but not too bad at all), but it didn't seem right for some reason. Plus, I would have had to leave my backpack with my camera, ipod, etc. unattended on the shore, which seemed too risky on a busy beach like this. Another thing: I found that some people around here are pretty shameless about wearing a swimsuit and sunbathing in public when they probably should be.
From the beach I cut up away from the water front into a neighborhood I didn't check out last time. I stumbled upon a wonderful little church across the street from a "topless bar" (which is just transliterated from the English) called the Arizona Club. I kept walking along this one street for a while as it starting rising about the downtown area, thinking that it would eventually intersect another street that would lead me back down, but after a while I realized it just kept going without a way down, so I had to turn around. I lingered along the waterfront a little while longer, mostly just people-watching, before heading to the area east of downtown near the train ticket booth. It was here that I stumbled upon another area of town that I hadn't discovered last time: a whole different waterfront / beach area! I don't know how I could have missed it, because it seems like a major destination for visitors. It's called Massandra beach, like the nearby town, and it is accessible by a little path off of one of the main roads that I just didn't bother checking out before. It's actually a series of different beaches sectioned off from each other by big raised platforms jutting out into the sea. There is a nice path lined with vendors and restaurants along the edge of the beaches, and to the other side the hill rises rapidly and there are a number of fancy hotels and apartments. Many of the beach sections are reserved for guests of various hotels, but some of them at least appeared to be public, so I went down onto one and sat in the pebbles for a while, throwing rocks into the water. I walked a little further down the beach afterwards until the beach area tapered off. I watch a women swim pretty far out into the water, but since the water was really quite calm it didn't seem dangerous at all, like it might in the Pacific back home. The sun was getting low in the sky, so I figured I should start heading back to Simferopol. I walked back to the down town area and caught a marshrutka back up to the bus station, where I found a minibus right away heading to Simferopol. By this time the sky had somehow gotten very overcast, so the views of the sea weren't as inspiring heading back. It was dark by the time I got back to Simferopol.
In the week since Yalta I've done a whole lot of nothing, really. I've gotten pretty engrossed in the elections back home, and have spent a lot of time on the internet catching up on all the developments. I even got up at 4:00 AM the other night to watch the third debate online. I've also been doing more research on Crimea stuff, just getting more ideas about the direction I want to take my project. I've been doing a bit more exploring around the city as well. I've discovered a few new restaurants that I like. One of them is in the market by my apartment. They have fairly decent pizza and pasta for pretty cheap. I also discovered a shaurma place at the market that's better than the other one I've been going to. I think the key difference is that they put onions in it, while the other one doesn't. There's another place downtown that I had been meaning to check out, since I had walked by before and thought I saw people eating blinis. I finally tried it the other day, but was confused by there menu and didn't see blini at first, so I ended up ordering their specialty, a "pie", or "pirog" (the place is called "Cafe of Pirog"). These pies are unlike either the American or Russian conception of a pie, but are pretty tasty. They're basically like a pizza with another thin layer of crust folded over and covering the toppings. I guess it's kind of like a calzone, but it's still flat and you eat it like a pizza. I got my with chicken and cheese. It was only after I ordered that I found the separate blini menu on the wall, much smaller than the big pirog menu. I definitely enjoyed it, but I'll have to try the blinis next time.
One day earlier this week I was going to try to make it down to Sevastopol for the day, but it proved unsuccessful. I thought I'd be able to simple hop on a bus or marshrutka that was heading there, much like I had to Yalta, because it's about the same distance away.Since my neighborhood isn't on the way to Sevastopol, I headed down to the train station where I thought I could find a ride. It turns out there aren't really any marshrutkas going t Sevastopol, or anything that you can just simply "hop onto," you have to actually buy a ticket for a scheduled bus. It was already kind of late in the day by the time I got to the station and figured all this out, plus there was a long line for tickets and there didn't seem to be a bus heading to Sevastopol for a little while, so I bailed on the plan. There are buses to Sevastopol leaving from the bus station right by my apartment too, so it will be easy to buy a ticket and catch a bus there sometime in the very near future. Anyway, since I was going to stick around town and hadn't eaten yet, and since the ticket booth was right next to McDonalds, I decided to pop in for a quick lunch. It's not the best place to have lunch, but at least it did provide me with a funny anecdote that pertains nicely to my research project: I was sitting at a table outside on their patio, when some guy asked if he could sit there too, since the other tables were all taken. We both sat quietly eating, not talking to each other, when he finally gestured towards the trash bin and asked me, "what does that mean, 'dya-ku-yem-o?'" He was talking about the word written on the flap to the garbage can that all fast food places have. Knowing what's usually written on those flaps, knowing that everything at McDonalds is written in Ukrainian here, and knowing that this word sounds very similar to a certain Czech word I know, I had already determined that "dyakuemo" means "thank you" (or, probably, "we thank you"). I told him simply, "I think it's Ukrainian," to which he shook his head and said, "kashmar!" (like, "what a nightmare!"). Once he had finished his food, he looked to me again and asked, "where am I supposed to put this garbage?" I smiled and said, "over there where the Ukrainian writing is," to which he just shook his head again, as if that were only adding insult to injury. I couldn't help but laugh to myself after he left. I know he lives in Crimea and speaks Russian, but the idea that he would never have encountered that word in Ukrainian before, and the fact that he would seem so personally offended by it, seems strange to me considering that Ukrainian is still used in advertising, television, and all other kinds of media in Crimea. It just goes to show how important the language issue is for the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking population of Crimea. Also the fact that he didn't know where to put his garbage was pretty funny as well.
After lunch I rode back to my neighborhood, but instead of going home I decided to explore the area a little bit. I walked down Gurzufskaya street and ended up at the creek, which I followed in the direction away from town. I then cut over to the University's botanical garden, which the creek runs past. It was a warm sunny day, and it was very nice to walk through the rose gardens and various other landscaped garden areas. I sat on a bench for a while enjoying the weather before heading home. On the way back I passed a pretty cool monument commemorating the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. It was a big chunk of stone in the shape of Crimea, with beams heading out in different directions towards stones with the names of all the Soviet republics that the Crimean Tatars were sent to (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, which got the vast majority). I took a slightly different route back home from the one I usually take, and found some shops I hadn't seen before, including a grocery store that I'll probably check out soon.
Yesterday I was finally able to schedule a meeting with the head of the International Education Department at the university. The director, Marina, is the one who has been trying to get a meeting for me with the Rector of the university, and she is a good resource for all things going on at the university as well. On my way into the main university building, I was simply waved in by the security guard, while some chinese students had to rummage through their bags for their IDs. I don't think he remembered me from the one other time I came in with a professor (I don't even know if it was the same security guard). Maybe I just looked like a Westerner and he figured I must have some official business there, or maybe he's just racist towards Chinese. Anyway, my meeting went well, although it doesn't look like I'll b getting a meeting with the Rector any time soon. Apparently he's in the middle of giving out awards or something right now, and after that he's taking his vacation. Marina tells me that he has been informed of my presence, so there may be some sort of formal contact with him later on down the line. At any rate, I think I'll probably want to interview him for my project sometime in the spring (I think I mentioned that he was speaker of the Crimean Supreme Soviet [like Parliament] in the early '90's and played a very important role in the process of securing Crimea's autonomous status). He's actually a professor of geography, and Marina gave me a copy of his book "The Regional Geopolitics of Sustainable Development" about Crimea, which will likely come in very handy. She also gave me a copy of a recently published book with general information about the university in Russian and English. I told her more about my ideas and plans for my research project, and afterwards she took me to the geography department to meet with the vice-dean and head secretary of the Socio-Economic Georaphy faculty, who in turn introduced me to the Dean. Marina and I told them about who I was and what I was interested in doing here, and now they've scheduled me to come back on Wednesday during a meeting of the faculty to meet the professors and give a brief presentation of myself and what I'd like to research while I'm here. I'll finally get to meet the husband of the professor I met with earlier who, it sounds like, will end up being my primary advisor while I'm here. I'm pretty nervous about this presentation, given my modest language skills and still somewhat vague ideas about my project, but I think it should turn out alright. Marina had to leave before I had a chance to talk to her about some other things not relating to my project specifically, such as getting hooked up with the English department and seeing if they need an assistant or if I could do some tutoring, but it will have to wait for our next meeting. Before she left I was able to get the phone number of one of the students from Willamette University who are studying here, though it turns out they just left for a two-week trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg, and once they get back I'll be heading out to Georgia, so it may be a while before I'm able to get in touch with them, but I'd certainly like to. I did pass two girls speaking English on the river path the other day, and I suspected they might be two of the Willametters. but I didn't think quick enough nor would I have been bold enough to simply blurt out, "hey, English!" or something like that. In other news, I have made email contact with a grad student who is here doing research and whose blog I have been following for a while. She was out of town for most of this week, but hopefully we'll be meeting up soon, because I'm really starting to get bored and lonely without people to hang out with here.
One last thing I did: Today I finally checked out the book fair that happens every weekend a few bus stops up Kiev street. It's pretty big, but a lot of vendors were already starting to pack up by the time I got there. Most of them were selling books aimed at students or children, but there was a good variety of history, self-help, general interest, magazines, etc. There were even a number of CD and DVD booths. I ended up buying a small "tourism atlas" of Crimea, which is basically like a gazetteer with detailed segment-by-segment maps of the whole region, along with city maps for the main towns and a lot of good information about different spots around the peninsula. I also got a book on the geography of Ukraine meant mainly for students, and it looks like it has a lot of useful info. I'm interested in seeing the language that it uses to talk about Crimea, and what biases that might reveal. Oh, the other day I also bought some books at a bookstore downtown: One on the history of Crimea, an in-depth guide to all the various tourist sites and natural areas of Crimea, and a small booklet of poetry about Crimea. I've gone Crimea-crazy (That is pretty much the point of me being here, though)!
Gee, for not really doing much this week, I sure was able to write a lot. My water was shut off again today, which is extremely frustrating. Last time it didn't bother me too much since it happened right before I left for Kiev and by the time I got back it was back on. This time I'm stuck in the apartment without being able to simply wash my hands, flush the toilet, or do the dishes. I was able to cook dinner without water (the usual onions, pepper, garlic, potatoes, eggs, and cheese), but no way to do the dishes afterward. Since I was in Kiev last time, I really don't know how long to expect the water to be off. I hope it's back on by tomorrow, or else things will start getting tricky. I think I'm going to start filling empty bottles with water and leaving them under the sink so I'll have some in these situations, because I'm sure this is going to happen again. That's it for now. I'll let you know how my presentation goes.

-Austin