Just another crazy day in Ternopil

Brieanne and I didn’t actually end up going to Internat today. Let me explain:

 The day started out as expected – we had the morning off and then met our local program coordinator (Olena) at the university. Here, Olena introduced us to the orphanage representative, Horace, who would be taking us on the bus to show us how to get to Internat. The bus we were going to take doesn’t run very often so we had a lot of time to get to know each other. This is what I learned about Horace:

Horace is a lot younger that I expected (~24 whereas I was expecting an older gentleman) but speaks English very well. He works for little pay at the orphanage and earns most of his money DJing at local bars. He’s been to BC before and would like to come to live in Canada but would not like to leave his DJ job (or, I suspect, his girlfriend Maria). His family seems well-off as they have all studied at the University where Brieanne and I took our Ukranian course.

During our conversation, Horace told us about a couple fun things to do in Ternopil and said he would probably show us around a bit. He’s an active, creative person so I am looking forward to getting his perspective of the city. I’m looking forward swimming in the river he mentioned and visiting the club he works at.

We waited for an hour with no sign of our bus, # 33. After waiting for that long, Horace called a taxi but it either didn’t come or didn’t stay long enough for us to get in it. Since Horace needed to get back home for appointment to get his new car road-ready, we made our way back to the school to participate in cultural activities. This experience supports my previous blog about going with the flow – you never know what a new day will bring! Hopefully we will get to Internat tomorrow.

At the University, we were greeted by two additional students who took us and our tutors to a nearby park to sing and play guitar. It was great! I really love the sound of guitar, especially live, and it inspired me to get practicing again. After a few songs, the rain started pouring down. That was fine with me – I really like rain and storms. We took shelter under a tree for a while and then high-tailed it to the university. “Ei dammo!” (“Let’s go!”)

After finishing up our music class at the university, we ran some errands downtown and made our way home. My host family had company so I hung out with them for a while. It was nice to see them visiting like my family would at home. There are a lot of differences here but some things are universal.