Also I can't decide whether or not to go to Ukraine (look I'm being all good and nationalistic and not calling it The Ukraine) before I come home. I've got a week in which I could go to Moscow and get myself a visa, and then another week in which I could go to Ukraine, be in Ukraine and then come home from Ukraine and go straight back to Michigan.

Plusses of going to Ukraine:

• When the hell else am I ever going to go to Ukraine?
• Kiev is clearly a cool ass city.
• And other cities such as Lviev and Odessa are also desireable places to visit.
• Ukraine has got to be way better than sitting on my ass in Voronezh and eating way too much food.

Minuses of going to Ukraine:

• the visa alone costs $100.
• I have a very limited amount of time left in Vornonezh/Russia -- why not spend it here with host family etc.
• If I go that automatically means spending money, as opposed to not spending money and being good and having money to pay for housing and school and such this summer, and that's not even thinking about next year yet.
• I could go to the dacha again instead...

looks like the reasons to not go are mostly financial. That means I should just suck it up and go. And it turns out that the woman at the travel agency wasn't a bitch after all: I wrote her last week asking her to change my ticket home to the 9th, and I got back an automatic message that said she was gone for the week. The day before she got back I did a little investigation on the subject of trains from Kiev to Voronezh and etc and found out that I wouldn't make a plane home on the 9th. As she hadn't gotten back from vacation yet I sent her a second email and asked her to change the ticket to the 10th and not the 9th. When she got in, she responded to the second email saying she would change the ticket to the 9th (t.e. she was gonna be a bitch and listen to the first date for the one free change, even though she hadn't done any work on it yet). But then today someone else entirely wrote me back and said that I'm now flying on the 10th. Yay for not bitchy travel agents!

I know I should be working on something, seeing as exams are next week, but I can't think of anything to work on.

procrastination!!

excessive and inappropriate use of exclamation points!!!!!

use of exclamation points at all!