This is my first post since arriving in the Ukraine and Dnipro more specifically. I arrived into the Ukraine at 17:50 (approximately) and after having spend the plane journey talking to a very nice Ukrainian university student (who informed me of many interesting fact about the Ukraine and frequently mentioned why she was so strong in her desire to leave) I entered into the busy visa hall.
After a quick word with the very [UN]helpful officer I found an English speaker who pointed me in the right direction of the visa forms and also told me that 50 US dollars would be enough to speed us to the front of the cue.
After finally arriving I quickly found the other teachers from the other school's including a teacher who had been out there for a few months and studied Russian at university (very handy let me tell you!) we quickly got on a bus and headed out to the train station where me and John (the other new teacher for Dnipro) would get the sleeper train that evening.
After dropping of my suitcase we went to sample the local delights of Kyiv and ended up in a sushi bar... Never the less they did sell some of the local food varenyky a sort of cross between dim sum/ravioli that comes with a variety of fillings.
I felt optimistic about the "meat" option though upon discovering it was sold out, settled for the potato option. Despite essential being potato wrapped in a sort of pasta it was very flavoursome, no doubt assisted by the side dishes of semina and some oiley onion thing whose name I can not remember.
I wish I could report that the sleep train lived up to its name, alas this was not the case. Instead I spend most of the 7 hour journey tossing and turning and swatting mosquitoes in a semi comatose state. When I arrived at my apartment everything seamed pretty much as you would expect of a standard apartment in the UK, with the only exception of the shower (more to come later).
After this I was assisted in a food shop and phone sim card purchasing adventure by one of the local teachers which was very useful to have some basic items in the apartment and not have to spend ridiculous sums of money for using my phone.
Finally we made our way over to the school...the very long way. In fact we walked straight past it as we didn't expect it to be so close to the flat. However we did eventually arrive...after having walked all the way round the block! (and not a small block either).
The last event that day was to go out to the local Italian which helpfully has it's menu in Ukrainian, meaning that my knowledge of Russian provided to be of little helps except in working out the names of the pizza's, what was pizza and what was pasta and mozzarella which is spelt as it sounds.
The next day was the start of the induction week which I'll post some more details of in my next post along with some more pictures.
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