Three Days in Donetsk

So, we finally got around to taking our trip to Donetsk to register. We had to go to Donetsk, because we needed to be registered under the Ukrainian Bible Institute. And we had to go now because we couldn't go earlier and we only have until the 7th of July or something like that. We left on Monday expecting to be home that night or the next afternoon and ended up staying for THREE days! I had brought my PJ, Jordan had brought her Toothbrush, and that's almost all we had. We were told that we couldn't use the kitchen because it was being remodelled, so we ate out and then realized the last day that they meant the upstairs kitchen was out, but we could have used the downstairs one. Ugh. (I'm not a fan of eating out and I still haven't quite recovered from eating out so much in Italy.)

On the last day we were told that our trip had done nothing because both the people who "own" the rooms they tried to register us to were out of town and couldn't sign the necessary papers. But they made us fill out the papers again just in case it's possible that we won't have to go back to do everything all over again. The forms were in Ukrainian, which is like Russian except it's different. My student friends who were at the school still laughed when they heard!  And they kept our passports, which is pretty terrifying because if any Militia* man it becomes a contest between how much he needs a bribe or if he's not one of the bad ones. They're don't tend to choose to believe the "the government has my passport" excuse. I've decided not to keep too much money with me and to work hard on blending in.

One of the students, Nadia, came back to Kharkov with us because she's from Russia and needed some papers from the Russian Consulate here so she could go home for the summer. We took the new fast trains both directions and they are really nice and have air conditioning and TVs. Nadia said "it's like a dream!"


*That is Police man.