Weekends Blow.

Okay, not really, but this weekend was so much harder than the entire week was. At least for me. The last two days seemed like they would neeeeeeeeeeeever end. We did lots and lots of awesome, sweet things. On Saturday we saw the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, which is an orthodox christian monastery. The caves underneath, where the monks once lived, now serves as their tomb. The environment in said caves is such that the bodies are highly preserved. Some of the glass caskets had a hand showing out of the burial robes so we could see the state of the bodies. Definately dead. But, there was still skin and fingernails and tiny hairs on them. We had to wear scarves on our heads and carry a candle with us because it was so dark. There was a continuous line of people going in, some stopping at each tomb to pray and kiss the caskets. Gross. I was surprised none of the scarves caught on fire with how many candles were wandering around down there. Afterwards, we went to a service in the church there. The chanting and the choir and the swinging incense balls were very mystical. Like you see in the movies. Sure didn't feel the spirit, though. The bells in the tower also went off while we were there, and they were amazing. They start out very slow and monotonous, but before long, there are many different tones and they are going super fast! It was fun to hear. Of course, this was about when my camera decided it was tired and didn't want to work anymore(Haley was generous enough to share her camera with me, so all of the good ones, of the really cool stuff, she'll have to upload to the blog later). We went home after that, to try not to be excessively late for dinner. An hour and a half isn't excessive, is it? Yesterday we went to church in Kiev first thing in the morning, then we went to the head teacher's apartment and made a cake, a much-needed treat for us all. After that, we had tickets for the ballet, which unfortunately fell on Sunday. We saw Cinderella, and it was very beautiful and enchanting, but I think I've had my fill of ballet for a while. There's just something about it that feels a little too much like miming. It was very beautiful, though. The biggest problem with this weekend was how much time we spent travelling. It took AGES to get into Kiev! Saturday we missed our train in the morning, so had to catch a bus (after having walked a good twenty minutes or more to the train station) and then another bus to get into town. We had to take the metro, and Aubrie and I got left behind again because Aubrie's metro card wouldn't work. We finally got through and found the others (we have a problem with making sure everyone gets through the checkpoints like that. We're getting better...). It was a lot of time spent on buses, and most of the time I was standing. Bleh. Yesterday was worse, though. It took forever to get to church and we were twenty minutes late. Then, it took forever (more buses, metro, and walking) to get to the apartment. It wasn't too bad getting to the Opera House for the ballet, but oh my heavens. Getting home...not fun. Some girls got pretty distracted taking pictures, so we were waiting outside for them for at least twenty minutes. This caused us to miss the early train. We were going to try to catch a train that was half an hour later, but apparently it doesn't stop in Boyarka (it was the express/more expensive train) so instead we had to wait for two hours to catch the 11:05 train. All the weirdies take the latest trains, and sure enough, Haley, Sarah and I were pretty well surrounded. Two weirdies in front, facing us (one with crazy hair and two swords...) and three that smelled like cigarettes and had at least two beer bottles each. They didn't give us much trouble and we pretty well ignored them despite their pitiful efforts (they could say about five words in English: yes, no, hello, goodbye, and beer). When we finally got on the train and got to Boyarka, we found that the buses had already stopped. The buses between cities stop early, but the buses within the cities usually run a lot later. Nope. They weren't running. So, we got to walk down the scary streets of Boyarka in the middle of the night with all the drunken creepers and wasted sketchers (our new word for those that are sketchy). It wasn't the most comfortable half-hour walk. We finally got home and the sweet, wonderful cooks had left dinner for us. The cute old-man guard let us in and turned on lights for us. The helper-people at the school are so good to us. The cooks, the guards, the cleaning ladies. Love them. Anyway, I have found that I much prefer life during the week than life on the weekend. I missed my kids, and I could certainly do without public transportation. Hopefully next weekend, when we go to Kamianets Podilski, will be less crazy.