December is always quite a stressful month for me, not only because of exams, but also because of all the essays and assignments that I have to write, which is actually more stressful than the exams themselves, as I tend to procrastinate writing as much as I can... Well, my procrastination isn't as extreme as it used to be during my first years at university, so there's at least some progress :) This weekend I'm staying in Lviv and hopefully I'll write at least half of what I'm supposed to do by the end of next week. One thing that makes me feel that my state of mind must be much better than it was even just a year ago is that spending the weekend at home doesn't feel terrible anymore. Of course, I never lose my passion for traveling and I'd rather be Training at the moment, but I can still remember how I was nearly going crazy each time I had to spend weekend in Lviv and I'm glad that those emotions are gone. It's much better to be traveling when I want to and not because "I have to", as staying alone, face to face with my thoughts would be unbearable. Something must have changed in me, indeed. I don't notice those changes so easily, because I see myself everyday, but after a while it's possible to tell that things aren't the way they used to be. I believe in this case it's a change for the better, yet I hope to go somewhere next week :) But surely, now I'm not going to spend the whole weekend sitting at home and typing ;) I think I'll go for a walk to the city centre and perhaps continue my tradition of letter writing in café's.
Yes, I should definitely spend some time writing letters to my dear penpals, because just this week 3 letters have arrived at my P.O. Box ;)
This letter from Francesca in Italy came on Monday. I haven't heard from her since summer, so it was really nice to read all her news :)
Fariza from Singapore has written me a very sincere letter in answer to my intro and has also sent me two postcards from her country :) I'm really glad to finally have a penpal from Asia, with thom I can exchange long and thoughtful letters! By the way, have you noticed this Russia-themed envelope? :) I'll have to ask Fariza, whether people associate Ukraine with Russia even halfway around the world away from here :) That's really interesting!
Finally, on Thursday I've received this letter from my Finnish friend Essi, who has visited me earlier this year and we had a great time traveling around Ukraine, taking photos of sad yellow buses, all statues of Jesus, as well as of the big mess on Maidan Nezalezhnosti :D Essi has also sent me a huuuge postcard from her trip to Prague and a handmade Christmas card! She makes one for me each year, which I really appreciate :) I also loved her idea of using 18 stamps on one envelope! :)
This week I've only been able to send one letter, but believe me - it was a big one! :) I promised myself to fit into 30 A4 pages and I managed, but that was quite hard. I hope Tündi will receive my letter soon :) By the way, I really like those sets of stamps showing different regions of Ukraine - they're almost like postcards. Today they've started selling a new set, dedicated to Volyn region, so of course I've bought a few - just let me know, if you're interested in receiving such stamps. The only problem with them is that they don't fit onto standard sized envelopes ;) By the way, once I'm writing about stamps, here are the new Ukrainian Christmas/New Year stamps:
They're meant for domestic mail, but you know, I like to put a lot of stamps on my envelopes (not as many as Essi did though), so they're going to travel to quite a few countries :) To be honest, I don't celebrate Christmas myself and so I don't get excited about Christmas-related stuff, but I know how much it means to some of my friends, so why not please them with holiday themed stamps and postcards? I also used to love Christmas as a child, but I haven't celebrated it since I've started living on my own in Ukraine. Well, I've tried to celbrate once, I even had a small Christmas tree, but that just felt sad, because I missed those times, which are gone forever... Therefore I prefer to keep my wonderful childhood memories and love that old Christmas, the way it used to be. Nowadays ignoring Christmas doesn't upset me anymore, especially that I have no idea, when am I supposed to celebrate it. In Poland, where I'm originally from, it's on 25th December, just like in most of countries. But in Ukraine it's not even a day off - I'm actually going to have an exam on 25th December this year. Ukrainian Christmas is on 7th January, but I'm going to be on my way to Israel that day. Isn't traveling also a kind of celebration? :)
P.S. A day or two ago my German friend has asked me, whether there's been a nuclear incident in Ukraine, so I think I'll better make it clear on my blog that nothing terrible has happened :) One of the reactors of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been switched off for technical reasons (they all have to be switched off from time to time) and this, combined with lack of coal on "normal" power plants (as most of coal comes from the war zone), causes problems with energy in Ukraine. It happens that they just switch it off for 2 or 3 hours either in the morning or in the evening, which can be slightly annoying, but I hope they'll fix that reactor soon. No Chernobyl #2, don't worry ;)
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