Culture Shock?

I am really depressed today. I don't know whether it's because Ed's project is to stymied, or whether it's because I'm just running out of things to do in Kharkiv, or a combination, or neither, of those things. Maybe it's just a wave of culture shock, which I've heard comes and goes. One problem, I know, is the isolation - there is just no one here for us to interact with. Very few people speak English, and almost no one speaks it fluently. The ballet and symphony season are over until the fall; there are no movies in English (the American movies are dubbed into Russian); I'm having a hard time getting into my book "Life and Fate," which Laura (on whom I rely for reading recommendations), has told me is one of the greatest books ever written. Sitting at my computer and going to Amazon, as if I'm browsing a bookstore at home, is fine, but in the end I can't buy anything because there is no way to get anything here. Fern sent out our first FedEx package, with the office supplies that Ed can't get here (file folders and letter size legal pads - yes, they just don't have those things here), and she emailed to say that even with her 75% discount at FedEx these are undoubtedly the most expensive office supplies Ed has ever gotten, and that she thinks we should save FedEx for absolute necessities! I am also dreading my haircut and color - I haven't seen any redheads here that look good, and by now my hair is so faded and bleached out from the sun that there is no way for them to tell what color they should use. These are trivial things, I know, but still . . . .

The highlights of my day have been doing a wash, stripping the bed for the clean sheets the maid brought with her this morning (she comes every Monday and stays exactly one hour and I pay her 25 Hrvynas - at that rate she makes more than judges earn here!), and going to a new and different kiosk for a new and different kind of sausage (I hate it - way too fatty) and cheese (masses of it - I didn't know how to tell her to give me less, and there was a very long queue impatiently waiting behind me). We were thinking of taking an overnight trip to Poltova, which is a small city about 1 1/2 hours west of here on the "fast" train to Kyiv, but Ed keeps hoping some progress will be made with the office preparations, and that there will be something for him to do.

So now I'm just going to wait until Betsy wakes up and makes her scrabble move - then pretty soon Molly will be up and she'll make hers, and then Dee. Vicki will start playing today too, back from her trip to Italy. Pretty pathetic!

. . . .

Well, everyone woke up and now I've got some scrabble games going. Betsy even called on Skype-In because she thought I sounded so down (she was right!). I also abandoned "Life and Fate" for the time being in favor of short stories by Alice Munro (much more absorbing right now), and I seem to have managed to make it through the day. Ed got a call from Gennady telling him that they plan to open the office on Friday. So, as they say, tomorrow is another day - and a better one than today I hope.