When am I?

So I slept, ...for about 2.5 to 3 hours. So, by EST standards it 5:30 right now, and by Ukraine time its 12:30 AM. At the moment though, I really have no idea as to what time my body feels like it is. Certainly I am wide awake right now, but it does not feel like the morning. With all of the lights out and the whole pitch black outside thing it certainly looks like night, but not 12:30. Maybe I think it's around 9 or 10 at night.

Kiev is a city on a hill. This means a few things.

First, you are, for the most part, always walking either up or down. The CRDF offices here in Kiev are all the way down one big hill and then up another. Supposedly about a 20 minute walk. Also, I live about 10 minutes from the nearest metro station and its down the hill too.

Second, if you are on top of the hill there are a lot of things to look at. Fortunately, my apartment is pretty much on the top of the hill. If I go out back behind my building there is some greenspace, and a really big slope down. Not too far away in the distance I can see a bunch of colored houses that remind me of the Boca district in Buenos Aires.

Third, if you are at the top of the hill, you are in the center of the city. The location here is really something. There are two large (and old - one is around 900 years old) cathedrals in Kiev that are basically just to my left and right.

When the morning comes, and weather permitting, I plan on doing an intensive hike around the city with my camera to take some pictures. I also need to find out where the local supermarket is since it took forever to get basic things today at the fresh market type setting I went to with the CRDF program director here. I also need to make a list of all the things I plan on buying, figuring out what their name is in both Ukrainian and Russian, and start learning them. Some things I've found are similar between the languages, and others are not.

Since I can't seem to get google to recognize my street, you can click here to see generally where I am living. I am in one of the 4 buildings in the middle between the two red buildings. You can zoom out accordingly and see that just to the north are some colored houses.

Finally, my office will be somewhere. I have a computer desk in here that is right next to the internet router, but I am going to get wifi in the next week. After that I may choose to work from the kitchen, living room, bathtub, or local coffee shop. As for the outside, I'll take some pictures tomorrow, but I've got some buildings equally as grey as mine across the street. And for extra information, the original apartment was situated just across the street from the Louis Vuitton store in the really expensive part of town.