Kiev trip

Hi there!!

Wow! I feel like this winter is going to last for another 5-6 months!! I don't know but this is a very special winter indeed... It is very instructive and educational (I am not afraid of these "big" words). It teaches me a lot of patience. And patience seems to be the lesson I still need to learn for I lack it so much and I am a complete failure when it comes to exercising my patience on a daily basis.

Well, I will skip numerous details and parts of this rather long patience lesson which involve unstable internet connection, wireless which I just cannot fix, slipping on the ice, getting a cold, etc., and get to the Kiev trip about which I was going to write. By the way, here is another patience thing. I left home to go to the bus station to catch a bus to Kiev and guess what??? Half way through I realize that both of my mobile phones are left at home!! So I run back and then start off again. A poor guard of the local supermarket who just happened to be outside smoking must have had a deja vu for I ran past him several times!!

So we get on a bus and off we go!!! Kiev was great as always!! Huge, crowded, "cosmopolitan", multicolored, extremely versatile and what not! I must say that I had never used metro so much in my life. A friend of mine who went with me had to deliver some envelopes to some remote places in the city and so we spent quite a bit of time underground... Lots of people everywhere and I began to feel tired.
When I was a kid I dreamt of living in Kiev and I was very upset when I found out that I could not study in Kiev simply because my family could not afford Kiev. I though that my life was lost forever... But I was wrong!!

The more I have to go to Kiev (and I love the city a lot for its diversity and "life"), the more I realize that I cannot be there for more than 1 day. One day is perfectly enough for me and afterwards I usually feel really tired! So I was happy to catch a bus back home and in 3 hours find myself again in my quite town!!

Here is some wisdom out of all this: From contentment with little things comes happiness (African proverb). I think sometimes we just fail to notice those little things that we ought to appreciate, which make us really happy. Things like being able to walk to work or get home for lunch and get back to work within 2 hours! And I felt blessed and thankful to God for "planting" me here!

Love from a really snowy place!

Alf