Dobry Den!! We took the night train back to Kyiv last night and I'm currently at the Agricultural University. The abbreviation for this university is H.A.Y. which I found quite humorous since it is an ag U. The Pronunciation for those letters or the english equivalent would be N.A.U. This afternoon we are going on a boat ride down the Dnepro river which runs from Kyiv down to Crimea and into the Black sea. I'm looking foreward to seeing Kyiv from that vantage.

Yesterday in LbBiB we visited many Cathedrals and museums and a cemetary. The cemetaries are quite interesting as you will see in the pictures later. The graves are pretty much stacked on top of each other in random directions. Everyone has a monument that is for them when they die. This includes even the poor though theirs are much smaller. The cemetary we went to is one of the oldest and biggest cemetaries in Europe. It has at least one record in Guiness so I guess I can look up it's name when I return. Ivan Franko was buried there along with a couple of other heros and famous composers. I don't think their favorite person Schevchenko is though. I'm pretty sure this particular cemetary may have been the most compact art/sculpture gallery I've ever been to. After that we visited two museums before lunch. One was the former home of a well to do citizen in the 18th century where we saw many interesting artifacts. We then went to a pharmacy musem which was the workplace of an important alchemist and a brewhouse. On the walls were quite a few interesting drugs that I could recognize as their names haven't changed over the years. Some of these included Morphine, Conc. Opium, Pow. Cocaine... I wonder how often people came back to the pharmacist to make they feel better;) After lunch we went to a few cathedrals. Most of them I can't remember the names but the important ones were, the cathedral that the Pope had recently visited, the church our leaders were married in (Roman and Sherry Proganichny), St. Georges where we caught part of a mass (the acoustics and singing were incredible), and a cathedral that has been remodeled since Soviet times when it was practically destroyed and used as a storage facility. The church was just finished remodeling and re-stuckoing so it looked pretty good but none of the stained glass windows were left and the art had all been painted over. This was a good example of how the USSR destroyed things.

We then climbed to the former location of the Lviv castle which is on top of an incredibly steep hill. The castle was demolished in a battle quite a while ago but it is now a monument and lookout to Ukraine and Lviv. From the top we could see Poland, Slovakia, Belarus, and of course Ukraine.

We had dinner at a little Kafe downtown in the old city and took off for the train station. The train stations over here are amazing. They are buisier by far than the airport, and they are beautiful examples of pre Communist buildings. On the train we were in sleeper cars which slept four per car. On the trip to Lviv we got a little rowdy and the Ukrainians at the end compared us to a bunch of wild animals (I went to bed fairly early). On the ride back we were very tame. The cava and chai on the train are served in the same fashion as they did in soviet times. We didn't get tradiditional mugs rather they were drinking glasses in pewter cup holders. The holders used to be silver back in the day but now they are pewter because of cost.

We are now back in Kyiv like I said. After a good night sleep (on the train)and breakfast we took our showers and headed to the stud farm on campus. Apparently the miniatures are the newest rage amongst the oligarchy here as they are breeding little horses to maintain the herd.

Well, it's lunch time now (12:30PM) so I must go for now. I will get back on more often now that I know this internet cafe is here.