Finally I get am at a computer. We are currently in Lviv and we just got back from visting a seed cleaning and processing facility and a couple of castles. One of the castles, built in the 13hundreds, has been renovated but in my personal opinion it needed a womans touch. I think the Soviets put too much morter on the outside and inside and made it into what looked like a former prison rather than a castle. The other was a 17th century french style palace that had been used for most of its life as a party palace. During Soviet times it was an insane asylum and they are currently renovating it to it's former glory however it's going to take a lot of work as it looks as though it hasn't been upkept in about 50+ years. The castle is falling apart. It was fun being able to basically play around in the castle including its pitch black basement with no flashlights. We basically had no boundaries except where they were working. There was no fancy art but we had plenty of time to just have fun. A note of how poorly upkept the place was there was a tree growing out of the wall on the third floor.

Yesterday we spent time at the local ag college and recieved a tour and got the chance to meet with a lot of Ukrainian students. They had english class while we were there and we were the class for the day. We went to the opera in the old town that evening for a short but fun Ukrainian operetta.

The first place we visited was Kyiv where we were staying at the National Agricultural College. We had a tour of the facilities and they split us into groups to visit our areas of interest. The vet school was the best tour according to most because of the incredible museum of anatomy and the interesting structure.
We have visited a few churches and seen some of the most famous mosaics in the country. We went to the Ballet where we saw Spartok (Spartacus). On the first night we were immediately bussed into the city after dropping off our stuff in the hostel. It was the Ukrainian version of memorial day but specific for WW2 veterans and victims. There are massive amounts of WW2 memorials and monuments all over this country. We sat under Kyiv's version of the statue of liberty and watched fireworks. It reminded me of Towanda's 4th of July celebration only with half the fireworks (I think we had more at Steve and Cindy's last year).

My general observations on Ukraine are as follows. It is extremely hard to concentrate when driving or walking down the street. The scenery in Lviv is beautiful in archetecture and in Kyiv the archetecture is basically communist square buildings with the occasional monument and beautiful church. The concentration issue is distinctively in the ladies of the country who I'm convinced the entire country believes that "if you've got it flaunt it" and most of the women under 30 have it and it's extremely distracting however it is also extremely wonderful. Everyone here is very proud of their history and they love to brag about their newfound structures and systems that have developed since independence. To a point it's very annoying I don't even know as much about the structure of IaSU or UofI as I do about the Natn'l Ag Univ. Here. We spent 2 hours talking about a "Ukrainian hero" who they aren't even sure what he really did. This was after an eight hour train ride and only 2 hours of sleep you can guess what our heads were doing during the presentation. Other general observations. The language is difficult though I can now read Ukrainian and Russian but I don't know what I'm saying yet, except a few common courtesies. Everyone seems to be happy to see us and loves practicing their english though no one will smile when it comes to picture time. I have asked a couple of the people about these cultural differences and I'm not sure I liked the answers I recieved. People are poor but not as poor as I necessarily thought and they all think every american is filthy rich. It's ~$2.20 for a Big Mac meal and that's extremely expensive for a Ukrainian. We ate at a Cafe and I had Chicken Kyiv some other chicken thing and some Perogies with a shredded beet salad and a Lvivska Beer for US$3.50 and that was a huge meal.

Everything is great and I shall continue to oogle at the ladies but talking to them likely won't happen as the best looking ones don't seem to speak my language. I can't pass out my e-mail either because the internet is rare and expensive for them.

That is all for now. My love and blessings go out to everyone.
Dad. I need a new eyepiece cover for my N90S. Since I won't be in the states for long I would like to have one when I get there. Thanks.