Juice from Ukraine and Other Observations

Today at breakfast, I discovered that Lisa's carton of orange juice was from Ukraine. (The Cyrillic letters including an "i" with a dot on it gave it away, because Russian doesn't have an "i" with a dot, but Ukrainian does.)

It's fascinating to me to be in this place on the border between cultures and geographies, in between Europe and Asia. If I were in Thailand, say, I would simply expect everything to be different. Different fruits, different foods, and entirely different sources for where those things come from. But here, even though we're at the far end of Europe, lots of products in the supermarket are from Germany. Or presumably from Russia to the north of here or Turkey to the south. And then this Ukrainian juice! Easily transported here across the Black Sea, Lisa pointed out, so Ukraine actually makes good sense as a source of random grocery items.

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As is so often the case, this is a trip with multiple purposes; this is both "yay, interesting new country to explore!" and "boy, better use this month to get a serious start on researching and applying to grad schools, because otherwise it's going to be too late to meet the deadlines."

As is also, unfortunately, so often the case, I've been being really hard on myself. You know: I'm not going out and fully enjoying this great opportunity of being in Georgia, but I'm also not being effective at getting things done, what am I even doing with my time, etc. etc. (Was feeling this especially in the first few days. Am not very good at remembering that it's normal not to have gotten much done yet in a just a few days in a new place.)

After spending one day making some good progress on grad school research and the next day finally getting back to work on my maybe-it-will-someday-be-a-novel, I'm feeling considerably calmer. The trick is to hold onto that calm enough to keep staying focused and keep getting things done...

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Speaking of German things, today is the Day of German Unity (reunification of East and West Germany, 24 years ago) and Lisa and I are invited to a reception at the German embassy, with the ambassador. The perks of being part of a small expat community in a small land. (I also recently met the Icelandic ambassador in Berlin, speaking of small countries!)