Since I last visited Blogland, more ice and snow have melted. People are saying that spring is in the air. I have yet to get a whiff of it--probably the piles of snow yet to melt are getting in the way.

We did enjoy a nice dinner with Oksana and Oleg. I don't recall what we ate but probably it was good. We were in a store tonight after church and they had lasagna noodles. Very tempting but they cost about $4 for one box. Seems to me that's expensive but they are imported. Maybe for our anniversary which is coming on March 22.

The UEC has been fighting illness. Our two full-time staff have been sick. Lena and I watched the desk most of Friday after Sergiy fell ill. We'll seee how Monday goes. The second student night went well. More unbelievers came this time. And Misha Zhyvov preached this Sunday. I thought he did a great job. He keeps gettting better.

I finally finished the detective/mystery novel The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin. His series of novels based on the character Erast Fandorin, something like a Russian Sherlock Holmes, are immensely popular here and several of his novels have been made into high-quality films. Can't say that I am a big fan of the mystery novel genre but as they go, it's pretty good. If you like 19th-century Russian society and were possibly bored out of your mind by Anna Karenina, pick up something by Akunin.

Remember, if you Amazon, use the UEC's search engine to find your items and the UEC gets 5.25% of the purchase costs at no cost to you. I think our website is down for a little while. Sergiy found cheaper hosting so I guess those orders will have to wait a bit.

What else? I have taken up studying koine Greek. I can't really say I like studying languages that much but it seems to never leave me. Two years of French in high school, two years of German and one year of Russian at Lipscomb, about a year of formal study of Russian in Kyiv, some Ukrainian on the side, and now a little Greek. It's sort of fun since Russian has a lot of similarities, even the way verbs are declined. But I keep mixing up Russian and Greek.

Lena has started her marketing class. Six more weeks of marketing. God bless, her.

And then the elections. Next Sunday Ukraine will go to the polls to elect every seat in the 450 member Verkhovna Rada, or parliament. There are 45 different parties. Yes, 45!! We are also electing the Kyiv city mayor, the city council, and all the local councils. It's the most expensive election in Ukraine's history. Daily we are bombarded with ads in our mailbox, being handed stuff on the street and some really horrible TV commercials.

The government does not allow polls to be released two weeks before the election, but it looks like no one is going to get a majority. After the dust settles, we will see who sells their soul and forms a coalition. Since the coalition that brought us the Orange Revolution has fallen apart, no one really knows what will happen. This election is particularly important since the Rada will now choose the prime minister instead of the president. So what a wild ride it could be.

Of course, the Communists are still getting a few votes. The head of the parliament somehow created a party and the grocery store chain Furshet officially endorses him. The fast food restaurant Shviko endorses the European Capital party. Mister Snack officially supports Klichko, former world champion boxer, for mayor. The metro and the Kyiv zoo support the current mayor Omelchenko. I don't think they have any choice in the matter. There's also the Christian Democratic Party whose head is a charismatic and bank president. Yes, we have fun in politics in Ukraine. The US is really terribly dull when it comes to politics compared to this circus (I hope my Ukrainian readers aren't offended but with all the guys waving the flags on the street corners it just reminds me of a circus sometimes).

I have decided to support the former prime minister Tymoshenko. Yes, she's rich and probably stolen most of it. But she has guts and is about the most determined politician I have ever seen. She can really captivate a crowd. Her team is composed of several people I respect (including Andriy Shevchenko who used to read the news of Channel 5) so I will have to support Yulya in this race.

And my favorite party to hate is the opposition block "No Yes," in reference to the president's party's slogan "Yes." This party is made of all the disgruntled people who apparently have lost their places of power in society. They are against joining NATO, but for joining an economic alliance with Byelorussia, Russia, and Kazakhstan. They don't happen to mention that Byelorussia is basically a dictatorship, Russia isn't much better, and Kazakhstan is an old-style Asiatic big-man, one-man show. The current president supports closer relations to Europe and Georgia, one of the few genuinely democratic former Soviet Union republics. This party is also for the Russian language. It's on all their signs. I just haven't figured out who is against Russian. Maybe there are 12 nationalists in Lviv somewhere who want to really get rid of Russian, but no one running for office has even suggested that we should ban Russian. They are just playing on stereotypes and trying to rally the people in Donbass who think that someone in Kyiv is going to try to stop them from speaking Russian.

And then there is the party of the Regions. Don't get me started. This party is headed by a guy who was knocked down and rushed to a hospital after a student threw an egg at him in the last presidential campaign. He also brought us 10% inflation after raising wages and pensions beyond what the government could afford and then tried to steal an election. But I guess the 30% of the nation that is predicted to vote for them have very short memories. I realize it's more complicated than that but Maidan has to mean something.