First freak-out as the final countdown begins

This past Wednesday we hit a milestone: 4 weeks until departure. And I marked this event by having my first “oh my gosh - it’s almost time to go and I have nothing done” freak-out. Note that I call it my first freak-out. I’ve done this moving thing enough to know that there will be more.

Of course, this is the first international move we’ve done. And because there’s no Target in Kyiv, I’m feeling the need to purchase a lot of things before we go. In fact, that was a big part of this week’s crisis. How many rolls of toilet paper do we need to buy? We have to get another set of towels. And there’s no way they’re going to have shoes that I like there…better get a pair of dress and casual in black, brown, and navy. You can see how this can get out of hand really quickly. I’m currently working on taking deep breaths and telling myself that it’s okay if I don’t get everything on my endless list.

On the upside, this week was my first without Russian class. I had originally planned to stick it out a little longer, but I was just tired day after day and, besides, I needed to get to work on my lengthy “to do” list. I did force myself to study on my own for an hour or two each morning this week and Shawn and I try to converse in Russian in the evenings. And I’ve always got my trusty flashcards to help enhance my vocabulary.

By the way, some of you eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that I added another blog link to the side of my homepage. Carolyn was in my original Russian class and she and her husband are currently in Moscow. We always joked that we made a good team in class (her strength was vocab and my strength was grammar), and we’re going to get to test that theory out in a few months when she’s coming to Kyiv for a visit! I’ll let you know how it goes.