A year from now . . . L'viv and teaching english abroad

I had no idea what to expect when I entered Ukraine. Brett had spoke highly of the country, despite some culture shock and difficulties when he first arrived, but that was to be expected. Right?
Well, let's just say that shock wasn't strong enough a word to describe my utter amazement when I entered L'viv. Even Istanbul, Morocco and Thailand were not quite as frightening as L'viv, my first real taste of the Soviet Union as it once was. I was petrified.
Everything in Cyrillic, seatbeltless taxis and toothless drivers, filthy streets, wandering drunks, gray soviet boxes they pass off as architecture. And then there was the people. Dull, dreary, unfriendly, many of them speaking Russian, many of them resenting the Poles, this is a country strongly tied to its history and even more confused about its identity. My first impression of L'viv was to turn tail and run.
Yet, after teaching some Ukrainian friends how to play spoons, singing "we are the champions" to the victors, meeting the polite and grateful seminarians Brett teaches, and seeing the greatness as L'viv once was . . . I warmed to it. Brett's neighborhood looks like a gang of dilapidated concrete towers gathered in the outskirts of the city, the echoes of children playing in dirty streets, old women bringing home dinner and crickets playing fiddle in soviet fountains now overgrown. Most people don't talk to each other, but there is some warmth there.
The soviet way was to keep to yourself, to stay in your box and never come out. Just being on the bus rubs that in. Everyone keeps to themselves for the most part, and there is a distance between people wherever you go, whether it's husband and wife or shop attendant and customer.
I find this place to be both depressing and challenging; there is a spark of hope within the university, the first religious institution to be founded under the old Soviet Union, and within the Seminary. The Ukrainian Catholic Church, reduced to a few hundred priests after going underground, has ordained thousands in less than 20 years. It's one of the few institutions actually interested in preserving Ukrainian culture, religion and identity. I shall be teaching their students this fall.
More on that later, I leave for Athens in 10 hours, buona notte,
rudz