Not to Be Confused with Malta

We interrupt the planning for tomorrow's Poetry Party (whose idea was it to have a poetry party? Seriously. Wait, was that me? Oh, yeah. Good one. For future reference, poetry and partying mix almost as well as short legs and those ankle-strap heels that are so fashionable this season. Russians seem to be oblivious in both of these cases, though, throwing Pushkin-themed raves and wearing inappropriate footwear with reckless abandon.) Ok, that train of thought derailed in the parentheses. Let's start again: We interrupt the planning for tomorrow's Poetry Party to procrastinate, and also to share the good news/brag that I get to go to Yalta next week!!!

My oft-mentioned neighbor Seth is done teaching and is going to Yalta, and he invited me to come along! The powers that be, though annoyed that this means I'll have to de-register and re-register my visa again and miss two days of class, admitted that this is not an opportunity to be wasted, and gave me their blessing. My students are, of course, heartbroken, but I think they'll live, since they immediately started making plans to go sunbathing during our canceled Monday lesson.

You may remember Yalta as the site of that one conference they had at the end of World War II, or the setting for Chekhov's famous short story Дама с собачкой/The Lady with the Lap-Dog, or as a sanatorium-resort town for invalids dying of tuberculosis, like Chekhov himself. It's also a nice place to hang out, with lots of beaches and mountains. It also has wars, or at least one, and Tatars.

PS – It's also in Ukraine! It's not super-Ukrainian, since it was actually part of Russia until some bureaucrat's pen slipped during the Khrushchev era, but still. I've never been to Ukraine.