T-Minus 1 Month...

It's coming: my departure for Ukraine, one month from tomorrow. Now that I'm back from vacation, shopping and packing will commence in earnest. Along with purchasing property insurance, making sure medical stuff is in order, and continuing to study Ukrainian.

But I wasn't completely idle on vacation -- I made many an online purchase to prepare for my journey! Some directly related to service, some not so much... List of arrivals follows:

• Betty Azar, Fundamentals of English Grammar Third Edition
• Joanna Baker & Heather Westrup, The English Language Teacher's Handbook
• The Lonely Planet's Russia, Ukraine & Belarus
• Andrew Wilson, The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation (a lengthier, more detailed version of the Borderlands book I'm currently reading)
• Wendy Moffat, A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster (yes, even after surviving an honors thesis on him, I'm still fascinated by Forster -- this new bio is for fun and possible future scholarship)
• DVDs: Out of Africa 25th Anniversary Edition (it's one of my favorite movies ever, and will definitely accompany me to Ukraine in some form or another); P90X "Core Synergistics" & "Interval X Plus / Abs/Core Plus" (to keep me in shape if other forms of exercise aren't readily available -- I'm also taking my yoga mat)

I certainly have my hands full! My good friend Hannah Combe wrote me a letter with a list of all the books she's read this summer: at least 16. I wonder how many pages I can read in one month? I better read a lot b/c I won't be able to take that many books along with me -- too heavy.