On September 27 I will celebrate my 2 year anniversary in Ukraine.
I will also be arriving to Kiev approximately 40 minutes after I am scheduled to take the GRE.
Coincidence?
You’d think that I would have learned how to avoid these kinds of situations by now, 2 years in, but no. This anniversary will be a humbling reminder of my limits. The only thing I can take out of this situation as proof of growth is the fact that I did not break down into tears at the train station today while trying to fix the problem I’ve created for myself.
I’ll rewind a bit.
I never wait till the day of a trip to buy my train tickets. I have always heard of PCV’s who do this, but I live an hour and a half and a 40 UAH round trip bus ticket away from the nearest train station, so it has never been something worth risking. I buy my tickets when I’m at a train station, and sometimes this means a month in advance.
For this GRE, I bought my tickets about 2 weeks early. It was a tough purchase, as I had maybe 42 UAH in my Peace Corps bank account (about $5) and a hardly more reassuring number in my American account. I bought the round trip tickets at a cost of 250 UAH with my American funds, very aware of the fact that I would probably have to go yet another month without buying meat. My muscles hate me for this.
But anyways.
I usually pin my train tickets up on my bulletin board. Around 4 p.m. yesterday, I noticed that they weren’t there. Even before looking, I knew this was not good. I searched every possible place I could have stored them, but the tickers were not to be found. I vaguely remember cleaning out my wallet maybe a week ago, and my best guess is that I accidentally laid them down in a pile of receipts that were thrown away.
Given that it was 4 p.m., and given that the next bus out of my town was at 5, and given that I live an hour and a half away from the train station, and given that the last bus back to my town is at 6:30 p.m., there was no way I could go buy new tickets. I would have to wait until the day of my trip. Today.
I reassured myself that this was ok, and that the non-type A PCV’s get away with this all the time. I would be fine. I would get a ticket.
No.
I was informed that the only possible tickets were lux. First class. 900 UAH. Over $100. If you haven’t figure this out yet, no, I could not afford that.
The next option was to leave the day before the GRE, on Monday. Taking an overnight train, I would get to Kiev on Tuesday morning, and take the test at 9 a.m. The problem is that the train from Mariupol, the “closest” train station to me, arrives in Kiev at 9:48 in the morning. The only other possible train I could take would leave from Donetsk, and would arrive at 7:30 a.m. I tried for that one, but alas, the trains were full.
The woman suggested that I wait an hour, then see if I could get on the train, take it to a city called Yasinavata, then take a 2 a.m. train to Kiev, arriving there at 3 p.m. on Monday.
I wasn’t thrilled about this option, but it was my only one.
So I waited, and 20 minutes before the train was to leave (waiting till the last minute is not unusual by the way–I often have to wait until 15 minutes before a bus leaves to buy the ticket, so I assumed it was a similar deal), I asked the woman if I could buy a ticket. She looked at me with worry and said, “No, you can’t.” Apparently, I was just supposed to hop on the train and see if there was anything available. And then, if I made it to Yasniavata, I would have to hope to do the same for the 2 a.m. train to Kiev.
By this point the train was leaving in 5 minutes. Realizing that I might be stuck in a city hours away from my home in the middle of the night, and not be guaranteed a way to Kiev, I decided that I couldn’t fight the inevitable. I was not going to make it to Kiev on time for the GRE.
Like I said, I didn’t cry. This is good.
But I do feel very defeated.
I had a friend who lives in Donetsk (3 hours from where I was at the moment) check about buses to Kiev (because no, there are no buses from Mariupol to Kiev–have I mentioned I live in nowhereville?) That option would go down like this: an 8 p.m. bus that would arrive in Kiev at 8 a.m., in time for the GRE. BUT, and this is a very important but, I don’t sleep on buses. If you remember, one of my very first posts on this blog explains my incredibly unfortunate inability to sleep on moving vehicles. So, this means after a sleepless night sitting upright, I would sit down to take a 4 hour test that I don’t really feel prepared for. And the only reason I’m taking this is because I need to improve my score from the last time I took it. Given the circumstances, it is quite unlikely I would do better. I know me. I’m not a standardized test kind of person. I’m a hard-working person who scores average on tests.
I have no choice but to let this go. I am trying really hard not to think about the $100,000 of grad school debt that to which I am possibly resigning myself by not having a better GRE score. You know, these schools, they say it doesn’t matter. But I think they are lying. Everyone wants some way to compare people to each other. And I could insist a 1000 different ways that if a school just gave me a shot I wouldn’t let them down, but in the end, that GRE is probably going to earn the money.
Here’s to another few years not buying meat.
