Russian Pool

Monday night I went out with the guys -- Andrei, Igor, Sergey, Sasha and Yuri. Sasha and I started the evening playing Russian pool. It's played on a bigger table than American pool with all white balls and one red. I asked what the rules are, and they told me there are no rules. I guess there are variations on the game, but in the basic game, you can hit any ball into any other ball. Sounds easy enough, right? Except the opening to the pockets is so much narrower than in Amercian pool that you have to be very precise about where you hit the ball. Luckily, when Igor and Andrei came, we started to play as teams, so with Igor's help I won one game. He and Andrei continued to play, but I spent the rest of the evening just talking with Sergey, Sasha and Yuri and drinking a little more vodka than was good for me. After some recovery on Tuesday, I went out walking for awhile, but it is HOT in Kiev. It feels like July. The evening was nice, though, and a group of us (Oleg, Tanya, Sergey, Tanya, Lyuda, Andrey, Alla, Slava, and Alyona) sat on the patio of a restaurant on Andrevsky Spusk and ate and drank and talked. It's a very good life!