Odessa 2 : photos and impressions

Our second day in Odessa…I took the liberty to resume Fred’s first impressions about Odessa and also to state my own ideas about this second day of our trip.The second day at the Odessa University gives us a more optimistic picture. Anyway, I wasn’t 100% agreeing with Fred. As an ex-professor at a Romanian University I profoundly disagree with any discourse so unconnected to the students’ interests. Being a teacher, as any other job, implies sticking to the rules. In those labs we visited yesterday, we saw that the professors were involved and they were putting the students’ interest on top. Furthermore they express a highly international openness. Still, as I have already seen in some other Ukrainian cities, the linguistic skills are not sufficient. I mean the students’ skills, who don’t sufficiently manage international languages, which restricts international university inter-connection. Anyway, I admit that Ukraine has big potential.While I was writing these lines, Serghei informed me that the Ukrainian financial system is about to go bankrupt (Petru is attending a mission in Kiev for an important bank). In theory, the banks stopped refunding deposits and no money leaves the country. This is one more reason to re-think our future strategy.