Odessa

[William Vernola]

My wife and I spent a year in Kharkov teaching on a USIA/ACTR sponsored
program in a Ukrainian school K-11.  I don't know about conditions in Odessa
(we never even made it there to visit.  My wife is a native speaker of Russian
and my Russian is functional.

With dollars your standard of living should improve greatly.  We rented a
really decent 2 bedroom apartment on the outskirts of the city for $100/mo.
Other people had cheaper but not as nice.

Even thought the official language was Ukrainian, hardly anyone spoke it -
only Russian.  In Kiev you could get along in russian fine.  I don't know
about Odessa.  Certainly they are probably less nationalistic there than in
Lviv.

A flood of western food products and other goods are coming in regularly from
Poland, Germany, and in the south - Turkey.

If you're adventurous your friend should be able to do nicely - especially in
Ukrainian.  It's close to Polish at times, although never tell a nationalist
this.

William Vernola