Vacations with the scent of coffee I usually don’t plan ahead my vacations, and I often spontaneously decide what I am going to do from friday evening till monday morning, that’s because i don’t like when my plans are suddenly broken by something right before the beginning of friday night. Nonetheless, two weeks ago I decided to visit annual coffee festival in the city of Lviv, which takes place at the end of september. I’ve heard a lot about this city and its culture, but I’ve never been to it before, and the coffee festival is a one more reason for me to visit it at last. I’ve also suggested this idea to my friends, and they agreed to visit this festival with me, because they like good coffee too. We expect to drink a plenty of perfect coffee there, because this city is famous for its long history of coffee houses and perfect coffee. Of course if we have enough time, we will go sightseeing in old city. As for me, I just want to walk down the streets of old center of the city, holding a cup of coffee, and look on old buildings to feel its spirit. I believe that i’ll get a lot of pleasure from that festival and maybe i’ll write a little story what was it like...

Strangers are friends just waiting to happen Strangers are friends just waiting to happen. People meet people. Let’s be honest, we feel stressed when we are trying to make friends and relations with strangers, and often it happens without any reasonable case. Why are we so afraid of each other? Firstly, frightening news on TV, crime series like “CSI” supply us with fears about strangers, secondly, our parents told us to be careful and avoid talking with strangers, when we were children, thirdly, we may have different prejudices about others, and last but not least - our self esteem could be low. All this doesn’t make us more friendly and prevents us from making new friends easier than we usually do. Meeting new people can be a challenge. Some of my friends are ones, that I would have never expected to become acquaintances with, because my first impression from some of them wasn’t good and I didn’t think that i would even talk to them, but I was wrong about what they were like. Moreover, sometimes I haven’t believed that I can be interesting for some people, who I thought was much more educated, successful or popular, nonetheless it was good to know that I underestimated myself and that people didn’t have prejudices, and we’ve became good friends. One of the most important things that I’ve learned is that first impression and thoughts based on it aren’t always good advisors. There are 6 billion of us and every single one is different from the next, so I believe that number of good people are higher than bad ones, we should face our fears and biases, meet new people and get to know them, we may find that they are more interesting and friendly, than we expected.

Houston, we've got a problem with messages I'm experiencing problems with Italki messaging system right now at 7:40 UTC. If only i'm to send a message to somebody, i'm receiving the error message "502 Bad Gateway, nginx 1.1.17". It's quite frustrating for me, because I can't answer to some users requests. Am I only one so lucky right now, our other users are experiencing the same problem right now? How often did other users have got such errors in the past? I've send a feedback to the Italki support team immediately and also i've sent a tweet to an official Italki twitter account. P.S. Don't take this note very serious, I'm just practicing my writting skills and this small problem gave me some insiration to write a new entry in my notebook. I think that Italki team will fix this problem in 5 minutes and all will be fine.

About myself (draft) I’m not a professional writer, so it’s difficult for me to write an essay about myself properly, but i want to try. My name is Alexander Gorodnichenko. I am techie and i spend a lot of my time with computers and gadgets, but nevertheless i’m a friendly person, so i have friends in real life too, not only in social networks. I appreciate people’s kindness, honesty and good sense of humor. I don’t like when people are tactless or rude. I’m an atheist. If you believe in Astrology, my friends say that i’m typical Archer - jovial and sociable. I was born on 20 December, in 1982 in former USSR, in small town Kiliya near river Danube. After graduating from high school in 2000 i began studying radio communications and television broadcasting in Academy of Telecommunications in Odessa city. I gained a lot of knowledge, but it was almost pure theory i didn’t have enough of practice because of lack of modern communication equipment in our academy. I’ve meet a lot of interesting people in academy and i’ve made a lot of friends there. I’ve graduated from the academy in June 2005. My first place of work was in my academy, i’ve started to work as an assistant in academy’s department of radio communication and broadcasting. My salary was minimal, but my work gave me a lot of inspiration and experience. I’ve always been living in Ukraine and I haven’t been traveling to other countries yet. I feel quite frustrated about this fact, because i read a lot of books about great travelers when i was at school and i still have a dream of been traveling to other countries, i'll try to do my best to make my dream come true. I like to spend my time away from apartment. I like jogging along the seaside in summer, I run three times a week in the morning for 10 kilometers. I also like freestyle swimming in the sea after jogging. This physical activity makes me feel better and stronger. I also like fishing, but i’m not very lucky in it. My younger brother is a professional of pike fishing, and like to take lessons from him when we both have a possibility to go fishing. I don’t smoke tobacco or marijuana, but in good company i can drink two or three bottles of beer or a bottle of wine. I like to read popular science books, watch sci-fi, action movies and comedies. I also like to watch "The Big Bang Theory" and "The Daily Show with John Stewart".