Woke up to the sound of communist marches outside. Explained to Marta that it's the day when people are a bit more eager to fight with each other over history and politics than on other days.

Opened the news to find that Obama's got four more years. Reacted with a gasp: they voted yesterday, and the results are already in today. Here, it's been ten days, and the results are some crazy mess, as always.

Later, when Marta mentioned she was helping other kids with origami at school, I said it was really nice of her. Then, for some reason, I decided to warn her that when she grows up a little and they start having serious tests and stuff in their classes, she shouldn't let other kids copy her work, because it's called cheating, and in the U.S., for example, they expel kids from school for it.

"Oh, I don't think I wanna study at an American school then," said Marta.

So I had to use their and our elections as an example to explain why schools that don't allow tolerate cheating are better than those that do.

Without any cheating, it takes so much faster to cast and count the votes, determine the winner and move on with life.

In Ukraine, however, all this cheating leaves no room for life whatsoever: few things get done properly, because they're all very busy trying to make you believe that their guy is the true winner, and then it's time for a new election, and it all starts all over again - all, including the cheating.

I think Marta found this explanation pretty convincing.