A Cross Cultural Moment
Today when talking to Sasha, the CEUME’s director, in his office, I noticed a color brochure with the picture of a dean of a university here in Kyiv, one of CEUME’s partner institutions. It was an advertisement for his 60th birthday, which was also today. It was in Ukrainian, but I think it was detailing his accomplishments, etc. I asked Sasha about it, wondering why the brochure was made and if the 60th birthday has some special significance here. Sasha explained that 60 is the age that people can retire and get pensions, but that this gentleman would continue working. There was to be a big party at the university that he would go to. This dean has worked with CEUME since it’s beginning and has been a major proponent of business education reform in Ukraine, so he is a close colleague for us.
Later in the afternoon, Sasha and a couple of coworkers returned from the party, and they began talking about going shopping and getting a bunch of food. Shortly afterwards, I went into the office kitchen to investigate what was going on. We sometimes have small parties on Friday afternoons, with wine and cognac, and cheese, cold cuts, pickles, olives, bread, and a sweet. Svita, my coworker, informed me that we would be having a “table” to celebrate the dean’s birthday. Surprised, I asked if he would be there. No, she replied, but we’ll toast him in his absence.
Soon, I was being called from my computer: “Wendy, come here. It’s time to drink vodka.” (That’s a joke because we never drink vodka, being predominantly women)
A lovely spread was on our conference room table, nice cheeses, ham, pickles, pickled tomatoes, olives, bread, mushrooms and a cake, with wine and cognac to drink. It is customary when drinking with people to give toasts, so Olga first, then Sasha, then Svita, gave long and inspirational toasts to the dean, extolling his virtues and wishing him a long life.
For me, this illustrates so many characteristics that I love here: ceremony, using any excuse to celebrate, recognizing individuals publicly, love of long toasts.
05 December 2003
So where to begin again? I’m trying to write more frequently, b/c the more time that passes, the harder it is to describe all that has happened.
Winter has begun and we’ve all begun steeling ourselves for the long gray. I run in the mornings, in a beautiful park near my apartment. It borders the Vohovna Rada, or national senate as well as one of President Kuchma’s residences. It also overlooks the Dniper and there are two vistas that I pause at each time I pass them. There is an older man who rides his bike each day in the park, followed in loping strides by his huge German Shepherd. One day, after our first and only snow, he was walking and I asked him where his bike was. It was a ploy to meet his dog and it worked. Now when he pedals by me, he calls out “Good morning” to me, alternating between Russian and English.
I feel a sense of accomplishment whenever I make a connection with people here. It’s partially just because this is a big city and probably some cultural components, but in any case, even though it’s a small thing, I’m grateful for my biker and his dog. That and the tailor, the nut lady on the street near work, the money changer, the people who will indulge my need to converse with them. Oh, and let’s not forget the nut and spice guy at my bazaar and the very nice lady who waxes me. Fine, they’re all people with whom I do business with, but it’s a start. I do have nice relations w/ coworkers and occasionally bring in something baked to share or try to bring back a small present from trips out of town for them, as they do.
In the middle of November, my organization had its fifth annual national conference in the eastern city of Kharkiv. It was my first trip to the large city, which is very Russified and still has a huge Lenin statue in the middle of its square, which is Europe’s largest. The conference’s theme was increasing connections between business and business education and we had over 200 participants.
My role was smaller in this conference than in the Summer Institute in July and this conference was more people, but only three days. As usual, I was a little surprised at how nice things were, things such as food, both quality and quantity.
Getting to Kharkiv was interesting. Our flight was cancelled, so the group of us, CEUME staff as well as 4 faculty from Poland and 1 dean of the Northwestern Kellogg School of Business, jumped in taxis to see if we could catch the overnight train. No luck. So we jumped back in taxis and hightailed it over to Arizona’s, a TexMex restaurant. After a lovely dinner (this restaurant is out of my PC budget, so it was especially nice to indulge in margaritas and nachos, as well as the ubiquitous fajitas), we jumped in a rented marshrutka, or large van, complete with driver. At one a.m., after stopping for more fortification (champagne, juice, fruit, tissues and gum), we were driven overnight to Kharkiv, arriving just in time to wash up and begin opening to conference. Yawn.
What else about the conference? Some of the speakers were interesting and because we had simultaneous interpretation, I was able to follow the discussion and speakers. We had full group sessions, the break out groups on subtopics of the main theme, then a couple of plenary sessions with the full group. In one of them, we had representatives from Phillip Morris Ukraine, who donates a lot of money to non-profits in Ukraine, Microsoft Ukraine, as well as a Ukrainian brewery and bank speak about what they do to foster connections between business and biz ed. Interestingly, the Microsoft representative went through the entire Microsoft product line before talking about the training and education opportunities that Microsoft offers. The Phillip Morris rep admitted that cigarettes are damaging to health, something one would never hear in the US from a company PR person! I’m a pretty literal person and expected people to talk about the subject at hand, so was a little surprised that people didn’t really. I found out afterward that the subject had been confused to be social responsibility of business, which was one of the small group subjects.
One the first night, we had a big forshet, or buffet, at a beautiful old building by a no-longer used race track. There were the usual long tables of huge amounts of food, as well as champagne, wine and beer flowing. Our forshets are unusual in Ukraine because we have standing buffets, where as it is more traditional to have people sitting at tables laden with food. The benefits to the standing are socializing and networking, which are skills still being developed here.
It was nice because many people had been at the Summer Institute and remembered me from the simulation game. It was fun to see these people and made me feel rewarded that they wanted to talk and to hear about what they had been doing since the summer. A couple told me they’d used the business simulation game in their classes, which of course thrilled me. That night I felt as if I was doing something that was contributing, or at least part of something important. Those little moments carry a lot of weight in less clearly defined times.
I am kicking myself that I didn’t bring my camera to the conference, but I will do so in the future and take copious pictures.
Winter has begun and we’ve all begun steeling ourselves for the long gray. I run in the mornings, in a beautiful park near my apartment. It borders the Vohovna Rada, or national senate as well as one of President Kuchma’s residences. It also overlooks the Dniper and there are two vistas that I pause at each time I pass them. There is an older man who rides his bike each day in the park, followed in loping strides by his huge German Shepherd. One day, after our first and only snow, he was walking and I asked him where his bike was. It was a ploy to meet his dog and it worked. Now when he pedals by me, he calls out “Good morning” to me, alternating between Russian and English.
I feel a sense of accomplishment whenever I make a connection with people here. It’s partially just because this is a big city and probably some cultural components, but in any case, even though it’s a small thing, I’m grateful for my biker and his dog. That and the tailor, the nut lady on the street near work, the money changer, the people who will indulge my need to converse with them. Oh, and let’s not forget the nut and spice guy at my bazaar and the very nice lady who waxes me. Fine, they’re all people with whom I do business with, but it’s a start. I do have nice relations w/ coworkers and occasionally bring in something baked to share or try to bring back a small present from trips out of town for them, as they do.
In the middle of November, my organization had its fifth annual national conference in the eastern city of Kharkiv. It was my first trip to the large city, which is very Russified and still has a huge Lenin statue in the middle of its square, which is Europe’s largest. The conference’s theme was increasing connections between business and business education and we had over 200 participants.
My role was smaller in this conference than in the Summer Institute in July and this conference was more people, but only three days. As usual, I was a little surprised at how nice things were, things such as food, both quality and quantity.
Getting to Kharkiv was interesting. Our flight was cancelled, so the group of us, CEUME staff as well as 4 faculty from Poland and 1 dean of the Northwestern Kellogg School of Business, jumped in taxis to see if we could catch the overnight train. No luck. So we jumped back in taxis and hightailed it over to Arizona’s, a TexMex restaurant. After a lovely dinner (this restaurant is out of my PC budget, so it was especially nice to indulge in margaritas and nachos, as well as the ubiquitous fajitas), we jumped in a rented marshrutka, or large van, complete with driver. At one a.m., after stopping for more fortification (champagne, juice, fruit, tissues and gum), we were driven overnight to Kharkiv, arriving just in time to wash up and begin opening to conference. Yawn.
What else about the conference? Some of the speakers were interesting and because we had simultaneous interpretation, I was able to follow the discussion and speakers. We had full group sessions, the break out groups on subtopics of the main theme, then a couple of plenary sessions with the full group. In one of them, we had representatives from Phillip Morris Ukraine, who donates a lot of money to non-profits in Ukraine, Microsoft Ukraine, as well as a Ukrainian brewery and bank speak about what they do to foster connections between business and biz ed. Interestingly, the Microsoft representative went through the entire Microsoft product line before talking about the training and education opportunities that Microsoft offers. The Phillip Morris rep admitted that cigarettes are damaging to health, something one would never hear in the US from a company PR person! I’m a pretty literal person and expected people to talk about the subject at hand, so was a little surprised that people didn’t really. I found out afterward that the subject had been confused to be social responsibility of business, which was one of the small group subjects.
One the first night, we had a big forshet, or buffet, at a beautiful old building by a no-longer used race track. There were the usual long tables of huge amounts of food, as well as champagne, wine and beer flowing. Our forshets are unusual in Ukraine because we have standing buffets, where as it is more traditional to have people sitting at tables laden with food. The benefits to the standing are socializing and networking, which are skills still being developed here.
It was nice because many people had been at the Summer Institute and remembered me from the simulation game. It was fun to see these people and made me feel rewarded that they wanted to talk and to hear about what they had been doing since the summer. A couple told me they’d used the business simulation game in their classes, which of course thrilled me. That night I felt as if I was doing something that was contributing, or at least part of something important. Those little moments carry a lot of weight in less clearly defined times.
I am kicking myself that I didn’t bring my camera to the conference, but I will do so in the future and take copious pictures.
27 October 2003
I just wanted to tell y'all that it is SNOWING LIKE CRAZY!!! I just was discussing this with my coworkers and they reminded me of the impending five months of winter. On one hand, it's really beautiful out, on the other, it's 4:45pm, nearly dark and SNOWING!!! It's just 27 Oct.!!!! I need a drink. Oh, wait, that's a big sign of winter depression. I need a vital carrot juice. With 100 grams of horilka (vodka). :-)
Today's observations...
I have been running in a beautiful, nearby park in the mornings lately. As I walk there, I pass all of the street cleaners, many women in colorful head scarves, sweeping leaves off the sidewalk with their homemade brooms, made out of tied together twigs. The leaves are falling so quickly now and I try to remember to look up a lot, knowing that the trees will soon be starker.
I also pass by many people walking to work, dressed in dark coats and hats, some with children, most with the ubiquitous "packet" or heavy plastic shopping bag that is the carryall of choice.
The park has a very ornate palace of sorts, which is one of the president's many residences throughout the city and country, and a great view of the Dnipr and east of the city. I love to pause a moment there, looking at the mist or seeing what the sky is doing where it meets the earth.
There are many people out walking their dogs and today one woman's female rottweiler took an interest in me as I ran by. I'm never been remotely afraid of dogs, but they speak a different language here and so I'm more cautious with them. Dogs tend to stay close to their owners and are more circumspect of humans. I have observed some people kicking or hitting dogs and have heard stories about this as well, so it may contribute to this.
The dog's person reassured me, saying that while some of the breed bite, her dog didn't. After letting the furry friend smell me, I started to run again and she leapt up, wanting to play. It was nice and shockingly didn't get me all verklempt about my Hawkstar, so far away.
The other observation: I'm riding the marshrutka to work, a short drive fortunately. Looking out the window, getting teary about some personal nonsense, when I spy a billboard advertising a vacuum cleaner, with the word "sucker" spelled out in Cyrillic. It's all so ridiculous here sometimes and those moments of levity and humor help tremendously.
I have been running in a beautiful, nearby park in the mornings lately. As I walk there, I pass all of the street cleaners, many women in colorful head scarves, sweeping leaves off the sidewalk with their homemade brooms, made out of tied together twigs. The leaves are falling so quickly now and I try to remember to look up a lot, knowing that the trees will soon be starker.
I also pass by many people walking to work, dressed in dark coats and hats, some with children, most with the ubiquitous "packet" or heavy plastic shopping bag that is the carryall of choice.
The park has a very ornate palace of sorts, which is one of the president's many residences throughout the city and country, and a great view of the Dnipr and east of the city. I love to pause a moment there, looking at the mist or seeing what the sky is doing where it meets the earth.
There are many people out walking their dogs and today one woman's female rottweiler took an interest in me as I ran by. I'm never been remotely afraid of dogs, but they speak a different language here and so I'm more cautious with them. Dogs tend to stay close to their owners and are more circumspect of humans. I have observed some people kicking or hitting dogs and have heard stories about this as well, so it may contribute to this.
The dog's person reassured me, saying that while some of the breed bite, her dog didn't. After letting the furry friend smell me, I started to run again and she leapt up, wanting to play. It was nice and shockingly didn't get me all verklempt about my Hawkstar, so far away.
The other observation: I'm riding the marshrutka to work, a short drive fortunately. Looking out the window, getting teary about some personal nonsense, when I spy a billboard advertising a vacuum cleaner, with the word "sucker" spelled out in Cyrillic. It's all so ridiculous here sometimes and those moments of levity and humor help tremendously.
24 October 2003
I've perhaps finally acknowledged that I might not catch up from Aug. on the blog and that this should not prevent me from beginning to write regularly again. I miss writing here, but somehow have felt that I shouldn't until caught up....
NEWS FLASH! Photos are up. Check 'em out!
Today is our first snow and it's so beautiful. Big, dry flakes that are actually starting to stick. Today I ran before it began to snow. I've begun to run in a lovely, nearby park and am so grateful that there are still leaves on the trees. It's been a sort of gradual process to fall, though the temperatures have been getting low - near freezing - and today, the white stuff!
I'm feeling a little melancholy today and hope that this won't be a refrain this winter. I'm a little scared of winter, the unrelenting gray, the frozen tundra, the frozen toes, the wind, the paucity of fresh foods. But, the snow is beautiful, there are banyas (steambaths) to visit, I can run the stairs in my building... It will be fine, but right now the thought of the unknown is a bit scary.
Work is going well. I'm trying to model some time management behavior - it drives me crazy how so many projects that I work on or see are driven by panic management. Planning is sparse and the other PCV's and I are working on infrastructure.
So much is topsy turvy, through the looking glass in the development world as I see it. As always, I will speak in generalizations to avoid trouble. There's a decent amount of money being given out by the US (via USAID and the State Dept. on a gov't level and by private foundations like the Soros Found.), by the EU and then by various European Governments, among other sources. Some organizations get large grants to run specific projects, to run their operations or to divvy up to other, smaller orgs.
Sometimes the following occurs: misappropriation of funds, outright stealing, creation of power bases and fiefdoms, autocratic rulers, etc. I don't think any of this is going on at my org, but sometimes I am surprised at the lack of infrastructure in the org, considering our level of funding.
I am trying to observe, but I am probably judging. I wonder often about how money is being spent, how programs are implemented.
Anyway, as I was running today and thinking about how happy I am that my skin is really clear now, it struck me: am I just here to enjoy a nice apt., dinner parties w/ expat, PCV friends? Isn't it time to get my hands dirty, so to speak? My org allows me the sometimes stifling luxury to operate in pretty comfortable circumstances, but really, I'm here to work and sometimes be uncomfortable. Not the old, tired, "I'm not suffering" line, but just that I would like to find some work in another org that is a little more grassroots and tied to something I feel strongly about.
I am so boring today - I'll write back when I have something to describe again.
NEWS FLASH! Photos are up. Check 'em out!
Today is our first snow and it's so beautiful. Big, dry flakes that are actually starting to stick. Today I ran before it began to snow. I've begun to run in a lovely, nearby park and am so grateful that there are still leaves on the trees. It's been a sort of gradual process to fall, though the temperatures have been getting low - near freezing - and today, the white stuff!
I'm feeling a little melancholy today and hope that this won't be a refrain this winter. I'm a little scared of winter, the unrelenting gray, the frozen tundra, the frozen toes, the wind, the paucity of fresh foods. But, the snow is beautiful, there are banyas (steambaths) to visit, I can run the stairs in my building... It will be fine, but right now the thought of the unknown is a bit scary.
Work is going well. I'm trying to model some time management behavior - it drives me crazy how so many projects that I work on or see are driven by panic management. Planning is sparse and the other PCV's and I are working on infrastructure.
So much is topsy turvy, through the looking glass in the development world as I see it. As always, I will speak in generalizations to avoid trouble. There's a decent amount of money being given out by the US (via USAID and the State Dept. on a gov't level and by private foundations like the Soros Found.), by the EU and then by various European Governments, among other sources. Some organizations get large grants to run specific projects, to run their operations or to divvy up to other, smaller orgs.
Sometimes the following occurs: misappropriation of funds, outright stealing, creation of power bases and fiefdoms, autocratic rulers, etc. I don't think any of this is going on at my org, but sometimes I am surprised at the lack of infrastructure in the org, considering our level of funding.
I am trying to observe, but I am probably judging. I wonder often about how money is being spent, how programs are implemented.
Anyway, as I was running today and thinking about how happy I am that my skin is really clear now, it struck me: am I just here to enjoy a nice apt., dinner parties w/ expat, PCV friends? Isn't it time to get my hands dirty, so to speak? My org allows me the sometimes stifling luxury to operate in pretty comfortable circumstances, but really, I'm here to work and sometimes be uncomfortable. Not the old, tired, "I'm not suffering" line, but just that I would like to find some work in another org that is a little more grassroots and tied to something I feel strongly about.
I am so boring today - I'll write back when I have something to describe again.
30 September 2003
I'm still catching up, but will post tidbits as the mood strikes...
25 Sept. 2003
Today I’ve had a discussion w/ my office mate, Pavlo, who I nicknamed “Pavlito” from the Spanish, and who speaks excellent English. Ever since I called him a “dork” and he looked it up online and got very offended (hey – I didn’t know it meant “dick”), he asks me language questions. Today has been on the subject of political correctness and how to call people with different characteristics. Some excerpts:
Pavlito: “I read that there is special feministic vocabulary to describe men and women, like ‘Vaginal Americans.’”
Me, choking on the tea I just sipped: “I’m sorry, did you just say ‘vaginal Americans?’”
Pavlito: “Yes, and men are called ‘penile Americans.’”
Me, trying to be adult and not snicker b/c he just said “penile:” “Pavlo, that is crazy. A few people may say that, but it definitely isn’t in common usage.”
Pavlito, who never believes me after the dork debacle: “But maybe in your village they don’t say this, maybe they say this in other cities.”
Me, getting indignant because he always believes random internet sources over a REAL, LIVE Vaginal American: “Pavlo, nobody says that. I’ve never heard anyone say that, ever. Really.”
Then we had a discussion about overweight people, who he heard should be called “alternative appearance.” I told him that fat and overweight were ok, w/ the latter being the polite variant.
Then on to developmentally disabled, who we no longer call “retards.” In Russian/Ukrainian, they say, “invalids” for physically disabled people, so many Ukrainians say “invalid” in English.
He also asked me why so many people in America are overweight. I told him that’s an excellent question, but I speculate that processed food, lots of it and little exercise contribute. Ukrainians tend to be quite lean, along the French model, despite some of the diet being rather heavy. Take salo, for example, the straight pork fat that is beloved. Or all the sour cream. Mmmmm, sour cream.
I digress. Language is always very interesting to me, as is Pavlito’s impressions of Americans and what I gather he’s learning from me. I realize that I’ve taught him “shut up” (for when he’s teasing me about being a spy, which grows wearying), but nothing too bad otherwise. It’s sobering to realize that I really am a representative of Americans, and even in Kyiv may be the first American anyone has closely worked with. I try not to take it too seriously, but it is something I try to remember when I’m having a bad day.
25 Sept. 2003
Today I’ve had a discussion w/ my office mate, Pavlo, who I nicknamed “Pavlito” from the Spanish, and who speaks excellent English. Ever since I called him a “dork” and he looked it up online and got very offended (hey – I didn’t know it meant “dick”), he asks me language questions. Today has been on the subject of political correctness and how to call people with different characteristics. Some excerpts:
Pavlito: “I read that there is special feministic vocabulary to describe men and women, like ‘Vaginal Americans.’”
Me, choking on the tea I just sipped: “I’m sorry, did you just say ‘vaginal Americans?’”
Pavlito: “Yes, and men are called ‘penile Americans.’”
Me, trying to be adult and not snicker b/c he just said “penile:” “Pavlo, that is crazy. A few people may say that, but it definitely isn’t in common usage.”
Pavlito, who never believes me after the dork debacle: “But maybe in your village they don’t say this, maybe they say this in other cities.”
Me, getting indignant because he always believes random internet sources over a REAL, LIVE Vaginal American: “Pavlo, nobody says that. I’ve never heard anyone say that, ever. Really.”
Then we had a discussion about overweight people, who he heard should be called “alternative appearance.” I told him that fat and overweight were ok, w/ the latter being the polite variant.
Then on to developmentally disabled, who we no longer call “retards.” In Russian/Ukrainian, they say, “invalids” for physically disabled people, so many Ukrainians say “invalid” in English.
He also asked me why so many people in America are overweight. I told him that’s an excellent question, but I speculate that processed food, lots of it and little exercise contribute. Ukrainians tend to be quite lean, along the French model, despite some of the diet being rather heavy. Take salo, for example, the straight pork fat that is beloved. Or all the sour cream. Mmmmm, sour cream.
I digress. Language is always very interesting to me, as is Pavlito’s impressions of Americans and what I gather he’s learning from me. I realize that I’ve taught him “shut up” (for when he’s teasing me about being a spy, which grows wearying), but nothing too bad otherwise. It’s sobering to realize that I really am a representative of Americans, and even in Kyiv may be the first American anyone has closely worked with. I try not to take it too seriously, but it is something I try to remember when I’m having a bad day.
23 September 2003
Where to begin today? I recently read a book written by a fellow PCV from Group 24, Christina O’Keefe’s Finding Francis. (Order it online at www.amazon.com - it’s a worthwhile read) It’s a sort of memoir and it made me think a lot about writing, about what I’ve been doing in this space. It felt uncomfortable to acknowledge that this blog, hell this whole experience, is a lot more about me than anything else.
But, I also realize that this is a common human condition – we are inherently selfish and I’m comfortable fessing up to it. I also take a more Ayn Rand-esque view of the word “selfish” in relation to people. Being selfish has a bad rap, but I believe it’s hardwired in us and serves survival purposes.
Further, I decided when I chose to come here to that I would do the kind of work I wanted to, because I know I’ll be most effective doing what I want. That means that I don’t do development work that I don’t like. At the same time, I also need to be challenged and need to actively cultivate that in my life and not seek the easier, more comfortable paths.
Finally, this is MY blog, MY life and everyone is welcome to write their blog as they see fit and live their life as they wish. I’m not sure who or what I’m being defensive against, but it’s been on my mind and now it’s out.
Back to the reports. I’m walking up the steps from the passage under a major street, buy flowers from a babushka, bargaining her down from 3 to 2 hryven, then enter the metro. There’s a crumpled, gray babushka sitting and begging right before the escalator down to the train. I realize that I move the flowers to the hand away from her, as if to hide them, and feel shame for my health, my youth, that I can buy trifles like flowers.
There’s the young girl on the other metro stairs, trained to repeat, “Thank you, please help me,” for hours to the passersby. On the next underpass stairs, a mother slumped over, cradling her child, not even bothering to say anything, a plastic cup in front of her.
Then on the street, all of the fashion, the Russian and Ukrainian floating past me, me catching mainly connector words as opposed to full sentences. The young women wearing tight, satiny pants, the supremely pointed shoes that are the rage this summer carrying their light bodies. The men wearing black and gray, toting their murses. (man purse)
On the marshrutka, I try to give my money to the driver, who has turned off the engine and is reading a paper. He ignores me, so I try humor to get his attention to take my one hryven. When he does notice, he says shortly that the conductor will take my money and I take a seat, thinking unmentionable thoughts about culture, manners, generalizing 55 million people in my moment of bad humor.
Last week, I took my first vacation! Christopher, my boyfriend, has arrived from Colorado and after a couple of weeks here in Kyiv, we set off to western Ukraine.
We went to Lviv, Ivano Frankivsk and a village in the Carpathians, Yaremche. We stayed with fellow PCV, Chris, in Lviv and got to enjoy the party she threw for Tina O’Keefe’s book release. Tina read from Finding Francis and we all enjoyed Chris’ gazpacho and great mix of people. It was really cool to have not just PCV’s and Americans there, but also Ukrainian coworkers and new friends.
Lviv is a supremely beautiful city, the center all cobblestones, old buildings, churches, neo-classical architecture, coffee houses, breweries. Christopher and I counted 3 dogs that were trained to carry baskets through the streets. One was a beggar’s dog and had a sign asking for donations, but the other two seemed to be civilians. Curious.
After Lviv, we took a 4 hour marshrutka through rolling countryside to Ivano Frankivsk. Why are the haystacks cylindrically shaped, supported by poles, ranging in shape from “soft serve ice cream” to “Christmas tree” shapes? We saw horse drawn carts carrying people, livestock, produce. At one town, little beggar boys boarded the marshrutka to sing a song, then beg for alms. One had what looked like a congenital birth defect and had flipper-like hands with one or two digits on each misshapen hand. He stood in front of a row of people, clapping his arms together and repeating, “Please help me, please help me,” until someone gave him some kopecks and he joined his cohorts on the street.
We were supposed to meet up with a PCV friend in Ivano Frankivsk (IF), but I hadn’t written down the name of the hostel where we were supposed to stay and meet. IF turned out to be a larger town than I’d expected and the taxi drivers didn’t know the hostel. They kept trying to send us to an expensive hotel, but I finally convinced them we wanted cheap. They told me one to go to and gave walking directions.
I’m not great with directions in my native language and am much worse in Russian/Ukrainian. We walked for some time, Christopher silent and brooding, me hungry and worried. I asked a woman on the street and she indicated that she’d walk us there.
We backtracked about a kilometer (oops) and then I noticed the HUGE billboard advertising the hotel. The women kept walking us to the hotel despite the signs, past train tracks, past garbage heaps, past a big soviet-style apartment building, past burning garbage heaps, to the hotel. It was really nice of her to go out of her way to walk us and we thanked her as she quickly walked away in the dusk.
The hotel had a utilitarian feel, but seemed clean and I tried to sort out the pricing structure. It was the first time I’d been confronted by the old tiered pricing. A room for non-Ukrainians cost just over 3 times as much as for Ukrainians! We asked to see a room and while it was very clean, but the toilet was on another floor and the whole hotel had no hot water.
I’m glad that Christopher intervened and vetoed that place, because we ended up staying at a really nice, Western style hotel that cost $1 more than that place, and had a lovely private bath and hot showers. Even the obnoxious Canadian gymnast convention that had shrieking girls drinking too much downstairs couldn’t dampen our enthusiasm for the place.
The next day we tried all day to phone Scott without success. I even phoned PC HQ in Kyiv to get his office address, but when we went to find it, the building that should have been that number was being demolished. Disheartened, I perked up when Christopher bought me an ice cream on the street and we decided to cut our losses and head to Yaremche that evening.
We went to a kiosk I’d seen advertising tourist info. I asked there for said info and she gave me a piece of paper and told me to phone the number on it. I did so from a pay phone, asking the info center what they knew about accommodations in Yaremche. The woman on the other end asked me where I was, which seemed a strange way to answer my questions. She offered to come down and give me the information in person and sure enough, five minutes later, she showed up by the kiosk with information in hand.
The language question is even more interesting in Western Ukraine to me, where they really speak Ukrainian. Here in Kyiv I think I hear so little pure Ukrainian, or perhaps when I do I’m catching the parts that sound enough like Russian that I don’t notice. But in Lviv and IF and later Yaremche, there were many times when the accent and vocabulary were distinctly different. I felt happy for these people to have a separate language from Russian. Nonetheless, when I was dealing with people, they easily switched from Ukrainian to Russian when we spoke. Or sometimes I would speak Russian and they Ukrainian and we’d make do that way. I think of this tangent because after this tourist info woman spoke Ukrainian to my Russian, she made sure to say “Dasvidanya” which is distinctly Russian.
After getting tourist info, we went to the train station to purchase our tickets. It was only my second time buying train tickets and the whole process is still very intimidating to me. I had my Ukrainian phrasebook ready and steeled myself for the waiting, the curious looks at our backpacks, the outright staring sure to occur the moment I open my mouth.
Christopher was having a bit of culture shock. The pushing, staring, whispering and pointing and such were getting to him, and he was reacting angrily. Granted, maybe no one understood what he was saying, but I felt a little uncomfortable, despite also understanding how uncomfortable it can be to be singled out.
By contrast with his newness and adjustments, it was interesting to note how much I have grown accustomed to such things. While I probably will never enjoy being jostled and I’m definitely never going to enjoy being cut in front of in line anywhere, I’m somewhat accustomed to crowded public transport and being a “star.” In fact, there’s even a syndrome for expats or PCV’s when they return to the US and are no longer “stars.” Even if they didn’t enjoy the attention that being different brought them, suddenly they are very ordinary and there’s a vacuum where all the attention to their every move used to be.
The train station still makes me nervous because one waits for a long time, then has a short amount of time with a generally taciturn railway employee and there’s always people trying to push in and ask questions, especially when they hear the slowness of my speech. Plus I have to be really careful to make sure I understand what they’re saying because changing a rail ticket would suck.
In any case, the railway employee was actually sort of friendly, but told me that I couldn’t buy tickets that day for the coming Saturday. I tried to ask several ways, but each time she told me I couldn’t. She said I would have to buy them the next day.
I got out of line, then decided to verify that I understood correctly. The second time around, she explained using large hand gestures and creative dance interpretation that one can only buy tickets 3 days before the train leaves. Despite having a database on her computer, she was unable to tell me whether there were actually tickets available for the train we wanted.
This turn of events meant that we needed to stay in IF one more night, then buy tickets the following morning. Christopher also reacted rather strongly to this ridiculous rule, which also contrasted nicely to me how passive I’m getting when people tell me things such as this. We realized later that we could have tried bribing her, but I really don’t want to contribute too much to that culture. A chocolate bar of thanks here and there, sure, but outright bribes are icky.
We trooped back to the expensive expat palace, braving the Canadian gymnasts one more night.
More to follow…
But, I also realize that this is a common human condition – we are inherently selfish and I’m comfortable fessing up to it. I also take a more Ayn Rand-esque view of the word “selfish” in relation to people. Being selfish has a bad rap, but I believe it’s hardwired in us and serves survival purposes.
Further, I decided when I chose to come here to that I would do the kind of work I wanted to, because I know I’ll be most effective doing what I want. That means that I don’t do development work that I don’t like. At the same time, I also need to be challenged and need to actively cultivate that in my life and not seek the easier, more comfortable paths.
Finally, this is MY blog, MY life and everyone is welcome to write their blog as they see fit and live their life as they wish. I’m not sure who or what I’m being defensive against, but it’s been on my mind and now it’s out.
Back to the reports. I’m walking up the steps from the passage under a major street, buy flowers from a babushka, bargaining her down from 3 to 2 hryven, then enter the metro. There’s a crumpled, gray babushka sitting and begging right before the escalator down to the train. I realize that I move the flowers to the hand away from her, as if to hide them, and feel shame for my health, my youth, that I can buy trifles like flowers.
There’s the young girl on the other metro stairs, trained to repeat, “Thank you, please help me,” for hours to the passersby. On the next underpass stairs, a mother slumped over, cradling her child, not even bothering to say anything, a plastic cup in front of her.
Then on the street, all of the fashion, the Russian and Ukrainian floating past me, me catching mainly connector words as opposed to full sentences. The young women wearing tight, satiny pants, the supremely pointed shoes that are the rage this summer carrying their light bodies. The men wearing black and gray, toting their murses. (man purse)
On the marshrutka, I try to give my money to the driver, who has turned off the engine and is reading a paper. He ignores me, so I try humor to get his attention to take my one hryven. When he does notice, he says shortly that the conductor will take my money and I take a seat, thinking unmentionable thoughts about culture, manners, generalizing 55 million people in my moment of bad humor.
Last week, I took my first vacation! Christopher, my boyfriend, has arrived from Colorado and after a couple of weeks here in Kyiv, we set off to western Ukraine.
We went to Lviv, Ivano Frankivsk and a village in the Carpathians, Yaremche. We stayed with fellow PCV, Chris, in Lviv and got to enjoy the party she threw for Tina O’Keefe’s book release. Tina read from Finding Francis and we all enjoyed Chris’ gazpacho and great mix of people. It was really cool to have not just PCV’s and Americans there, but also Ukrainian coworkers and new friends.
Lviv is a supremely beautiful city, the center all cobblestones, old buildings, churches, neo-classical architecture, coffee houses, breweries. Christopher and I counted 3 dogs that were trained to carry baskets through the streets. One was a beggar’s dog and had a sign asking for donations, but the other two seemed to be civilians. Curious.
After Lviv, we took a 4 hour marshrutka through rolling countryside to Ivano Frankivsk. Why are the haystacks cylindrically shaped, supported by poles, ranging in shape from “soft serve ice cream” to “Christmas tree” shapes? We saw horse drawn carts carrying people, livestock, produce. At one town, little beggar boys boarded the marshrutka to sing a song, then beg for alms. One had what looked like a congenital birth defect and had flipper-like hands with one or two digits on each misshapen hand. He stood in front of a row of people, clapping his arms together and repeating, “Please help me, please help me,” until someone gave him some kopecks and he joined his cohorts on the street.
We were supposed to meet up with a PCV friend in Ivano Frankivsk (IF), but I hadn’t written down the name of the hostel where we were supposed to stay and meet. IF turned out to be a larger town than I’d expected and the taxi drivers didn’t know the hostel. They kept trying to send us to an expensive hotel, but I finally convinced them we wanted cheap. They told me one to go to and gave walking directions.
I’m not great with directions in my native language and am much worse in Russian/Ukrainian. We walked for some time, Christopher silent and brooding, me hungry and worried. I asked a woman on the street and she indicated that she’d walk us there.
We backtracked about a kilometer (oops) and then I noticed the HUGE billboard advertising the hotel. The women kept walking us to the hotel despite the signs, past train tracks, past garbage heaps, past a big soviet-style apartment building, past burning garbage heaps, to the hotel. It was really nice of her to go out of her way to walk us and we thanked her as she quickly walked away in the dusk.
The hotel had a utilitarian feel, but seemed clean and I tried to sort out the pricing structure. It was the first time I’d been confronted by the old tiered pricing. A room for non-Ukrainians cost just over 3 times as much as for Ukrainians! We asked to see a room and while it was very clean, but the toilet was on another floor and the whole hotel had no hot water.
I’m glad that Christopher intervened and vetoed that place, because we ended up staying at a really nice, Western style hotel that cost $1 more than that place, and had a lovely private bath and hot showers. Even the obnoxious Canadian gymnast convention that had shrieking girls drinking too much downstairs couldn’t dampen our enthusiasm for the place.
The next day we tried all day to phone Scott without success. I even phoned PC HQ in Kyiv to get his office address, but when we went to find it, the building that should have been that number was being demolished. Disheartened, I perked up when Christopher bought me an ice cream on the street and we decided to cut our losses and head to Yaremche that evening.
We went to a kiosk I’d seen advertising tourist info. I asked there for said info and she gave me a piece of paper and told me to phone the number on it. I did so from a pay phone, asking the info center what they knew about accommodations in Yaremche. The woman on the other end asked me where I was, which seemed a strange way to answer my questions. She offered to come down and give me the information in person and sure enough, five minutes later, she showed up by the kiosk with information in hand.
The language question is even more interesting in Western Ukraine to me, where they really speak Ukrainian. Here in Kyiv I think I hear so little pure Ukrainian, or perhaps when I do I’m catching the parts that sound enough like Russian that I don’t notice. But in Lviv and IF and later Yaremche, there were many times when the accent and vocabulary were distinctly different. I felt happy for these people to have a separate language from Russian. Nonetheless, when I was dealing with people, they easily switched from Ukrainian to Russian when we spoke. Or sometimes I would speak Russian and they Ukrainian and we’d make do that way. I think of this tangent because after this tourist info woman spoke Ukrainian to my Russian, she made sure to say “Dasvidanya” which is distinctly Russian.
After getting tourist info, we went to the train station to purchase our tickets. It was only my second time buying train tickets and the whole process is still very intimidating to me. I had my Ukrainian phrasebook ready and steeled myself for the waiting, the curious looks at our backpacks, the outright staring sure to occur the moment I open my mouth.
Christopher was having a bit of culture shock. The pushing, staring, whispering and pointing and such were getting to him, and he was reacting angrily. Granted, maybe no one understood what he was saying, but I felt a little uncomfortable, despite also understanding how uncomfortable it can be to be singled out.
By contrast with his newness and adjustments, it was interesting to note how much I have grown accustomed to such things. While I probably will never enjoy being jostled and I’m definitely never going to enjoy being cut in front of in line anywhere, I’m somewhat accustomed to crowded public transport and being a “star.” In fact, there’s even a syndrome for expats or PCV’s when they return to the US and are no longer “stars.” Even if they didn’t enjoy the attention that being different brought them, suddenly they are very ordinary and there’s a vacuum where all the attention to their every move used to be.
The train station still makes me nervous because one waits for a long time, then has a short amount of time with a generally taciturn railway employee and there’s always people trying to push in and ask questions, especially when they hear the slowness of my speech. Plus I have to be really careful to make sure I understand what they’re saying because changing a rail ticket would suck.
In any case, the railway employee was actually sort of friendly, but told me that I couldn’t buy tickets that day for the coming Saturday. I tried to ask several ways, but each time she told me I couldn’t. She said I would have to buy them the next day.
I got out of line, then decided to verify that I understood correctly. The second time around, she explained using large hand gestures and creative dance interpretation that one can only buy tickets 3 days before the train leaves. Despite having a database on her computer, she was unable to tell me whether there were actually tickets available for the train we wanted.
This turn of events meant that we needed to stay in IF one more night, then buy tickets the following morning. Christopher also reacted rather strongly to this ridiculous rule, which also contrasted nicely to me how passive I’m getting when people tell me things such as this. We realized later that we could have tried bribing her, but I really don’t want to contribute too much to that culture. A chocolate bar of thanks here and there, sure, but outright bribes are icky.
We trooped back to the expensive expat palace, braving the Canadian gymnasts one more night.
More to follow…
14 August 2003
14 August
I'm still catching the blog up to present, but today was such a beautiful day that I wanted to write while it's fresh.
I took the metro from work to the language school where I'm taking a weekly Russian group lesson. Today as I rode up the metro escalator, I noticed that almost everyone was carrying bouquets of dried flowers and also that many arrangements contained poppy flower pods, the part where people make heroin from.
Inspired since I was going to class, I asked the woman riding next to me in Russian if today was a holiday and if so, what kind was it. Strangely, I wasn't annoyed when she replied in English, as I usually am in the language tug' o war. She told me that today is a religious holiday when people bring these flowers to the church to be blessed. She didn't explain why and I didn't think to ask, but she did say that the next week was a day to bring apples to the church to be blessed and that the apples would be best after this day.
I suppose that these holidays are pagan rituals absorbed by the orthodox church, celebrating an end of summer and a bountiful harvest. I'll try to get more info on these holidays.
As we said goodbye at the top of the escalator and I entered the bright summer afternoon, I was overwhelmed by the sight of lines of women selling dried flowers and by the scent, as many of the flowers were herbs gone to seed and flower. There was basil, oregano, mint, wheat, poppy pods, marigolds, zinnia, among hundreds of others. For nearly ten minutes, I walked down the street by these vendors, and compared the different selections and colors and smells.
There are times when this country is so beautiful that I ache from the sight and this afternoon was such a time. The metro stop is also right by one of the botanical gardens and to get to the language school, I walk on a path through it. The whole walk to class was highly pleasurable.
It's just that life here becomes routine, so much so that I begin to forget at times that I've ever lived anywhere else or that the whole world isn't like this. I'm not explaining this well; but sometimes when something so striking as today's flower fantasia happens, I'm jolted out of a mundane acceptance of this life and realize that I'm living in Ukraine! I'm far from home! Excitement and adventure in the world! Woo Hoo!
Right, it's late and time for bed. Goodnight, all.
I'm still catching the blog up to present, but today was such a beautiful day that I wanted to write while it's fresh.
I took the metro from work to the language school where I'm taking a weekly Russian group lesson. Today as I rode up the metro escalator, I noticed that almost everyone was carrying bouquets of dried flowers and also that many arrangements contained poppy flower pods, the part where people make heroin from.
Inspired since I was going to class, I asked the woman riding next to me in Russian if today was a holiday and if so, what kind was it. Strangely, I wasn't annoyed when she replied in English, as I usually am in the language tug' o war. She told me that today is a religious holiday when people bring these flowers to the church to be blessed. She didn't explain why and I didn't think to ask, but she did say that the next week was a day to bring apples to the church to be blessed and that the apples would be best after this day.
I suppose that these holidays are pagan rituals absorbed by the orthodox church, celebrating an end of summer and a bountiful harvest. I'll try to get more info on these holidays.
As we said goodbye at the top of the escalator and I entered the bright summer afternoon, I was overwhelmed by the sight of lines of women selling dried flowers and by the scent, as many of the flowers were herbs gone to seed and flower. There was basil, oregano, mint, wheat, poppy pods, marigolds, zinnia, among hundreds of others. For nearly ten minutes, I walked down the street by these vendors, and compared the different selections and colors and smells.
There are times when this country is so beautiful that I ache from the sight and this afternoon was such a time. The metro stop is also right by one of the botanical gardens and to get to the language school, I walk on a path through it. The whole walk to class was highly pleasurable.
It's just that life here becomes routine, so much so that I begin to forget at times that I've ever lived anywhere else or that the whole world isn't like this. I'm not explaining this well; but sometimes when something so striking as today's flower fantasia happens, I'm jolted out of a mundane acceptance of this life and realize that I'm living in Ukraine! I'm far from home! Excitement and adventure in the world! Woo Hoo!
Right, it's late and time for bed. Goodnight, all.
20 July 2003
It has been a very, very long time since I've written here and much has happened. I'm currently working in Sudak on the Crimean Peninsula at our annual summer conference. It's a crazy thing, this conference, a beast that opens its jaws at 7am and sometimes doesn't spit its victims out until early the next morning. I'm tired and a little discouraged, frankly speaking, but know that much of this may be due to sleep deprivation, which I don't deal well with. I'm here from 13 - 30 July.
In any case, whining aside, here are some events or observations since I last wrote.
Early in my time in Kyiv, I went to an old indoor produce market that is in central Kyiv, Bessarabska. It's more expensive, but it has many imported items and I went to see if they had ginger, which they did. While I was walking around, I smelled something familiar and before I even knew what it was, I felt a great welling up of emotion and suddenly was nearly in tears. The culprit was a ripe peach. I realized that this is the time of year that Mom and I always go to South Carolina to visit Great Aunts Eva and Theo and Sadie and Viola. We invariably buy lots of peaches and the smell permeates the car as we return to North Carolina. I bought the damn peach and ate it, crying and grateful that sunglasses partially hid my nostalgia.
Work has been going well, and in preparation for this conference, we all began working a lot and long hours. In my judgment, there was less planning that one might think for a major two part conference. I think it creates much more work and certainly more stress. That part I don't enjoy.
However, much has been interesting. I like working with such smart and energetic people and have begun to feel more a part of the two offices I work in.
Back to the end of June, on my birthday weekend, we had a organizational meeting in Odessa, to have all the PCV's and CEUME staff discuss organizational development and begin discussing such things as how to maintain CEUME as a self-sustaining NGO after the USAID funding ends in 3 years.
After the meeting, I stayed on in Odessa w/ fellow PCV, Louis, also a former North Carolinian, and we explored bits of the city and the 7 square kilometer market that is on the outskirts of town. Odessa is an old port city built by, variously, the French, the Greeks and to a lesser degree, the Ottomans, and of course, the Russians. It has a similar "elegant decay" (quoting Louis) as New Orleans does and to me, a more relaxed feeling than Kyiv.
I flew back to Kyiv on my birthday, which happens to be Constitution Day in Ukraine, and was surprised how happy I felt to be back, how it felt like home. I'm growing fond of the city.
Here in Ukraine, the tradition on one's birthday is rather different than in the US. Perhaps the biggest difference is that one is supposed to provide the party for oneself. The birthday girl/boy should bring some kind of champagne, vodka or wine (or all of the above if you're a big shot), cake and sweets, at a minimum. Though it felt strange to me, as if I was bragging or making a big deal of my own birthday, I dutifully went to the store, bought a garishly frosted cake, a bottle of champagne and a box of chocolates and brought them to work the next day.
The complication is that, as I've mentioned, I work in two offices. I decided that I needed to bond more with one office than the other, and there happened to be a meeting, so I carted the stuff over and planned to invite everyone to the kitchen after our meeting.
However, everyone started leaving the office right after the meeting and the time didn't seem right, so I didn't say anything and left the party stuff.
The next day, one of the interns in the other office was going to have a party for his graduation from colleges, so I told him I'd donate the cake and champagne and mentally decided to forgo this birthday year.
I went to the other office and got the party supplies and we had a fun graduation party. I thought that was that.
The next day, a comrade at work tells me that the other office women were a bit worried that the cake and champagne were there but then gone. They wondered if I was mad (why I'm unsure) or basically what went amiss. I tried to explain my side of the silliness, but could see that there was a disconnect. I realized that despite the time lapse, I'd have to throw a party anyway.
By this time, a week later, raspberries were in season, so I made a raspberry pie w/ cookie and almond crust. It was tasty but sort of ugly, but by now I had to go forward.
I brought in pie w/ ice cream and some fruit, but no champagne and invited everyone back to the kitchen. I told them that the previous cake hadn't been good enough, so I'd removed it and made something else. They laughed.
There were many jokes only slightly at my expense regarding the looks of the pie, but they ate both of them, the damn skinny wenches. They found a bottle of champagne in the fridge and we had some toasts and in the end I was glad that we did it.
A couple of days later, I arrived at work at the other office rather early for me, at 9:30am or so. I was fresh from working out and looking for a cup of coffee. My Ukrainian director, Sasha, starts calling me to come to the conference room. I walk in to everyone seated around the large, oval table, and on the table sat a bottle of cognac and a big, lime green-frosted cake, in addition to chocolates and cherries.
I sighed and laughed and said, "Oh, Ukraina," (Oh, Ukraine) to which everyone laughed. What I meant by this is that it is so endearing and at the same time exhausting to celebrate as they do. The first few impromptu cake and cognac/champagne/vodka mini-parties in the middle of the day were a novelty, but this early morning variety was new and sometimes one isn't in the mood to throw down cake and a bevy in the middle of a workday, let alone the beginning of it.
However, there's nothing to be done and why should one resist? I sat down and we talked a little bit in Russian about how birthdays are different here versus the US. The cake and cognac were there because one of the faculty members that we work with was in town from Donetsk and brought cake for Sasha's birthday that had been in the middle of June.
Sasha had Pavlo bring me a rose and one of his toasts was that we were passing the birthday "baton" from him to me, until the next birthday, which was to follow the next week, Sveta's. Sveta is a delightful coworker, and I particularly appreciate her because she is very positive and will speak Russian with me, even though her English is amazing.
We finished the cake, ate chocolates, drank the bottle of cognac, to be followed by a bottle of vodka that I was able to avoid. At about 11am, I went to my desk to begin my day, and to begin to rehydrate.
I'm catching up to present, so more episode to follow… Thanks to those of you who are reading this. Sometimes I'm surprised that anyone wants to read all of this - my ramblings. If this were about life in the US, I suppose it wouldn't be all that.
It has been a very, very long time since I've written here and much has happened. I'm currently working in Sudak on the Crimean Peninsula at our annual summer conference. It's a crazy thing, this conference, a beast that opens its jaws at 7am and sometimes doesn't spit its victims out until early the next morning. I'm tired and a little discouraged, frankly speaking, but know that much of this may be due to sleep deprivation, which I don't deal well with. I'm here from 13 - 30 July.
In any case, whining aside, here are some events or observations since I last wrote.
Early in my time in Kyiv, I went to an old indoor produce market that is in central Kyiv, Bessarabska. It's more expensive, but it has many imported items and I went to see if they had ginger, which they did. While I was walking around, I smelled something familiar and before I even knew what it was, I felt a great welling up of emotion and suddenly was nearly in tears. The culprit was a ripe peach. I realized that this is the time of year that Mom and I always go to South Carolina to visit Great Aunts Eva and Theo and Sadie and Viola. We invariably buy lots of peaches and the smell permeates the car as we return to North Carolina. I bought the damn peach and ate it, crying and grateful that sunglasses partially hid my nostalgia.
Work has been going well, and in preparation for this conference, we all began working a lot and long hours. In my judgment, there was less planning that one might think for a major two part conference. I think it creates much more work and certainly more stress. That part I don't enjoy.
However, much has been interesting. I like working with such smart and energetic people and have begun to feel more a part of the two offices I work in.
Back to the end of June, on my birthday weekend, we had a organizational meeting in Odessa, to have all the PCV's and CEUME staff discuss organizational development and begin discussing such things as how to maintain CEUME as a self-sustaining NGO after the USAID funding ends in 3 years.
After the meeting, I stayed on in Odessa w/ fellow PCV, Louis, also a former North Carolinian, and we explored bits of the city and the 7 square kilometer market that is on the outskirts of town. Odessa is an old port city built by, variously, the French, the Greeks and to a lesser degree, the Ottomans, and of course, the Russians. It has a similar "elegant decay" (quoting Louis) as New Orleans does and to me, a more relaxed feeling than Kyiv.
I flew back to Kyiv on my birthday, which happens to be Constitution Day in Ukraine, and was surprised how happy I felt to be back, how it felt like home. I'm growing fond of the city.
Here in Ukraine, the tradition on one's birthday is rather different than in the US. Perhaps the biggest difference is that one is supposed to provide the party for oneself. The birthday girl/boy should bring some kind of champagne, vodka or wine (or all of the above if you're a big shot), cake and sweets, at a minimum. Though it felt strange to me, as if I was bragging or making a big deal of my own birthday, I dutifully went to the store, bought a garishly frosted cake, a bottle of champagne and a box of chocolates and brought them to work the next day.
The complication is that, as I've mentioned, I work in two offices. I decided that I needed to bond more with one office than the other, and there happened to be a meeting, so I carted the stuff over and planned to invite everyone to the kitchen after our meeting.
However, everyone started leaving the office right after the meeting and the time didn't seem right, so I didn't say anything and left the party stuff.
The next day, one of the interns in the other office was going to have a party for his graduation from colleges, so I told him I'd donate the cake and champagne and mentally decided to forgo this birthday year.
I went to the other office and got the party supplies and we had a fun graduation party. I thought that was that.
The next day, a comrade at work tells me that the other office women were a bit worried that the cake and champagne were there but then gone. They wondered if I was mad (why I'm unsure) or basically what went amiss. I tried to explain my side of the silliness, but could see that there was a disconnect. I realized that despite the time lapse, I'd have to throw a party anyway.
By this time, a week later, raspberries were in season, so I made a raspberry pie w/ cookie and almond crust. It was tasty but sort of ugly, but by now I had to go forward.
I brought in pie w/ ice cream and some fruit, but no champagne and invited everyone back to the kitchen. I told them that the previous cake hadn't been good enough, so I'd removed it and made something else. They laughed.
There were many jokes only slightly at my expense regarding the looks of the pie, but they ate both of them, the damn skinny wenches. They found a bottle of champagne in the fridge and we had some toasts and in the end I was glad that we did it.
A couple of days later, I arrived at work at the other office rather early for me, at 9:30am or so. I was fresh from working out and looking for a cup of coffee. My Ukrainian director, Sasha, starts calling me to come to the conference room. I walk in to everyone seated around the large, oval table, and on the table sat a bottle of cognac and a big, lime green-frosted cake, in addition to chocolates and cherries.
I sighed and laughed and said, "Oh, Ukraina," (Oh, Ukraine) to which everyone laughed. What I meant by this is that it is so endearing and at the same time exhausting to celebrate as they do. The first few impromptu cake and cognac/champagne/vodka mini-parties in the middle of the day were a novelty, but this early morning variety was new and sometimes one isn't in the mood to throw down cake and a bevy in the middle of a workday, let alone the beginning of it.
However, there's nothing to be done and why should one resist? I sat down and we talked a little bit in Russian about how birthdays are different here versus the US. The cake and cognac were there because one of the faculty members that we work with was in town from Donetsk and brought cake for Sasha's birthday that had been in the middle of June.
Sasha had Pavlo bring me a rose and one of his toasts was that we were passing the birthday "baton" from him to me, until the next birthday, which was to follow the next week, Sveta's. Sveta is a delightful coworker, and I particularly appreciate her because she is very positive and will speak Russian with me, even though her English is amazing.
We finished the cake, ate chocolates, drank the bottle of cognac, to be followed by a bottle of vodka that I was able to avoid. At about 11am, I went to my desk to begin my day, and to begin to rehydrate.
I'm catching up to present, so more episode to follow… Thanks to those of you who are reading this. Sometimes I'm surprised that anyone wants to read all of this - my ramblings. If this were about life in the US, I suppose it wouldn't be all that.
18 June 2003
17 June
Today I went to a huge children’s store to buy a sort of gag gift for Amy and Charlie and their new-ish baby, Benjamin. I won’t reveal the gag gift til later, as I’m just mailing it now. The store had recognizable things like Fisher Price and Leggo toys, Crayola (I smelled the crayons and got stared at suspiciously), and less familiar things, like an entire wall of very realistic-looking guns.
I’ve been making myself walk around my neighborhood after work before dark, to familiarize myself and also not spend hours and hours alone in my apartment, obsessively reading. Tonight my destination was the produce market and then after dinner, the baby store.
I have been a bit obsessive lately about grocery shopping, as in I like to go everyday. The interactions at the market are very satisfying – friendly, I get to practice Russian, it’s food and they give out samples! The huge supermarket right by my house is also a source of hours of entertainment. I smell shampoos, try to read ingredient labels, look at all the new and strange products, as well as feel triumph when I find a familiar one, such as Balsamic vinegar. I still haven’t brought myself to buy the US-priced olive oil, but I know I will eventually break down. The sunflower oil is locally produced and quite nice. There are several varieties, ranging from dark and flavourful (but BAD BAD BAD for baking – brownie disaster) to light and without a distinct taste (on the contrary, quite good for baking – decent brownies).
I could talk about food for days, so I’ll move on.
Last week, while doing laundry, I hit my head on a light fixture and it turns out got a small concussion. I realized this when I saw that part of my eye was extremely bloodshot, so I called the PCMO (medical officer). I had sort of forgotten that I’d hit my head, which may have been part of the concussion thing. Anyway, I ended up staying the night at Expat Palace and doing laundry in the machine there. Oh, luxury! The eye cleared up in a few days, but the running joke among some of the PCV’s here is to ask me how many states there are in the Union, from when they were supposed to be on head injury watch for me.
It is also sweet cherry season, to be followed later by sour cherry season. I am almost sick of strawberries and am trying to switch to trying to eat cherries everyday til I’m sick of them, too. Then it will be another fruit’s turn at the market. However, the glut of berries gives me the ability to make berry intensive things like strawberry granita, sort of like gelato and really, really good w/ a little vodka as a slushy cocktail. Mmmm.
Today I also met my local militsia (police). Per PC procedures, my Regional Manager, Irina, and I went to the militsia office just one block from my building and asked to speak to the highest up person we could to introduce me. We got a pretty high up guy judging by his office and suit. He actually was really nice, but I kept having some weird visions of Russian Dragnet, which interfered greatly with my ability to take the proceedings seriously. Like so many things in my experience here, this meeting was one more stop on the surreal highway. Sometimes I am a little overwhelmed or maybe just impressed by the simple facts: I am riding in a Landrover with diplomatic plates, speeding around Kyiv to our next militsia meeting.
Anyway, back to this reality, Officer Friday asked us if we wanted to meet the officer in charge on the blocks where I live, so we went over to a satellite office that just happened to be open for two hours when we were there. Both officers couldn’t seem to believe that we didn’t want anything from our visits, but just to have them know I was here and meet me. They were nice and surprisingly friendly. I’m glad that I already know when to not smile here, as these were meetings to sit and look tough and confident at.
Sometimes I am somewhere that I can see a view over this city and over the grey Soviet apartment blocks, the gilded church domes and the ugly modern brick apartment blocks, a huge blue sky spans and my heart breaks to try to know this place and learn it all. I wish that I could embrace it all and it would become like home to me, but I know it is take time and it will always be other or maybe not or maybe only sometimes.
Time for bed. No more strawberry slushy vodka treats or more slather like the proceeding may follow. Good night.
14 – 16 June
I could smell the strawberries before I could see the bazaar. It was early Sat. morning, the first time that I went to the market before the afternoon. I was surprised that many stalls weren’t yet open at 7:30am. It is strawberry season and when something is in season, the market is flooded.
My vegetable and fruit bazaar is a long tent that covers the many tables of produce. There is a money exchange, a bread seller, a nice young man from Uzbekistan (do I sound like I’m 80?) selling dried fruits and nuts who likes to speak English with me, and then probably 100 or more tables of produce. Outside the tent are more people and sometimes their prices are better, perhaps because they don’t pay a fee to be in the tent. There are always many babushkas (grandmothers) selling flowers, the odd hen, herbs, whatever they could grow or raise somewhere, and as I walk by, they call out, “Deidushka (young woman), come see my (insert product here).”
In addition to the produce bazaar, there is a semi-permanent bazaar that has stalls selling dairy products, crackers and cookies, household cleaners and soaps, etc. There is the best cheese there and every time I go back, I see more sauces, cans of olives, new cookies or crackers.
I bought 2 kilograms of strawberries at the bazaar – a little more than 4 lbs. for about $3. I bought that and also a box of chocolates to bring to Ira and Helena’s house, for on Sat. I was going back to Brovary for the first time since moving to Kyiv. We’ve talked a couple of times on the phone, and Ira invited me for lunch for her birthday. She’d said something about coming in the morning then staying til the evening, but I reminded her how I get tired and that I’d come for the day or so.
When I got home, I realized I’d bought not entirely ripe strawberries and decided to leave those at home to ripen and buy riper ones at the market near Brovary. I packed up my plastic bag and headed out to my first home in Ukraine.
At Lisova market, I found cheaper and riper strawberries and again bought 2 kilos. I was really excited on the familiar marshrutka ride to visit with Ira and Helena. Arriving in Brovary, I bought a pretty bouquet of white lilies, and thus properly armed with chocolate, strawberries and flowers, I walked up to their flat.
I realize in retrospect that going to visit them is the first time since I’ve been here that someone’s really, really happy to see me. Don’t cry for me, Argentina. I don’t mean that I’m not making friends, but everyone is new and they just haven’t realized yet the depth of their feelings for me. In time they will, but in the meantime, having Ira and Helena hug and kiss me and generally be super excited to see me was so wonderful.
Helena has gotten a new job in the same department w/ a pay raise and Ira is finishing up her semester as a student and her classes as a teacher have already finished. I found out that on the last day of classes, it is traditional for students to give the teacher a flower. Ira was surprised that she received almost exclusively red roses. They both were very curious about my job, apartment and Helena in particular if I was eating properly.
It turned out that I had completely misunderstood Ira’s invitation, besides the fact that it was Ira’s birthday and that I should come before lunchtime on Sat. They had invited me for the weekend and were planning that I’d stay til Sunday afternoon. I had already arranged w/ Mom for her to phone Sat. night, so couldn’t stay. I felt bad, even though I was sort of glad to not have to stay. One full day is really enough. Always leave them wanting more is my motto.
We had a lovely lunch with: Vica (Ira’s friend), Petr Sr. and Katerina, (great aunt and uncle, but called grandmother and grandfather), Petr Jr. (Petr and Katerina’s grandson who is my age), his girlfriend, Yulia.
Petr Sr. is quite the flirt and told me during lunch that he thinks I’m pretty, but he’d like it if I was bigger. He indicted his chest at this comment, so I think he may have been alluding to something, but maybe I’m misreading cultural symbolism. Kidding, of course, I suppose if he wasn’t cute and old (75) and speaking Russian/Ukrainian, I would label him a pig. He somehow gets immunity from how I usually judge men who tell me I should have bigger boobs. He also kept adding “To our American friends!” to the end of every toast, even when someone else made it. He actually was very entertaining and good natured about the girls giggling at him. (me included, of course)
There were the usual toasts and eating fest and Ira’s favorite sweet, sweet red wine, some kind of rose desert stuff. Helena made golubsi, or cabbage rolls (YUM! Pass the smetana [sour cream]), chicken fillet, young (new) potatoes with dill, parsley and mayo, the crab, corn and onion salad that is Ira’s favorite, as well as cheese blini, cucumbers and then a cake that Helena made, plus the chocolates that I’d brought. A Ukrainian table is always well-laden for guests, and it might be traditional to worry if there’s enough unless the table is utterly choked with food, as Helena did. There of course were copious leftovers.
I was a little nervous about going into a no-English zone after a couple of weeks of no studying and almost exclusive English speaking. It was fine, however, and even Katarina, who has been a strong critic about my Russian, instead of commenting on how poorly I speak and reminding me how much better my friend Carrie speaks, said that I was speaking better than before. Go figure. I think I felt so comfortable w/ everyone that this helped a lot. When I feel scared, nervous or insecure, even things that I know cold come out wrong.
After that lovely day, I headed back to Kyiv and a bad phone connection w/ Mom, but at least I got to hear her voice. This is probably the longest we’ve ever gone without talking and yet it seemed so normal to talk to her. I even managed to stave off tears til after we hung up! I was so proud. Actually, it was a day of conversations with both parents, b/c Dad had phoned me at 2am Sat. morning, having gotten a wee confused about the time difference. It was also nice to hear his voice, despite my tiredness.
I think one isn’t properly living abroad until someone has phoned at an inappropriate hour.
Sat. night I went over to fellow PCV Susan’s “Expat Palace,” a four room renovated flat with kalunka (hot water heater) and cable TV that her organization is putting her up in until they find her a suitable apartment. Brian and Lani were in from out of town and I ended up sleeping over to avoid an expensive taxi ride home. We all made breakfast in the morning and talked and talked and talked. It was lovely. I’ll attach photos shortly of all of us cooking, then talking, then brushing our teeth.
Sunday night I was supposed to talk to Dad while he was visiting with Nanny and Sam was with him, but he couldn’t get through. Sundays are difficult days to phone here.
Monday was an Orthodox Catholic holiday, Holy Trinity, and all weekend in the markets people were selling 3 foot long grassy reeds that were to be put in homes. I need to go to a service here sometime. The churches are really beautiful, round domes and gold covered. The icons are especially beautiful.
I went into work for a half day despite the holiday, as I have a deadline. I’m quite enjoying work and am learning a ton. I am finding that even though I had trepidations about whether I’d find Business Management Education interesting or not, it seems that how it relates to this developing educational and economic systems is utterly fascinating. I may yet be a development junkie.
The organization has two offices and one is directly across from the Presidential Administration and an old building called “the House of Monsters” for all the stone sculptures of bizarre creatures on it. The secret police have an office right next to ours, and their office isn’t labeled (duh, SECRET police) but there is a sign for shoe repair. I thought it was a cover and was telling one of my coworkers about seeing a man go in with shoes in a bag, but she told me it also is a real shoe repair. It’s still a great cover.
I will get to go to a retreat for our organization in Odesa the last weekend of June, ahem, my birthday!! I am very, really excited to explore beyond Kyiv Oblast. Odesa is supposed to be a beautiful, vibrant city and I’m staying 2 days beyond our retreat at a fellow PCV’s apt.
I could smell the strawberries before I could see the bazaar. It was early Sat. morning, the first time that I went to the market before the afternoon. I was surprised that many stalls weren’t yet open at 7:30am. It is strawberry season and when something is in season, the market is flooded.
My vegetable and fruit bazaar is a long tent that covers the many tables of produce. There is a money exchange, a bread seller, a nice young man from Uzbekistan (do I sound like I’m 80?) selling dried fruits and nuts who likes to speak English with me, and then probably 100 or more tables of produce. Outside the tent are more people and sometimes their prices are better, perhaps because they don’t pay a fee to be in the tent. There are always many babushkas (grandmothers) selling flowers, the odd hen, herbs, whatever they could grow or raise somewhere, and as I walk by, they call out, “Deidushka (young woman), come see my (insert product here).”
In addition to the produce bazaar, there is a semi-permanent bazaar that has stalls selling dairy products, crackers and cookies, household cleaners and soaps, etc. There is the best cheese there and every time I go back, I see more sauces, cans of olives, new cookies or crackers.
I bought 2 kilograms of strawberries at the bazaar – a little more than 4 lbs. for about $3. I bought that and also a box of chocolates to bring to Ira and Helena’s house, for on Sat. I was going back to Brovary for the first time since moving to Kyiv. We’ve talked a couple of times on the phone, and Ira invited me for lunch for her birthday. She’d said something about coming in the morning then staying til the evening, but I reminded her how I get tired and that I’d come for the day or so.
When I got home, I realized I’d bought not entirely ripe strawberries and decided to leave those at home to ripen and buy riper ones at the market near Brovary. I packed up my plastic bag and headed out to my first home in Ukraine.
At Lisova market, I found cheaper and riper strawberries and again bought 2 kilos. I was really excited on the familiar marshrutka ride to visit with Ira and Helena. Arriving in Brovary, I bought a pretty bouquet of white lilies, and thus properly armed with chocolate, strawberries and flowers, I walked up to their flat.
I realize in retrospect that going to visit them is the first time since I’ve been here that someone’s really, really happy to see me. Don’t cry for me, Argentina. I don’t mean that I’m not making friends, but everyone is new and they just haven’t realized yet the depth of their feelings for me. In time they will, but in the meantime, having Ira and Helena hug and kiss me and generally be super excited to see me was so wonderful.
Helena has gotten a new job in the same department w/ a pay raise and Ira is finishing up her semester as a student and her classes as a teacher have already finished. I found out that on the last day of classes, it is traditional for students to give the teacher a flower. Ira was surprised that she received almost exclusively red roses. They both were very curious about my job, apartment and Helena in particular if I was eating properly.
It turned out that I had completely misunderstood Ira’s invitation, besides the fact that it was Ira’s birthday and that I should come before lunchtime on Sat. They had invited me for the weekend and were planning that I’d stay til Sunday afternoon. I had already arranged w/ Mom for her to phone Sat. night, so couldn’t stay. I felt bad, even though I was sort of glad to not have to stay. One full day is really enough. Always leave them wanting more is my motto.
We had a lovely lunch with: Vica (Ira’s friend), Petr Sr. and Katerina, (great aunt and uncle, but called grandmother and grandfather), Petr Jr. (Petr and Katerina’s grandson who is my age), his girlfriend, Yulia.
Petr Sr. is quite the flirt and told me during lunch that he thinks I’m pretty, but he’d like it if I was bigger. He indicted his chest at this comment, so I think he may have been alluding to something, but maybe I’m misreading cultural symbolism. Kidding, of course, I suppose if he wasn’t cute and old (75) and speaking Russian/Ukrainian, I would label him a pig. He somehow gets immunity from how I usually judge men who tell me I should have bigger boobs. He also kept adding “To our American friends!” to the end of every toast, even when someone else made it. He actually was very entertaining and good natured about the girls giggling at him. (me included, of course)
There were the usual toasts and eating fest and Ira’s favorite sweet, sweet red wine, some kind of rose desert stuff. Helena made golubsi, or cabbage rolls (YUM! Pass the smetana [sour cream]), chicken fillet, young (new) potatoes with dill, parsley and mayo, the crab, corn and onion salad that is Ira’s favorite, as well as cheese blini, cucumbers and then a cake that Helena made, plus the chocolates that I’d brought. A Ukrainian table is always well-laden for guests, and it might be traditional to worry if there’s enough unless the table is utterly choked with food, as Helena did. There of course were copious leftovers.
I was a little nervous about going into a no-English zone after a couple of weeks of no studying and almost exclusive English speaking. It was fine, however, and even Katarina, who has been a strong critic about my Russian, instead of commenting on how poorly I speak and reminding me how much better my friend Carrie speaks, said that I was speaking better than before. Go figure. I think I felt so comfortable w/ everyone that this helped a lot. When I feel scared, nervous or insecure, even things that I know cold come out wrong.
After that lovely day, I headed back to Kyiv and a bad phone connection w/ Mom, but at least I got to hear her voice. This is probably the longest we’ve ever gone without talking and yet it seemed so normal to talk to her. I even managed to stave off tears til after we hung up! I was so proud. Actually, it was a day of conversations with both parents, b/c Dad had phoned me at 2am Sat. morning, having gotten a wee confused about the time difference. It was also nice to hear his voice, despite my tiredness.
I think one isn’t properly living abroad until someone has phoned at an inappropriate hour.
Sat. night I went over to fellow PCV Susan’s “Expat Palace,” a four room renovated flat with kalunka (hot water heater) and cable TV that her organization is putting her up in until they find her a suitable apartment. Brian and Lani were in from out of town and I ended up sleeping over to avoid an expensive taxi ride home. We all made breakfast in the morning and talked and talked and talked. It was lovely. I’ll attach photos shortly of all of us cooking, then talking, then brushing our teeth.
Sunday night I was supposed to talk to Dad while he was visiting with Nanny and Sam was with him, but he couldn’t get through. Sundays are difficult days to phone here.
Monday was an Orthodox Catholic holiday, Holy Trinity, and all weekend in the markets people were selling 3 foot long grassy reeds that were to be put in homes. I need to go to a service here sometime. The churches are really beautiful, round domes and gold covered. The icons are especially beautiful.
I went into work for a half day despite the holiday, as I have a deadline. I’m quite enjoying work and am learning a ton. I am finding that even though I had trepidations about whether I’d find Business Management Education interesting or not, it seems that how it relates to this developing educational and economic systems is utterly fascinating. I may yet be a development junkie.
The organization has two offices and one is directly across from the Presidential Administration and an old building called “the House of Monsters” for all the stone sculptures of bizarre creatures on it. The secret police have an office right next to ours, and their office isn’t labeled (duh, SECRET police) but there is a sign for shoe repair. I thought it was a cover and was telling one of my coworkers about seeing a man go in with shoes in a bag, but she told me it also is a real shoe repair. It’s still a great cover.
I will get to go to a retreat for our organization in Odesa the last weekend of June, ahem, my birthday!! I am very, really excited to explore beyond Kyiv Oblast. Odesa is supposed to be a beautiful, vibrant city and I’m staying 2 days beyond our retreat at a fellow PCV’s apt.
2 – 8 June
The first week I was going to work, Carrie, fellow PCV, stayed with me. She's probably the person I’ve gotten to know best and it was fun to have her to ruminate over the events at work and process it all. She is also a development junkie, but unlike me, has been studying it in earnest for some time now and is a delight to talk about all the complexities, contradictions, abuses, trends, meanings, etc., of development work and being an American.
We cooked, hung out, listened to music, read, and generally enjoyed time in a free space, that is my apartment and not home stay.
On Sat. 7 June, Carrie and I went to a festival organized by the other NGO that my organization’s Ukrainian director runs. It was held at an open air museum that consists of houses and villages constructed to replicate traditional housing from different Ukrainian regions. It is a beautiful area away from the city, all green, rolling hills, horses and wooden homes with thatch roofs. I want to go back to picnic sometime soon.
We spent more time wandering around the grounds and eating shashlik (shishkabobs) so I can’t report authoritatively on the festival, but there were tons of people in Ukrainian traditional dress and craftspeople selling their wares. Lots of beautiful but expensive embroidered fabric and clothes.
To get to the festival, I had been told a marshrutka to take, but this info turned out to be wrong. No one on the street knew anything, so we started stopping other marshrutkas and asking them. We weren’t sure how this would be received, but to our utter gratitude, not only were the marshrutka drivers perfectly happy to stop their vans and try to figure out where we should go, the passengers got into the act.
Then we got on the bus they directed us to, asking the driver and his ticket taker how to get from their route to the museum. They not only didn’t ask us to pay, but the ticket taker walked us to the next transport, an electriska (electric trolley bus) to make sure we would get to the right one. I was surprised at this care, for sometimes people seem hard and unmoved, particularly in this big city.
The first week I was going to work, Carrie, fellow PCV, stayed with me. She's probably the person I’ve gotten to know best and it was fun to have her to ruminate over the events at work and process it all. She is also a development junkie, but unlike me, has been studying it in earnest for some time now and is a delight to talk about all the complexities, contradictions, abuses, trends, meanings, etc., of development work and being an American.
We cooked, hung out, listened to music, read, and generally enjoyed time in a free space, that is my apartment and not home stay.
On Sat. 7 June, Carrie and I went to a festival organized by the other NGO that my organization’s Ukrainian director runs. It was held at an open air museum that consists of houses and villages constructed to replicate traditional housing from different Ukrainian regions. It is a beautiful area away from the city, all green, rolling hills, horses and wooden homes with thatch roofs. I want to go back to picnic sometime soon.
We spent more time wandering around the grounds and eating shashlik (shishkabobs) so I can’t report authoritatively on the festival, but there were tons of people in Ukrainian traditional dress and craftspeople selling their wares. Lots of beautiful but expensive embroidered fabric and clothes.
To get to the festival, I had been told a marshrutka to take, but this info turned out to be wrong. No one on the street knew anything, so we started stopping other marshrutkas and asking them. We weren’t sure how this would be received, but to our utter gratitude, not only were the marshrutka drivers perfectly happy to stop their vans and try to figure out where we should go, the passengers got into the act.
Then we got on the bus they directed us to, asking the driver and his ticket taker how to get from their route to the museum. They not only didn’t ask us to pay, but the ticket taker walked us to the next transport, an electriska (electric trolley bus) to make sure we would get to the right one. I was surprised at this care, for sometimes people seem hard and unmoved, particularly in this big city.
30 May 2003
I am sitting in my new Kyiv apartment. All windows are open to the balcon and the white, cottony bits that are dispelled by a tree are floating inn droves thru the air and forming small, puffy piles in the corners of the balcon. I am home.
The month of May has nearly passed and I never sat down to write here. After Orthodox Easter, came the first of May or Labor Day. This holiday is no longer the huge event that it once was under Soviet times, but it means that after Easter, people are off for nearly a week. Then on the 9th of May is Victory Day, referring to WWII, what in Russian translates to the “Great Patriotic War.” There were many Saints days as well and generally May is a relaxing time of year here, unless one is in Peace Corps training.
Personally, I was busy with Russian class, our internship and also participating in the holidays with Ira and Helena. We survived a minor disturbance, where Ira was offended that I didn’t ask if she could come along when I was invited to someone’s dacha. She wanted to go b/c she was interested in the family’s son.
In late April, early May, over a period of about 47 hours, spring struck and suddenly where all had been gray and concrete, barren trees studded with crow’s nest, there was an urgent green. Yards previously festooned with the entrances to the cellars where people store the produce they grow on dachas were carpeted in new grasses, weeds and flowers. The trees immediately had leaves. The suddenness was infectious and as Colorado has no discernable spring, it reminded me a bit of growing up in North Carolina, except for the sudden onslaught of this spring.
It has been unseasonably warm so far and by that I basically mean hot. People are complaining, but it is at least comforting to me to know that it is not normal here for the weather to switch gears from driving, biting cold wind and rain of early spring to a balmy summer heat. The temperature switch was oddly exhausting and I found myself napping when possible between coming home and homework and dinner.
On May Day, I went with Ira to the 20th birthday party of a friend of hers, Marina. Marina is an English teacher and speaks almost flawless English and I think I’ve almost convinced her that I really want to speak Russian with her, despite her superiority in English.
The 20th birthday is a very important one in Ukraine. There’s some significance about even numbers that I don’t entirely grasp, but the 30th and 40th birthdays are also important.
When I got home the day before May Day, Ira was home with her friend, Valentin, who is also a teacher at Ira’s school. We all went shopping for Marina’s gift at every shop along the main thoroughfare in Brovary. Ira had decided that champagne glasses were an appropriate gift and we were to split the cost. After looking in every shop, most of which had almost the same goods for prices that barely varied by a few kopecks, we decided on a set of champagne glasses that I will only describe as being blessed with a great deal of gold ornamentation, as are many goods and clothes here.
On the day of the party, I had to leave a meeting w/ fellow volunteers early to get home for the party and this caused no small amount of discord, set to a backdrop of a good dose of inter-group tension. Nonetheless, Ira, Valentin and I arrived at a party hall about on time for Marina’s birthday, carrying our gift, a fancy bouquet of flowers and Ira’s stereo.
A tradition here for birthdays is to say a set of phrases to the birthday girl or boy and they count how many are said: “I wish you: luck, love, a wealthy husband, a long life, etc.” I tried a new variant on Marina, wishing her the ability to find a good job and was promptly scolded back into the accepted format.
After greeting her family, we went into the room where a long table was set up and nearly choked with dishes of food: meat, salads, vegetables, pickles, more salads, bread. There were probably over 100 dishes of food on a table set up to seat about 20 or 30. There were bottles of vodka, wine and mineral water every 6 chairs or so. I have found that this is the traditional Ukrainian table setup for a party and it is so impressive to come in to such abundance, I imagine the intended effect.
Soon Marina and two of her friends joined us in the dining room. These two dayavushkey (young women) were also English teachers and eager to speak English. They sometimes were funny because they would correct each other’s grammar or pronunciation or choice of words. They also are fond of the phrase, “If I am not mistaken.” They have slight British accents and use British words like “trousers” or “flat.” I tried valiantly to practice Russian, but they were a tough sell. Luckily, there were people there that couldn’t speak English and Ira who knows I want to practice (and even may get grumpy sometimes if people won’t speak Russian with me) was sweet to speak with me sans translation.
A background drama that led up to this party: Marina met the other PCT (Peace Corps Trainees) at the party that Ira and I had. She got Tom, Larry, Larry’s host brother Andrei and Ira and I together at a café to formally invite us to her party the week before. On Marina’s birthday, Tom couldn’t make it b/c he got sick and was in Kyiv and Larry decided that he should work on the workshop and not go to the party, especially because his host brother also couldn’t come.
I don’t know what is normal for here in terms of parties and accepting or declining invitations. There was no way that anyone of us could have said no to Marina’s invitation, but it was no small scandal when neither Tom, Larry nor Andrei came. I had to explain numerous times that I didn’t know Tom or Larry before in America and that I couldn’t explain their behavior. Andrei was especially reviled because they expressed that his behavior was unacceptable for a Ukrainian.
There had been a previous scandal when Larry and Andrei blew off Ira and Marina when they’d made plans to see “Mr. Bean 2” in Kyiv. Thank God for all the homework I had that prevented me from going. I hate Mr. Bean and seeing that film dubbed into Russian with slightly annoying teenagers who won’t speak Russian with me would make me VERY GROUCHY.
Anyway, the stage was already set for more misunderstanding and I do think that Marina was genuinely (and understandably) hurt that these three didn’t show up nor phone to cancel. I find Ira and also Marina to be sensitive to insult and almost looking for it sometimes. I remind myself a lot that Ira is only 20 and as she is moody, I have to work to not take her mood personally. It is probably my comeuppance, as I’m moody and now I see what it is like to live on the other side of the mood. (good pun, if I do say so!)
Back to the party, after a short amount of time, we sat down to begin our feast. I sat with the teenagers, as I keep referring to these young people who not only work full time as teachers, but who also are full time university students, and often work at home, helping to cook and clean or take care of younger siblings.
Then the toasts began. First Marina’s mother gave a toast that brought tears to my eyes, not so much because I understood all of it, but because I felt a bit homesick. We lifted our glasses and then dug into the food. I had a couple of new dishes: 1. Shuba (fur coat) which is a salad with many layers of vegetables such as beet (I’m lucky to so love beets!), shredded potatoes, carrots, intermixed w/ a salted fish that’s not dried and in this version, a lot of what I found out later is excellent caviar. I hadn’t had caviar before and quite liked it. 2. Holodnaya (cold salad) which is uncolored, unflavored jello made from pork, salted w/ bits of pork floating in it. I tried a bit, but didn’t go back. However, I nearly ate an entire bowl of shuba by myself and when I found out the next day how much the caviar costs that was in it, I was more than a little embarrassed. In my defense, there were several bowls of shuba that were untouched when I left, so no one lacked for it.
We had several rounds of toasts, eating all the while. Then it was time for a break. We walked outside a bit, enjoying the now warm weather. We hung out in the room with a stereo and listened to Russian pop, my new fav music. Then it was time to repeat the toasting, drinking, eating part. I was surprised how comfortable I felt, or maybe how welcomed I felt. It is a big deal that people would invite me, basically a stranger, to a family celebration.
After the third round of toasting, drinking and eating, we took another break and I got to speak a bit with Marina’s mother, who was very sweet and kindly spoke slowly in Russian for me. It is a little difficult for me to speak b/c sometimes a small crowd will gather to listen to the Americanka speak and I get a tad nervous with all the attention. Marina was also hovering, making sure that I didn’t need translation. Of course I don’t understand everything, but when it is just conversation, it is more important for me to listen and reply and don’t need to accurately know all facts. At least that is my philosophy.
I also have realized in this time that I had gotten to be rather a language Nazi. I was very frustrated for a time when Ira was translating a lot, especially when I was super slow the first few weeks. She’d translate before I could think and I would despair that I’d never learn. We worked it out and now when she feels the need to translate, she’ll do it to easier Russian, which is very kind of her.
Again, back to the party, we had cake, coffee and more toasts, then I needed to leave as the hour was growing late and I had already negotiated with Ira that I could leave by myself. It is difficult to do anything without the group, although as I am here longer, I find that Ira and Helena seem slightly less worried that I’ll harm myself going alone somewhere. I have even been allowed to go to Kyiv by myself! I joke; it is endearing and also can be greatly frustrating. It also has been a lesson in how important it is to understand the “collective” mentality and one that I’ve made many mistakes in dealing with.
I was walked to the marshrutka stop by all the teenagers and instructed by Marina’s mother to phone her cell phone when I got home, as she warned me that many people had been drinking all day since it was a holiday. I think Marina worries about her minutes, b/c when I phoned, I only got out “privet” and Marina replied, “horasho, horasho” and hung up. I guess my accent gave me away again! :-D (a note: I found out that the first 4 seconds of cellular airtime are free, so people try to speak quickly and hang up by the 4 sec. mark)
The rest of the month was a blur of PC conferences, meetings upon meetings for our internship, studying, trying to do one new thing everyday, instead of class, internet café, trip to Spar (local posh grocery store).
On the 17 May, we gave our workshop at the Unemployment Center. I had volunteered to do the ice breaker and deal with logistics. I did so for 3 reasons:
1. To see how I liked this aspect of event planning
2. To get more interaction with the Unemployment Center staff and
3. To work on my own, to circumvent a particularly strong personality in our group, who was apt to either be very domineering about how everything should be done or very frustrated when people didn’t want to take initiative. It mainly worked.
Our workshop went well – we had 13 participants and the workshop was a brief overview of how to write a Business Plan and with a main emphasis on doing market research. We tried to use interactive exercises and had them break out into work groups a couple of times. My ice breaker was a simple one: I gave everyone nos. and asked them to find the people w/ the same number, thereby forming the groups they’d work in later, then once in group, introduce themselves and find 3 facts they all had in common, besides perhaps working together or living in the same town.
Watching the groups work was interesting as it seemed like there emerged a leader of each group and that what I think of as normal for working in a group, i.e. that everyone who wishes to may speak and their opinion or idea will be heard and noted, wasn’t entirely the case. Our LCF’s, Yulia and Ira, participated and later told us about their experiences. Yulia, for example, was told to pretend she liked sports for the ice breaker when she protested that she didn’t. I thought that there was a premium on finding a “correct” answer versus what I might call critical thinking, but perhaps I’m so expecting to find this here that I’m inventing.
Again my disclaimer that these are only my observations and in no way an attempt to write anything authoritative about “The Ukrainian People” or “Ukrainian Culture.”
A few days after the workshop, we all had our Language Proficiency Interview (LPI), which was an aural exam of our language ability after 2.5 months of intensive Russian. I reviewed and practiced conversing, with a special emphasis on toning down my natural inclination to try to explain concepts greatly beyond my language ability, the result of which is often a look of consternation on the face of my listener.
I tried hard to remind myself that this test was supremely subjective to allay my nervousness – I wanted to do well as a momento of the work I’d done studying and speaking and listening and more studying. But I also tried hard to remember that the fact that I can speak, understand and read to the amount that I can is a huge success, regardless of any test.
In any case, the first question the tester asked was what my name is, which I misunderstood to be a question about where I was living or how I was living, so I answered, what, here in Brovary or in Kyiv? We had a good laugh about that, then went on to converse for about 20 minutes or so.
After the LPI, we basically were done, except for one training by the medical office titled “Safety Day” in which we watched a video about sexual assault and then practiced some easy self defense moves.
I spent the last week packing, dealing with logistics, studying a bit, etc. We had a farewell dinner the penultimate night with Larry’s, Dan’s and my host families at Dan’s flat. I had initially been opposed to this, because I felt that our host families weren’t close, Dan, Larry and I had never gotten particularly close and so why did we need to bother our host families with this pretense?
However, it turned out to be a very pleasant affair and was frankly nice to have some ceremony of saying goodbye. I find that Ukrainians are very fond of certificates, particularly when these certificates are stamped. Yulia gave each host family a stamped certificate of appreciation from Peace Corps and then I gave a impromptu thank you speech in Russian and then tried not to cry. Yulia, always that master of subtlety and perception, patted my knee under the table when she noticed me trying to compose myself.
The next night was the real final night and I spent the day finishing up packing, cooking a meal for Ira and Helena and moving my luggage to Yulia’s for it to be transferred by Peace Corps vehicles later.
For our farewell dinner, I made a reduction sauce of pomegranate and cherry juice, w/ a little lemon juice, then cooked chicken and potatoes in this sauce. There were homemade rolls from focacia dough, a salad with “young” cabbage (the cabbage grown this spring and not allowed to get as big as it could - as opposed to all this “old” cabbage we’ve been eating since I arrived?), carrots, the great ubiquitous cucumber and some hothouse tomatoes. There were brownies with walnuts for desert and we toasted the meal with Ukrainian champagne, which I must admit is OK despite its sweetness.
We had a lovely, low key dinner and then agreeing that we were over-full, took a gulyat (stroll) around the neighborhood in the cool evening air.
In the morning, I hugged Ira when she left for school and Helena waited with me until the marshrutka we hired as a group arrived, kissing me three times as goodbye, then I fought back tears as I rode away from that massive concrete building that had sheltered me since arriving that rainy and cold night.
Back to Kyiv, back to the Piggy and for the first time since we arrived on March 6th in Ukraine, the whole of PC Ukraine Group 24 was back together. We had our close of training conference, replete with much information, feedback sessions and late night carousing in front of the Piggy.
We also found out the result of the LPI, on which I did quite well. There was only one category higher than the one I scored into and only one person achieved that classification. And, if you, gentle reader, will allow me to brag one moment more, there were 7 of us out of our group of 78, who scored into this category that I did. We’ll retake the test at the end of service, to gauge progress and also can optionally do it in six month increments to keep track of progress in the meantime.
On 27th May, we went by bus from the Piggy to the “Teacher’s House,” a beautiful, historic building where we were to swear in as PC Volunteers, no longer Trainees. The first president of independent Ukraine was there, Leonid Kravchuk, as was the US Ambassador, Carlos Pascual, who administered the Oath of Peace Corps Service. Three of our group gave the same speech, one in Ukrainian, one in Russian and one in English. There was a good brass band that played inspirational music, heavy on the Sousa, and about three sub-ministers from various ministries gave speeches that were blessedly short. I hadn’t expected to enjoy the ceremony, but again it was lovely to have an event to celebrate our transition from training to service.
Also present were our host families. We each could invite two members. Shockingly, it was the first time that this had been done and I hope it continues. It was a nice way to be able to publicly commemorate them and also for them to better understand what Peace Corps aims to do in Ukraine. Ira, being a political science student at university, was almost beside herself at having heard Leonid Kravchuk and Carlos Pascual speak. Mr. Pascual is leaving this post soon and it will be interesting to see what the new ambassador will do or not do.
After the ceremony, we had a brief reception with champagne, fruit, cookies and chocolates and milled around, trying not to faint from the heat. Ira and I caught up and though I found myself so strongly wishing that Christopher, my Mom and my Dad could be there, I was really happy that at least one person who was interested was there.
The next day, we all went to PC HQ, where we had more interviews and meetings, dealt with logistics and then all of us CEUME people met with the organization’s American director.
At about 3pm, Bogdana, my coordinator and guardian angel from CEUME, showed up with a taxi to whisk me and my baggage to the new apartment. Since I knew the address, I’d snuck over to the building on Sunday and had walked up to the 6th floor and stared at the door I thought was mine, as well as checked out the neighborhood a bit and the metro stop.
I am still dealing with feeling privileged and spoiled for not only being in Kyiv, but also now for having a flat that is quite close to downtown. I am somewhat getting over this. I didn’t expect or ask for any of this and all I can do is work hard, try to help however I can, be grateful and enjoy.
So, the flat is really nice. It’s a large one room, which means that there is one room other than the kitchen. This room serves as both living room and bedroom and is approximately 25 long X 15 wide of my size 7.5 feet. The kitchen is also relatively large and there is a balcon (the ubiquitous balcony that nearly all apartments have, usually enclosed in glass and useful as storage, small garden, area for drying clothes, etc.) that spans the entire width of the apartment, as the living room/bedroom and kitchen are side by side in the layout. The balcon is 26 X 5 of my feet. The only windows in the apartment are on the balcon side, which faces north west. There is good light in the afternoons and as there is no building close enough to block it, there is something of a view, if only of the tall tree that are around. It’s really quite lovely.
The kitchen only needs a few things in terms of cooking accoutrements and the bathroom has been redone and is REALLY nice. We have hot water and this is the first American-style shower I’ve had since arriving.
Many rental apartments are very different from in the US as the apt. owner is likely to leave many personal effects there, such as clothes, books, knickknacks, many dishes, etc. This apt. has almost none of these and to my UTTER shock, there is no rug hanging on the wall. There is a divan (couch pulled out into a bed) in one corner of the room as my bed and another divan as a couch, as well as a chair. There is the obligatory wall o’shkof, a big wooden and darkly stained piece of furniture that is a long series of shelves and a sort of armoir that serves as closet. This, too, incredibly, is sans landlord possessions. There is an old color TV that I haven’t yet figured out how to turn on, but will ask for instructions.
The kitchen holds the common linoleum table and the stools that are topped by embroidered seat covers. The cabinets have sweet periwinkle flowers painted on them and there are many cabinets and dishes. The refrigerator is charmingly vocal but clean and working.
The hallway entrance is pretty large and there is another shkof there for coats and shoes.
The piece d’resistence is of course the telephone. Hurrah!
I’m very lucky and so grateful to have landed in this lovely home.
Tomorrow I will go to work and today as soon as I can make myself get out of this sanctuary, will go explore the neighborhood, try to find a reasonable grocery store and also the way to the Dnipro river, which is quite close by.
Tune in soon for the latest installment, which I promise won’t be so long in coming as this latest one.
The month of May has nearly passed and I never sat down to write here. After Orthodox Easter, came the first of May or Labor Day. This holiday is no longer the huge event that it once was under Soviet times, but it means that after Easter, people are off for nearly a week. Then on the 9th of May is Victory Day, referring to WWII, what in Russian translates to the “Great Patriotic War.” There were many Saints days as well and generally May is a relaxing time of year here, unless one is in Peace Corps training.
Personally, I was busy with Russian class, our internship and also participating in the holidays with Ira and Helena. We survived a minor disturbance, where Ira was offended that I didn’t ask if she could come along when I was invited to someone’s dacha. She wanted to go b/c she was interested in the family’s son.
In late April, early May, over a period of about 47 hours, spring struck and suddenly where all had been gray and concrete, barren trees studded with crow’s nest, there was an urgent green. Yards previously festooned with the entrances to the cellars where people store the produce they grow on dachas were carpeted in new grasses, weeds and flowers. The trees immediately had leaves. The suddenness was infectious and as Colorado has no discernable spring, it reminded me a bit of growing up in North Carolina, except for the sudden onslaught of this spring.
It has been unseasonably warm so far and by that I basically mean hot. People are complaining, but it is at least comforting to me to know that it is not normal here for the weather to switch gears from driving, biting cold wind and rain of early spring to a balmy summer heat. The temperature switch was oddly exhausting and I found myself napping when possible between coming home and homework and dinner.
On May Day, I went with Ira to the 20th birthday party of a friend of hers, Marina. Marina is an English teacher and speaks almost flawless English and I think I’ve almost convinced her that I really want to speak Russian with her, despite her superiority in English.
The 20th birthday is a very important one in Ukraine. There’s some significance about even numbers that I don’t entirely grasp, but the 30th and 40th birthdays are also important.
When I got home the day before May Day, Ira was home with her friend, Valentin, who is also a teacher at Ira’s school. We all went shopping for Marina’s gift at every shop along the main thoroughfare in Brovary. Ira had decided that champagne glasses were an appropriate gift and we were to split the cost. After looking in every shop, most of which had almost the same goods for prices that barely varied by a few kopecks, we decided on a set of champagne glasses that I will only describe as being blessed with a great deal of gold ornamentation, as are many goods and clothes here.
On the day of the party, I had to leave a meeting w/ fellow volunteers early to get home for the party and this caused no small amount of discord, set to a backdrop of a good dose of inter-group tension. Nonetheless, Ira, Valentin and I arrived at a party hall about on time for Marina’s birthday, carrying our gift, a fancy bouquet of flowers and Ira’s stereo.
A tradition here for birthdays is to say a set of phrases to the birthday girl or boy and they count how many are said: “I wish you: luck, love, a wealthy husband, a long life, etc.” I tried a new variant on Marina, wishing her the ability to find a good job and was promptly scolded back into the accepted format.
After greeting her family, we went into the room where a long table was set up and nearly choked with dishes of food: meat, salads, vegetables, pickles, more salads, bread. There were probably over 100 dishes of food on a table set up to seat about 20 or 30. There were bottles of vodka, wine and mineral water every 6 chairs or so. I have found that this is the traditional Ukrainian table setup for a party and it is so impressive to come in to such abundance, I imagine the intended effect.
Soon Marina and two of her friends joined us in the dining room. These two dayavushkey (young women) were also English teachers and eager to speak English. They sometimes were funny because they would correct each other’s grammar or pronunciation or choice of words. They also are fond of the phrase, “If I am not mistaken.” They have slight British accents and use British words like “trousers” or “flat.” I tried valiantly to practice Russian, but they were a tough sell. Luckily, there were people there that couldn’t speak English and Ira who knows I want to practice (and even may get grumpy sometimes if people won’t speak Russian with me) was sweet to speak with me sans translation.
A background drama that led up to this party: Marina met the other PCT (Peace Corps Trainees) at the party that Ira and I had. She got Tom, Larry, Larry’s host brother Andrei and Ira and I together at a café to formally invite us to her party the week before. On Marina’s birthday, Tom couldn’t make it b/c he got sick and was in Kyiv and Larry decided that he should work on the workshop and not go to the party, especially because his host brother also couldn’t come.
I don’t know what is normal for here in terms of parties and accepting or declining invitations. There was no way that anyone of us could have said no to Marina’s invitation, but it was no small scandal when neither Tom, Larry nor Andrei came. I had to explain numerous times that I didn’t know Tom or Larry before in America and that I couldn’t explain their behavior. Andrei was especially reviled because they expressed that his behavior was unacceptable for a Ukrainian.
There had been a previous scandal when Larry and Andrei blew off Ira and Marina when they’d made plans to see “Mr. Bean 2” in Kyiv. Thank God for all the homework I had that prevented me from going. I hate Mr. Bean and seeing that film dubbed into Russian with slightly annoying teenagers who won’t speak Russian with me would make me VERY GROUCHY.
Anyway, the stage was already set for more misunderstanding and I do think that Marina was genuinely (and understandably) hurt that these three didn’t show up nor phone to cancel. I find Ira and also Marina to be sensitive to insult and almost looking for it sometimes. I remind myself a lot that Ira is only 20 and as she is moody, I have to work to not take her mood personally. It is probably my comeuppance, as I’m moody and now I see what it is like to live on the other side of the mood. (good pun, if I do say so!)
Back to the party, after a short amount of time, we sat down to begin our feast. I sat with the teenagers, as I keep referring to these young people who not only work full time as teachers, but who also are full time university students, and often work at home, helping to cook and clean or take care of younger siblings.
Then the toasts began. First Marina’s mother gave a toast that brought tears to my eyes, not so much because I understood all of it, but because I felt a bit homesick. We lifted our glasses and then dug into the food. I had a couple of new dishes: 1. Shuba (fur coat) which is a salad with many layers of vegetables such as beet (I’m lucky to so love beets!), shredded potatoes, carrots, intermixed w/ a salted fish that’s not dried and in this version, a lot of what I found out later is excellent caviar. I hadn’t had caviar before and quite liked it. 2. Holodnaya (cold salad) which is uncolored, unflavored jello made from pork, salted w/ bits of pork floating in it. I tried a bit, but didn’t go back. However, I nearly ate an entire bowl of shuba by myself and when I found out the next day how much the caviar costs that was in it, I was more than a little embarrassed. In my defense, there were several bowls of shuba that were untouched when I left, so no one lacked for it.
We had several rounds of toasts, eating all the while. Then it was time for a break. We walked outside a bit, enjoying the now warm weather. We hung out in the room with a stereo and listened to Russian pop, my new fav music. Then it was time to repeat the toasting, drinking, eating part. I was surprised how comfortable I felt, or maybe how welcomed I felt. It is a big deal that people would invite me, basically a stranger, to a family celebration.
After the third round of toasting, drinking and eating, we took another break and I got to speak a bit with Marina’s mother, who was very sweet and kindly spoke slowly in Russian for me. It is a little difficult for me to speak b/c sometimes a small crowd will gather to listen to the Americanka speak and I get a tad nervous with all the attention. Marina was also hovering, making sure that I didn’t need translation. Of course I don’t understand everything, but when it is just conversation, it is more important for me to listen and reply and don’t need to accurately know all facts. At least that is my philosophy.
I also have realized in this time that I had gotten to be rather a language Nazi. I was very frustrated for a time when Ira was translating a lot, especially when I was super slow the first few weeks. She’d translate before I could think and I would despair that I’d never learn. We worked it out and now when she feels the need to translate, she’ll do it to easier Russian, which is very kind of her.
Again, back to the party, we had cake, coffee and more toasts, then I needed to leave as the hour was growing late and I had already negotiated with Ira that I could leave by myself. It is difficult to do anything without the group, although as I am here longer, I find that Ira and Helena seem slightly less worried that I’ll harm myself going alone somewhere. I have even been allowed to go to Kyiv by myself! I joke; it is endearing and also can be greatly frustrating. It also has been a lesson in how important it is to understand the “collective” mentality and one that I’ve made many mistakes in dealing with.
I was walked to the marshrutka stop by all the teenagers and instructed by Marina’s mother to phone her cell phone when I got home, as she warned me that many people had been drinking all day since it was a holiday. I think Marina worries about her minutes, b/c when I phoned, I only got out “privet” and Marina replied, “horasho, horasho” and hung up. I guess my accent gave me away again! :-D (a note: I found out that the first 4 seconds of cellular airtime are free, so people try to speak quickly and hang up by the 4 sec. mark)
The rest of the month was a blur of PC conferences, meetings upon meetings for our internship, studying, trying to do one new thing everyday, instead of class, internet café, trip to Spar (local posh grocery store).
On the 17 May, we gave our workshop at the Unemployment Center. I had volunteered to do the ice breaker and deal with logistics. I did so for 3 reasons:
1. To see how I liked this aspect of event planning
2. To get more interaction with the Unemployment Center staff and
3. To work on my own, to circumvent a particularly strong personality in our group, who was apt to either be very domineering about how everything should be done or very frustrated when people didn’t want to take initiative. It mainly worked.
Our workshop went well – we had 13 participants and the workshop was a brief overview of how to write a Business Plan and with a main emphasis on doing market research. We tried to use interactive exercises and had them break out into work groups a couple of times. My ice breaker was a simple one: I gave everyone nos. and asked them to find the people w/ the same number, thereby forming the groups they’d work in later, then once in group, introduce themselves and find 3 facts they all had in common, besides perhaps working together or living in the same town.
Watching the groups work was interesting as it seemed like there emerged a leader of each group and that what I think of as normal for working in a group, i.e. that everyone who wishes to may speak and their opinion or idea will be heard and noted, wasn’t entirely the case. Our LCF’s, Yulia and Ira, participated and later told us about their experiences. Yulia, for example, was told to pretend she liked sports for the ice breaker when she protested that she didn’t. I thought that there was a premium on finding a “correct” answer versus what I might call critical thinking, but perhaps I’m so expecting to find this here that I’m inventing.
Again my disclaimer that these are only my observations and in no way an attempt to write anything authoritative about “The Ukrainian People” or “Ukrainian Culture.”
A few days after the workshop, we all had our Language Proficiency Interview (LPI), which was an aural exam of our language ability after 2.5 months of intensive Russian. I reviewed and practiced conversing, with a special emphasis on toning down my natural inclination to try to explain concepts greatly beyond my language ability, the result of which is often a look of consternation on the face of my listener.
I tried hard to remind myself that this test was supremely subjective to allay my nervousness – I wanted to do well as a momento of the work I’d done studying and speaking and listening and more studying. But I also tried hard to remember that the fact that I can speak, understand and read to the amount that I can is a huge success, regardless of any test.
In any case, the first question the tester asked was what my name is, which I misunderstood to be a question about where I was living or how I was living, so I answered, what, here in Brovary or in Kyiv? We had a good laugh about that, then went on to converse for about 20 minutes or so.
After the LPI, we basically were done, except for one training by the medical office titled “Safety Day” in which we watched a video about sexual assault and then practiced some easy self defense moves.
I spent the last week packing, dealing with logistics, studying a bit, etc. We had a farewell dinner the penultimate night with Larry’s, Dan’s and my host families at Dan’s flat. I had initially been opposed to this, because I felt that our host families weren’t close, Dan, Larry and I had never gotten particularly close and so why did we need to bother our host families with this pretense?
However, it turned out to be a very pleasant affair and was frankly nice to have some ceremony of saying goodbye. I find that Ukrainians are very fond of certificates, particularly when these certificates are stamped. Yulia gave each host family a stamped certificate of appreciation from Peace Corps and then I gave a impromptu thank you speech in Russian and then tried not to cry. Yulia, always that master of subtlety and perception, patted my knee under the table when she noticed me trying to compose myself.
The next night was the real final night and I spent the day finishing up packing, cooking a meal for Ira and Helena and moving my luggage to Yulia’s for it to be transferred by Peace Corps vehicles later.
For our farewell dinner, I made a reduction sauce of pomegranate and cherry juice, w/ a little lemon juice, then cooked chicken and potatoes in this sauce. There were homemade rolls from focacia dough, a salad with “young” cabbage (the cabbage grown this spring and not allowed to get as big as it could - as opposed to all this “old” cabbage we’ve been eating since I arrived?), carrots, the great ubiquitous cucumber and some hothouse tomatoes. There were brownies with walnuts for desert and we toasted the meal with Ukrainian champagne, which I must admit is OK despite its sweetness.
We had a lovely, low key dinner and then agreeing that we were over-full, took a gulyat (stroll) around the neighborhood in the cool evening air.
In the morning, I hugged Ira when she left for school and Helena waited with me until the marshrutka we hired as a group arrived, kissing me three times as goodbye, then I fought back tears as I rode away from that massive concrete building that had sheltered me since arriving that rainy and cold night.
Back to Kyiv, back to the Piggy and for the first time since we arrived on March 6th in Ukraine, the whole of PC Ukraine Group 24 was back together. We had our close of training conference, replete with much information, feedback sessions and late night carousing in front of the Piggy.
We also found out the result of the LPI, on which I did quite well. There was only one category higher than the one I scored into and only one person achieved that classification. And, if you, gentle reader, will allow me to brag one moment more, there were 7 of us out of our group of 78, who scored into this category that I did. We’ll retake the test at the end of service, to gauge progress and also can optionally do it in six month increments to keep track of progress in the meantime.
On 27th May, we went by bus from the Piggy to the “Teacher’s House,” a beautiful, historic building where we were to swear in as PC Volunteers, no longer Trainees. The first president of independent Ukraine was there, Leonid Kravchuk, as was the US Ambassador, Carlos Pascual, who administered the Oath of Peace Corps Service. Three of our group gave the same speech, one in Ukrainian, one in Russian and one in English. There was a good brass band that played inspirational music, heavy on the Sousa, and about three sub-ministers from various ministries gave speeches that were blessedly short. I hadn’t expected to enjoy the ceremony, but again it was lovely to have an event to celebrate our transition from training to service.
Also present were our host families. We each could invite two members. Shockingly, it was the first time that this had been done and I hope it continues. It was a nice way to be able to publicly commemorate them and also for them to better understand what Peace Corps aims to do in Ukraine. Ira, being a political science student at university, was almost beside herself at having heard Leonid Kravchuk and Carlos Pascual speak. Mr. Pascual is leaving this post soon and it will be interesting to see what the new ambassador will do or not do.
After the ceremony, we had a brief reception with champagne, fruit, cookies and chocolates and milled around, trying not to faint from the heat. Ira and I caught up and though I found myself so strongly wishing that Christopher, my Mom and my Dad could be there, I was really happy that at least one person who was interested was there.
The next day, we all went to PC HQ, where we had more interviews and meetings, dealt with logistics and then all of us CEUME people met with the organization’s American director.
At about 3pm, Bogdana, my coordinator and guardian angel from CEUME, showed up with a taxi to whisk me and my baggage to the new apartment. Since I knew the address, I’d snuck over to the building on Sunday and had walked up to the 6th floor and stared at the door I thought was mine, as well as checked out the neighborhood a bit and the metro stop.
I am still dealing with feeling privileged and spoiled for not only being in Kyiv, but also now for having a flat that is quite close to downtown. I am somewhat getting over this. I didn’t expect or ask for any of this and all I can do is work hard, try to help however I can, be grateful and enjoy.
So, the flat is really nice. It’s a large one room, which means that there is one room other than the kitchen. This room serves as both living room and bedroom and is approximately 25 long X 15 wide of my size 7.5 feet. The kitchen is also relatively large and there is a balcon (the ubiquitous balcony that nearly all apartments have, usually enclosed in glass and useful as storage, small garden, area for drying clothes, etc.) that spans the entire width of the apartment, as the living room/bedroom and kitchen are side by side in the layout. The balcon is 26 X 5 of my feet. The only windows in the apartment are on the balcon side, which faces north west. There is good light in the afternoons and as there is no building close enough to block it, there is something of a view, if only of the tall tree that are around. It’s really quite lovely.
The kitchen only needs a few things in terms of cooking accoutrements and the bathroom has been redone and is REALLY nice. We have hot water and this is the first American-style shower I’ve had since arriving.
Many rental apartments are very different from in the US as the apt. owner is likely to leave many personal effects there, such as clothes, books, knickknacks, many dishes, etc. This apt. has almost none of these and to my UTTER shock, there is no rug hanging on the wall. There is a divan (couch pulled out into a bed) in one corner of the room as my bed and another divan as a couch, as well as a chair. There is the obligatory wall o’shkof, a big wooden and darkly stained piece of furniture that is a long series of shelves and a sort of armoir that serves as closet. This, too, incredibly, is sans landlord possessions. There is an old color TV that I haven’t yet figured out how to turn on, but will ask for instructions.
The kitchen holds the common linoleum table and the stools that are topped by embroidered seat covers. The cabinets have sweet periwinkle flowers painted on them and there are many cabinets and dishes. The refrigerator is charmingly vocal but clean and working.
The hallway entrance is pretty large and there is another shkof there for coats and shoes.
The piece d’resistence is of course the telephone. Hurrah!
I’m very lucky and so grateful to have landed in this lovely home.
Tomorrow I will go to work and today as soon as I can make myself get out of this sanctuary, will go explore the neighborhood, try to find a reasonable grocery store and also the way to the Dnipro river, which is quite close by.
Tune in soon for the latest installment, which I promise won’t be so long in coming as this latest one.
28 April 2003
Easter Bunny, bawk, bawk
Sunday 27 April is Orthodox Easter. On Saturday, Helena got up at 6am to begin cooking. She is an excellent cook and in particular, an amazing baker. She made 6 or so loaves of bread, 3 of which were intricately decorated w/ small pieces of dough. I photographed them, so they will eventually be up on my website.
When I got back from Russian class on Sat., I watched how they decorated egg. Helena brought from outside some small leaves, I think just weeds, but ones w/ pretty leaves. She wet the leaves and placed them on the egg surface, then wrapped a piece of cut up panty hose around, tying this with string to secure it. She’d had about 8 onions worth of onion skin boiling for some time, and this had created a natural yellow-orange dye. She boiled the eggs in this mixture for 7 minutes and then unwrapped them. I also photographed these, and they were so pretty and natural looking. They sort of reminded me of a Martha Stewart project, but really I think that woman has tainted the notion all crafts and rustic arts for my generation. Uck. It’s like she has taken the notion of making something pretty by hand at home and patented it and co-opted the idea for her own profit. Don’t even get me started.
Sunday morning at 4am, we got up, and at 4:45am, walked down to the church. It was cold. It was dark. I am quite the morning person, so my language skills were really at their best at that early hour. Not. As we walked, we were soon in a large crowd of people, all carrying baskets w/ embroidered fabric covering them. The baskets were filled with kolbasa, meat, the decorated bread (either homemade or store bought, as some people are moving away from traditional arts), decorated eggs and candles.
I could hear the bells ringing as we approached and soon we were walking among a huge throng in the rising light. We met a friend of Ira’s along the way and all walked together.
At the church, which is partly under construction as so many are here (churches were prohibited during Soviet times, so they’re still being built and enlarged some 10 years after independence), we stood in a curving line of people, all with baskets in front of them on the ground, waiting for the priest to come and bless us and our baskets of food. We unfortunately stood under the bell tower and those bells that sounded so pretty half a km. away were less melodic just above head.
After some time, a beared and bespectacled priest came around. He carried a small, handmade broom that is ubiquitous here. His helper carried a bucket of water and the priest liberally splashed water on people and baskets alike, saying all the while, “Kristos Vas Kres - Jesus has risen.” I only got a little water sprayed on me, as I was cowering behind Ira like the unbaptized person I am, but many people were quite drenched. Hey, it was cold and I’m not an Orthodox Catholic, so little holy water was wasted on me.
We got home around 7am and Helena, who apparently enjoys cooking for this holiday, but not getting up early to get wet for it, was waiting. She spread out all the food she’d spent the day before preparing and that we’d had blessed: pork roast, roasted chicken, the fancy breads (some rolled w/ raisins, some rolled w/ poppy seed and raisin), a very typical Ukrainian salad (krab, canned corn, rice, onion and mayo) and also the ubiquitious kolbasa and cheese. We opened a bottle of the sweet dessert wine that Ira so loves and toasted: “Kristos Vas Kres - Jesus has risen” and then the reply, “Vaistas Vas Kras - it is true he has risen.” It is tradition to say this 3 times.
We then played a game I don’t understand entirely, but which involves trying to break another person’s egg shell. I think I won, but maybe they were being polite.
Then we slept til about 1pm and then got up and ate again. I like this holiday, except for those damn bells.
Sunday 27 April is Orthodox Easter. On Saturday, Helena got up at 6am to begin cooking. She is an excellent cook and in particular, an amazing baker. She made 6 or so loaves of bread, 3 of which were intricately decorated w/ small pieces of dough. I photographed them, so they will eventually be up on my website.
When I got back from Russian class on Sat., I watched how they decorated egg. Helena brought from outside some small leaves, I think just weeds, but ones w/ pretty leaves. She wet the leaves and placed them on the egg surface, then wrapped a piece of cut up panty hose around, tying this with string to secure it. She’d had about 8 onions worth of onion skin boiling for some time, and this had created a natural yellow-orange dye. She boiled the eggs in this mixture for 7 minutes and then unwrapped them. I also photographed these, and they were so pretty and natural looking. They sort of reminded me of a Martha Stewart project, but really I think that woman has tainted the notion all crafts and rustic arts for my generation. Uck. It’s like she has taken the notion of making something pretty by hand at home and patented it and co-opted the idea for her own profit. Don’t even get me started.
Sunday morning at 4am, we got up, and at 4:45am, walked down to the church. It was cold. It was dark. I am quite the morning person, so my language skills were really at their best at that early hour. Not. As we walked, we were soon in a large crowd of people, all carrying baskets w/ embroidered fabric covering them. The baskets were filled with kolbasa, meat, the decorated bread (either homemade or store bought, as some people are moving away from traditional arts), decorated eggs and candles.
I could hear the bells ringing as we approached and soon we were walking among a huge throng in the rising light. We met a friend of Ira’s along the way and all walked together.
At the church, which is partly under construction as so many are here (churches were prohibited during Soviet times, so they’re still being built and enlarged some 10 years after independence), we stood in a curving line of people, all with baskets in front of them on the ground, waiting for the priest to come and bless us and our baskets of food. We unfortunately stood under the bell tower and those bells that sounded so pretty half a km. away were less melodic just above head.
After some time, a beared and bespectacled priest came around. He carried a small, handmade broom that is ubiquitous here. His helper carried a bucket of water and the priest liberally splashed water on people and baskets alike, saying all the while, “Kristos Vas Kres - Jesus has risen.” I only got a little water sprayed on me, as I was cowering behind Ira like the unbaptized person I am, but many people were quite drenched. Hey, it was cold and I’m not an Orthodox Catholic, so little holy water was wasted on me.
We got home around 7am and Helena, who apparently enjoys cooking for this holiday, but not getting up early to get wet for it, was waiting. She spread out all the food she’d spent the day before preparing and that we’d had blessed: pork roast, roasted chicken, the fancy breads (some rolled w/ raisins, some rolled w/ poppy seed and raisin), a very typical Ukrainian salad (krab, canned corn, rice, onion and mayo) and also the ubiquitious kolbasa and cheese. We opened a bottle of the sweet dessert wine that Ira so loves and toasted: “Kristos Vas Kres - Jesus has risen” and then the reply, “Vaistas Vas Kras - it is true he has risen.” It is tradition to say this 3 times.
We then played a game I don’t understand entirely, but which involves trying to break another person’s egg shell. I think I won, but maybe they were being polite.
Then we slept til about 1pm and then got up and ate again. I like this holiday, except for those damn bells.
20 -24 April
On Sunday, we finished our conference and by lunchtime were whisked away to do our site visit. Site visit is the time when we visit the organization where we’ll work for 3 days. There are 5 other people in my group that will work with CEUME’s regional offices (Lviv, Donestk, Kharkiv, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk), so all of the PCT’s and our counterparts went to the central CEUME office in Kyiv via taxi. I was a little tired and dehydrated from going out the prior night to a very cool club called “44” that is sort of a jazz club and had a good mixture of Americans, Europeans and Ukrainians. Being there was the first time I’ve felt “off-duty” or somehow relaxed in a way I used to think was normal.
Anyway, I’m in the taxi w/ Nancy (fellow PCT going to Lviv), her coordinator, and Bogdana is sitting up front. I am dizzy, we are driving fast through the city and suddenly we’re downtown, right across from the “Sports Palace” where major sporting events are held, like the recent Ukraine/Spain football match. Kyiv is a pretty city with many fancy old and new buildings, which how I am able to describe the architecture. It is so big city and I was feeling so country mouse. Or maybe tired mouse.
I wasn’t entirely in my body and we were just about to meet our director and then I was going to go to my apartment for the next few days. It was just so much and I wished that I’d invested in sleep the evening before and not socializing. Socializing is important also I’m just too old anymore to get away properly on little sleep.
We enter the building and go up to the office. It’s modern and western style and we all sit down in a sunny, large conference room. We meet Oleksander, Sasha, who is the director of the organization. He introduces himself and talks about the organization, then asks the PCT’s to go around and talk about our experience and what we hope to bring to the organization. I’m a little panicked at this impromptu public speaking event, but decide to talk about the web development, of course, and about my new interest in event planning. Everyone goes around and does their spiel and it’s very interesting to learn about what my fellow PCT’s have done.
We then walk a couple of blocks to a very nice restaurant, Pervek, that serves traditional Ukrainian food. The wait staff wears costumes that I might associate w/ some sort of Bovarian festival and cleavage abounds, at least among the female staff. I ate salo for the first time! This is perhaps the national food of Ukraine, or at least tied w/ borscht. Salo is basically pork fat, but it’s really so much more. I ate some that was liberally mixed with garlic and I was shocked how great it is. I made the faux pas of mentioning how much I liked the “garlic butter.” I knew about salo, but I thought it was different or looked different. (For a full treatise on salo, read the FAQ sheet I have on this site, under PC Ukraine, of course.)
Anyway, it was more “stranger in a strange land” time - we ate at this most posh restaurant and I’m trying to make conversation with all these new people and trying to not appear as overwhelmed by all this niceness. I think maybe one day I will finally accept that things will be so different than I expected, but I haven’t yet.
I actually had a conversation about this with another PCT that will work in Kyiv. We admitted to being sort of disappointed that we aren’t suffering in this experience. I mean, I knew that I’d be in a city and I knew that by virtue of being in Europe, albeit Eastern Europe, that things would be relatively nice, at least compared to doing work in rural Mongolia, for example. But I still expected to work somewhere that might not have a computer, that was really grassroots, where people wouldn’t speak English better than me.
I want to be clear that I’m not complaining. CEUME is doing important work and it is a tremendous opportunity for me to work with there. I think I will learn a great deal and that I will be able to find areas to work that will be satisfying and that I might feel like I’m helping somehow. I’m just prattling on about how this experience is difficult for me, and how the difficulties are so unexpected.
One thing that is interesting in keeping this journal is the public nature of it. Some friends have written how they think it’s either interesting or brave of me to be so relatively frank here and write about feelings, etc. I also think that it is interesting b/c I’m realizing that I need to be careful about who and what I write. I have tried to only write about my experiences on purpose, as other’s stories are theirs to tell. It will be interesting to see if I ever get in trouble w/ this public space and my words.
Back to our original subject, after lunch, Bogdana showed me to where I’d stay for the duration of the site visit. I know that this concept must be tiring to read already, but yes, I was a little surprised that the apartment was a large, renovated, Western-style flat, complete with modern washing machine. My favorite part of the apartment is the fancy paint job, with sparkles mixed in. At night I kept feeling like I was dizzy and seeing stars as the glitter would sparkle in the light.
I spent the next couple of days at CEUME. Sasha kindly took time to orient me, I met many people who work there and got to go to a very interesting press conference and tour at a hospital for children victims of Chernobyl. Apparently there are many cases of children of cleanup workers and of people who remained in the area getting quite ill, and there were many young children at this hospital.
In terms of my actual job, I am unsure exactly what I’ll be doing, but it seems that in addition to some website work that they need help with, I could be working on event planning, conducting seminars for staff and/or the public about IT issues and/or doing whatever they need.
At the apartment, I watched “Emma” dubbed in Russian. I hate dubbing, but at least it was good practice for language. I also got to eat Chinese food and I was shocked how delicious it taste!!! I guess I have missed eating non-Ukrainian food a little bit, although I really have no complaints about it.
On Thursday, after talking to my PC Regional Coordinator about the site visit, I returned to Brovary. I had bought a chocolate Easter bunny at a cute bakery in Kyiv and thus armed, knocked on Ira and Helena’s door. It felt so good to come “home” and see them! We had a great dinner and I felt so happy that someone knows me and was happy to see me. Slowly things become more familiar and slowly I feel more settled. Of course this process takes time, but the meantime while it is taking its time can be rather lonely.
On Sunday, we finished our conference and by lunchtime were whisked away to do our site visit. Site visit is the time when we visit the organization where we’ll work for 3 days. There are 5 other people in my group that will work with CEUME’s regional offices (Lviv, Donestk, Kharkiv, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk), so all of the PCT’s and our counterparts went to the central CEUME office in Kyiv via taxi. I was a little tired and dehydrated from going out the prior night to a very cool club called “44” that is sort of a jazz club and had a good mixture of Americans, Europeans and Ukrainians. Being there was the first time I’ve felt “off-duty” or somehow relaxed in a way I used to think was normal.
Anyway, I’m in the taxi w/ Nancy (fellow PCT going to Lviv), her coordinator, and Bogdana is sitting up front. I am dizzy, we are driving fast through the city and suddenly we’re downtown, right across from the “Sports Palace” where major sporting events are held, like the recent Ukraine/Spain football match. Kyiv is a pretty city with many fancy old and new buildings, which how I am able to describe the architecture. It is so big city and I was feeling so country mouse. Or maybe tired mouse.
I wasn’t entirely in my body and we were just about to meet our director and then I was going to go to my apartment for the next few days. It was just so much and I wished that I’d invested in sleep the evening before and not socializing. Socializing is important also I’m just too old anymore to get away properly on little sleep.
We enter the building and go up to the office. It’s modern and western style and we all sit down in a sunny, large conference room. We meet Oleksander, Sasha, who is the director of the organization. He introduces himself and talks about the organization, then asks the PCT’s to go around and talk about our experience and what we hope to bring to the organization. I’m a little panicked at this impromptu public speaking event, but decide to talk about the web development, of course, and about my new interest in event planning. Everyone goes around and does their spiel and it’s very interesting to learn about what my fellow PCT’s have done.
We then walk a couple of blocks to a very nice restaurant, Pervek, that serves traditional Ukrainian food. The wait staff wears costumes that I might associate w/ some sort of Bovarian festival and cleavage abounds, at least among the female staff. I ate salo for the first time! This is perhaps the national food of Ukraine, or at least tied w/ borscht. Salo is basically pork fat, but it’s really so much more. I ate some that was liberally mixed with garlic and I was shocked how great it is. I made the faux pas of mentioning how much I liked the “garlic butter.” I knew about salo, but I thought it was different or looked different. (For a full treatise on salo, read the FAQ sheet I have on this site, under PC Ukraine, of course.)
Anyway, it was more “stranger in a strange land” time - we ate at this most posh restaurant and I’m trying to make conversation with all these new people and trying to not appear as overwhelmed by all this niceness. I think maybe one day I will finally accept that things will be so different than I expected, but I haven’t yet.
I actually had a conversation about this with another PCT that will work in Kyiv. We admitted to being sort of disappointed that we aren’t suffering in this experience. I mean, I knew that I’d be in a city and I knew that by virtue of being in Europe, albeit Eastern Europe, that things would be relatively nice, at least compared to doing work in rural Mongolia, for example. But I still expected to work somewhere that might not have a computer, that was really grassroots, where people wouldn’t speak English better than me.
I want to be clear that I’m not complaining. CEUME is doing important work and it is a tremendous opportunity for me to work with there. I think I will learn a great deal and that I will be able to find areas to work that will be satisfying and that I might feel like I’m helping somehow. I’m just prattling on about how this experience is difficult for me, and how the difficulties are so unexpected.
One thing that is interesting in keeping this journal is the public nature of it. Some friends have written how they think it’s either interesting or brave of me to be so relatively frank here and write about feelings, etc. I also think that it is interesting b/c I’m realizing that I need to be careful about who and what I write. I have tried to only write about my experiences on purpose, as other’s stories are theirs to tell. It will be interesting to see if I ever get in trouble w/ this public space and my words.
Back to our original subject, after lunch, Bogdana showed me to where I’d stay for the duration of the site visit. I know that this concept must be tiring to read already, but yes, I was a little surprised that the apartment was a large, renovated, Western-style flat, complete with modern washing machine. My favorite part of the apartment is the fancy paint job, with sparkles mixed in. At night I kept feeling like I was dizzy and seeing stars as the glitter would sparkle in the light.
I spent the next couple of days at CEUME. Sasha kindly took time to orient me, I met many people who work there and got to go to a very interesting press conference and tour at a hospital for children victims of Chernobyl. Apparently there are many cases of children of cleanup workers and of people who remained in the area getting quite ill, and there were many young children at this hospital.
In terms of my actual job, I am unsure exactly what I’ll be doing, but it seems that in addition to some website work that they need help with, I could be working on event planning, conducting seminars for staff and/or the public about IT issues and/or doing whatever they need.
At the apartment, I watched “Emma” dubbed in Russian. I hate dubbing, but at least it was good practice for language. I also got to eat Chinese food and I was shocked how delicious it taste!!! I guess I have missed eating non-Ukrainian food a little bit, although I really have no complaints about it.
On Thursday, after talking to my PC Regional Coordinator about the site visit, I returned to Brovary. I had bought a chocolate Easter bunny at a cute bakery in Kyiv and thus armed, knocked on Ira and Helena’s door. It felt so good to come “home” and see them! We had a great dinner and I felt so happy that someone knows me and was happy to see me. Slowly things become more familiar and slowly I feel more settled. Of course this process takes time, but the meantime while it is taking its time can be rather lonely.
Thursday 17 April through 20 April, I was in Kyiv at the beloved PiG for our mid-training conference. Dan, Larry and I made our way, all by ourselves, to Kyiv. So you are duly impressed, this involved taking the now-familiar marshrutka to the Losina metro stop, a transfer through byzantine hallways at the Chreschiatik station to another metro line, exiting the metro to then walking underground on one of the many pathways that allow one to cross streets w/o walking in traffic. We then completed our journey with a final marshrutka, where I got to say the phrase I’ve been practicing for some time, “Hastonivite, pozjalista - stop here, please.”
An aside: I heavily employ mnemonic devices to learn language. For example, I remember “hastonovite” because it reminds me of “hasta la vista, baby.” I remember “newdeli - week” because it reminds me of “new dehli.” I remember “pamogat - to help” b/c it reminds me of pomegranate. Sometimes I wonder if these are too complicated, but they amuse me and seem to help.
Anyway, it was surprisingly good to see everyone, or at least the 40 or so of us who are in the “Business” group. There was much gossip and comparing of home stay experiences. Rumors of possession of particularly unsavory porno and some other such nonsense predominated the first couple of days, but some gossip that was confirmed to be true was equally juicy. I hereby retract any previous statements that our group 24 is boring and not living up to PC standards of hedonism.
For the three days we were there, we had seminars and interviews each day from 9am to 5pm. On Friday night, we had a grand dinner where we met our Coordinators, who are our counterparts from the organizations that we’ll work with. Most had traveled from far away, but mine, Bogdana, of course just came from Kyiv.
Bogdana is probably around my age and speaks English better than I do. She is the coordinator for trainings for CEUME and I hope to work with her, traveling around the country organizing and running such events. We talked a lot about traveling and also about how she had lived in DC for a year. She’s urbane and very used to working with Americans, so again I see that my experience will be so different than I expected.
An aside: I heavily employ mnemonic devices to learn language. For example, I remember “hastonovite” because it reminds me of “hasta la vista, baby.” I remember “newdeli - week” because it reminds me of “new dehli.” I remember “pamogat - to help” b/c it reminds me of pomegranate. Sometimes I wonder if these are too complicated, but they amuse me and seem to help.
Anyway, it was surprisingly good to see everyone, or at least the 40 or so of us who are in the “Business” group. There was much gossip and comparing of home stay experiences. Rumors of possession of particularly unsavory porno and some other such nonsense predominated the first couple of days, but some gossip that was confirmed to be true was equally juicy. I hereby retract any previous statements that our group 24 is boring and not living up to PC standards of hedonism.
For the three days we were there, we had seminars and interviews each day from 9am to 5pm. On Friday night, we had a grand dinner where we met our Coordinators, who are our counterparts from the organizations that we’ll work with. Most had traveled from far away, but mine, Bogdana, of course just came from Kyiv.
Bogdana is probably around my age and speaks English better than I do. She is the coordinator for trainings for CEUME and I hope to work with her, traveling around the country organizing and running such events. We talked a lot about traveling and also about how she had lived in DC for a year. She’s urbane and very used to working with Americans, so again I see that my experience will be so different than I expected.
A quick note to follow up that the party was interesting - a funny mixture of young Ukrainians, young to middle aged PCT's and great pizza. Who knew that shredded, sauteed carrots, onion and mayo would be so good on pizza? Ira was disapointed that we wouldn't dance much, despite my providing an example. Ah, well, now she's learned a valuable cultural lesson that Americans don't dance. (apologies to those Americans that do, of course)
14 April 2003
11 Apr. 2003
“But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?”
- Albert Camus
OK fine, I got this quote off a cereal box. A generic brand cereal box. Nonetheless, it accurately sums up the joy that I am feeling for having pursued my dreams. The payoff is huge, when one is lucky, from following the voice that says crazy things like, “We need to leave this rich life in CO and go to Ukraine, learn Russian, leave all friends, family, dog and a strong love behind, ok? Whattaya say?”
We are preparing the house to host a party tonight. I made chocolate chip cookies (I will later devote an entire journal entry to the wonders of Ukrainian and Russian chocolate), Helena is making a pizza, Ukrainian style (she’s sautéing carrots and onions right now, and I’m suspicious about the package of ketchup on the table) and Ira has been rearranging the furniture and cleaning. We invited a nearly equal number of Americans to Ukrainians and most of the Ukrainians that are coming speak some English. I think I may enjoy preparing for the party as much or more than the party, but that’s ok, too.
I feel so comfortable with Ira and Helena and especially so when we are all crammed in the kitchen, discussing food, weather, whatever questions they think up for me about the US and Helena is often very curious about Costa Rica. I also ask tons of questions for them and have become more adept at refusing more food. I am very lucky that providence saw fit to match us together.
I also could devote a journal entry to the common thread of women in their kitchens. As much as I enjoy cooking, I also enjoy the time in the kitchen with friends or family. (MOM!! Stephanie!! Jules, Free!! McGill!!) I love how quickly I felt home in the kitchen, even before I had 5 words of Russian down. I love how Helena has a system of doing things in her kitchen, which of course reminds me of my Mom in her kitchen (although Mom has more complex systems set up in her kitchen!) and reminds me of Dona Christina in her kitchen in Puntarenas (Costa Rica) and reminds me of countless women I know and have known in their kitchens and also of a few select men, of which right now I can only think of Charlie of Chez Wicker. I think that for me, part of what I cherish the most from traveling and living abroad is finding human commonalities that transcend culture and borders. I’m not prettying anything up here, there are certainly differences and big ones between peoples, but I like to remember the similarities, too.
“But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?”
- Albert Camus
OK fine, I got this quote off a cereal box. A generic brand cereal box. Nonetheless, it accurately sums up the joy that I am feeling for having pursued my dreams. The payoff is huge, when one is lucky, from following the voice that says crazy things like, “We need to leave this rich life in CO and go to Ukraine, learn Russian, leave all friends, family, dog and a strong love behind, ok? Whattaya say?”
We are preparing the house to host a party tonight. I made chocolate chip cookies (I will later devote an entire journal entry to the wonders of Ukrainian and Russian chocolate), Helena is making a pizza, Ukrainian style (she’s sautéing carrots and onions right now, and I’m suspicious about the package of ketchup on the table) and Ira has been rearranging the furniture and cleaning. We invited a nearly equal number of Americans to Ukrainians and most of the Ukrainians that are coming speak some English. I think I may enjoy preparing for the party as much or more than the party, but that’s ok, too.
I feel so comfortable with Ira and Helena and especially so when we are all crammed in the kitchen, discussing food, weather, whatever questions they think up for me about the US and Helena is often very curious about Costa Rica. I also ask tons of questions for them and have become more adept at refusing more food. I am very lucky that providence saw fit to match us together.
I also could devote a journal entry to the common thread of women in their kitchens. As much as I enjoy cooking, I also enjoy the time in the kitchen with friends or family. (MOM!! Stephanie!! Jules, Free!! McGill!!) I love how quickly I felt home in the kitchen, even before I had 5 words of Russian down. I love how Helena has a system of doing things in her kitchen, which of course reminds me of my Mom in her kitchen (although Mom has more complex systems set up in her kitchen!) and reminds me of Dona Christina in her kitchen in Puntarenas (Costa Rica) and reminds me of countless women I know and have known in their kitchens and also of a few select men, of which right now I can only think of Charlie of Chez Wicker. I think that for me, part of what I cherish the most from traveling and living abroad is finding human commonalities that transcend culture and borders. I’m not prettying anything up here, there are certainly differences and big ones between peoples, but I like to remember the similarities, too.
10 April 2003
Today my Russian class walked to the train station to do some “on the ground recon.” I realized as we walked around, dodging small lakes of muddy water, that I’ve been so coddled and protected since I arrived and have slowly begun to do more for myself. It’s such a different experience that what I was in Costa Rica, when I did everything for myself from the get go. That was hard, I’ll admit. I realize that literally, I’ve been barely looking up very much, partly because of ice, but also b/c it’s like there’s only so much I can deal with at a time. Everyday I look up a little more and see something new – a store here, the vast horizon of high-rise apartment buildings, huge fields of mud destined to be soccer fields in the summer. I realize this is just the tip of an iceberg that I hope I can explore.
The other funny thing is that every time I learn a new word or grammar structure in Russian, I hear it, then immediately think, wow, what a coincidence that people are saying that today, right when I learned it! Of course, I realize that they’ve probably been saying this all along and I just didn’t understand before. Our language training is imminently practical and I think I’ll be able to navigate after training. People have been complimentary about my learning, which is encouraging.
Today my Russian class walked to the train station to do some “on the ground recon.” I realized as we walked around, dodging small lakes of muddy water, that I’ve been so coddled and protected since I arrived and have slowly begun to do more for myself. It’s such a different experience that what I was in Costa Rica, when I did everything for myself from the get go. That was hard, I’ll admit. I realize that literally, I’ve been barely looking up very much, partly because of ice, but also b/c it’s like there’s only so much I can deal with at a time. Everyday I look up a little more and see something new – a store here, the vast horizon of high-rise apartment buildings, huge fields of mud destined to be soccer fields in the summer. I realize this is just the tip of an iceberg that I hope I can explore.
The other funny thing is that every time I learn a new word or grammar structure in Russian, I hear it, then immediately think, wow, what a coincidence that people are saying that today, right when I learned it! Of course, I realize that they’ve probably been saying this all along and I just didn’t understand before. Our language training is imminently practical and I think I’ll be able to navigate after training. People have been complimentary about my learning, which is encouraging.
9 Apr. 2003
Today we met again with the unemployment center to go over our project and also a timeline. We met with my favorite person there, Svetlana, who is super positive and business like and also I think so beautiful. The women here are just amazing beautiful. I mean, of course not everyone, but so many are really stunning. Some try to “enhance” this beauty with hair color not found in nature or nearly cartoonish makeup (I know, cultural judgment, not observation).
We are going to plan and present a workshop for center employees about using criteria to determine if a business idea and or plan is viable, with an emphasis on small scale market research. Svetlana told us today that she will invite people from other employment centers in the Kyiv oblast to participate. It’s exciting. I hope that this center will apply to get a PC volunteer down the road. I think it would be a great place to work and has lots of potential for development.
Today at the meeting, I was heartened b/c I understood many words. This is partly because I have reached a nice level where the language is gelling for me and also b/c they spoke in Russian and not Ukrainian, as they have in prior meetings. I got a lot, which I verified b/c of the translation. Sometimes I think I understand, then will find out that basically I’ve been making things up based on facial expressions, assumptions, etc. Some assumptions are quite humorous and fantastical and lead to funny situations. Wish I could think of an example right now, but alas.
It is very interesting to me how these languages are sorted out and that so many people speak at least 2 languages in their daily life. Officially, all government documents and meetings are required to be in Ukrainian and it is the official language. However, many people speak Russian as well and most people speak the mixture language, Dvoryak. I am glad to be learning proper Russian, as I think it could have good applications later and would allow me to go nearly anywhere in the former Soviet republic and be able to communicate a bit. On the other hand, I need to know at least niceties and some vocabulary in Ukrainian, as many stores, nearly all food and transport is in Ukrainian.
Luckily, there is some cross over in vocabulary and I have no idea about grammar. I know the Ukrainian alphabet, and it is only 3 or 4 letters different from the Russian alphabet.
Another demarcation for the language is geography. Western Ukraine is more nationalistic and tends to speak Ukrainian. Eastern Ukraine identifies itself as Russian by ethnicity and speaks mainly Russian. These are textbook answers and I’m looking forward to exploring the nuances. Language is endless fascinating to me and this Russian/Ukrainian mixture is no less.
Do take all of this with a grain of salt, as I have been studying this all of one month.
Tonight I went to an aerobics class at a nearby gym. I can’t remember if I wrote about going to this gym before, but I went once and just did weights. The class, which they call, “shaping” (as in English just like that but pronounced w/ their accent) is taught by a super fit woman who emphasizes keeping ones shoulders down and back (great) and also moving at all times to the fast beat of techno with high impact motions (less great). Somehow (!) she knew I wasn’t from ‘round these parts and when I didn’t her instructions, she would come over and physically move me into position. I really liked how she seemed to know most everyone’s names and she helped the less fit people to do slower exercises or with lower impact.
The style of dress was interesting for me, in that I realize I’m so used to the US and everyone having lots of clothes for every occasion. One has outdoors clothes, one has workout or gym clothes, one has fancy clothes. The women had varying degrees of shoes and I must admit to worrying about a couple who were wearing ballet slippers. Worrying b/c I have become so brainwashed that one must have full space-age, polymer cross-training shoes or one certainly can’t work out properly. There also is, um, less emphasis on well-fitted jog bras. ‘Nough said.
It was funny too b/c one woman kept getting phone calls on her mobile, but the teacher did razz her a little bit for talking during class. In the same building as the gym is some sort of martial arts studio. There are photos of the people doing this art and it is really beautiful and they’re super flexible. There are swords involved, but it’s not the Japanese sword art whose name escapes me now. Kendo, that’s it.
As I got ready to go to class, I realized that what I needed to wear to class was the one piece of clothing with an American flag. Could I have been more conspicuous? No matter, no one tried to rip off my shirt and burn it or anything. I just think it’s funny b/c I really would never wear the flag on clothes, just not my style, but I didn’t even consider that when this shirt made it into my allotted 100 lbs. of baggage. I just thought, “good workout shirt,” not “obvious sign that I’m American.”
To be clear: I am a patriot, but I just find wearing the flag on my chest a bit conspicuous. I will never sew a maple leaf to my backpack or anything like that, but nor do I want to be walking around waving the red, white and blue and speaking English loudly. (Americans are, um, renowned for being very loud in public relative to other peoples)
At the end of class, our aerobics queen ordered everyone to hang suspended from a bar for at least 5 seconds. All in all it was very interesting and if I can walk tomorrow w/o a cane, I’ll be very excited. I learned a new word, “rukki” which I thought meant “march,” but afterwards I looked it up in the dictionary and it means “hands.” :-0 It was exciting to understand certain words, though, such as “right,” “left,” and “straight.”
Time for sleep. The upstairs neighbor has decided it’s time to do some construction; I’m still trying to figure out what power tool he’s using. This will be a good test of my earplugs. I love earplugs. They make me a good neighbor and a well-rested girl. Duje noch.
Today we met again with the unemployment center to go over our project and also a timeline. We met with my favorite person there, Svetlana, who is super positive and business like and also I think so beautiful. The women here are just amazing beautiful. I mean, of course not everyone, but so many are really stunning. Some try to “enhance” this beauty with hair color not found in nature or nearly cartoonish makeup (I know, cultural judgment, not observation).
We are going to plan and present a workshop for center employees about using criteria to determine if a business idea and or plan is viable, with an emphasis on small scale market research. Svetlana told us today that she will invite people from other employment centers in the Kyiv oblast to participate. It’s exciting. I hope that this center will apply to get a PC volunteer down the road. I think it would be a great place to work and has lots of potential for development.
Today at the meeting, I was heartened b/c I understood many words. This is partly because I have reached a nice level where the language is gelling for me and also b/c they spoke in Russian and not Ukrainian, as they have in prior meetings. I got a lot, which I verified b/c of the translation. Sometimes I think I understand, then will find out that basically I’ve been making things up based on facial expressions, assumptions, etc. Some assumptions are quite humorous and fantastical and lead to funny situations. Wish I could think of an example right now, but alas.
It is very interesting to me how these languages are sorted out and that so many people speak at least 2 languages in their daily life. Officially, all government documents and meetings are required to be in Ukrainian and it is the official language. However, many people speak Russian as well and most people speak the mixture language, Dvoryak. I am glad to be learning proper Russian, as I think it could have good applications later and would allow me to go nearly anywhere in the former Soviet republic and be able to communicate a bit. On the other hand, I need to know at least niceties and some vocabulary in Ukrainian, as many stores, nearly all food and transport is in Ukrainian.
Luckily, there is some cross over in vocabulary and I have no idea about grammar. I know the Ukrainian alphabet, and it is only 3 or 4 letters different from the Russian alphabet.
Another demarcation for the language is geography. Western Ukraine is more nationalistic and tends to speak Ukrainian. Eastern Ukraine identifies itself as Russian by ethnicity and speaks mainly Russian. These are textbook answers and I’m looking forward to exploring the nuances. Language is endless fascinating to me and this Russian/Ukrainian mixture is no less.
Do take all of this with a grain of salt, as I have been studying this all of one month.
Tonight I went to an aerobics class at a nearby gym. I can’t remember if I wrote about going to this gym before, but I went once and just did weights. The class, which they call, “shaping” (as in English just like that but pronounced w/ their accent) is taught by a super fit woman who emphasizes keeping ones shoulders down and back (great) and also moving at all times to the fast beat of techno with high impact motions (less great). Somehow (!) she knew I wasn’t from ‘round these parts and when I didn’t her instructions, she would come over and physically move me into position. I really liked how she seemed to know most everyone’s names and she helped the less fit people to do slower exercises or with lower impact.
The style of dress was interesting for me, in that I realize I’m so used to the US and everyone having lots of clothes for every occasion. One has outdoors clothes, one has workout or gym clothes, one has fancy clothes. The women had varying degrees of shoes and I must admit to worrying about a couple who were wearing ballet slippers. Worrying b/c I have become so brainwashed that one must have full space-age, polymer cross-training shoes or one certainly can’t work out properly. There also is, um, less emphasis on well-fitted jog bras. ‘Nough said.
It was funny too b/c one woman kept getting phone calls on her mobile, but the teacher did razz her a little bit for talking during class. In the same building as the gym is some sort of martial arts studio. There are photos of the people doing this art and it is really beautiful and they’re super flexible. There are swords involved, but it’s not the Japanese sword art whose name escapes me now. Kendo, that’s it.
As I got ready to go to class, I realized that what I needed to wear to class was the one piece of clothing with an American flag. Could I have been more conspicuous? No matter, no one tried to rip off my shirt and burn it or anything. I just think it’s funny b/c I really would never wear the flag on clothes, just not my style, but I didn’t even consider that when this shirt made it into my allotted 100 lbs. of baggage. I just thought, “good workout shirt,” not “obvious sign that I’m American.”
To be clear: I am a patriot, but I just find wearing the flag on my chest a bit conspicuous. I will never sew a maple leaf to my backpack or anything like that, but nor do I want to be walking around waving the red, white and blue and speaking English loudly. (Americans are, um, renowned for being very loud in public relative to other peoples)
At the end of class, our aerobics queen ordered everyone to hang suspended from a bar for at least 5 seconds. All in all it was very interesting and if I can walk tomorrow w/o a cane, I’ll be very excited. I learned a new word, “rukki” which I thought meant “march,” but afterwards I looked it up in the dictionary and it means “hands.” :-0 It was exciting to understand certain words, though, such as “right,” “left,” and “straight.”
Time for sleep. The upstairs neighbor has decided it’s time to do some construction; I’m still trying to figure out what power tool he’s using. This will be a good test of my earplugs. I love earplugs. They make me a good neighbor and a well-rested girl. Duje noch.
09 April 2003
Today I saw a new weather icon: the sunny, rainy, snowy symbol. Yeah, don’t see that at home much! However, sunny, rainy, snowy pretty much describes the weather right now. Monday a.m. I woke to see a coat of fresh snow on the ground. It was pretty til the afternoon, when it turned slushy. Dan, fellow PCT, and I joke that we have one word for all the engineers here: drainage. It’s quite a gauntlet avoiding car-eating muddy potholes and the walls o’ water that the marshrutkas produce when ploughing through them.
It might sound like I’m complaining or despondent, mais non, mon ami. I find cheer in the small chickadees that hop around, sometimes providing the only color in the gray landscape, the yellow and green on their chests. I look forward to seeing my favorite street dog on his corner as I walk from class to the internet café each day. I also find humor where it comes and these days that is in many places. I’m warm and fed and thank god I have headphones and tons of music. Life is good.
Helena keeps telling me that once April 15 hits, the weather will change and it will really be spring. We’ll see. I also remember that in CO, one can’t count on consistent weather til June.
It might sound like I’m complaining or despondent, mais non, mon ami. I find cheer in the small chickadees that hop around, sometimes providing the only color in the gray landscape, the yellow and green on their chests. I look forward to seeing my favorite street dog on his corner as I walk from class to the internet café each day. I also find humor where it comes and these days that is in many places. I’m warm and fed and thank god I have headphones and tons of music. Life is good.
Helena keeps telling me that once April 15 hits, the weather will change and it will really be spring. We’ll see. I also remember that in CO, one can’t count on consistent weather til June.
