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.
14 August 2003
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.
