June 13, 2007
Sorry for the absence of blog postings lately. I have been keeping very busy with all of the projects designed to teach Peace Corps trainees what it means to be a volunteer. I also think these projects are designed to weed out the weak of heart and instill in trainees the massive importance of getting to know the language.
There are two parts to our training as Peace Corps Trainees. The first part is to design and implement a community project. The second was to plan and run a summer camp for students. This sounds easy but don’t be fooled. Ukraine does not work the same way America does and neither do Ukrainian students.
The Community Project. Our community project was a talent show that would use presentations by the local youth groups to do two things; create awareness of the youth community and its needs and to raise money for youth programs at the one and only school in my town. In order to do this we worked with the local after school clubs, the dance club, and poetry club. We also created an English Club and a Tae-Kwon-Do club. We took acts from all of these clubs to create our show so the dance club did some dances, the poetry club read some original poetry, the English club sang a song in English, and the TKD kids got to do a little demonstration. Also, the three other volunteers at this site and I got to sing a song in Ukrainian. I believe most people thought that this was the highlight of the concert not because it was good, oh no, but because it was probably the funniest thing they have seen since the end of the cold war. Allow me to explain. Here is where things stood the day before the concert. I had a practice for the TKD kids and 3 showed up (this is ater I had been gone for 2 weeks at my visit to my new site, so they hadn’t had a class in 3 weeks), half of the English club miraculously disappeared, and we had still not memorized the lines to our Ukrainian song let alone learned the tune. The night of the concert, I get there an hour early and I have 11 kids for the TKD demonstration of which only 3 learned the demo I had planned. 2 of the kids that showed up had only attended 1 TKD class, I did some serious tutoring and decided to demonstrate with the kids so the ones who didn’t know what to do could follow me. They had so much fun strutting their stuff that in the end it really didn’t matter if it was correct or not. Then we had the English club. We had chosen a very cute song called “Baby Shark” for the kids to sing because it has actions like “Lady swimming” where they pretend to swim, and “Shark Attack” where they get to jump about like wild monkeys and bring their hands together like shark jaws. Again, this performance was a success by virtue of the children’s outstanding cuteness and the fact the most of them did know this words to the song or if not the words, at least the gestures. Who does not love an 8 year old pretending to be a great white? Finally, the crowing achievement, the Americans attempting to sing in Ukrainian. They went all out for this one. Each one of us was given a traditional Ukrainian costume to wear (I wad redressed by 4 different women until I had it on right) and we got to sing with an accordion. I sang in Ukrainian, with an accordion, in front of a native speaking audience. I will never fear any kind for public performance after this, I simply can’t imagine anything more intimidating. To say that we weren’t the best would be something of an understatement but here is the really cool part. When all of us had completely lost the beat of the song and weren’t sure how to salvage this performance, the audience started to clap and sing along with us. We finished the song together, that was pretty cool. In the end we raised about 350 Hyrvinas for the school.
TEN THINGS I LEARNED FROM SUMMER CAMP IN UKRAINE
If you give Ukrainian students a lunch break they will never return. Teaching in
a prison would be easier because you at least know that they will be there.
9. Capture the flag, a game that Americans can play for hours, will be completed by Ukrainian children in less then 15 minutes. Why you ask, because someone will go turncoat and tell the other team where their flag is and may even go get it for them. I have no idea why.
8. When told to wear “sports attire” Ukrainian girls will wear skirts, high heels, and lots of make up but they will pull their hair back into a ponytail. I really don’t understand this.
7. If Ukrainian children decide that they don’t like the game you are trying to explain to them they simply will not do it. There is no arguing, they simply turn into statues and will not move until you agree to do something else.
6. Every Ukrainian teenager knows who Eminem and Britney Spears are and they will ask you if you have met them.
5. Dancing provocatively at a discotheque is fine for teenagers but they would rather die then learn how to swing dance.
4. Teenagers are like wolves, they can smell fear and they will eat you alive.
3. Younger children are like mimes, they will do everything they see you doing, and I mean EVERYTHING. And never think you are not being watched.
2. You will never be cool enough in a teenagers eyes so don’t even try, just teach.
1. Many Ukrainians have never heard American country music and it scares them, especially John Denver. Again, I have no idea why.
Friday, July 6, 2007
Monday, May 21, 2007
Here is a picture of me with my new coordinator, Tanya. We are at a large monument in Harkiv and the statue behind us represents the mother of all of the soldiers that have faught in past wars. You can actually hear her heartbeat. The park has patriotic music playing everywhere and the "mothers" constant heartbeat to remind you of the sacrifices of all of the men/women who have died fighting in conflicts.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Swimming with the fishes and running with the bulls
March 7th 2007
Showers in Ukraine are a little different. Let us think about the word shower shall we?
S H O W E R, it seems like a good word. Not to short, not to long, not one of those weird exceptions in English spelling. All in all, not a bad word. But lets look a little deeper…this word could mean so many things. You shower people with gifts and affection. There are April showers which lead to May flowers. Bridal showers which lead to marriage etc…As well as the quick shower and the well known and loved long hot shower. Now let us look at the word “Ukrainian showers”. This word also has many meanings like relaxation after an 8 hour train ride or comfort after a really tough 8th form class where the kids looked at you like you had grown a second head when you tried to explain that “yes, nicotine IS addictive, and smoking can kill you”. However, a Ukrainian shower may also mean torture, fear, and possibly death for inexperienced Americans like myself.
First of all, lets realize that no where in the word shower does it imply that the human body should be vertical. Shower just refers to the action of the water not the position of the recipient. So in Ukrainian showers you have to sit down. Why, you ask? Well for one, the shower head is mounted around 1 to 2 feet above the edge of the tub, if it is mounted at all. Sometimes it just hangs from the faucet like a hibernating snake ready to spring to life at water pressure and smack the unsuspecting naked recipient in the back of the head. More on that later. Ukrainian bathrooms tend to be small. Ukrainian architecture is simple and compact. I can brush my teeth in the sink and shave my leg in the tub at the same time. What little space there is in the bathroom is taken up by an enormous bathtub. The tub itself is not so much wide as it is very deep. I am not sure why this is but people here, including me, wash all of their laundry in said bathtub so deep is a good thing. However, besides being deep, the bathtub is also raised up several inches from the floor so the edge of the tub is around mid thigh on most normal people. That is pretty high up, and it makes it harder to escape the bathtub in times of duress and the resulting fall particularly painful.
In order to take a shower you must first manage to understand a kolonka. If you are fortunate enough to have hot water in your house (and currently I am) but many people are not, you must light the kolonka in order to heat the water. Now, the kolonka is not on all of the time, you only light it when you need hot water and the water must be running before you light it. If the water is not running, and I mean the hot water tap, not the cold water tap sine they are covered by two separate pipes, then whatever water is in the un-flowing hot water pipe will boil, evaporate, and then make the kolonka explode. That will always add a little spice to your day. Even with it is working correctly it makes many ominous noises which I imagine are similar to what Darth Vadar must sound like when he is snoring. I learned about our kolonka on my first day in Ukraine and have only had one near death experience so far. Not too bad considering.
So here is the processes, you turn on the hot water (it is freezing cold at this point) you skitter into the kitchen where the kolonka lies in wait and you light a match, turn on the gas and light the kolonka. Making sure to light it right away because waiting to long with the gas running and then applying fire will also result in various fireworks. In that case you will need medical attention and not a shower. You skitter back into the bathroom, put your cloths into a place where you hope they will stay dry, and lever yourself over the very high edge of the tub. Now you wait for the ice cold water to warm up. At this point you adapt what I like to call the “readiness crouch”. This is necessary because the kolonka likes to mess with you. Sometimes the water will be a perfect temperature for your entire shower, sometimes it will not. Most of the time the water will fluctuate from being to hot to being okay to being too cold to okay and back again. If you are in an appropriate crouch (please remember that you cannot stand in a Ukrainian shower, there is no curtain and the shower head reaches your hip if you stand up) and can move quickly you can get wet before the water becomes too hot, get out of the way to soap up, and dash back in to rinse off before you miss a temperate cycle.
I knew none this on my first night with my host family. I had met my new family, eaten far too much excellent but rather foreign Ukrainian food, gotten settled into my room, and was looking forward to a nice relaxing shower. I was aware of the sitting in the tub thing but was prepared to tackle it. I managed to light the kolonka without a problem and vault into the tub. The water was a perfect temperature so I sat down (notice the sitting part) and turned the water to the shower. I didn’t realize that unsecured shower heads can act amazingly like giant Amazonian boa constrictors when they are not secured and water pressure is introduced. The docile looking shower head springs to life and manages to spray enough water to fill a full sized Olympic swimming pool into the tiny bathroom and clock me upside the head before I wrestle it into submission. I have managed to completely soak my clothes, my pajamas and the towel I was intending to dry myself off with. I lock the shower head in place, check the bump on my head where the shower head bit me and made liberal with the shampoo. So I have soap in my hair, on my face, and on my hands when the water suddenly turns freezing cold. Startled, I try to push myself out of the way but my hands are soapy that I only succeed in slipping and banging my head against the soap tray. I manage to back away to the safe end of the tub and stand up to avoid the hot water. Since I have soap on my face I haven’t really opened my eyes and I failed to notice that there is laundry hanging from the lines above the tubs. Did I mention that we do laundry in the bathtub and either hang it on the porch or over the bathtub to drip dry? Either way, I stand up and promptly get caught in my host sister’s hot pink bra. I try to disentangle myself without getting soap all over this laboriously cleaned laundry or into my eyes and only succeed in firmly tying my right hand to my head and looking vaguely like I am wearing a football helmet made of pink lace. The water has returned to a normal temperature and I realize that I must remove some of the soap on my free hand so I can untie myself from the Chinese torture device I have created. So I unclip myself from the cloths line, get rinsed off and release myself from my host sisters double D’s. I rinse the soap off of the bra and re-hang it believing that disaster has been averted.
Next, I tried to shave my legs…
I sat down again (how could I have been so stupid!) and pulled out my safety razor. Had I been using anything other then a safety razor I surly would have died from blood loss after this next ordeal. I have made some good progress when the water turns scalding hot. Knowing that standing up in not a very good idea, I attempt to head to the other end of the tub. Unfortunately, my legs are all slippery and I can’t manage to get to the higher end of the tub without one limb or another sliding onto the scalding water. I can’t get my feet under me either and I with lightning decisiveness I decide that this is a matter of life and death and if I don’t want to do my red lobster impression I need to escape. So in a Herculean effort, I pull myself over the edge of the tub.
Did I mention how high Ukrainian bathtubs are?
I fall for what feels like 15 or 20 feet but in reality is 2.5 or so and land on my sopping wet clothes, towel, and pajamas. Miraculously, I am unhurt so I lay there in the 1 inch of standing water I have created, soapy, naked and thanking my lucky stars that I am still alive. Then I hear it, the approaching footsteps. I had let out a blood curdling shriek when I had gone over the edge of the bathtub. My host family was coming. They must have heard the yell and the wet splash and thought I had either slipped in the tub or had turned into a mermaid. They probably didn’t know about the standing water on their bathroom floor and I suddenly as the strong desire for them not to have this particular image as one of their first impressions of me. I scramble to my feet and try and use the 2 inches of dry part on my towel to mop up my own personal swimming pool. Needless to say, that was not super successful. My host dad (of course it’s the dad) knocks on the door and says something very fast in Ukrainian. I take a guess that it is something along the lines of, “are you okay, it sounds like a naval battle in there?” and I squeak back “Ya Dobra, Ya dobra!” (I’m good! I’m Good!). He hesitates, probably seeing the water leaking into the hallway, but then heads back down the hall.
I look at the shower, I still need to rinse off but now realize that I am dealing with an entity that has proven itself to me smarter then me. I promise to sacrifice a chicken to it and I climb back in. The shower is again at a normal temperature and I rinse off, remembering to stay on the balls of my feet in a flight position. That leg will have to remain half shaved. Then I wring out my towel and pajamas, dry off (or at least become less wet) and get dressed. Then I use my towel to mop up the floor and do as much as possible to erase the damage that I have caused. All in all it takes me about an hour to take a shower that takes the average Ukrainian 5 minutes to complete. But I did learn the valuable lesson of the shower crouch. This is the very necessary position that you can use to propel yourself to safety when the kolonka decides to have a mood swing. Hello Ukraine!
May 7th,
I ate an entire fish today. I mean the WHOLE fish. My host mom has just come back from a trip to the Azur Sea and as we are sitting down for dinner she asks me if I like Sushi. Surprised, I said “yes, I love sushi” knowing that eating fresh fish in Ukraine is not really possible unless you caught it yourself or that it is a mutant fish from Chernobyl that walked itself to market. At my response my host mom heads onto the balcony and comes back with a string of whole dried fish. Basically, they take the whole fish, string a line through its jaw and let the suckers day. I am so surprised that this “sushi” that I don’t even blink when my host mom rips one of the fish off of the line and puts it into my hand. I look at it, it looks at me. It looks like it is smiling and promptly name it Flipper. This is why I never eat anything with a face. Then I watch in horror as my host mom takes her own fish and effortlessly rips its little head off. Then, holding it by the tail she peels its skin off, fins and all, like it is a banana. She then eats the thing down to its tail. I am sitting there, holding Flipper, and staring at her in horror. When my host mom notices that I haven’t laid into my fish, she must have assumed that I couldn’t get Flippers little head off. So she reached over, takes Flipper, twists his head off and puts that in my left hand. She then places the rest of him in my right hand. I look at Flippers little face, then I look at his body. This is where I had to make the conscious decision not to flip out. I thought to myself, “you joined Peace Corps to try new things, broaden your horizons, and learn about new cultures. Don’t knock it until you try it.” So…I peeled Flipper. He wasn’t half bad, I mean not something I would go out and buy myself but not horrible either. That was until I pulled a piece of fish meat off and all of (what I thought were) Flippers little internal organs fell onto the table. This was where I lost my cool, I threw Flippers head in one direction and his tail in the other and had to leave the room. My host mom was laughing so hard she probably had a fin come out of her nose. In reality, what fell out of my fish was seasoning but I only discovered that later after I had calmed down. I have been consoling myself in that fact that at least I tried it…
May 9th
It’s not running with the bulls in Pamplona but it’s close. Today, I got to meander with the cows. Jamie (another volunteer) and I were on our daily walk. I can’t jog in our town because there are a lot of dogs and they are hardwired so that anything that runs must be chased. I didn’t really enjoy that added addition to my runs, although I make great time, so instead we take walks. We were walking the other day and as we rounded a corner we merged with an entire herd of heifers. Every day, the people in our village take their cows out to graze on the communal lands outside of the town. The townspeople take turns watching the cows, my host mom who is a nurse, has already taken her turn. Each evening the two people who are cow watching, herd the cows back into town. Now once inside the town limits each cow becomes its own little homing device. The people are waiting outside their gates just like they wait for their children and as their cow comes home they simply open their gate and the cows walk in. The cows know which gate is theirs and they know how to get there. Jamie and I followed one cow around 7 different turns before it got to its gate and it never hesitated. We got to be one of the “herd” and I realized that this is as close to a cow as I have ever been. For the first time ever there were no fences it I realized that cows can be a little scary. They are awfully big up close but apparently all of our village’s cows are friendly. Some more then others. We got chased by one really friendly calf who thought we looked like its mother and we were bumped off of the road by a cow that had a serious drooling problem. I know it wasn’t rabies but one must give a large berth to a copiously salivating 2 ton animal. It made me think of the phrase, “until the cows come home”. I realized that not only do the cows come home in my village but they know the way.
May 11, 2007
So I taught my last class at my training site yesterday. It was actually a pretty good teaching day. We had a translator in class and we were going over what rights people had. The students got the chance to ask us about our rights in the US and they seemed to really enjoy finding out how things really work in America. For example, some of them didn’t know that we had to pay for our own higher education. It was a good chance for me to learn about what students think in Ukraine and a chance for them to learn about us. It was amazing how different some of the student’s opinions were. One boy thought things were getting better while another girl swore it was harder to survive in Ukraine. I can’t wait until I can understand the language better. It has been a real challenge teaching with my limited language skills but I think I am getting the hang of it. I am killer at charades now. Who else do you know that can mime “constitution”? The students at English club loved seeing all of the pictures I brought in of my family. It was funny how they paid so much more attention to the pictures of my cat then anyone else. I guess they think she is adorable as I do. My Tae Kwon Do students gave me flowers at class because they know I am leaving for my site visit soon. It was such a sweet gesture. I got lots of warm fuzzies.
Showers in Ukraine are a little different. Let us think about the word shower shall we?
S H O W E R, it seems like a good word. Not to short, not to long, not one of those weird exceptions in English spelling. All in all, not a bad word. But lets look a little deeper…this word could mean so many things. You shower people with gifts and affection. There are April showers which lead to May flowers. Bridal showers which lead to marriage etc…As well as the quick shower and the well known and loved long hot shower. Now let us look at the word “Ukrainian showers”. This word also has many meanings like relaxation after an 8 hour train ride or comfort after a really tough 8th form class where the kids looked at you like you had grown a second head when you tried to explain that “yes, nicotine IS addictive, and smoking can kill you”. However, a Ukrainian shower may also mean torture, fear, and possibly death for inexperienced Americans like myself.
First of all, lets realize that no where in the word shower does it imply that the human body should be vertical. Shower just refers to the action of the water not the position of the recipient. So in Ukrainian showers you have to sit down. Why, you ask? Well for one, the shower head is mounted around 1 to 2 feet above the edge of the tub, if it is mounted at all. Sometimes it just hangs from the faucet like a hibernating snake ready to spring to life at water pressure and smack the unsuspecting naked recipient in the back of the head. More on that later. Ukrainian bathrooms tend to be small. Ukrainian architecture is simple and compact. I can brush my teeth in the sink and shave my leg in the tub at the same time. What little space there is in the bathroom is taken up by an enormous bathtub. The tub itself is not so much wide as it is very deep. I am not sure why this is but people here, including me, wash all of their laundry in said bathtub so deep is a good thing. However, besides being deep, the bathtub is also raised up several inches from the floor so the edge of the tub is around mid thigh on most normal people. That is pretty high up, and it makes it harder to escape the bathtub in times of duress and the resulting fall particularly painful.
In order to take a shower you must first manage to understand a kolonka. If you are fortunate enough to have hot water in your house (and currently I am) but many people are not, you must light the kolonka in order to heat the water. Now, the kolonka is not on all of the time, you only light it when you need hot water and the water must be running before you light it. If the water is not running, and I mean the hot water tap, not the cold water tap sine they are covered by two separate pipes, then whatever water is in the un-flowing hot water pipe will boil, evaporate, and then make the kolonka explode. That will always add a little spice to your day. Even with it is working correctly it makes many ominous noises which I imagine are similar to what Darth Vadar must sound like when he is snoring. I learned about our kolonka on my first day in Ukraine and have only had one near death experience so far. Not too bad considering.
So here is the processes, you turn on the hot water (it is freezing cold at this point) you skitter into the kitchen where the kolonka lies in wait and you light a match, turn on the gas and light the kolonka. Making sure to light it right away because waiting to long with the gas running and then applying fire will also result in various fireworks. In that case you will need medical attention and not a shower. You skitter back into the bathroom, put your cloths into a place where you hope they will stay dry, and lever yourself over the very high edge of the tub. Now you wait for the ice cold water to warm up. At this point you adapt what I like to call the “readiness crouch”. This is necessary because the kolonka likes to mess with you. Sometimes the water will be a perfect temperature for your entire shower, sometimes it will not. Most of the time the water will fluctuate from being to hot to being okay to being too cold to okay and back again. If you are in an appropriate crouch (please remember that you cannot stand in a Ukrainian shower, there is no curtain and the shower head reaches your hip if you stand up) and can move quickly you can get wet before the water becomes too hot, get out of the way to soap up, and dash back in to rinse off before you miss a temperate cycle.
I knew none this on my first night with my host family. I had met my new family, eaten far too much excellent but rather foreign Ukrainian food, gotten settled into my room, and was looking forward to a nice relaxing shower. I was aware of the sitting in the tub thing but was prepared to tackle it. I managed to light the kolonka without a problem and vault into the tub. The water was a perfect temperature so I sat down (notice the sitting part) and turned the water to the shower. I didn’t realize that unsecured shower heads can act amazingly like giant Amazonian boa constrictors when they are not secured and water pressure is introduced. The docile looking shower head springs to life and manages to spray enough water to fill a full sized Olympic swimming pool into the tiny bathroom and clock me upside the head before I wrestle it into submission. I have managed to completely soak my clothes, my pajamas and the towel I was intending to dry myself off with. I lock the shower head in place, check the bump on my head where the shower head bit me and made liberal with the shampoo. So I have soap in my hair, on my face, and on my hands when the water suddenly turns freezing cold. Startled, I try to push myself out of the way but my hands are soapy that I only succeed in slipping and banging my head against the soap tray. I manage to back away to the safe end of the tub and stand up to avoid the hot water. Since I have soap on my face I haven’t really opened my eyes and I failed to notice that there is laundry hanging from the lines above the tubs. Did I mention that we do laundry in the bathtub and either hang it on the porch or over the bathtub to drip dry? Either way, I stand up and promptly get caught in my host sister’s hot pink bra. I try to disentangle myself without getting soap all over this laboriously cleaned laundry or into my eyes and only succeed in firmly tying my right hand to my head and looking vaguely like I am wearing a football helmet made of pink lace. The water has returned to a normal temperature and I realize that I must remove some of the soap on my free hand so I can untie myself from the Chinese torture device I have created. So I unclip myself from the cloths line, get rinsed off and release myself from my host sisters double D’s. I rinse the soap off of the bra and re-hang it believing that disaster has been averted.
Next, I tried to shave my legs…
I sat down again (how could I have been so stupid!) and pulled out my safety razor. Had I been using anything other then a safety razor I surly would have died from blood loss after this next ordeal. I have made some good progress when the water turns scalding hot. Knowing that standing up in not a very good idea, I attempt to head to the other end of the tub. Unfortunately, my legs are all slippery and I can’t manage to get to the higher end of the tub without one limb or another sliding onto the scalding water. I can’t get my feet under me either and I with lightning decisiveness I decide that this is a matter of life and death and if I don’t want to do my red lobster impression I need to escape. So in a Herculean effort, I pull myself over the edge of the tub.
Did I mention how high Ukrainian bathtubs are?
I fall for what feels like 15 or 20 feet but in reality is 2.5 or so and land on my sopping wet clothes, towel, and pajamas. Miraculously, I am unhurt so I lay there in the 1 inch of standing water I have created, soapy, naked and thanking my lucky stars that I am still alive. Then I hear it, the approaching footsteps. I had let out a blood curdling shriek when I had gone over the edge of the bathtub. My host family was coming. They must have heard the yell and the wet splash and thought I had either slipped in the tub or had turned into a mermaid. They probably didn’t know about the standing water on their bathroom floor and I suddenly as the strong desire for them not to have this particular image as one of their first impressions of me. I scramble to my feet and try and use the 2 inches of dry part on my towel to mop up my own personal swimming pool. Needless to say, that was not super successful. My host dad (of course it’s the dad) knocks on the door and says something very fast in Ukrainian. I take a guess that it is something along the lines of, “are you okay, it sounds like a naval battle in there?” and I squeak back “Ya Dobra, Ya dobra!” (I’m good! I’m Good!). He hesitates, probably seeing the water leaking into the hallway, but then heads back down the hall.
I look at the shower, I still need to rinse off but now realize that I am dealing with an entity that has proven itself to me smarter then me. I promise to sacrifice a chicken to it and I climb back in. The shower is again at a normal temperature and I rinse off, remembering to stay on the balls of my feet in a flight position. That leg will have to remain half shaved. Then I wring out my towel and pajamas, dry off (or at least become less wet) and get dressed. Then I use my towel to mop up the floor and do as much as possible to erase the damage that I have caused. All in all it takes me about an hour to take a shower that takes the average Ukrainian 5 minutes to complete. But I did learn the valuable lesson of the shower crouch. This is the very necessary position that you can use to propel yourself to safety when the kolonka decides to have a mood swing. Hello Ukraine!
May 7th,
I ate an entire fish today. I mean the WHOLE fish. My host mom has just come back from a trip to the Azur Sea and as we are sitting down for dinner she asks me if I like Sushi. Surprised, I said “yes, I love sushi” knowing that eating fresh fish in Ukraine is not really possible unless you caught it yourself or that it is a mutant fish from Chernobyl that walked itself to market. At my response my host mom heads onto the balcony and comes back with a string of whole dried fish. Basically, they take the whole fish, string a line through its jaw and let the suckers day. I am so surprised that this “sushi” that I don’t even blink when my host mom rips one of the fish off of the line and puts it into my hand. I look at it, it looks at me. It looks like it is smiling and promptly name it Flipper. This is why I never eat anything with a face. Then I watch in horror as my host mom takes her own fish and effortlessly rips its little head off. Then, holding it by the tail she peels its skin off, fins and all, like it is a banana. She then eats the thing down to its tail. I am sitting there, holding Flipper, and staring at her in horror. When my host mom notices that I haven’t laid into my fish, she must have assumed that I couldn’t get Flippers little head off. So she reached over, takes Flipper, twists his head off and puts that in my left hand. She then places the rest of him in my right hand. I look at Flippers little face, then I look at his body. This is where I had to make the conscious decision not to flip out. I thought to myself, “you joined Peace Corps to try new things, broaden your horizons, and learn about new cultures. Don’t knock it until you try it.” So…I peeled Flipper. He wasn’t half bad, I mean not something I would go out and buy myself but not horrible either. That was until I pulled a piece of fish meat off and all of (what I thought were) Flippers little internal organs fell onto the table. This was where I lost my cool, I threw Flippers head in one direction and his tail in the other and had to leave the room. My host mom was laughing so hard she probably had a fin come out of her nose. In reality, what fell out of my fish was seasoning but I only discovered that later after I had calmed down. I have been consoling myself in that fact that at least I tried it…
May 9th
It’s not running with the bulls in Pamplona but it’s close. Today, I got to meander with the cows. Jamie (another volunteer) and I were on our daily walk. I can’t jog in our town because there are a lot of dogs and they are hardwired so that anything that runs must be chased. I didn’t really enjoy that added addition to my runs, although I make great time, so instead we take walks. We were walking the other day and as we rounded a corner we merged with an entire herd of heifers. Every day, the people in our village take their cows out to graze on the communal lands outside of the town. The townspeople take turns watching the cows, my host mom who is a nurse, has already taken her turn. Each evening the two people who are cow watching, herd the cows back into town. Now once inside the town limits each cow becomes its own little homing device. The people are waiting outside their gates just like they wait for their children and as their cow comes home they simply open their gate and the cows walk in. The cows know which gate is theirs and they know how to get there. Jamie and I followed one cow around 7 different turns before it got to its gate and it never hesitated. We got to be one of the “herd” and I realized that this is as close to a cow as I have ever been. For the first time ever there were no fences it I realized that cows can be a little scary. They are awfully big up close but apparently all of our village’s cows are friendly. Some more then others. We got chased by one really friendly calf who thought we looked like its mother and we were bumped off of the road by a cow that had a serious drooling problem. I know it wasn’t rabies but one must give a large berth to a copiously salivating 2 ton animal. It made me think of the phrase, “until the cows come home”. I realized that not only do the cows come home in my village but they know the way.
May 11, 2007
So I taught my last class at my training site yesterday. It was actually a pretty good teaching day. We had a translator in class and we were going over what rights people had. The students got the chance to ask us about our rights in the US and they seemed to really enjoy finding out how things really work in America. For example, some of them didn’t know that we had to pay for our own higher education. It was a good chance for me to learn about what students think in Ukraine and a chance for them to learn about us. It was amazing how different some of the student’s opinions were. One boy thought things were getting better while another girl swore it was harder to survive in Ukraine. I can’t wait until I can understand the language better. It has been a real challenge teaching with my limited language skills but I think I am getting the hang of it. I am killer at charades now. Who else do you know that can mime “constitution”? The students at English club loved seeing all of the pictures I brought in of my family. It was funny how they paid so much more attention to the pictures of my cat then anyone else. I guess they think she is adorable as I do. My Tae Kwon Do students gave me flowers at class because they know I am leaving for my site visit soon. It was such a sweet gesture. I got lots of warm fuzzies.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Sorry for the black out folks but I have been assigned to PST (pre-service Training) in a tiny town in Central Ukraine that has no internet so you will be getting the last three weeks of my blog in one glorious lump. I have had some emotional ups and downs and it is probably better that I have had time to reflect (and edit!) my blog material any way. This will probably be standard procedure for the next three months so don’t be alarmed it if appears that I have fallen off of the face of the earth. I’m still here they just don’t have internet accesses. I at least hope to have a cell phone by the 7th or so, so family and friends can reach me. I miss you guys, don’t think I don’t love you because I haven’t called!
March 27-28th - So I made it to Kyiv…Finally. It has taken us more the 5 extra hours to arrive at staging. Both of our flights were late and when we finally arrived at the airport in Kyiv over 30 of the volunteers, myself included, were missing one or more of our pieces of luggage. Apparently, our plane was too heavy and they left a large portion of our luggage in Frankfurt, those efficient Germans. We watched them load our plane with over 20 dogs but I guess all of our worldly belongings weren’t as important at Fido. I kind of agree but there were some volunteers who were a little alarmed. And the worst part was that once we made it to Kyiv the Lufthansa folks made us fill out a bunch of forms letting them know that they had lost our luggage BUT we had to wait in line for, not one, not two, but THREE hours before we could submit said forms. We all sat clustered in line leaning drunkenly against each other and finally gave up and we sat of the floor. Then we realized with revulsion that we were stuck to the floor and decided to stay there until the third world war because that the rate the line was moving we were going to be there until the U.S. Marine Corps came to get us out. Apparently everyone of us senseless Americans do not know how to properly fill out a customs form, because it is oh so self explanatory. As each person came up to them they would glance at our form and then, with a grand flourish, tear the labors of the last half hour, in half and make us fill it out again as they watched. Of course it would have been too easy for them to explain the form to all of us at once and we could make corrections but maybe the Germans aren’t that efficient after all. When I finally made it to staging, 5 hours late, having been up for 20 hours, and still missing a piece of luggage they let us know what language we would be learning. When I discovered I was learning Ukrainian I broke down and cried I was so disappointed (I was selfishly hoping for Russian). I am not normally a super emotional person but today has been pretty rough.
March 31st - I have made it through staging and am on my way to my host site. I will spend three months at this site living with a Ukrainian family and taking language and cultural classes. The town I am in is very small, with one school, a population of 2100 people and no internet ( I admit it, I am addicted to the internet, but the first step is admitting you have a problem. I had not expected to be so isolated from my family). My host family is very nice. There is a mother Nina(ніна), father Yura (юрій), and two sisters, Kristina (крістіиа) and Tamila (таміла). (you have no idea how long it just took me to write those in the Cyrillic alphabet, it’s gunna be a long two years!) Kristina speaks some French and Tamila knows some English so I am not totally lost but there is definitely a lot of charades going on. My host parents think I am far too skinny, they demonstrated this by pointing at me and pointing at a match and saying “Ni, Ni pohano” (ні ні погано) this means “no, no bad!” And at every point I am told to “Yeasty” (їсти) meaning eat! My new favorite and most necessary Ukrainian phrase is “Ni halodna” or Not hungry!
April 2nd – So the first day of classes is a little daunting. There was four hours of language class and one hour of technical training (meaning how to teach). We also walked around the town, it took an impressive 30 minutes, and made a map with the names of places on it. During hours 3-4 of the language lessons I just sat in the corner and drooled as my brain shut down to protect itself from the onslaught. I came home and took a nap, woke up, and realized that I had forgotten everything I had learned that day. I am foolishly hoping it will come back by tomorrow. We are expected to create a community development project in this town (something we can do to improve the town, so if you have any ideas, let me know) and I should be teaching classes in Ukrainian by week four. Am I a little doubtful that this will ever happen? Maybe, but I have two weeks left to find out and you never know, I certainly learned the Ukrainian word for bathroom real quick so maybe the pressure will be good for me.
I will be honest and admit that I am thinking about coming home. Ukraine is not what I expected. It is beautiful, and rough, and the people are wonderfully strange(in a good way). But it is very, very foreign. It is most certainly not home, and I really don’t know if I could live away from my family for 27 months. I am going to give it a few more weeks and we shall see.
April 6, 2007
I have had a very busy last few days. We are having language classes everyday for 4-5 hours. On top of that we have made a trip to the school in our town and the mayors office. We were able to have a meeting and visit with the school principal, vice principal and vice-vice principal and the mayor. That is one of the nice things about a community this small. Everyone knows everyone else and they are willing to bend over backwards for us. One of our little field trips today involved going into a store and asking how much milk, bread, butter, salt, and chocolate were. This may seem like a simple task to you but please remember that we had to ask this in Ukrainian and I have been studying the language for 5 whole days. The store keeper was super nice and patiently answered all of our questions, haltingly asked in broken Ukrainian. It still took us about 20 minutes and I think more this one Ukrainian got a laugh out of us trying to read the labels on products trying to figure out what was butter etc…Milk in Ukraine comes in a bag not a bottle so it is harder to locate things then you would think.
I did make my first language faux pas. We had a “parents night out” where all of the volunteers and their host families get together and have a little party. The bar provided the liquor and I learned several new things like
1. Men always pour the drinks. My host dad Yura came and since he was one of the few males he kept getting up to pour liquor for women at the other end of the table. He seemed to love the attention but it was hard having to ask the nearest male to pour me a soda.
2. If a bottle is empty it gets put on the floor. An empty bottle on a table is apparently bad luck.
3. My host Mom brought a whole bag of food. She produced the entire meal, except the salad, out of this little bag at her feet. It was like sitting next to Santa Claus. They even borrowed a cutting board and knife from the bar to cut sausage and cheese. Apparently this is often done to keep the costs of eating out down and isn’t that unusual.
4. When the music starts playing, everyone dances. Yes, EVERYONE. I was out there jamming with my and the other volunteers host parents. And some of the parents, especially the ones liberally doused in Vodka, really enjoyed the dancing. My host mom can really cut a rug. Sarah, one of my fellow volunteers said to me this was one of the weirdest parties she has ever been to but she was having a great time. I agreed in both cases.
Now here is where my little faux pas happened. In my defense, the Ukrainian word for hot is hotsuvate (Haatsyouvatte). I was hot from dancing and went to sit down, announcing proudly in what I thought was perfect Ukrainian, “Ya hotsuvate” or what I thought met “I’m hot”. Now, it does mean “I’m hot”, but in an entirely different way. As in,“ I’m a total hottie…” My host dad laughed so hard he had to sit down. Oops.
We have lost our first Cluster mate (cluster is the group of people you assigned to the same town with, there are/were five people in my cluster, Adam, Sarah, Jami, Jake and myself). Adam decided that the Peace Corps wasn’t working for him and he has decided to go home. He apparently has a lady friend he is missing quite a lot. I understand where he is coming from. I hope that his friends and family understand that it is harder to do this then most people realize and that there is no shame is deciding that it is not the right choice for you. I wish him the best of luck, I hope his is successful in whatever he decides to do. I imagine that it is almost harder to leave then it is to stay. The Peace Corps is quick and he was picked up this afternoon. The driver also told us that he is the third volunteer to leave from our original 73.
April 8, 2007 Eastern Orthodox Easter
I woke up at 2:30 am this morning to attend an Easter service with my host mom and sister. We bundled up in our warmest cloths and covered our heads with scarves. All done in silence so as to not wake my host father. My host mom brought out two baskets filled with dyed eggs, salt, and homemade bread. These are “real” Easter baskets. At 15 till 3 we headed to the church. As we got to the street I could see other women and men, bundled against the cold and carrying their baskets, trudging towards the tolling church bells. It was still dark and you could hear the mummer of voices as people greeted each other with “Cristos vos Creste” and replied “Voyesta nos vos creste”. There are not street lights in our town and people seemed to move like cats in the dark. We reached the church in our tiny little town, it is built to hold maybe 70 people if they all stand. There were at least three hundred people there. They had all formed a circle facing in, surrounding the little blue structure which was identifiable as a church only by the little white crosses painted by the door.. We placed out baskets in the circle and headed into the church. There was much crossing oneself in the orthodox fashion, meaning top, bottom, right, then left. The choir was singing something beautiful if a little out of key and the priest in his brilliant red and white would punctuate the singing with something chanted in Ukrainian to which all of the parishners would reply in unison or cross themselves. We only stayed in the church for a few minutes and then headed back outside so others could come in. As we took our place in the circle you could hear people greeting each other, checking the contents of each others baskets and in general waiting for something. Almost half of the population of the town was at the church in the middle of the night, waiting. A small boy darted out of the church and disappeared into the crowd and then the bells began to ring. They were so close you could feel them in your bones. The entire circle crossed themselves in unison and then lit candles to place into their Easter baskets. I couldn’t tell but I think they were symbolic offerings of some kind? For fifteen more minutes we waited in silence and then the bells rang again and the priest came out of the church. With a line of people following him with fresh loaves of bread and the little boy carrying a picture of Jesus the priest walked around the entire church blessing everyone with holy water. Little boys were recruited to run in and fill up the bucket because it kept getting empty. We weren’t sprinkled with holy water, we were doused. It was so cold that the water on my glasses began to frost up but people turned their faces to the priest to be blesses and then silently drifted off with their baskets to share their blessed food with their families. We returned home and went back to bed, just like the whole thing had been a dream.
April 13, 2007
Allow me to try and explain the Ukrainian bus system to you. In Ukraine there are busses that travel between towns. They are not very frequent because busses are in short supply and many are in various states of disrepair. All of them play loud music and are driven by people named Sergi. At least all of the ones I have been on. The busses are very popular because many people in Ukraine do not have a car and even if they did, gas is very expensive so it is cheaper to ride. To ride in a Ukrainian bus you need to have a linebackers training, a surfers balance, and no need for personal space. Picture this, you see the bus which is either 5 minutes early of half an hour late (I have never experienced a bus that has been on time but I have only been here for 3 weeks so it could happen). What was a crowd of 5 people has suddenly swelled to 30 people and all of them must get on that bus. The bus comes and it is full, but that does not matter, the driver stops anyway and the carnage commences. You use your linebacker training to dodge around every slower or less agile person to get a place near the front of the group, there are no lines in war! Next your elbows come in to play, and you push your way to the front of the group, trampling anyone foolish enough to get in your way and throwing elbows in all directions. You of course try and soften any blows you aim at the elderly or children because that would just be rude. You are finally stopped by a babuca (grandmother) who is clutching her purse like a weapon and has unconscious would be-riders scattered around her. She can go first of course because you respect your elders and you know she has a brick in her purse and she isn’t afraid to use it. Grandma totters on the bus and you scurry on behind her. You only make it to the stairs and your rear end is still sticking out of the bus door. That does not matter because someone you have never met before grabs your butt and pushes it in for you and an amazing 12 other people squish themselves on the bus. The bus door closes and pinches your tush, or maybe it was the person next to you. By next to you, I mean you are packed to tightly that you can tell who is Jewish and who is not. You yelp at the pinch and the bus driver, Sergi, winks at you and spits out of his window. The bus begins to move and you commence surfing. Surfing is necessary because the roads in Ukraine are not the best. If a vehicle is coming from the other direction they play chicken with the bus until one of them flinches. The loser must swerve off of the road because it is not wide enough for two vehicles. The result is some severe swerving and a little bus offroading. This can be fun if you close your eyes and imagine you are on a rollercoaster or Disney ride, anywhere but on a bus. At each stop the driver opens the door again in the vain hope that some one will get off, no one does(they couldn’t even if they wanted to) and miraculously, more people get on. At this point you are twisted into the less know yoga pose known as, iamtryingtobreathandgetawayfromthecreepyguy/girlnexttome.
The bus begins to reach destinations and people who have been trapped in the crowd on the bus since Stalin’s time try in vain to get of. A lucky few do. We reach the final stop and the bus driver gets out of the bus, opens the door, and begins to pry people out of the bus like sardines from a can. As the crowd thins you breath a sigh of relief, or gasp for air, depending on your position. You also get to realize whose hand that was…You get off of the bus and commence with your day. I rode the bus twice today and I fell like I should get a medal. Our ride home was so crowded that our teacher Natasha got up close and personal with a cute man she had never met before, Jami had to hug Jacob and accidentally groped him when she tried to catch her falling purse, Sara had to stand on one foot like a flamingo for a good portion of the 40 min. trip because there were so many other feet there was not place to put hers down and I got to get so close to a support pole I could imagine what some strippers felt like. We had a pretty good laugh about it.
April 19, 2007
Since my town is so small there is no barber or salon to speak of. Because of this, many of the town members come to my host dad to get their hair cut. Yesterday, this happened for the first time since I have been here. My host dad did two, very military like, haircuts for my host moms cousin and nephew. He then gave my host mom a trim. Then he comes up to me and say (I don’t really know what he said but I think it was something like this), “do you want me to take a little off the top, the military look is really in this year?” I politely declined and began to back slowly towards my room. Holding his WWII era hair clippers he followed me and must have said something like this, “it won’t hurt, you will look just like Demi Moore in GI Jane!”. At this I squealed like a little girl and began running around the apartment hiding behind various members of my host family. I was finally able to hold him off by threatening to paint him with my host sisters’ hot pink nail polish. It was a pretty funny evening.
Top 5 things I have learned so far about Ukraine.
In Ukraine it is considered bad luck to cross a persons path with an empty bucket. I have no idea why
In Ukraine it is unlucky to whistle indoors or outdoors, it invites bad luck. However, your host family really doesn’t mind it you sing “Rogers and Hammerstein” at the top of your lungs. You are American, they expect you to be a little weird.
When hand washing clothes it is vital to make sure you rinse out the soap thoroughly even though the water is ice cold. Clothes that are hung out to dry with detergent in them turn funny colors and take on new and interesting shapes more resembling modern art then your favorite sweater.
If you go jogging in Ukraine people will look to see what you are running from, not seeing anything they will check to see if you are on fire. Dogs in Ukraine do not understand joggers, what they do understand it that anything that is running should be chased. There are a lot of dogs in Ukraine.
There is more then one way to cook a potato, in fact there are hundreds of way to cook them and I am about halfway through trying all of them.
Nothing tops off a meal of Borsht like a good old American Snickers Bar.
If you thought a Latin Catholic mass was hard to follow, try a Latin Mass where the translations are in Ukrainian.
Ukrainian women do things in high heels that make tight rope artists look like total wusses.
Ukranian mothers will feed you, it doesn’t have to be your mother. If you are skinny and American they think you are starving and will feed you whether you want to eat or not.
The cats in Ukraine are super cute and fuzzy but they are not really domesticated. They will chase you just like the dogs do. But, unlike the dogs, they know what to do with you if they catch you so you should run really really fast or prepare to be shredded.
April 21, 2007
I taught my first class in Ukrainian yesterday. To say that it was not stellar is probably an understatement. I got to the front of the class and all of the words that I had painstakingly looked up and practiced flew out of my head. I was teaching healthy Lifestyles and I forgot the word for lifestyles. Not my most shining moment. Then I attempted to write it on the board and the chalkboards on Ukraine are ridiculous! I would have needed a jackhammer to leave a mark on this thing, chalk just wasn’t cutting it. I am trying to dwell on the fact that I have only been in Ukraine for 4 weeks and have only been learning Ukrainian for 3 so hopefully the teachers and students will give me some leeway. The Ukrainian students were very nice and actually seemed to enjoy correcting our pronunciation so it wasn’t all bad. I just have no idea how I am supposed to teach dental hygiene next week with my limited language skills. There are going to be some interesting charades going on. How does one act out “gingivitis”?
On a side note. I was “talking” with my host dad yesterday and, in order to ask a question involving what kind of animal I was currently eating, I ended up running around the kitchen with my index fingers pointing up from my ears like horns and saying moo. This lead to my host dad and I swapping the Ukrainian/English work for all of the common barnyard animals. We commenced with lots of barnyard noises and animal impressions. Apparently, I do a great chicken impression and my host dad does a killer duck quack. We both ended up in giggles at the kitchen table. While I don’t really remember any of the names I learned it was quite a fun time.
March 27-28th - So I made it to Kyiv…Finally. It has taken us more the 5 extra hours to arrive at staging. Both of our flights were late and when we finally arrived at the airport in Kyiv over 30 of the volunteers, myself included, were missing one or more of our pieces of luggage. Apparently, our plane was too heavy and they left a large portion of our luggage in Frankfurt, those efficient Germans. We watched them load our plane with over 20 dogs but I guess all of our worldly belongings weren’t as important at Fido. I kind of agree but there were some volunteers who were a little alarmed. And the worst part was that once we made it to Kyiv the Lufthansa folks made us fill out a bunch of forms letting them know that they had lost our luggage BUT we had to wait in line for, not one, not two, but THREE hours before we could submit said forms. We all sat clustered in line leaning drunkenly against each other and finally gave up and we sat of the floor. Then we realized with revulsion that we were stuck to the floor and decided to stay there until the third world war because that the rate the line was moving we were going to be there until the U.S. Marine Corps came to get us out. Apparently everyone of us senseless Americans do not know how to properly fill out a customs form, because it is oh so self explanatory. As each person came up to them they would glance at our form and then, with a grand flourish, tear the labors of the last half hour, in half and make us fill it out again as they watched. Of course it would have been too easy for them to explain the form to all of us at once and we could make corrections but maybe the Germans aren’t that efficient after all. When I finally made it to staging, 5 hours late, having been up for 20 hours, and still missing a piece of luggage they let us know what language we would be learning. When I discovered I was learning Ukrainian I broke down and cried I was so disappointed (I was selfishly hoping for Russian). I am not normally a super emotional person but today has been pretty rough.
March 31st - I have made it through staging and am on my way to my host site. I will spend three months at this site living with a Ukrainian family and taking language and cultural classes. The town I am in is very small, with one school, a population of 2100 people and no internet ( I admit it, I am addicted to the internet, but the first step is admitting you have a problem. I had not expected to be so isolated from my family). My host family is very nice. There is a mother Nina(ніна), father Yura (юрій), and two sisters, Kristina (крістіиа) and Tamila (таміла). (you have no idea how long it just took me to write those in the Cyrillic alphabet, it’s gunna be a long two years!) Kristina speaks some French and Tamila knows some English so I am not totally lost but there is definitely a lot of charades going on. My host parents think I am far too skinny, they demonstrated this by pointing at me and pointing at a match and saying “Ni, Ni pohano” (ні ні погано) this means “no, no bad!” And at every point I am told to “Yeasty” (їсти) meaning eat! My new favorite and most necessary Ukrainian phrase is “Ni halodna” or Not hungry!
April 2nd – So the first day of classes is a little daunting. There was four hours of language class and one hour of technical training (meaning how to teach). We also walked around the town, it took an impressive 30 minutes, and made a map with the names of places on it. During hours 3-4 of the language lessons I just sat in the corner and drooled as my brain shut down to protect itself from the onslaught. I came home and took a nap, woke up, and realized that I had forgotten everything I had learned that day. I am foolishly hoping it will come back by tomorrow. We are expected to create a community development project in this town (something we can do to improve the town, so if you have any ideas, let me know) and I should be teaching classes in Ukrainian by week four. Am I a little doubtful that this will ever happen? Maybe, but I have two weeks left to find out and you never know, I certainly learned the Ukrainian word for bathroom real quick so maybe the pressure will be good for me.
I will be honest and admit that I am thinking about coming home. Ukraine is not what I expected. It is beautiful, and rough, and the people are wonderfully strange(in a good way). But it is very, very foreign. It is most certainly not home, and I really don’t know if I could live away from my family for 27 months. I am going to give it a few more weeks and we shall see.
April 6, 2007
I have had a very busy last few days. We are having language classes everyday for 4-5 hours. On top of that we have made a trip to the school in our town and the mayors office. We were able to have a meeting and visit with the school principal, vice principal and vice-vice principal and the mayor. That is one of the nice things about a community this small. Everyone knows everyone else and they are willing to bend over backwards for us. One of our little field trips today involved going into a store and asking how much milk, bread, butter, salt, and chocolate were. This may seem like a simple task to you but please remember that we had to ask this in Ukrainian and I have been studying the language for 5 whole days. The store keeper was super nice and patiently answered all of our questions, haltingly asked in broken Ukrainian. It still took us about 20 minutes and I think more this one Ukrainian got a laugh out of us trying to read the labels on products trying to figure out what was butter etc…Milk in Ukraine comes in a bag not a bottle so it is harder to locate things then you would think.
I did make my first language faux pas. We had a “parents night out” where all of the volunteers and their host families get together and have a little party. The bar provided the liquor and I learned several new things like
1. Men always pour the drinks. My host dad Yura came and since he was one of the few males he kept getting up to pour liquor for women at the other end of the table. He seemed to love the attention but it was hard having to ask the nearest male to pour me a soda.
2. If a bottle is empty it gets put on the floor. An empty bottle on a table is apparently bad luck.
3. My host Mom brought a whole bag of food. She produced the entire meal, except the salad, out of this little bag at her feet. It was like sitting next to Santa Claus. They even borrowed a cutting board and knife from the bar to cut sausage and cheese. Apparently this is often done to keep the costs of eating out down and isn’t that unusual.
4. When the music starts playing, everyone dances. Yes, EVERYONE. I was out there jamming with my and the other volunteers host parents. And some of the parents, especially the ones liberally doused in Vodka, really enjoyed the dancing. My host mom can really cut a rug. Sarah, one of my fellow volunteers said to me this was one of the weirdest parties she has ever been to but she was having a great time. I agreed in both cases.
Now here is where my little faux pas happened. In my defense, the Ukrainian word for hot is hotsuvate (Haatsyouvatte). I was hot from dancing and went to sit down, announcing proudly in what I thought was perfect Ukrainian, “Ya hotsuvate” or what I thought met “I’m hot”. Now, it does mean “I’m hot”, but in an entirely different way. As in,“ I’m a total hottie…” My host dad laughed so hard he had to sit down. Oops.
We have lost our first Cluster mate (cluster is the group of people you assigned to the same town with, there are/were five people in my cluster, Adam, Sarah, Jami, Jake and myself). Adam decided that the Peace Corps wasn’t working for him and he has decided to go home. He apparently has a lady friend he is missing quite a lot. I understand where he is coming from. I hope that his friends and family understand that it is harder to do this then most people realize and that there is no shame is deciding that it is not the right choice for you. I wish him the best of luck, I hope his is successful in whatever he decides to do. I imagine that it is almost harder to leave then it is to stay. The Peace Corps is quick and he was picked up this afternoon. The driver also told us that he is the third volunteer to leave from our original 73.
April 8, 2007 Eastern Orthodox Easter
I woke up at 2:30 am this morning to attend an Easter service with my host mom and sister. We bundled up in our warmest cloths and covered our heads with scarves. All done in silence so as to not wake my host father. My host mom brought out two baskets filled with dyed eggs, salt, and homemade bread. These are “real” Easter baskets. At 15 till 3 we headed to the church. As we got to the street I could see other women and men, bundled against the cold and carrying their baskets, trudging towards the tolling church bells. It was still dark and you could hear the mummer of voices as people greeted each other with “Cristos vos Creste” and replied “Voyesta nos vos creste”. There are not street lights in our town and people seemed to move like cats in the dark. We reached the church in our tiny little town, it is built to hold maybe 70 people if they all stand. There were at least three hundred people there. They had all formed a circle facing in, surrounding the little blue structure which was identifiable as a church only by the little white crosses painted by the door.. We placed out baskets in the circle and headed into the church. There was much crossing oneself in the orthodox fashion, meaning top, bottom, right, then left. The choir was singing something beautiful if a little out of key and the priest in his brilliant red and white would punctuate the singing with something chanted in Ukrainian to which all of the parishners would reply in unison or cross themselves. We only stayed in the church for a few minutes and then headed back outside so others could come in. As we took our place in the circle you could hear people greeting each other, checking the contents of each others baskets and in general waiting for something. Almost half of the population of the town was at the church in the middle of the night, waiting. A small boy darted out of the church and disappeared into the crowd and then the bells began to ring. They were so close you could feel them in your bones. The entire circle crossed themselves in unison and then lit candles to place into their Easter baskets. I couldn’t tell but I think they were symbolic offerings of some kind? For fifteen more minutes we waited in silence and then the bells rang again and the priest came out of the church. With a line of people following him with fresh loaves of bread and the little boy carrying a picture of Jesus the priest walked around the entire church blessing everyone with holy water. Little boys were recruited to run in and fill up the bucket because it kept getting empty. We weren’t sprinkled with holy water, we were doused. It was so cold that the water on my glasses began to frost up but people turned their faces to the priest to be blesses and then silently drifted off with their baskets to share their blessed food with their families. We returned home and went back to bed, just like the whole thing had been a dream.
April 13, 2007
Allow me to try and explain the Ukrainian bus system to you. In Ukraine there are busses that travel between towns. They are not very frequent because busses are in short supply and many are in various states of disrepair. All of them play loud music and are driven by people named Sergi. At least all of the ones I have been on. The busses are very popular because many people in Ukraine do not have a car and even if they did, gas is very expensive so it is cheaper to ride. To ride in a Ukrainian bus you need to have a linebackers training, a surfers balance, and no need for personal space. Picture this, you see the bus which is either 5 minutes early of half an hour late (I have never experienced a bus that has been on time but I have only been here for 3 weeks so it could happen). What was a crowd of 5 people has suddenly swelled to 30 people and all of them must get on that bus. The bus comes and it is full, but that does not matter, the driver stops anyway and the carnage commences. You use your linebacker training to dodge around every slower or less agile person to get a place near the front of the group, there are no lines in war! Next your elbows come in to play, and you push your way to the front of the group, trampling anyone foolish enough to get in your way and throwing elbows in all directions. You of course try and soften any blows you aim at the elderly or children because that would just be rude. You are finally stopped by a babuca (grandmother) who is clutching her purse like a weapon and has unconscious would be-riders scattered around her. She can go first of course because you respect your elders and you know she has a brick in her purse and she isn’t afraid to use it. Grandma totters on the bus and you scurry on behind her. You only make it to the stairs and your rear end is still sticking out of the bus door. That does not matter because someone you have never met before grabs your butt and pushes it in for you and an amazing 12 other people squish themselves on the bus. The bus door closes and pinches your tush, or maybe it was the person next to you. By next to you, I mean you are packed to tightly that you can tell who is Jewish and who is not. You yelp at the pinch and the bus driver, Sergi, winks at you and spits out of his window. The bus begins to move and you commence surfing. Surfing is necessary because the roads in Ukraine are not the best. If a vehicle is coming from the other direction they play chicken with the bus until one of them flinches. The loser must swerve off of the road because it is not wide enough for two vehicles. The result is some severe swerving and a little bus offroading. This can be fun if you close your eyes and imagine you are on a rollercoaster or Disney ride, anywhere but on a bus. At each stop the driver opens the door again in the vain hope that some one will get off, no one does(they couldn’t even if they wanted to) and miraculously, more people get on. At this point you are twisted into the less know yoga pose known as, iamtryingtobreathandgetawayfromthecreepyguy/girlnexttome.
The bus begins to reach destinations and people who have been trapped in the crowd on the bus since Stalin’s time try in vain to get of. A lucky few do. We reach the final stop and the bus driver gets out of the bus, opens the door, and begins to pry people out of the bus like sardines from a can. As the crowd thins you breath a sigh of relief, or gasp for air, depending on your position. You also get to realize whose hand that was…You get off of the bus and commence with your day. I rode the bus twice today and I fell like I should get a medal. Our ride home was so crowded that our teacher Natasha got up close and personal with a cute man she had never met before, Jami had to hug Jacob and accidentally groped him when she tried to catch her falling purse, Sara had to stand on one foot like a flamingo for a good portion of the 40 min. trip because there were so many other feet there was not place to put hers down and I got to get so close to a support pole I could imagine what some strippers felt like. We had a pretty good laugh about it.
April 19, 2007
Since my town is so small there is no barber or salon to speak of. Because of this, many of the town members come to my host dad to get their hair cut. Yesterday, this happened for the first time since I have been here. My host dad did two, very military like, haircuts for my host moms cousin and nephew. He then gave my host mom a trim. Then he comes up to me and say (I don’t really know what he said but I think it was something like this), “do you want me to take a little off the top, the military look is really in this year?” I politely declined and began to back slowly towards my room. Holding his WWII era hair clippers he followed me and must have said something like this, “it won’t hurt, you will look just like Demi Moore in GI Jane!”. At this I squealed like a little girl and began running around the apartment hiding behind various members of my host family. I was finally able to hold him off by threatening to paint him with my host sisters’ hot pink nail polish. It was a pretty funny evening.
Top 5 things I have learned so far about Ukraine.
In Ukraine it is considered bad luck to cross a persons path with an empty bucket. I have no idea why
In Ukraine it is unlucky to whistle indoors or outdoors, it invites bad luck. However, your host family really doesn’t mind it you sing “Rogers and Hammerstein” at the top of your lungs. You are American, they expect you to be a little weird.
When hand washing clothes it is vital to make sure you rinse out the soap thoroughly even though the water is ice cold. Clothes that are hung out to dry with detergent in them turn funny colors and take on new and interesting shapes more resembling modern art then your favorite sweater.
If you go jogging in Ukraine people will look to see what you are running from, not seeing anything they will check to see if you are on fire. Dogs in Ukraine do not understand joggers, what they do understand it that anything that is running should be chased. There are a lot of dogs in Ukraine.
There is more then one way to cook a potato, in fact there are hundreds of way to cook them and I am about halfway through trying all of them.
Nothing tops off a meal of Borsht like a good old American Snickers Bar.
If you thought a Latin Catholic mass was hard to follow, try a Latin Mass where the translations are in Ukrainian.
Ukrainian women do things in high heels that make tight rope artists look like total wusses.
Ukranian mothers will feed you, it doesn’t have to be your mother. If you are skinny and American they think you are starving and will feed you whether you want to eat or not.
The cats in Ukraine are super cute and fuzzy but they are not really domesticated. They will chase you just like the dogs do. But, unlike the dogs, they know what to do with you if they catch you so you should run really really fast or prepare to be shredded.
April 21, 2007
I taught my first class in Ukrainian yesterday. To say that it was not stellar is probably an understatement. I got to the front of the class and all of the words that I had painstakingly looked up and practiced flew out of my head. I was teaching healthy Lifestyles and I forgot the word for lifestyles. Not my most shining moment. Then I attempted to write it on the board and the chalkboards on Ukraine are ridiculous! I would have needed a jackhammer to leave a mark on this thing, chalk just wasn’t cutting it. I am trying to dwell on the fact that I have only been in Ukraine for 4 weeks and have only been learning Ukrainian for 3 so hopefully the teachers and students will give me some leeway. The Ukrainian students were very nice and actually seemed to enjoy correcting our pronunciation so it wasn’t all bad. I just have no idea how I am supposed to teach dental hygiene next week with my limited language skills. There are going to be some interesting charades going on. How does one act out “gingivitis”?
On a side note. I was “talking” with my host dad yesterday and, in order to ask a question involving what kind of animal I was currently eating, I ended up running around the kitchen with my index fingers pointing up from my ears like horns and saying moo. This lead to my host dad and I swapping the Ukrainian/English work for all of the common barnyard animals. We commenced with lots of barnyard noises and animal impressions. Apparently, I do a great chicken impression and my host dad does a killer duck quack. We both ended up in giggles at the kitchen table. While I don’t really remember any of the names I learned it was quite a fun time.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Oh my GOD! I'm really leaving!
So it's really happening. I am leaving for the Ukraine tomorrow. I am feeling a little shakey about joining the Peace Corps as I am just as homesick as I thought I would be and I haven't even managed to leave the country yet. The PC orientation was such a rush of information I kind of feel like important things like where I am going to stay are lost in the unimportant but catchy things like the Peace Corps theme song that the musically inclined volunteers created this afternoon. However, through the awesome support of my boyfriend and family I think I will give it a try. As my sister says, "If it's not fun, it will make a fun story". Hopefully I won't be hilarious when I get back.
I will be offline for the next week or so as our orientation event does not have international phone service or internt. We could all get eaten by big Russian Bears and no one would know. It would be a fitting revenge for all of those poofey hats that the bears have been used for...yeah...sorry...i'm tired.
I will be offline for the next week or so as our orientation event does not have international phone service or internt. We could all get eaten by big Russian Bears and no one would know. It would be a fitting revenge for all of those poofey hats that the bears have been used for...yeah...sorry...i'm tired.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
How much "stuff" do I really need
I started packing last night. It felt weird to be putting so many things in storage knowing I wouldn't see them again for over two years. I think that it is finally starting to sink in that I am leaving. 9 days to go...
I started to wonder if my family and friends would think about me (I sure they will), if I would make friends or be a loner, if I would be able to handle the upcoming changes or if I would cry like a baby on the plane (probably both). As I was sitting amidst my 50 pairs of shoes trying to decide if I was going to take my hot pink Converse I remembered a quote that I read in a book my twin sister gave me.
When we leave this earth
we can not take with us what we have received
but only what we have given
Saint Francis
It made me feel a little bit better.
I started to wonder if my family and friends would think about me (I sure they will), if I would make friends or be a loner, if I would be able to handle the upcoming changes or if I would cry like a baby on the plane (probably both). As I was sitting amidst my 50 pairs of shoes trying to decide if I was going to take my hot pink Converse I remembered a quote that I read in a book my twin sister gave me.
When we leave this earth
we can not take with us what we have received
but only what we have given
Saint Francis
It made me feel a little bit better.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
