I know I haven't blogged in a week. It mostly has to do with a lack of available internet and/or not a lot worth writing about. But when I sat down with some free time today, I realized I had done a number of firsts this week:
One, my first School Leavers. School Leavers is prom and graduation rolled into one. Carrie was invited by the students she's been teaching for the past two years and I went as escort. This meant a shirt and a tie for me, as it's pretty formal. After some perfomances by the students (some good, but the most entertaining was a truly bad cover of a System of a Down song; forever preserved on my video camera), they recieved their diplomas and we were all bussed to a restaurant on the other side of town. There, we found four tables, each thirty feet long and piled with food. The students occupied one table, their families and teachers the other three and we were still eating and drinking at 2:00 AM. The party started about then, with the students in their suits and evening gowns moving to the restaurant's dance floor to dance until they "welcomed the morning" and the rising of the sun. And on that next day they would be graduated and ready to enter the real world.
Two, my first visit to the meat market. Up until now, I've been buying my meat at this western-style grocery store that puts the meat in a styrofoam tray and wraps it in Saran wrap, like I'm used to. I realized that most people bought their meat at from vendors at the open-air bazar, but that just seemed unhealthy. The problem is that I've been craving beef and the store has only had chicken and pork, and even then a very poor selection. So I went to the meet market.
There, I found dozens of long, wooden tables covered with every part of an animal that you could possibly consume. Every ten feet or so was a babushka trying to get you to buy this or that cut of meat, and behind them were men and women hacking meat on cutting boards, huge cleavers swining up and down, handing the bloody pieces to the babushkas, who would weigh them and place them on the tables to hawk to passing customers. Lots and lots of unwrapped meat just sitting out. One would think that this would be a sanitation nightmare, but I've been assured by everyone, volunteers included, that this has been working for hundreds of years and it's perfectly safe, possibly safer because the animals aren't raised in factory conditions.
I walked along the tables, looking at all the meat. Everything, and I mean everything was on these tables. Huge cow livers the size of my head, hearts and lungs and tails stripped of the fur. I found stuff that I recognized as cow muscle and, not knowing the terminology, was asking the babushka by pointing at my own body parts to find out where on the cow it came from. Finding some top round, I bought a kilogram of it and picked up some potatoes on the way out. Tonight, I'm having steak and mashed potatoes! And tomorrow, maybe another first: I plan on grinding up some of the meat (something I've never done), and hopefully tomorrow I'll have some cheeseburgers and french fries for lunch! Yes!
Three, I went to my first Student Republic. Student Republic is this huge two-day outdoor festival for university students where they elect the members of their governing council called (you guessed it) the Student Republic. Anyone is welcome to attend, and I was invited along by Diana and Ksoosha. There, the various student groups at the various universities were competing in games (a leapfrog race was one of them), eating, drinking, listening to concerts and riding very, very old amusement park rides. With their rusted metal and sagging wood, they were a little scary, but I rode them anyway. Once again, without the American fear of tort, there were few rules about how one could act on the rides, which is how I found myself on the one that is a bunch of chairs hanging from chains being whirled around (do you know the one I'm talking about?), grabbing the person ahead of me (who happened to be Diana), putting my feet on the back of her chair and launching her forward. This was as per her request, and being done by everyone else on the ride as well.
Diana and I are still in limbo. A few nights ago, we sat on the roof of her seven-story apartment building, me holding her, and we watched the sunset, listening to music on her CD player, each of us with one earphone. If there was ever a time to kiss her, that was it, but I didn't. Selfish as I was being by holding her (which, I realize, may be leading her on), I didn't want to act on my baser instincts by making out or more with her and thus making her think a relationship may be forthcoming. As is, I think we've reached a nice equalibrium. It was a little tense for a while there, those hesitations when we'd part from a hug, wondering if we'd kiss. But that seems to be gone: I don't feel her expecting that from me any more and I don't constantly ask myself if I will do it. For now at least, we seem to just be really flirty friends.
Four, I did my first lead climb yesterday! Carrie, Diana and I had been rapelling down from the top of the cliff, anchored into a tree, and then setting a top rope from one of the metal anchors bolted into the cliff. If you don't climb, top roping is when the rope goes from the climber up to an anchor and then back down to a person who belays from the bottom. Lead climbing is when the rope hangs down from the climber's harness and he or she clips the rope into various points on the way up. Top roping is easy and safe. Lead climbing is more difficult and can be dangerous because when you top rope and you fall, you fall maybe two or three inches. When you fall on lead climbing, you could fall eight to ten feet. We couldn't top rope any more because someone had erected a fence of woven tree branches at the top of the cliff. Probably to protect children from falling over, but also preventing us from rapelling.
So, lead climbing from the bottom was the only option. We didn't have the right gear for it, nor the right rope, but we were short of options. I've been wanting to lead climb for a long time, as it opens up a lot more routes to you (we've been stuck on the same four on this cliff because we were limited to where we could rapel down) but I've never had the gear or wherewithal. Carrie has done a lot of lead climbing and has taken some serious falls and therefore has a healthy fear of it, so the day before yesterday, she was the one to go up and set the top anchor. Yesterday, though, I figured, what the hell? So I did it. And it was easy. It's always been made out to be this hard, nerve-wracking thing, but I simply didn't think about the fall. On one sketchy move, it started sneaking into my head that a fall would really hurt, but I shoved it aside, knowing that thought would probably make me miss the move. As is, I didn't fall, and thought it was a lot of fun. Carrie tells me that I'll also gain a healthy fear when I take my first "whipper", some ten foot fall that swings me hard into the rock face, but until then, I'm enjoying it.
I also had a last today: my last day of teaching at the institute for the summer. I have still have two more weeks of teaching in Kyiv ahead of me, but as of mid-July, I will have a whole month off to travel!
Tomorrow, Carrie, Diana and I are going to Denishi, a local town known for its rock walls to do some climbing with the Polissya crew. They've got a tent for us and after climbing all day we're supposed to camp out. I'm bringing my guitar; should be fun.
Lots of pictures from Crimea, Extreme Marathon, the Moby Concert, the above events and climbing at Denishi should be posted when I'm in Kyiv on Monday. Check back then!
Thanks for reading all this!