Friday, July 15, 2005

Ukraine: What to Do?

In three hours I'm supposed to be on a train heading for the Ukranian border, but I don't know if I will be on it. I was scheduled to work on a Habitat for Humanity project in Romania, but I just got an e-mail that a flood has completely cut off the town and they're currently flying people out by helicopter. Hence, the project has been effectively canceled (I was told that there's the odd chance that the waters will recede enough by the 20th to resume work, but not to count on it). So I find myself with time on my hands: do I spend some extra time in Romania? Dip down into Bulgaria? Or do I go back to Zhytomyr for a few day and catch up on sleep?

Questions, questions.

But I did get some answers. Before I went to this last PDO (my last scheduled work in Ukraine for the summer. I am off until August 15th. Woooo!), Diana and I had a talk.

It went simply: I like our friendship, I like cuddling, but I don't think dating would be a good idea because I don't want to be serious. I don't want to lead you on. I then had to explain what the idiom "lead you on" meant.

She then explained that, she didn't think we should date either. Following one of the many truisms that a lot of Ukrainians live by, she said: "if you date someone and it does not work, it will not work the second time." But yes, she still likes the cuddling.

So that's cleared up. We then got into a really long discussion about relationships and I was surprised to learn that she felt cheating in a marriage was perfectly acceptable. "Sometimes you love somebody and you get married. Sometimes you have someone that you are married to and someone that you love." This was told to her by her godmother, a "very wise woman". The only adult she hadn't known to cheat was her
grandfather, but since he is such a shy, reclusive, principaled man, that's not "the type of person" she would want to marry anyway. It was actually really informative and coupled with some other conversations with other Ukrainians I want to put together an overview of what I see to be the Ukranian view of dating and marriage. To give you an idea, the fact that I told Diana that I don't want to be serious impressed
her. "Most Ukrainian guys," she said "will tell you that they will be with you forever, and then they will change their plans."

She thinks Ukrainians should have a more open dialogue about relationships the way Americans do. Which surprised me because seeing how pragmatic Ukranians are about love and relationships, I wondered if Americans don't simply talk so much that we make our relationships neurotic. I've had a few where one party or the other wasn't happy,
but because we "talked about it", what made sense it words still had nothing to do with what makes sense to the heart and someone stayed in a relationship where a Ukrainian would have said "no, that's stupid." On the whole they seem to see things in black and white (including infidelty) whereas we might drives ourselves stumbling around through
a purgatory of grey.

Although talk about grey: when I gave Diana a kiss on the cheek before she left (as I customarily do), she grabbed my face in one hand and kissed me on the lips, then walked out the door. When we met later that night, we were still friends and it was like that last kiss never happened. I'm just going to assume it's all settled because at least she knows my side of it, I'm no longer leading her on, and I'm tired of being confused about it.

Two and a half hours. What to do?

I don't even know how to get into Romania. American Councils paid for my train ticket to the Ukranian border town of Chernivtsy, because they are obliged to pay our way back from PDO, and "back" can mean anywhere in Ukraine. How to get over the border from there may or may not be tricky. Last time Carrie went, she paid 30 griven for a cab ride to the border, then had to wait a few hours before she could hitch a ride on a van going into Romania.

Romania is in the EU and Ukrainians have to have a visa to cross the border (difficult because a lot of Ukrainians illegally work in the EU; it's like a Mexican trying to get into the USA). Consequently there's not a lot of traffic going that way. We'll see. It may not be as difficult as all that; I just won't know until I get there.

Hmmm. Two hours, fifteen minutes. I wonder what I'll do.