So I had some sandwhiches grilling in the oven and I was reading in my bedroom when I heard fire-ish noises. I ignored them at first because my kolunka, when on, sounds like a inferno in mineshaft and looks like the afterburner of an F-16. But then I remembered that my kolunka wasn't on.
As I neared the kitchen to investigate, I started to smell something burning and when I quickly turned the corner I saw that my countertop was on fire. A few ineffectial puffs of air from my mouth later, I dumped the residual pasta out of a pot, filled it with water and doused the counter, adding a few bits of macaroni to the mess.
Examining the aftermath, I was perplexed by how the only source of fire, the oven, could possibly set the countertop on fire. Ruling out spontaneous combustion, I finally hit upon the most probable cause, and here is the Mr. Bean moment.
Having lit the oven, I probably tossed the match used to do so at the ashtray that normally recieves them. It must have missed and somehow didn't go out. While I was in my bedroom, this lit match must have set fire to the tablecloth on top of the counter, which must have set off the boxes of matches sitting on it, which must have burned a hole through the plastic bottle of cooking oil, spilling the oil and, well, you can see where it went from there.
The cloth needed to be replaced anyway and the carbon scoring is nothing some scrubbing can't get out. Possibly the worst victim is the jar of peanut butter, which began hemorging its contents.
I am such a dumb ass.
In other news, that night, the Green Party of Ukraine (not affiliated with the American one) had a huge concert/rally in the same square Tymyshenko had hers. Watching them put up the scafolding on my way to work, I wondered if it wasn't the same workers erecting the same scafolding a week later for a different political party.
We're told to stay away from political rallies, but it's a little hard when you can hear the concert from your window and look out to see more than a thousand people having a great time. Many of those people probably didn't care about politics and instead came to see Verka Serdyuchka, the male singer who does his act dressed up as a flamboyant middle-aged Ukranian woman. He has a string of hit songs, one of which can be heard on the Ukraine video (haven't seen it? Click on the "video" link on the right of the page) when everyone is doing the ring dance near the beginning (the title says "they have traditional dances").
After hearing the crowd going nuts for an hour and a half I finally decided to go collect my camera and see some of it. NOT because I support any political parties, but who am I to pass up a free Verka Serdychka concert OUTSIDE MY WINDOW?
Here's some of the crowd:
And here is Miss Serdychka herself:
Those pictures were taken off my video camera while she was singing "Na Lyobov", one of her latest. There's barely a still shot on there because I was getting buffeted by the dancing crowd; it was like being in a many-hundreds mosh pit. But that's how much flamboyant transexual performers singing songs with traditional melodies and modern beats are loved by Ukranians.
I don't claim to understand it either.
But her music is really catchy.
And lastly, Karl Beck, the director of Peace Corps, came to visit me yesterday. For no particular reason, I was told. Just an informal visit, I was told. This made me nervous. If I'm in trouble, that's one thing. The director of Peace Corps coming to see me and only me for no reason sent off alarms. "What stupid things have I done lately?" went through my head at least twice. I knew he was visiting other volunteers in the country: I got a panicked phone call from a friend north of Kyiv that Beck was visiting her a few days before me. "Why was he coming? Who did he want to see? What did he want?" she asked. I could only tell her that I didn't know, either. This is how paranoid we are: we operate without any direct supervision, and so the concept of bosses makes up nervous.
It turned out to be no big deal. He watched one of my seminars and talked to my teachers for the last twenty minutes of it, answering their questions about Peace Corps. He talked to my coordinator and the director of the institute, outlining Peace Corps new extention in Youth Development, and then he came to see the climbing wall. My coordinator and my teachers lavished praise on me, which was nice. Perhaps they also feared I was in trouble.
Beck is a fascinating guy, having worked in a number of countries and done some really important things in his life, not the least of which was coordinating placement of all the Cuban refugees from the Murial boat lift. Despite this, though, we only made polite chat in the car on the way to the wall (he has a car and a driver).
Ironically, as proud as I was to show off the wall when we got there, he just kind of nodded and then asked to see the inside of the house that Polissya uses for meetings and stowing gear. The house is almost 100 years old and he was particularly interested in seeing how they had plastered the ceilings. So as much as I had planned to talk about all our future projects, his interest in architecture trumped my interest in climbing. He did thank me before he left: he said he's been to 10 institutes in the past five years and had never seen a seminar. He also said it's also the first time he's seen a climbing wall, meaning he had two firsts that day and appreciated it.
So that was pretty cool.
Karl Beck and I. I do clean up, don't I? That is what I wear to work everyday, which no one believes because they only see me in street clothes. This is because I have a tendency to change into comfortable clothes as soon as possible.