Ukraine: Pretty Paper

Money, I discovered, is naught but pretty paper unless someone will take it, but we’ll get to that in a second.

I was surprised to learn it, but the Ukrainian economy functions on American dollars. You see, many Ukrainians lost their life savings when the Soviet Union broke up thirteen years ago and the Russian banks refused to give them their money. So, Ukrainians don’t trust banks. Also, mega-inflation wiped out what little savings Ukrainians had left in 1994, when wheelbarrows of their former currency, the “coupon”, couldn’t bгy a roll of toilet paper (in fact, I’ve heard at least one story where coupons were used as toilet paper). The government has since revalued their currency and introduced the hrivna, but most people still don’t trust Ukrainian currency.

Their solution? They started buying up what, in 1994, was one of the world’s most stable currencies: the American dollar. Now, most people have their life savings in American dollars hidden somewhere in their apartments. There are currency exchanges for American dollars every two blocks in every city, even the small ones.

Just last month, during the Orange Revolution, whean people feared another economic collapse, dollar buying hit an all time high. While the dollar was plunging against every other currency in the world, it was rising against the hrivna in Ukraine, up $0.30 since November. The Ukrainian government had to buy up a ton of hrivnas just to keep the currency from collapsing.

Now, this can be good if you come to Ukraine with dollars and want to exchange them. This can be not good if you’re me and you had decided the safest place to hide your American dollars while traveling was in one of your Doc Martins. Most of the bills in my boot--and this is nasty--got sweaty, absorbed the black leather or whatever from the interior, and came out looking like somebody had brushed them with tar. I then promptly discovered that Ukrainian currency exchanges will only take pristine bills, worried that anything less might not convert back into hrivnas in the future. No one wanted to take my money.

I left the states with $160. Sixty dollars was my own, hurriedly withdrawn from a working ATM in Florida (and that took some searching in the aftermath of Hurricane Jean) before flying to D.C. for staging. In D.C., they gave me my per diem, which was $120 for three days. Since the hurricane made me miss all of staging, I only spent $20 on a nice dinner before I left D.C

In training in Ukraine, I found that our per diem was $12 a week. What you can live on for three days in our nation’s capitol was more than they gave us for a month in Ukraine, and I never felt like I didn’t have enough money..

Now that I am a volunteer, my living allowance is $179 a month, which is still more than three times the national average. That means I am living comfortably, well fed, in an apartment, traveling and well entertained in Ukraine on $2,148 a year. I could easily save twice that much in a year of teaching in Oklahoma, and always did, spending it on travel during my breaks and hi-tech goodies. But here’s the fun thought: I could save $3,000 in a year of working in the states, and then go to Ukraine (or any other country like it) and live comfortably for a year without working. I may do that in the future, for six months or so, in a warmer country, and write a novel or something.

Anyway, here I was in Ukraine, with nearly 650 hrivnas worth of American dollars that turned out to be nothing but expensive paper. My host brother suggested the black market, but Peace Corps has told us so many times not to use it that it wasn’t worth the risk. Over the course of three months, mostly by looking pathetic and visiting dozens of different exchange booths, I was able to exchange all but $60. Each exchange booth usually would take one $20 bill, almost certainly out of pity, and hand the rest back. That money bought my mobile phone and my family their Christmas gifts.

Three different exchange booths rejected the last three bills, the bills that had been on the outside of the stack and looked the worst. Ironically, $60 was the original amount I left Florida with, and after three months in Ukraine I still hadn’t spent a dime of my own money. I finally resigned myself to taking that $60 back to the states, and seeing if anyone would even accept them as legal tender there.

Then another volunteer clued me in that Peace Corps would exchange rough-looking money for pristine bills for us as a courtesy. I went to the Peace Corps cashier in Kiev yesterday, and even though she raised her eyebrows at them, she gave me three brand new $20 bills. A Ukrainian currency exchange took them, and I no longer have an American dollar to my name.

Ukraine: Boxing with my Brother

I once predicted that boxing would be the gentlemanly art of me getting my ass kicked while wearing a pair of red gloves. This turned out to be incorrect. The gloves were black.

I probably had it coming. Just an hour or so before, I had looked into my host brother’s room. Inside my host brother, Sergei, was wrestling with one of his friends and winning. After their bout, I asked to step in and Sergei, who is half a foot taller and forty pounds of muscle heavier than me, easily took me down and was on top. Not realizing that I had been a varsity wrestler in high school, he soon found himself thrown over my shoulder and onto his back, whereby he was pinned. He said I won because he was tired.

Sometime later, the boxing gloves came out and his two friends had bloodied (literally bloodied) themselves against each other in front of two female friends that had stopped by (and what better way to impress the ladies?). After the ladies and the friends left, Sergei and his friend Dima boxed one another, Sergei showing his boxing training as he slowly stalking Dima. Dima would flail wildly at Sergei before Sergei would beat him back into a wall and then unleash a hail of punches.

After Sergei was done and I had changed into a pair of sweat pants, I asked “moshna?” May I? Dima put the black boxing gloves on me and Sergei and I circled each other on the carpet. I had told him I didn’t know what I was doing asked him to go easy. He agreed, suggesting I first work on straight shots.

This I did, although I could never get through his defense, and spent a lot of time dodging his punches. I did notice that I kept closing my eyes whenever I punched, something I endeavored to correct. I connected a few times, after which, Sergei told me: “hit harder.”
I didn’t want to hit harder, as I was afraid he would start hitting me harder.

One jab at a time seemed not to be working, so I started throwing in combinations, remembering all the sportscaster commentary heard while watching boxing matches in Jim’s apartment.

More of my hits started connecting as Sergei would dodge one punch at get hit by another and a small smile appeared on his face. That really worried me. Somewhat like a computerized GRE test, I had the sneaking suspicion that the better I did, the more difficult this would be.
Sergei started coming forward, stalking me like he had Dima, snapping my head back with a few well-timed punches. I realized that the blood on his gloves was from me. I didn’t get mad, but I did get amped, realizing that a shot to the body and two to the head really does work. I finally got a solid one through, making him blink and causing two trails of blood to appear out of his nostrils. His response: “Good.”

Already five or six minutes into the fight, I was getting tired and he seemed to still be going strong. His reach easily outclassed mine and I spent the next two minutes just trying to stay out of the way of his punches and futilely tried jabbing to keep him back.
I didn’t even see the haymaker, but it spun me around and my vision went black. I’m not sure how I stayed upright, but I was calling an end to the match before my vision had even cleared. “I am sorry. I am tired,” Sergei said as way of apology for hitting me that hard. We tapped gloves and I collapsed in a chair, panting.

My lip was bloodied, but other than that, all was well. I have to admit that, aside from the fear of marring my face, it’s a great stress reliever and a great workout. We’ve agreed to do it again.

Ukraine: Drinking With Ukranians

I went drinking with Ukrainians last night. This is something my American friend Sarah had been imploring me to do since before I left the states. As someone who has drank less than ten times in 26 years, I did not think Ukraine would not the best place to start. Still, I had decided that I would drink as social conventions dictated. And social conventions had dictated…
In celebration of New Year’s Day, my host brothers and their friends took me to a local club. The door guard had an AK-47, but other than that, it seemed normal.

The rectangular dance floor was flanked on either side by round tables. At one end was a stage with two poles, and on the other was the door that led out to the bar. There was already two bottles of vodka at our assigned table when we arrived, as well as a bottle of juice.

The waitress brought two plates of sliced fruit and we began. About every ten minutes, Pasha would theatrically point at the bottle with both index fingers, then rotate his wrists down to his shot glass. That would be Sergei’s cue to pour a round. We’d raise our glasses, no one could hear the toast over the thumping beat, we’d clink our glasses together, and then everyone would throw the alcohol to the back of their throats, sip some juice and then eat some fruit. Sometimes this involved standing up to drink, but I’m not entirely sure why.

One should never try to keep up with Ukrainians when they are drinking vodka.

There is no way to describe what drinking is to Ukrainian culture. I read that Prince Yaroslav the Wise, who converted the entire country to Christianity (and shepherded--at sword point--the entire citizenry of Kiev into a freezing Deniper river to be baptized), had his pick of religions. He contemplated Islam for a time, and especially liked how this would help him ally with the Turks. He finally decided, though, that the Islamic prohibition against drinking was too much for any Slav to take.

I had a theoretical notion of how important drinking was to Ukrainians, but no real understanding that drinking can be like breathing, to be done at any hour on any day for the simple sake of survival. Drinking vodka with breakfast is common. Teachers toasting and getting toasted in the lounge before their next class is common. And twelve toasts at a Ukrainian club in quick succession is certainly common.

Social convention dictated I better have a glass to raise for every single toast, and that alcohol must be in that glass. I did two full shots the first two times, then I moved to half shots, and then I prayed the bottle would run out before I did. It was with joy that the last drop of the second bottle disappeared down someone’s gullet, and I was proud to have made it that far.
But then two more bottles were ordered.

I had already gone straight through buzzed to drunk. Alcohol is a depressant, and this is the effect it has on me. I do not become crazier the drunker I get, although I do become more uncoordinated. Drunk for me, sadly, is sitting with my eyes half-lidded, contemplating the world through a haze, knowing that getting up may be a bad idea.

As more toasts were done, I clinked my glass and then sipped at the vodka in it, valiantly to stay in a state that would let me walk home. Every sip was still sinking me deeper into that purple haze, though, me looking around the room with an idiot smile on my face.
A lurching trip to the bathroom revealed Turkish toilets, which are common in Europe, especially Eastern Europe. Turkish toilets are basically porcelain around a hole in the floor. To use them, you squat over the hole. This is not easy to do when you are drunk, and I don’t understand the logic of why every club in Ukraine has them.

Back in the main room, the dancers cleared off the floor at midnight, and a stage show started. These are common at Ukrainian clubs, possibly to give the dancers time to rest and consume more alcohol. This one had a lounge singer, two choreographed dances by four very beautiful Ukrainian girls wearing thongs and a lot of lace, a trio of male break dancers, and a stripper. The strippers are pretty common, too. This one made skilful use of both poles, finally dancing before us in a red thong and nothing else. I was appreciative.

Well, mostly, because the gyrating, beautiful, naked woman simply reinforced a common emotion of late: loneliness. The emotion was further intensified when our table, fully inebriated, made its way to the dance floor after the show. The floor was thronged with very beautiful women wearing very little clothing, but I couldn’t have picked one up if I wanted to. Ukrainians do not go to discos to meet members of the opposite sex. In fact, any single girl on the floor probably has a Mafioso-looking boyfriend who hates dancing and is watching her from the shadows. I’m told the clubs in Kiev are becoming more Americanized and more the place to meet girls, but in Zhytomyr tradition was still enforced and so was my singlehood.

Those Ukrainian men that do dance in clubs do so very poorly. The only reason they are on the floor in the first place is because the alcohol put them there, and it is also telling their limbs to shake spasmodically to the music. In this manner, I fit right in. My usual style of dancing was out of the question, so I mostly bounced up and down and waved my hands around to the beat. Often times it did not feel like I had arms. This was a pleasant sensation. Sergei told me to show them how Americans danced, but this was not to be done. I started, but it felt like someone had poured concrete into my legs, and so I stopped, and went back to waving my hands in the air. We did this for about an hour, sweat pouring off of us and my host brother Karil, bless his heart, moving about the floor like an epileptic dolphin, and then we went home.

So at least I can say I have gone drinking with Ukrainians, something regarded as an art form the world over. Sarah would be proud.

Ukraine: Blah

For once, I'm not going to use this blog for travelogues or essays, but more on what blogs are generally about: someone's thoughts and feelings. And, oddly, this will be short.

I am depressed. Or if not clinically depressed, then blah, sad, lonely. New Years sucked. A thousand people were partying in Zhytomyr's main square and I went to bed early. The weather sucks, the winter sucks, all my new friends are spread across Ukraine, three months later I still don't have control of what I eat and what I eat sucks (hard boiled eggs and beets for breakfast this morning; holodetz--meat Jell-O--last night; pickles and fried potatoes the night before last; an obscene amount of bortscht every day for lunch), I miss my family, I miss my friends in America. I miss Robynne and Sarah and Mom and Miguel and Michelle and Papi and Grandma and Rachel and Ryan and Shauna and Erin K. and Nick and Charlie.

I miss sitting in a darkened movie theatre, wolfing down a bucket of buttered popcorn and slurping down a huge soda. I miss driving my car down a late night empty highway. I miss stopping by Chinese takeout on my way home to watch a boxing match with Jim.

Ironically, what brought this on was the movie "Signs". I watched it last night, and maybe because it took place in America, I just really missed being home. Don't ask me why, it just did. So that's me at the moment. Nothing to worry about; just letting everything get to me.

Ukraine: Christmas in Kiev

[Note: As a Christmas gift, this week there will be two postings. So there is this one, talking about Christmas day in Kiev, and then there is the next one, which talks about what happens when you're me and you try mailing a Ukranian Penthouse. Be sure to check it out.]

It was Christmas day, the first I had ever spent without my family. I was determined not to spend it sulking.

I slept through breakfast, hoped a marchrutka to Kiev and had pizza for lunch. Susannah, a petite redhead from Montana (actually, she’s from a different state, but she asked me to protect her identity) and I went down to Kreshatic to watch the “Parade of Santas”. The final election between Yuchenko and Yannokovitch was the next day, so the tent city was still there, determined to be there until Yuchenko won.

It was against this backdrop of orange streamers and smoking wood fires in metal drums that fifty or so “Santas”, really members of a local youth organization wearing Santa robes and hats (and minus the big bellies and beards), were dancing in large circles or conga lines with children around Kreshatic avenue to Christmas music blared from a PA system. I grabbed onto the tail end of a conga line as it came past, just behind a hefty middle-aged Ukrainian woman, Susannah clinging to me. This is how the Ukrainians do Christmas.

A few hours later, we were in Maidan, and it was packed with revelers. Even thought it was 5:00 PM, it was already well into night. Just a week before, the square had been packed with Yuchenko supporters, but they had cleared out, had gone home to vote. The stage that Yuchenko gave his speeches from was still set up, but its video screens were dark, the stage empty.

The attention had been shifted to another stage across from it. This one had kids on it in sprite costumes, dancing around with people in weird animal costumes, at least one of which appeared to be a llama. Beside the stage, some fifteen stories tall, was a huge Christmas tree that, I had been informed, was actually made out of a hundred fir trees.

The sitting president and Yannokovitch-backer, Leonid Kuchma, came out to boos from the Yuchenko-supporting audience. He gave a booming speech about the goodness of Ukraine and Ukrainians, and wished everyone a merry Christmas and a happy New Year, keeping the speech decidedly apolitical. The crowd that had booed him just minutes before applauded him and began chanting: “Molodetz! Molodetz!” something said by our Ukrainian teacher whenever we answered correctly.

They then lit up the tree and ignited the fireworks. Standing packed into a crowd between the tree and the fireworks, I couldn’t see them both things simultaneously, and had to swivel my head between the successive explosions of red and green in the sky and the flashing blue lights that swept in lines across the tree as the huge ornaments on and off. It was exactly what I came to see.

And if you wanted proof that Ukrainians know how to have a celebration, you needed to look no farther than the under-street crossing at Teatralna. On our way back to the Peace Corps office, we walked down the steps into the crossing and ran into an impromptu dance session. The music came from an accordion and two guys beating over-sized tambourines. The dancers were couples in their fifties and sixties that had happened to be crossing under the street and had stopped to dance to the music. Men in suits and ties wearing round brown fur hats and women in dresses, many wearing babushka head scarves, whirled around in a choreographed dance that reminded me of a cross between folk dancing and the ballroom dances last seen in English Cotillions.

They were obviously enjoying themselves and they were so cute to watch. They were good, too. The dance flowed as they moved in circles, the group itself moving in a larger circle, rotating as people went through the steps and twirls. After every song they broke up, walking back into the crowd. Some couples would leave, other couples would come, and then a new song would start and they’d move back into the dance circle. I grabbed Susannah and we did a little dance on the side. An old man pushing seventy came and took her from me, whirling with her on the dance floor. Susannah had no clue what to do, but the old man was sweet about it, slowly showing her the steps while she awkwardly reciprocated, grinning in embarassment

I danced a little jig alone on the edge of the circle. Just then, I felt very. very happy. It wasn't salsa dancing with my family back home, but it was close. And that's Christmas in Kiev.

Ukraine: Mailing Pornography

I was in the Obhiev post office, trying to send home Christmas gifts to my family. For my sister and my soon-to-be-born niece, I was sending matroichka dolls. For my grandmother, it was a shawl handmade by a woman named Tamara. For my mom’s fiancée, Jerry, I was sending a AK-47 tee-shirt (he had asked me to find him an AK-47 in Ukraine), and a Soviet army belt with the hammer and sickle on the buckle. For my mother, I was sending sent the mug handmade out of Obhiev clay with the town’s name and crest on it, given to me by the mayor of Obhiev when I moved here.

For my grandfather, and here is where the problem started, I it was a Ukrainian Penthouse.

The mail clerk asked to see every item in the package before it could be sent, but she barely even glanced at the Penthouse when I held it up. Admittedly, I purposefully held it up with the back of the magazine to her, so all she saw was a full-sized ad for a watch. I knew it was illegal to mail pornography across Ukraine’s borders, but it’s also illegal to mail food across the borders, and Peace Corps volunteers, including myself, receive food care packages all the time. All packed into the box, the gifts weighed just a hair of the two kilogram limit, and I was asked to remove something. The Penthouse was on top, so I took it out. The package weighed exactly two kilograms.

I paid for an envelope to put the Penthouse into, put it inside and mailed everything.

As I was walking back to my apartment, I had a sudden case of the fear. You see, the Ukrainian postal service likes to open packages. Most of my mail comes to me already opened. A magazine in a box, I felt, could be overlooked. A Ukrainian mailman opening that envelope and a Penthouse sliding out, though…

I figured there could be three possibilities. One would involve him letting it go. Another would involve him taking it home. The third… I didn’t know what the fine was for illegally sending pornography, but I was sure it was something I couldn’t afford. I was also sure that I didn’t want Peace Corps getting involved.

Possibly I was just being paranoid, but I decided to err on the side of caution. I turned around and walked back to the post office. The envelope with the Penthouse was just on the other side of the glass partition between me and the three clerks, all of them women in their forties.

“I need that package back,” I said to them in Ukrainian, pointing.

“We can’t give it back to you,” one said. “Once you send it, it can’t be returned.”

“But it’s right there.”

“Sorry, we can’t.”

“I really need it back.”

That received a raised eyebrow, but one of them picked up the phone and made a call. “A man wants his package back,” the lady said into the phone. There was some more conversation, the end of which was an apparent order to call someone else. She did, but there was no answer.

“Sorry, we can’t give you the package back.”

“There may be something wrong with this package,” I tried to explain.

“Is there something wrong with the address?” one of them asked.

“No, the magazine inside, it may be not good.” (Note that I did not know the words for “law”, “rules”, or “regulations” and instead used “not good.”) “I don’t think I can send this magazine.”

“Why?” one of the clerks asked.

“This magazine, maybe it is not allowed,” I said, once again stringing words together as best I could.

At this point, I had the attention of all three of them, as well as the dozen other patrons in the post office, all watching the American speaking in Ukrainian.

“What is the magazine?” asked a clerk.

I sighed.

“Penthouse,” I said.

I received blank stares. They had never heard of it.

I was marshalling the words in my head, figuring that since I didn’t know “pornography”, the closest I could get to it was “women with no clothes.”

I was just about to say this when one of the clerks offered: “erotika?”

“Tak. Erotika,” I said.

The whole post office burst out laughing.

Not hesitating, one of the clerks grabbed the envelope and handed it to me.

“You will have to pay for the envelope since you wrote on it,” she said, counting back
money to me.

“Yes, of course,” I said, willing to forgo the whole refund just to get out of there.

She counted out the last money of the money to me, barely suppressing a smile.

Head hung low, I left.

Ukraine: Zen and the Art of Handwashing Clothes

I swing the bathtub’s nozzle arm over the blue maw of the wide, shallow bucket, toss in my clothes and turn on the hot water, which comes out tinted yellow. Sometimes we don’t have hot water, but that’s not common. I sprinkle in some detergent and begin to stir the steaming, mellifluous mixture with a hairbrush. It puts me in mind of cooking a sauce, a simmering, multi-colored sauce. Hotoovati goes the constant mental drill in Ukrainian. Hotoovati. To cook. Prati. To wash. Odyah. Clothes. I leave moi odyah to soak. Zaboovati. To leave. Namochuvati. To soak. Ya zabooyoo moi odyah namochuvati.

I return to my laundry ten minutes later and run some cold water into the bucket to lower the temperature below scalding. I put an empty bucket beside the first and sit down beside it in the tub. Then the scrubbing begins: I take each article of clothing in turn and rub the cloth against itself between my two hands, paying particular attention—as shown by my host mother, Anna—to the neck and underarm areas of the shirts. After I scrub an article of clothing, I halfheartedly wring it out and toss it into the empty bucket.

This is actually the relaxing part of my week, washing my clothes on Sundays. It is such an involved yet mindless process that it gives me time to and think and unwind. Besides, it’s my one “deprivation” in the country. There are many real deprivations for me here: unfamiliar food, unfamiliar language, far from home, but these are the deprivations of any traveler. When you sign up for Peace Corps, you expect something harder than that: eating beetles and living in a hut and enduring monsoons and digging your own toilet.

Initially, life in Ukraine doesn’t initially seem very deprived. The marchrutkas run efficiently, the students in the schools are well behaved (mostly), the apartments are comfortable and well furnished. There is usually running water and fairly constant electricity. In short, while there are minor inconveniences, it’s not that hard to live here.

The type of person that joins Peace Corps is the type that relishes in challenge, wants something difficult to brag about, takes a perverse pride in not having all the amenities we take for granted in America. In fact, the average Peace Corps volunteer does not want to see his or her host country turn into America.

I like buying food and clothes at the bazaar. I like having to walk everywhere. I like not having a microwave. So, since life here doesn’t really seem that hard, and Peace Corps is supposed to be hard, hand washing my clothes is really the only thing I can brag about having to do.

But having it hard is not really a reason for joining Peace Corps. In fact, having all that time to think while I scrub and scrub and scrub gives me an opportunity to ponder a question I only half considered before I left the country. A question I didn’t want to bother with answering in the landslide momentum that carried me through grad school, the application process and straight on a plane to Kiev. The question is: Why did I join Peace Corps?

When I first learned of Peace Corps my sophomore year of college, I knew it was a perfect fit: volunteer work, travel, total language and cultural immersion, challenge, prestige, fantastic benefits on return, an extremely efficient organization backing you up. And it was all being paid for by the good, forward-thinking citizens of the United States of America. There is simply no better volunteer program in the world than Peace Corps. Period.

But more than anything, it was a gut feeling. A gut feeling of both elation and fear whenever I thought about it, about the adventure and danger, about completely stepping outside the bounds of everything I knew, for better or for worse. Regardless of what it would cost, I wanted to do it.

I envisioned myself in Africa. Why Africa? Because Africa was romantic: tribal dances, real deprivations, wild animals and sunsets that set the sky ablaze. But then later, I realized I didn’t have the language background for it. The French speakers were being sent to Africa. Spanish speakers were being sent to Latin America and everywhere else. Secretly, I was kind of happy about that, because the more settled down I became, the fewer depravations I was willing to endure.

So then I saw myself in Latin America, living with a mosquito net over my bed, perfecting my Spanish and teaching kids from a chalkboard nailed to a tree. But that was not to be, either. It was offered as a choice, along with Eastern Europe and Central Asia, but although I put it on the top of my list, Peace Corps called a few weeks later and said they really needed teacher trainers in Eastern Europe.

I fought for Latin America, but only half-heartedly. Secretly, I liked the idea of Eastern Europe, the travel options, the comfort of a society that did have indoor plumbing and access to the Internet. And so that’s how I ended up in Ukraine.

I wring the soapy water out of the last article of clothing and toss it into the bucket holding the rest, my rinse bucket. I empty the water from the wash bucket and swing the nozzle to the rinse bucket and turn on the cold water. I swirl the clothes in the water for a few minutes and then repeatedly dunk and wring out each item of clothing before doing a final wring and putting it beside me in the tub. The final wringing requires some effort, veins popping out of my forearms, for not a single bit of water must drip out of the clothes when I hang them up. When I first started doing this, Anna would pull down any dripping clothes and hand them back to me. She can fully wring out a shirt in two seconds with two twists. It takes me ten times that.

I think I came to Peace Corps with a mixture of selfish and altruistic reasons. All of us do, I think. You have to have that mix or else you will never make it through training, let alone two years. Too much of one or the other and you’ll find yourself on a plane back home, realizing either the personal benefits were not worth all the work, or that you could no longer see yourself sacrificing so much for other people.

When I first put my bags down in Anna’s apartment, my altruistic side really wondered what it was going to get out of this. Seeing the apartment, its nice interior in defiance of the building's crumbling fascade, I saw that Ukrainians don’t need “help” the way, say, my kids in Oklahoma City did. The Ukrainian economy is on the upswing, charging along on an amazing 6 percent growth rate. Building in Kiev is non-stop and it’s beginning to spread out from the center. The apartments the Ukrainians live in are nicer than the ones my OKC kids lived in, and the schools aren’t dangerous, soul-damaging places. On the surface--dirty, crumbling and pockmarked as it is--Ukraine seemed no worse than the poorer places in America.

But there is a reason I'm working here, abroad, and not back in the United States. as great as Ukraine is, it's not so great.

With capitalism came problems that were tacked onto the landscape of problems Ukraine already had. Since the state is no longer bothering to keep up the infrastructure and investors have not stepped in to pick up the slack, it is collapsing before everyone’s eyes. The roads all need repair: they are a black swaths of pot holes, broken chunks of concrete and gaping manholes because people stole the covers to sell for scrap metal. The yellow tap-water is undrinkable. Trash floods out of buildings and into the streets where it is burned, filling the air with acrid smoke.

The corruption in the government, fueled recently by the kickbacks it received to license new businesses, has become so obvious that it’s sparked a revolution that caught national attention.

I've helped a drunk woman who was lying intoxicated in the street. I saw a man punch his girlfriend three times in the face in a dance club before his friend pulled him off of her.

And believe it or not, this is all fantastic compared to ten years ago, when hyperinflation wiped out everyone’s bank accounts and the only reason the populace didn’t starve was because of Ukraine’s ability to grow it’s own food. The cities emptied out as the urban population went back to family farms left only a generation or two ago. That was when Peace Corps came.

And now I’m here.

I begin hanging up my clothes on the lines that are strung over the tub. The harder to dry articles, like my jeans, I put on the hot water pipes that heat my room.

I'm focusing on the bad things, and it's not all bad, but I'm listing why I have changed my initial assumption that, with the schools so disciplined and the economy moving ahead, Ukraine didn't need Peace Corps' help.

And even though I know we still have social, corruption and (to a far lesser extent) infrastructure problems in America, they are minimal when held up to the mirror of Ukraine. I'd love to see Ukraine get to the level of "problems" we have. I'd love to see Ukraine have the methods of response we have. Outside of Kiev, there is no Alcoholic Anonymous for that woman I helped out of the street to go to. Outside of Kiev, there is no domestic abuse hotline number to hand that girl who got beat in the club.

So what, really, can I possibly give here?

As a teacher trainer, I will be responsible for giving the seminars that teachers need for rectification. In the next two years, I will train over 1,000 teachers. If I do my job correctly, I can inspire teachers to use inductive, active, communicative methods of teaching that can in turn help their students to become better English speakers. English, as told to me by the Ukranian Minister of Educations, is "the language of democracy," for it is the main language for technology, business and diplomacy.

What am I doing here? I’m not here to “help” impoverished people, because lord knows I could be doing more of that in America. And Peace Corps is nothing like the original idea I had for it. But it is Peace Corps, which is the government supporting me in a diplomatic endeavor to provide aid to any country that requests it. Ukraine has asked for help with their business and educational sectors. Peace Corps has responded.

So I have a job to do here: help, even in a small way, to change the education system of a country that is less than 13 years old, on the cusp of political reform and with the resources to catapult it to first world status. And they could then respond to the social, corruption, and infrastructure problems that are so prevelant.

In fifty years, I may have looked back on a Latin American country and have seen no change whatsoever. In fifty years, I have a feeling that Ukraine will be very, very different, and I can have a role in that, even if it’s a small one.

I don’t think I could have answered the question of “Why Peace Corps?” before I left, because Peace Corps was simply and abstract thing, an ideal. Here, now, I have a very real idea of what I will be doing here, one that is optimistic, but not unrealistic. But if the answer is to make noticeable impact, then there is another question beneath that: “Why bother doing that in another country? Why not work harder on the problems we have in America?”

And that answer I do know, and it may be the seed of something that had me leave America, and it certainly goes to the heart of Peace Corps. That answer is “to bring peace.”

I’m sick of people hating America. I’m sick of people seeing us as this greedy behemoth. I’m sick of people seeing us as warmongering simpletons. And if simply being an American that people know as their neighbor, that people know as their coworker, that people know as their teacher, can help change these views, that much more understanding lead to that much more peace in the world. Peace Corps is, ultimately, a diplomatic endeavor. It says to other countries, “here are our best (only 25% of applicants make it into Peace Corps, and you have to have a college degree to even apply), our brightest, our most hopeful, here to help you.” I’m here to help the cause of Peace. So that’s why I’m in a country with unfamiliar food, an unfamiliar language, far from home, and washing my clothes by hand in a tub. I came into Peace Corps because I’m an idealist and because I’ve been blessed and because I want to make this world a better place in any way I can.

I put away the buckets and dry my hands.

Ukraine: Trying Not To Bribe the Police

It was a late cold December night when I was able to meet two of Ukraine’s finest.

I was walking to a friend’s apartment, hands buried in my jacket and both breath and scarf trailing behind me when I saw the two of them, both wearing the same uniform: fur-collared gray jackets and brown fur Cossack hats with a militsia badge on the brim. They were walking past me when taller of the two came towards me, motioned for me to stop and asked me in Russian for my documents.

This should have been standard, so I reached into my pocket and pulled out my documents with my pink card. Neither officer had ever seen the documents before, and they poured over them with furrowed brows.

They asked me for my passport. I told them it was at home. And then began the litany of questions: where is home, why are you here, where are you from? They seemed surprised that I was from America. In my baggy, fraying jeans, Doc Martin boots and green Miami Dolphins ski cap, I thought it was obvious.

They continued with the questions. Where did I work, what did I do there, how long had I been in Ukraine, how long was I going to be in Ukraine, every question that had been drilled into me since my first language class, save for maybe: what is your hobby?

And thank God and thank my language teacher, Oxana, that I was stopped by the police then and not as much as a month before, before the language finally clicked, when my understanding was on the level of a three year-old. Now it was up to the level of a six-year old, but that seemed to be enough.

It came in handy when they decided to search me. They asked me to empty out my pockets. I did, but I had a lot in my pockets, could only hold so much, and so left a few things in them, including the bottle with the antibiotics that I was taking for a throat infection. I figured a bottle of pills wouldn’t look good.

Looking at the items in my hands, they wanted to know what the yellow throat lozenges in a blister pack were. Sadly, I couldn’t even remember the word for “sick” and managed with “They are for my throat.” They wanted to know what the Chap Stick was, because they had never seen that before, either. I told them it was for my lips and mimicked the motion, simultaneously realizing how effeminate a motion that was.

Finally, the pat down started, and I suddenly “remembered” the antibiotics. That got their attention. I told them what they were and that they were also for my throat. They couldn’t even get the child safety cap off. I finally helped them get the cap off, and they peered into the white-powder filled gelatin capsules.

“Kokaine?”

No, it’s not cocaine. “Tse narkotica?” No, I replied, they are not drugs. They are medicine.

The taller one peered at the English label. “Narkotica vid Ameritsee?”

No, they were not drugs from America, although they were liki (medicine) from America. They were legal. They were given to me by Peace Corps. Do you know Peace Corps?
Yes, they knew Peace Corps. Did they want to call Peace Corps with their questions? No, they did not. Did they want to go up to my language teacher’s apartment, which we were standing in front of, and talk to her? No, they did not. Did they want to go back to my apartment and see my passport? No, they did not.

They paused for a moment, expectantly. When I said nothing, they went back to their questions. The shorter of the two kept dropping into Russian, and his counterpart kept hitting him on the shoulder and reminding him to speak Ukrainian to me. Even so, I kept running across Ukrainian words I did not know, and would ask them to explain this word or that word, which only confused the shorter one and caused the taller one to repeatedly cover his face with his hand in frustration.

Every few minutes they tell me my documents were not good and that I had narcotics on me. Then they would pause expectantly. Then I would say nothing, then the questions would start again.

Finally, they suggested going to the police station as if it were a threat.

“Okay,” I said in Ukrainian. “Which way?”

Peace Corps had said that if you have a problem with a police officer, get to a police station. My willingness to go along confused them, but finally they motioned down the street. That was not the way to the police station I knew and so I cautiously followed them, trying to stay close to the street and the passing cars.

A block later, we were in front of the post office, and we stopped there. The post office is also where the public phones are. Do you want to call Peace Corps, I asked them. They can answer all your questions.

No, they didn’t want to call Peace Corps.

The taller one went inside to make a phone call, while the other stayed outside with me. “What is the problem?” I asked him. He waved off the question. We stood in silence for a few minutes.

Finally, the taller one came out.

They both looked at me expectantly. Finally, the shorter one apparently decided to get overt. He looked around to see if anyone was watching, rubbed his fingers together in the universal sign for money, motioned at themselves and then waved a hand away. The meaning was obvious: give us some money and you can go.

“Nee,” I said, the word out of my mouth before I had a thought behind it, a thought that maybe it would be easier to just pay them and get it over with. They seemed slightly surprised. After a minute, they nodded towards the street, and I followed them, standing on the sidewalk as cars went by. A few people walked past us on their nightly strolls.

Both took out cigarettes and offered me one, which I politely refused. They both became jovial at that point. They said they wanted to go to America. How could they do that? I told them I didn’t know, but they could call the embassy and ask them. But, I said, I did know that there were large Ukrainian populations in Chicago and New York. I didn’t know what we were waiting on or why we were by the street or who the taller officer had called. They asked me how much policemen made in America. I told them.

Finally, a car pulled up. An unmarked car. They motioned me towards it. I didn’t budge and started shaking my head. There was no way in hell I was getting in that car.

“It’s okay,” one of them said in Ukrainian.

An older, heavyset man in a suit and wearing the same Cossack hat that they had on got out of the car and took a few steps towards us. I took a few hesitant steps towards him and he asked for my documents.

I gave them to him, and he looked at them with the same confusion his juniors had. It became obvious he was their boss, but why had they overtly asked for a bribe after they had called him, I’m still not sure of.

He asked for my passport, and I went through the same litany with him. He thought I didn’t understand him. He kept asking for my passport with a visa in it. I repeatedly told him I didn’t have it with me, that this was all the documentation I needed. He tried different ways: how did I get to Ukraine? Train, car, plane? Plane. Where, Boryspil? Yes, Boryspil. They put a sticker in a passport, where is it? I know what you’re talking about, I said, I just don’t have my passport with me.

Finally, after about five minutes of this, he gave me my documents back and told me to have my passport next time. I look between them.

“I can go?”

Yes. The older man got into his car, the two cops walked off one way, and I walked off another.
I told my language teacher about it the next day. She told me that when Yuchenko is elected, he would stop all that. Also, she told me that it had been great practice for my Language Exam.

Ukraine: Language

English is a language that loves to simplify. We have more words than any other language, and yet an average American doesn’t know more than 3,000 of them and uses less than 1,000 on a daily basis.

The words we do know, we’re forever trying to make shorter. For example, when a person wants to say: “Good day, good sir. What have been the happenings in your esteemed life, for I do hope they have been clement?” he or she may now simply say: “S’up”. I’ve even noticed lately the progression from “S’up” to “S’uh”, dropping out yet another sound.

Ukrainian does not have this tendency towards simplification. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. I think that being locked indoors on too many cold, winter nights has caused Ukrainians to inflate their language in an effort take up more time. All the Slavic languages are like this, and are considered so difficult that Ukrainian Peace Corps volunteers are required to live with a host family for six months instead of the usual three.

The Ukrainian word for “hello”, that most basic of words in any language, is ten letters long and begins with three consonants back to back. The Ukrainian word for hello is zdravuistea. When that’s the first thing you’re trying to pronounce, you know it’s uphill from there. “Good-bye”, by the way, is do pobachinea. And, yes, you must separately pronounce the last two vowels. Ukrainians have a lingual dexterity that would shame a fly-eating amphibian.

There very few short words in Ukrainian. The word “use” is vikorictovoovati. I’m not making this up. We groan about the long words to our language teacher a lot, so it was with glee that she taught us the word for “fashion”: modna. “See, it’s a short word,” she said. Then the French speakers in my cluster pointed out where the word originally came from. If there’s a short word in Ukrainian, it’s probably a borrowed word.

But bringing up modna let’s me point out another bit of frustration with the Ukrainian language: words that sound like English words but mean something completely different. Modna means “fashion”, but fason means “model”. Plosha means “square”, but square means “public garden.” Shodenik means “journal”, journal means “magazine” and magazine means “store”.

This confusing echo to the Latin-based languages (to which Ukrainian is distantly related; somewhat like a bastard second cousin) can be seen in its alphabet. The Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet (not to be confused with the Russian Cyrillic alphabet) has 33 letters and is just close enough to the Latin alphabet to drive you nuts. Especially because while some of the some of the Cyrillic letters correspond to our alphabet (“B”, “A”, and “E”, for example), others don’t. “H” is pronounced N, “C” is pronounced S, and “P” is pronounced R. When you see PECTOPAH on a sign, it’s actually read “Restauran”, and you know it’s a place to go eat.

Oh, Cyrillic also has a letter that looks like “b”, and, like a Southern Baptist having sex, it makes no sound at all.

The other left over part of once being related to Latin is verb conjugations. Most Latin languages have two sets of verb conjugations. Ukrainian tries to be big daddy and have four.

Believe it or not, none of this is what really makes Ukrainian so difficult. What makes Ukrainian so difficult is that it is an inflected language. That is, the nouns change depending on how they are used in the sentence.

Meat with cheese. Cheese with meat. In English, the words don’t change. That’s because English is uninflected. Translate them into Ukrainian, though, and you find that Meeyaca z’cirom is different from Cir z’meeyacoyoo.
Old English used to be inflected, as was Old Norse, but both were inflected in different ways. After the Norse conquered England and found that they couldn’t understand the women they were taking as wives (“Husband” is from Old Norse, “Wife” is from Old English), the result was a simplification where the resulting Middle English was uninflected. And this simplification continued right into “’Nuff o’ dis his’tree”.

There are seven ways nouns can change in Ukrainian, and each of these is called a “case”. All nouns change, including names. So my name, at turns, is Daniel (nominative), Daniela (genitive), Danielom (instrumental) and Danieli (locative), depending how it’s used in the sentence. And, once the nouns change, every adjective, pronoun, number or participle used with them must change to agree with their case, gender and number.

Have a headache yet? I get them all the time.

Since six of the cases are common (there are, in fact, seven of the bastards), since there are three genders (including neuter), and there are two ways to number nouns (singular or plural) there are at least 24 variations for any given word. “My” could be miye, moya, moye, moyemoo, or moyeem depending on the number, gender and case of the noun it is possessing. Moyeeh is the form of “my” used when I possess a direct object that is animate and there’s more than one of it.

Advil. I so need Advil.

Ukrainian students learning English can’t get over that most words that don’t change. “What is miye in English?” “My.” “What is moya in English?” “My.” “What is moyeeh in English?” “My.” They think it’s the easiest language in the world.

So now I’m done complaining about how complicated Ukrainian is (did you know there are actually three words for “year” depending on how many years you’re talking about?), and I’ll leave you with one last Ukrainian word:

It is a word that, like some other Ukrainian words, is a concept that takes a sentence to describe. The word is zamourduvaty, and it means “to work someone so hard that they die of exhaustion.”

It’s how I feel at the end of language class.

Ukraine: Revolutsia Boude Pro Televisor

So, after I dragged my butt out of bed this morning after yet another night of staying up way later than I should have, I walked into the kitchen and said good morning to my mother. She said something in Ukranian that I didn't catch because I was still in a stupor, and after I asked "Scho?" (what?) she snapped at me, harshly repeating what she just said, which was to go wash my hands for breakfast.

After a few tense minutes of eating, I slowly started prying into what had gotten her upset, and wondering if I had yet again made some cultural gaffe. After a bit it started coming it: she wasn't mad at me, but three of Ukraine's eastern regions had held a referendum to become autonomous.

And I was reminded yet again that my attention span is way too short. After a few days where nothing but the revolution was the topic of conversation, we had returned to our daily routine: language classes, teaching, nights spent watching movies and playing guitar. After all, we couldn't go to Kiev, and, other than Yuchenko grafitti, orange streamers tied to trees, or the 1:00 AM drunken chanting of: "Nas bahato ee nas ne podolati!" (We are many and we will not be defeated) that is the preminent chant of the Yuchenko supporters (bested only by the 1:00 AM chants of "Yu-Chenk-Ko! Yu-Chenk-Ko!"), we are cut off from the revolution. Oh, by the way, it's not being called a revolution by the Yuchenko camp. It's called "an evolution of democracy."

The evolution of democracy is being televised 24 hours a day here (the title of this post, by the way, is the closest the Ukranian language can get to "The revolution will be televised"), but as I still can't keep up with the breakneck Ukranian spoken on it, I get my news updates from the same place much of America does: Yahoo News.

Still, I do get a side that can't be gotten in America: the reactions of the Ukranians. My host mother is at turns glowing with pride and worried to tears about her country. Losha, who returns from Kiev each day beaming, red-faced from the cold and sporting yellow and orange streamers. The host grandmother of one of my link mates, who tied an orange shawl around her head, declared "I am not afraid" and stomped off in her boots to a marchrutka bound for Kiev. Oxana, my Ukranian teacher, who watches the television and points out that people are smiling, her psyche looking for any bit of evidence that this will turn out alright. Helen, my technical trainer, returned from Kiev yesterday, where she had spent the day amongst the tent city that has sprung up along Krechatic avenue. "Everyone is trying to be kinder than everyone else," she told us, giving us stories of the free food being passed out, apples being forced into people's hands, the free toilets that that have been set up, the free ride she recieved back from Kiev when her marchutka driver declared that he would accept no payments from anyone for the ride.

The demonstration in Kiev, rather than being an impromptu gathering, is obviously is what it is: the successful result of massive organization. A never-ending series of concerts with all of Ukraine's top artists entertains the crowds from the main stage and on plasma screens. Someone brought in those portable toilets. Someone handed out the hundreds of orange tents. Someone is funding the field kitchens feeding hundreds of thousands of people. That someone, of course, is Yuchenko's party. I don't know if it's insidious or not, but the simple fact is that this was prepared for. I had heard the rumors before the first election: that if Yannokovich won, there would be a revolution. So it wasn't unexpected when they descended on Kiev. What's surprising is that it's lasted a week in sub-zero weather and heavy snow. Frankly I'm impressed, but let no one think that this wasn't forseen, that this revolution (or whatever it's called) wasn't orchestrated.

And we will see what the future will bring. After a few days, after no violence, I think we all relaxed, the Americans at least. Police were joining Yuchenko's crowd in droves. Kuchma and Yannokovich went to the negotiating table with key EU people mediating. We thought it was but a few days to a transfer of power or a new election.

But now what becomes apparent is what is not being carried in most Western news media: that Yannokovich has more than just thugs and mafia supporting him. That a huge percentage of the east did support him in an election that, even without fraud, was very close. And now that Eastern section, completely shut out by the media and dubbed as lackeys of a corrupt government, is threatening to break away.

And one would say good riddance, save for one thing: it's the industrial center. Currently, Ukaine cannot economically survive without it. If it breaks off and becomes independent or allies with Russia...well, I can't predict, but the results would be dire. And that's the balance of power: a West that refuses to be led by Yanakovich and an East that refuses to be led by Yuchenko. The West is the intellectual center, but the East is the industrial, and they need each other. Revolutions are grand things, amazing things, especially when so many people pack themselves into one place to together shout down corruption, but things do balance on the edge of the knife, and that's why my host mother was snapping at me this morning...

Ukraine: The Coup Continues

Here, in Obhiev, the snow continues to fall, and the city is blanketed, purified in white. Children outside of School #3 throw soccer-ball sized snowballs at one another, and, save for a few people with yellow flags sticking out of their pockets, the cause behind the rallies that have stopped Ukraine and gained the world's attention seems not to exist.

My host-mother returned from Kiev last night. She was one of the quarter-million that supported Yuchenko taking his symbolic oath of office, watching on a huge videoscreen as he read the words with his hand on a 300 year-old bible. It was with her this morning that I watched on television as a deputy from Zhytomyr told the gathered crowds that Yuchenko was the president of their oblast, and Lviv and Ivano-Fansisco have declared the same.

My host brother, Losha, and his friends are on a marchrutka as I type this, on their way to Kiev to lend their support. What could I tell him but "operechno", be careful?

Kuchma, the current president of Ukraine staunch supporter of Yanokovich, finally came out of hiding and announced that the government was willing to negotiate. Yuchenko has agreed to negotiations, his supporters now being ringed with militia. All is still peaceful, but Yanokovich suppoters in the capital are growing in number, covered in blue the way Yuchenko supporters are covered in orange. The television still hounds down any threats from the east, trailing miners from Donetsk who say they are going to Kiev "for a football game", and who may well try to stir up violence. The government has promised not to be the first to start the violence, but an outbreak of fighting would be the perfect excuse for an intervention...

Despite the illegal grab for power, Yuchenko still has legal routes to take. The parliment could declare no-confidence in the election and the supreme court could null the votes in some of the disputed regions (all of which are Yanokovich supporting) thus giving the election to Yuchenko.

The problem at this point is that no matter what is said at the negotiating tables, there is no way the Western oblasts will accept anyone other than Yuchenko as president. And with Western governments completely in his court, Yanokovich and Kuchma are backed into a wall. Even Putin in Russia is backing off his earlier support for the Yanokovich win. Still, the last thing Russia wants is the EU and NATO spreading right to its doorstep.

The White House has said it was "deeply disturbed by extensive and credible indications of fraud committed in the Ukrainian presidential election," according to spokeswoman Claire Buchan and reported by the AP.

Putin has branded the West's criticism of the elections as "inadmissible". Ukraine "doesn't need to be lectured."

I'm still twiddling my thumbs in Obhiev. Everyone in America wants me to stay out of trouble, which is endearing, but my romantic side wants to be in Kiev. I know that this is real life, real danger, but that is why I want to go. I want to go because this is real life, history in the making. If this goes off like the Rose Revolution in Georgia not even a year ago, this will be one of the seminal turning points in Ukrainian history, something noted in Eastern European textbooks for centuries to come. If Ukraine finally takes its place in the EU, which I hope to see it do in the next decade, this will be the moment that helped that to happen. But being in Peace Corps is more important to me than being at a rally, and so I stay.

At least my mom will be happy about that...

Ukraine: So You Want A Revolution?

I don't know what's making the news in America, but it's a bit of a madhouse in Ukraine right now.

First off, let me say that I am safe, I feel safe, and I don't think anything's going to happen to me.

That said, Ukraine is having a revolution. In its most important election since independence, Ukraine was split down the middle in support for Viktor Yuchenko, who wants to ally Ukraine with the West, and Viktor Yanocovich, a friend of Putin who wants to tie Ukraine closer to Russia.

In elections condemned by the EU and the United States as "flawed" (the United States has threatened sanctions), Yanocovich was declared the winner. That was two days ago. Since then, millions of Yuchenko supporters (Yuchenko is the liberal one and the one I'm rooting for)have flooded the streets. The western half of the country, including Kiev, has refused to acknowledge Yanocovich as the winner. Strikes have ensued all over the country and they refuse to stop until recounts are had or Yuchenko takes office.

In my little city, 45 minutes from Kiev, the streets haven't been flooded, but there is a trickle. Told to stay away from demonstrations by Peace Corps, I've instead watched as couple hundred people, decked out in Yuchenko's colors of orange and yellow, march up and down the main street.

As a bit of a back story, Yanocovich is both a convicted felon and supported by the Ukranian mafia. There was an assasination attempt on Yuchenko last month, apparently by Yanocovich supporters, during which he was poisoned with Ricin and, as a result, the left half of his face no longer works.

A few hours ago, Yuchenko (the loser, according to the elections) walked into parliment and,
backed by a quarter of a million supporters outside, declared himself president. He then took the oath of office on the bible used for such purposes.

During his speech to his supporters, he said this, as quoted by the AP:

"Ukraine is on the threshold of a civil conflict," the Western-leaning Yushchenko earlier told lawmakers in the chamber before his oath. "We have two choices: Either the answer will be given by the parliament, or the streets will give an answer."

Of course, violence is a concern, but thus far everything has remained peaceful. The embassy has released a warning to U.S. Citizens to avoid the rallys, and that's as far as it's gone.

There are rumors that Russian milita are moving into the area to settle the protests in favor of Yanocovich, and the Ukranian news is currently full of shaky camera shots of buses and trucks moving into Kiev that may or may not contain troops.

As far as the Peace Corps is concerned, there will be no evacuation as of yet, and the following was sent to all of us:

***1) The public demonstration in Kyiv has at least doubled in size, and itappears demonstrations in Kyiv will continue for some time with resultantdisruptions in transport, business activity, and freedom of movement in the city.
2) We have received reports that demonstrations in support of Yushchenko arealso underway in the following Ukrainian towns: Zaporizha, Kirovograd,Odessa, Kharkiv, Lutsk, Zhytomyr, Poltava, Chernigiv, Rivne, Dnipropetrovsk,Chernivtsi, Cherkassy, L'viv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Vinnytsya,Khmelnytsky, and Sumy. A pro Yanukovych demonstration is reportedly underwayin Sevastopol.
3) The opposition has called for strikes of workers in public services including the railways and bus services. Volunteers should avoid intercitytrain and bus travel or expect altered timetables and cancellations.
4) Thus far the demonstrations have been peaceful, and the demonstrationorganizers are on record as urging all demonstrators to avoid any use ofviolence.5) There are continuing reports that a large number thugs have been broughtinto Kyiv by Yanukovych supporters to cause trouble at the demonstrations.
6) Also there are new reports that common criminals, including juveniledelinquents, have been released from jails and encouraged by the authoritiesto disrupt the demonstrations. At the same time, the incidence of streetcrime in Kyiv including muggings, robberies, and random physical attacks isreported to have increased.

7) Kyiv Volunteers are strongly advised to stay indoors at night and to bevery careful when moving around the city in the daytime.

8) Nothing, repeat nothing, that has happened thus far is of a sufficientlyserious nature to cause PC to consider evacuation. Rumors that an evacuationis about to begin are entirely untrue.***

So that's what's going on in my world. Frankly, I find it rather exciting. I wish the Democrats had risen up this strongly during the 2000 elections. Our elections then were obviously flawed, but after a few inefectual rallies, opposition died away. Yuchenko supporters have shut the country down and refuse to let it back up until there is a full and fair recount in the disputed regions.

I wish I was out there now, taking photographs and interviewing people in broken Ukranian, but Peace Corps effectively has all the trainees in lockdown.

More information can be had by doing a search for "Ukraine" under Yahoo News or wherever it is you get your information. Also, if anyone has seen anything about this in the states, let me know. There is a dispute in my cluster as to whether the U.S. media has bothered to carry the story at all.

Ukraine: Ukrainian Peculiarities

Ukrainian peculiarities

What’s different about Ukraine? The little things.

Guards at the grocery store. A grocery store is a radically new concept in Ukraine. Most people are used to haggling at the bazaar for their food. The grocery store in Obuhiv is where you go if you want Western products like Pringles or Gillette razors. Because these things are so high priced and rare, there is a security guard every two aisles that watches you like a hawk.

Holodetz and salo. Holodetz is volunteer kryptonite. Think Jell-O. Now think Jell-O made out of meat. A square of translucent gelatinous stuff on your plate that is, in fact, meat. This is holodetz. Salo. Salo is simply pig fat. A slab of it. You eat it with black bread, butter and garlic. Sometimes, they dip it in chocolate and you eat that.

Refusing something three times. Customarily, you are supposed to refuse something the first time. If you don’t actually want it, you have to refuse its offer three times. Why would you refuse it? I don’t know, maybe because it’s an offer of more holodetz or salo.

A refusal to hand you change. In the Cossack era, a person had to refuse a position of leadership three times before he was worthy to accept it. You’re also supposed to refuse money three times before you can accept it. Because of this, a cashier will never hand you change at a store, instead putting it in a little dish for you to take, thus subverting the three-refusals rule and speeding things up.

Bread. Bread is a nationally worshiped food. The Ukrainian flag is blue on the top to represent the sky, yellow on the bottom to represent grain. The name of the city where I will live and work for two years, Zhytomyr, is made up of the words “Bread” and “Peace”. Bread is served at every single meal (and you eat it plain) and you never, ever throw away uneaten bread. Even if you’ve munched on your bread until it’s an inch-wide wafer and you can’t stand another bite, that bit goes in the breadbasket for the next meal.

Giving an odd number of flowers. An even number of flowers is given at funerals to the grieved. On any other occasion, it is bad luck. One of my clustermates, Liz, once gave her host mom three flowers, and the head of one fell off. The host mom freaked out and quickly put the two remaining flowers in separate jars to make them two gifts of one, thus keeping the flowers at an odd number.

Whistling indoors. Don’t do it. Ever. It’s bad luck.

Opening windows on public transportation. It doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the summer, your shirt is transparent from sweat, your hair is plastered to your forehead and you are beginning to merge with your seat, you must not open windows on public transportation. There is a long-standing belief that the draft will make babies and old people sick and possibly kill them. Our cluster mentor, Nick, related a story during which he had opened a marchrutka window in the middle of summer. The entire marchrutka went into an uproar and, after he got it closed, an old man came up, grabbed Nick by the shirt, waved a fist at him and said in Ukrainian: “if you do that again, I will punch you in the face.” For the rest of the two-hour ride, all the occupants of the marchrutka glared at him.

Toilets and bathrooms are separate concepts. Toilets get one room, the bathtub and sink get another. This is probably because it’s customary to do laundry in the bathroom and who wants to be constantly interrupted by the biological needs of others? They are such separate concepts that one host family I know of built a brand new bathroom (finally bringing indoor plumbing into their home) but didn’t bother to build an indoor toilet, continuing instead to use their outhouse.

Oh, public toilets don't have toilet paper, so you have to always carry some in your pocket.

Light switches. All the light switches are outside of the room that they are for. This leads to two problems: one, if you wake up in the middle of the night and want to turn on the lights, you have to stumble outside your bedroom door and blindly search in the hall for your switch. Two, central rooms that lead into several rooms (as in the case of the one that leads to the bathroom, the toilet, the kitchen, Losha’s room and the hall) will have all the switches for each room. Next to one another. So if you’re trying to use the restroom in the middle of the night, you find yourself staring at them, trying to figure out which one will turn on the light for the toilet instead of the light in Losha’s room, thus waking him up at two in the morning.

No shower curtains. There simply are none. Liz swears she found a room with one at Prolisok, but no one believes her.

Interesting health prohibitions. Ukraine is a cold country. Ukraine is a country with very little access to medical care. Therefore, there are many prohibitions that, if you violate them, will cause your host mother to throw a conniption fit. Drinking cold liquids is one. All liquids, from tea to milk to juice to soda, are served either hot or at room temperature (yes, Liz was once served heated Diet Coke when she was sick). Ukrainians don’t believe in ice. When I go to the McDonalds in Kiev, I can be found swirling my drink around just to hear the ice rattle on the sides. Another prohibition is walking out the door with wet hair. A third is walking around the apartment barefoot. You’re supposed to wear slippers, but my host mom will settle for socks.
Apparently, all this will keep you from getting pneumonia.

No locks on the interior doors. At all. Even your bedroom.

Milk in bags. This one makes absolutely no sense to me. Milk is sold in plastic bags. Not cardboard boxes or plastic jugs, but in bags. When you pick one up, it’s this amorphous blob in your hand as the liquid swishes around. You cut a corner off to get to the milk, but if you don’t use it all there’s no convenient way to store it other than putting a clothes pin on the end and hoping it doesn’t leak in the fridge. Yogurt is sold the same way, and I’ve seen more than one American just upending the corner of the yogurt bag over their mouths and squeezing.

Black pointy shoes and black leather jackets. Everyone wears them

Carbonated water. If you buy bottled water, you’d better specify ne hazodna because Ukrainians, like Europeans, love carbonated water. Frankly, I can’t stand the stuff and before I learned how to read Cyrillic, I bought several bottles of water that later just got tossed.

Patronymics. This is a Slavic thing, but I find it interesting. You don’t use the term Mister or Missus to denote respect in Ukraine. Rather, the formal way to acknowledge someone in Ukraine is through their patronymic. This is their first name followed by the first name of their father with –illa­ tacked on the end for women and –ovich for men. There are other ways to form the patronymic, but I stick with that. In Ukraine, I am formally Daniel Fosterovich. And an American named after his father could very well be Bob Bobovich.

Babies. I think the long winters, cultural traditions, and small apartments lead to one thing: an outdoor baby density of two to every square foot. You cannot take a ten minute walk (and I am in the habit of taking longer ones when the weather isn’t deathly freezing) without seeing dozens and dozens of little babies, bundled to twice their size, all in cute colorful little winter caps with two ore three little points on the top, being carried or pushed in strollers. Mothers sit on faded blue and yellow benches, talking to one another while they absentmindedly push their strollers back and forth with one hand, rocking their children. Babucias coo from beneath head shawls at their grandchildren in parks covered in yellow leaves. Even older brothers and sisters push the little babies around, giving them fresh air, getting them out of the apartments. It’s one of the nicer things about Ukraine.

And lastly there are babushka bags. No one uses backpacks or sling bags or even big purses to carry things. They use plastic department store bags colloquially called babushka bags. You know when you buy clothes from Sears or the Gap or Structure and the salesperson puts them in a plastic bag with the store’s name emblazoned on the side? Those are the bags I’m talking about. Every person you see on the street will have one swinging at their side. Stalls at the bazaars sell fifty different kinds for three hrivna each. Women color coordinate these plastic bags with their outfits. The esteem of the bag coordinates with the brand on the side. BMW plastic bags, for instance, are in high demand. Mine is a Hugo Boss bag, black, that I use to carry my books to class.

The first day I, in my leather jacket and walking through a crowd of babies, went to buy a bag of milk with my babuska bag swinging at my side, I felt very, very Ukrainian.

Ukraine: In the Eye of the Marchrutka

I’m performing marchrutka-cises (my word, mind you), the daily calisthenics required to ride in a people-packed minivan driven by a man five minutes out of his hug-himself white jacket. Currently, I’m squatting (very good for conditioning calves and thighs). Other days, I’m standing hunched over, clinging to an overhead strap (very good for the upper body).

Marchrutkas are capitalism’s answer to a communist failure. The old Soviet accordion-style busses could barely be kept running after the collapse of the USSR, the state unable to provide for them as they are barely able to provide for street repair, building refurbishment or garbage collection (have I mentioned yet the smell of the half-dozen or so trash fires burning continually throughout the city?). Into this transportation void stepped a few forward-thinking city employees that eased tax laws, sold the machines to themselves and started the franchise-without-a-franchise concept of marchrutkas. Now, hundreds of these privately-owned little minivans, packed to bursting, dart about the major cities and actually provide faster and cheaper (the capitalist mantra) transportation than the few remaining busses.

I do not apply the adjective “safe” to these little speed demons (also, when I say “speed”, I am not referring to the quality of going fast, but rather the hysterics-inducing amphetamine). I feel the safety factor of taking a marchrutka was best put forth by the U.S. Embassy head of security, who addressed the Peace Corps volunteers the very day we stepped off the plane. His speech was long, convoluted, and full of politically correct phrasings, but one of his points amounted to this: “if you ride on a marchrutka, you will die.”

This sentiment was later rebutted following by our Ukrainian coordinators: “that man has a private car and a chauffer.” In other words, if you want to get anywhere in Ukraine, get on the damn marchrutka.

The sight of a marchrutka, despite the Mercedes symbol on the front grill, does not inspire confidence. All have dents and dings (some have fully-imploded panels), and all but one I have ridden on required help from the 3M company to keep going. I don’t know how the Soviet Union existed before the incorporation of that company known for Post-It notes, but I feel it would still be around today had it discovered earlier the now omnipresent products of masking, cellophane, and duct tape.

Take the marchrutka I’m riding on now. The spider-web cracks that spread the length of the windshield are being held firm through cellophane tape, and it is through that tape that I see а hapless car being bared down upon before the marchrutka dives into oncoming traffic and then back into the proper lane, leaving the car to suck down dust. Marchrutka drivers, despite taking off with the side door still open, making change for the fares en route and never letting the gas pedal off the floor, always drive as if they’re running late. Late for getting an iced-down heart to a transplant patient, that kind of late.

This type of driving isn’t limited to marchrutkas, mind you. Every driver in Ukraine drives this way, weaving in and out of traffic, barreling straight at pedestrians (who most certainly do not have the right of way), and driving on the sidewalk. Although I have not heard it uttered aloud, there must be a Ukrainian proverb that goes: “If God did not want me driving on the sidewalk, he would not have paved it.” My host father in Zhytomyr admonished me for putting on my seatbelt, saying I did not need it in Ukraine. I put it on anyway, telling him it was habit. I think the reason seatbelts are not required is that no one would survive a Ukrainian car wreck, so why bother wrinkling your suit? After pulling a very illegal U-turn in the middle of the street and barely making it out of the way of oncoming traffic, my host father told me not to worry. “Ya droog miliziom,” he said by way of explanation. I am a friend of the police. Which is almost a superfluous thing to be in this case, because in a month and a half of traveling between cities on marchrutkas, I have never, ever seen someone pulled over on the side of the road. I have seen babucias selling onions, horse-drawn carts and an SUV on fire on the sides of Ukrainian roads, but never the police.

So really it’s no surprise when my marchrutka nearly hits a grandmother walking on the edge of the road , literally nearly hits this woman as it's trying to dodge around a too-slow car, and this babucia doesn’t even bother to have an expression of fear or disgust on her face, doesn’t even bother to shout an obscenity (not that it could be heard over the Ukrainian reggae music blaring from the driver’s radio) and instead stolidly kept walking as if her life had not been put on the line by a man driving with one wrist on the steering wheel as he tries to make change for the twenty sardine-impersonators in his minivan.

So it is in this way, as it is twice a week, that I partake of my morning workout session en route to the city of Ukrainka, having no doubt that I will arrive on time (provided I survive) for my technical session on how to stay safe in Ukraine, riding the whole way in the eye of the marshrutka.

Ukraine: Meeting Cujo

Once again, I have discovered that a first aid kit is a talisman against wounding and should be carried at all times, if only so it is never used.

Evidence: this summer I climbed the highest mountain in the continental United States without a scratch, first aid kit weighing heavy in my bag. The summer before, I had forgotten to bring a first aid kit to Europe, and managed to both gash open my hand in Amsterdam (righting an overturned boat) and break a toe in Switzerland (getting out of bed; sad but true).

Now, here in Ukraine, I managed to get gastrointeritis before we were distributed our medical kits, and after, well, we'll get to that in a second. First let me talk for a second about the medical kits, each the size of a small suitcase, that each volunteer recieves. I could perform an apendectomy with this kit, which comes complete with several million bandages, several thousands of kinds of over the counter drugs, three kinds of antibiotics: amoxocillin, cipro and bacatrine, sunscreen, chapstick and exactly four condoms. I did not bring this kit on my short trip to Zhytomyr, though, and that was my first mistake.

The dog seemed friendly, the big St. Bernard that belonged to my new host family in Zhyotomyr. Coming home the first night, it ran away from me. The second night, it ran towards me to see who I was, and then went back to its dog house. The third night, it repeated this, and I felt that I should befriend this dog. I started with the motion you're taught as a child: extend your hand palm forward, below the level of the dog's head. This allows the dog to get your scent. If it appears friendly, you can then slowly raise your hand to pet it. As I was extending my hand, though, I had this exact thought: "it already knows what I smell like." So, as the dog was coming forward, I raised my hand to pet it.

Sensing a threat, the dog's inner Cujo came out. It opened its jaws and clamped them down upon my hand. Luckily, I jerked my hand back at the first growl and its teeth only caught the side of my hand, leaving some small, tooth-shaped gashes. It was because this wound was, as I was later told, a "crush wound", that it immedietly swelled, looking as if my hand had gout, and sent searing signals of pain up to my brain.

My first thought was: does this dog have rabies? I figured no, because it was the family dog, not a stray. My second thought was: goddamn my hand hurts. I have a pretty high threshold, so I was in stunned disbelief that these little wounds on the side of my hand could hurt so badly.

The dog had since put itself between me and the door of the house, doing its job of protecting the family. Cradling my hand, I walked up the steps to the door, the dog growling and barking loudly, and I stopped about four feet from it, watching it out of the corner of my eye, trying to seem unthreatening, debating my options.

I was on the outskirts of Zhyotymr, Ukraine. The temperature was below freezing. My host family was inside and asleep. Possibly, they would come see what the dog was barking about, possibly not. My brain had an internal arguement then. The pain bit wanted something done about the pain bit as soon as possible. The fight or flight bit let every other bit know that the adrenaline had been opened full blast and wondered why we were neither fighting nor flighting. The anger bit was waving its hands about and demanding that this dog be kicked in the face, but the rational bit was trying to tell it that it wasn't the dog's fault and that the situation needed to be resolved in a, well, rational manner. The libido bit wanted to know when I was going to be laid. This is an emergency, the other bits said, go away. Perhaps I can use my powers of seduction on the dog, suggested the libido bit. Shut up, replied the rest.

And it was in this manner that I stood for at least five minutes while this dog barked its lungs out at me and neither of us budged an inch. This thought occured: "I can't believe that dog bit me." This thought occured: "am I really going to have to bum rush this dog to get into the house?" This thought occured: "will someone come out and see what this goddamn dog is barking at?" And, to show my screwed up sense of priorities, this thought occured: "If I try to get to the door, and it attacks, I really hope it doesn't damage my jacket." The jacket, it should be noted, was a birthday/Christmas gift from my mother, and I already felt bad enough about loosing the gloves she also bought me on a marchrutka coming back from Kiev.

I had just made up my mind to slowly inch my way to door (and possibly begin kick at the dog should it try to attack) when the interior lights came on and my host mother opened the door. She was surprised to see me standing there and motioned for me to come in. I had taken exactly one step towards her when the dog lunged.

Seeing the dog in motion, this fifty year-old woman said one harsh word in Russian, and the dog simply stopped in mid-attack, dropped to the ground and began whimpering.

I quickly walked past the dog and into the house, and it was then that my host mother noticed me cradling my bleeding hand. She flipped out. She began yelling in a fast, high-pitched Russian, beeseeching God, apologizing to me and cursing the dog all at the same time.

She had me wash the cuts off in the bathtub and then brought me into the kitchen. After she sat me down, she scooped some strange black stuff with the texture of grease out of a mason jar and began smearing it onto the cuts. Then, she slit open a bell pepper, scrapped out the seeds, put the skin of the bell pepper over the cuts and secured it to my hand in linen gauze.

My heart was pounding throughout all this, my whole body amped to do something: flee, pummel this dog, cry war cries, something, anything, but I was simply sitting on this stool in a kitchen having a woman put vegtables on my swollen, bleeding hand.

I told her in Ukrainian that I needed to call Peace Corps, and she didn't want me to. I think she was afraid that they'd take me away because the dog had attacked me. She kept telling me that this was the first time this had ever happened and apologizing over and over. I insited that I wasn't going anywhere, but I had to tell Peace Corps. Finally she relented and gave me the phone.

I called Peace Corps, slightly embarassed that this was my third medical call in my first month and a half of service (the first for gastrointeritis, the second for a throat infection). The nurse listened to everything that happened and then told me to get all that crap off my hand, wash it vigourously with soap and water, put antibiotic ointment on it and wrap it in gauze.

I went to do so and gave the phone to my host mother so they could explain to her in Russian all that needed to be done. I also told them to make sure she understood that I wasn't angry at her, and that I wasn't going leaving them.

I didn't have my antibiotic ointment or gauze, they were both safe in my medical kit in Obhiev. After I washed my hand, my host mother pulled out several tubes of stuff, none of which had intelligible words to me, and she began smearing everything on the wound in thick globs. I don't know what was in those tubes, but I'm pretty sure one was aloe vera. I kept tellng her I needed antibiotic ointment. She told me I needed all of this. Finally, slightly frustrated, I took the one tube that she told me was antibiotic cream, went to the bathroom, washed all that stuff off, put on the cream and wrapped it up.

It's a lot better today, not as swollen, and scabbed over. So, emergency averted. I went down with my host cousin to feed the dog the day after. The dog barked up a storm, but greedily wolfed down the food I tossed to her. So, hopefully the dog and I will get to be friends.

The dog's name, by the way, is Katrina.

I know one thing, though, I'm never going anywhere without a first aid kit.

Ukraine: An Update from Zhyotomyr

Well, my little weblog is vastly behind real life at the moment, considering the latest is from day three in Ukraine and I’m at a month and a half and going strong. So, an update: I am currently in Zhotomyr, a city of about 300,000 that also happens to be over a thousand years old. It’s a two hours bus ride west of Kiev, and will be my new home for two years starting in January.I’m currently visiting the city for a week, getting to know my new host family, teaching classes at the teacher training institute where I will be working for two years, and generally seeing if there’s any problems that Peace Corps needs to address before I permanently move here in a month and a half.

Life in Obhiev, where I currently live, is going really well. Language training is coming along very rapidly. This is what happens when you have six hours of language class a day and live with people who don’t speak English. My new host family (and perhaps they were being nice) thought I’d been studying it for several years. That’s probably not far off, considering that in two semesters of college you would only receive, what, 72 hours of language instruction and I’ve already received somewhere around 90 hours worth? In any case, I’m at about an intermediate-low level (to use the official ranking system) able to use public transportation, haggle at the bazaar, describe myself, and carry on shallow conversations Intense has always been the word to describe Peace Corps training, and that’s fairly true. Your entire day is packed up with technical sessions, language sessions, teaching classes and moving between cities to get all these done. And, theoretically, you should be sleeping at night but you actually spend most of your evening hanging or partying with fellow Peace Corps people. All the Volunteers that I’ve met that have been in country for over a year say that training was the worst part of Peace Corps, and if that’s true, I have nothing but good times to look forward. I’m loving this. It’s like college and a summer camp rolled into one, with the added bonus of getting paid every two weeks.

Training is officially half over, and the time came to see our future sites. My division of about 50 Peace Corps Trainees met back up in Prolisok where, after listening to the election results come in via BBC radio, there was much partying late into the night to take the edge off the knowledge that we’d have to endure four more years of Shrub (this was lubricated by 12 point Ukrainian beer). Following three successive nights of this were three successive days of bleary-eyed tech sessions focusing on both teaching techniques and safety issues, a boring experience since A) all the teaching training is a rehash for me (out of 109 trainees, only eleven of us have prior teaching experience) and B) they’ve been giving us the same security information over and over since we got off the plane in September. But they did give us our diplomatic papers, which was cool. Since Peace Corps is technically a diplomatic organization (albeit an apolitical one), we are accorded the status of diplomatic administrative staff. This does not mean I get diplomatic immunity (sadness) but I am free to move about the country without any restrictions and am legally allowed to say I am a diplomat with the U.S. Embassy.

We all departed Prolisok yesterday, some with 17-hour train trips ahead of them, and, after eating McDonalds, I got on a bus to Zhotomyr. Oh, let me digress on the McDonalds. It’s sad, but I craved it. This country does not have the sheer variety of food that we have in the States, and after a month of bortch and varenike and galupste and cabbage, cabbage, cabbage, the fatty, salty goodness of McDonalds was a beautiful thing. I ate a whole double cheeseburger meal (and the drink had ice in it!) and then bought another double cheeseburger meal and ate it, too. It’s sad, but an American diet is one that trains your body to feel leaden after a meal, and to associate that feeling with being full. Consequently, I haven’t felt full since I’ve gotten here. I’ve stopped eating because my stomach could contain no more food, but I haven’t felt full. I now know why dieters fall off the wagon so much when they switch to healthier food; it’s because they still feel empty. Actually, I’m in much better shape here, more energetic, eating more, exercising more (mostly in the form of walking everywhere), but my body does miss that feeling of being filled to the gills with grease. Sad, but true. So, yes, McDonalds was a sating experience.

Zhotomyr is very old, and I imagine it will be very pretty in the summer. The architecture is more of the soviet block style buildings, but there are many of the onion-domed Orthodox churches here, in beautiful blues and yellows that contrast with the gray skies and bare, brown trees. My new host family lives in a three-story house by a river on the outskirts of town. Once again, I seem to luck out while everyone else gets little mud and brick houses in tiny villages or cramped apartment buildings in packed cities like Liviv or Odessa. The father was in the Soviet military, but has been decorated by both the UN and the United States (for peacekeeping work by the former, and for helping to clear a minefield by the latter). The mother is the most, um, motherly person I’ve ever met, showering constant attention onto her two teenage sons, smoothing their clothes and kissing them over and over, embarrassed looks on their faces. She has already declared me her third son, and I fear the day that this attention will swing to me. Both sons do a lot of boxing (my room is covered in Mike Tyson posters) and they have told me they will teach me this gentlemanly sport of how to get the crap beaten out of me while wearing padded red gloves. Should be interesting. You have to cross the river to get into town by walking across a bridge. The bridge looks not so much made as evolved, a metal and rotting-wood contraption that has the added benefit of being fifteen feet above the icy water. Running from the bulls was less scary than crossing that thing.

I discovered that I will not be speaking Ukrainian when I move here. Zhotomyr is a Sergic city, which means they speak both languages. Well, theoretically. In actuality, everyone at my workplace and everyone in my new host family speaks Russian. They can understand Ukrainian, but since they’re not used to it they have to concentrate and are much happier when I drop into what little Russian I know. Ukrainian and Russian are as close as Spanish and Portuguese. Which is, to say, kind of. If you’re a native speaker of one, you can kind of understand the other, but guess what? I’m not a native speaker. The grammar is the same, about 30 percent of the vocabulary is the same, and that’s it. On an interesting note, after a long introductory conversation that included a mishmash of Russian and Ukrainian with my host mother and English with one of my host brothers, my host father pulled a letter from Argentina where he has business contacts. It was in Spanish and he doesn’t speak Spanish, so could I translate it for him? Surprisingly, I was able to, but I don’t know how the Dutch manage to effortlessly switch between four languages because it gives me a splitting headache (on the other hand, though, I like bragging about it). It would make sense for me to switch to Russian training, but I will also be going to a lot of schools in the countryside as part of my job, where they don’t speak a lick of Russian. Peace Corps’ current plan is to have me finish out Ukrainian training and then switch to Russian at site in January and work with a Russian tutor until I have a decent grasp of it.

I like having to learn both languages for one very good reason: travel. Now that everyone has their sites, I have discovered that, much like how it was in America, I am central to a whole lot of friends living on the outskirts of the country. My cluster mates, whom I’ve grown very close to, are now on the borders of Poland, Romania, Moldova, Russia and Turkey. We already have massive travel plans this summer to meet up and cross those borders. Since Polish is very close Ukrainian, it’s best to speak that language. And Russia, well, they don’t speak anything but Russian. Romanian is actually a romance language, somewhat close to Spanish. And Moldova and Turkey? I might have to resort to (gasp!) English.So, much to look forward to, much to look forward to, especially since Krakow, Bucharest, Budapest, Moscow, and Istanbul are all within a day’s train ride (well, you have to take a ferry to Istanbul), and then, of course, there are Ukrainian’s golden jewels of Kiev, Odessa, Yalta and Liviv…

In any case, I’ll stop here. Currently, my only complaints are the cold (and winter has not yet begun), the fact that it is pitch-black dark by 5:00 PM, and the excessive amounts of cabbage I have to eat (a fellow PCT received Cheese-its in the mail and shared them. I was brought to an near-delirious ecstatic state by their cheesy goodness). More later, but I wanted everyone to know that I’m safe, having fun, and getting to know this country that, while bleak and coming out from under the dual yoke of poverty and a Soviet legacy, is a really amazing place, with really amazing people that experience the world on an emotional level that Americans don’t get to without a lot of time and trust. I’ve learned a lot, have a lot to learn, and am really enjoying what I’m doing.

Ukraine: Training

This is Peace Corps Ukraine training:

Four hours of language class a day, usually in the afternoon. Teaching twice a week, 10th and 11th graders at a local school. They're pretty cool. As a teacher trainer, I observe my clustermates as they teach (and they teach four times a week) and give them feedback. Saturdays, we have ungodly long technical sessions that last all day where they teach teaching skills. As I did this for both my bachelors and my masters, I am bored. Nights: hanging out with clustermates, talking or watching episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" on Seth's computer. Weekends: Extremely hard partying with the link, which usually involves drinking at Rastafaris and dancing at Indigos.

All in all, a lot of fun, I'm kept very busy and I wouldn't trade the experience for the world.