Ode to a Wondering Heart

2010-05-30T07:23:00.004+03:00

Surprising Where the Light Shines

Today I was messing around with my other new projects and saw "1 unmoderated comment" under my old Peace Corps blog. Goodness, it's been years since I last posted, the two times I attempted to write after I came home having become lost in the swirl of procrastination, PTSD, and time passing.

Yet when I saw that unmoderated comment and clicked, something revived in me. Compliments will do wonders, especially for a writer's ego, I suppose*. But it's also the timing. Does the date stamp on the comment reflect the day I moderated the comment, or is it the day the person commented? Did this person really read my blog from time to time and for some reason, today of all days, decide to reach out and say, "Hey, I read you and I like it," right when I looked and could see? Or is this an old comment that's languished like so many things on the internet, lost, lonely and left behind until my consciousness ripened to readiness for perception? I find I can't remember if that comment was there the last time I logged in just a few days ago.

Either way, I'm astounded a bit. Just last Thursday I spilled many of my guts to an old friend as we walked our children down a sun-dappled street and I mused, "I've meant to write about that chapter in my life, but I haven't found a way to do it yet." Talking with a new person about these old events felt cleansing in a way. It was cathartic to re-tell to someone who hadn't heard me tell it before.

But talking about it also felt like dredging a swamp: icky and exposed. Even as I spoke, striving for healing objectivity, I became aware that I was actually confessing my scandalousness. In displaying the evidences of what happened to me and what I had done, I felt that creeping ugliness seep upwards, seeking the light, ready to overwhelm the beauty of what I've found in the 29 months since the event that changed my life occurred, and the beauty of my new-found friendship. It felt like an act of sabotage.

Strolling along between the leafy, shaded cool patches and bright hot sidewalks of the city streets, in the back of my mind in one of my quieter, more sensible voices, I wondered why I still felt the need for self-flagellation and self-revenge. For gratuitous self-display. To be Prometheus on the rocks before eagles, guts bared ready for consumption, digestion, and the defecation of gossip and innuendo. Did I discover fire? Hardly. Did I deserve degradation and the chance that my new friend would find me too tasteless for companionship? Perhaps.

Or was I seeking understanding and compassion - in other words, forgiveness - for the self-loathing that still seeps into my sense of being? And now that some anonymous comment has inspired me to write again, will this be my journey to real wellness, to put here, where my friends and family might stumble, my full confession of what happened? Where strangers might pause to consider my tale, to develop opinions about me? Will I truly and honestly display what I think of myself and part of my history for anyone to read and consider? Should I?

What I am rather long-windedly and slightly turgidly trying to say is: Peace Corps was not what I thought it would be. I was not the Peace Corps Volunteer I thought I would be. Shall I confess? Perhaps it is time.

~~~

*Note: The "anonymous" comment is probably spam, since it includes a link to a money-generating website. Since I fell for it and posted it, likely I will see more of these lovely, ego-stroking comments appear. Perhaps this is a case of comic cosmic coincidence. Should I take it as it is and continue my introspection, or should I leave it lie and write in a safer, less public place like my journals? Trouble is, I do like the thrill of writing on the internet, since it seems like there's at least the potential for someone else to read what I've written.

2008-03-17T07:28:00.004+03:00

Red Sky at Night...Part 1

I just got my office set up. I have a balance ball to sit on. That way, my total body will get a workout just by doing things like blog. Hot damn. Or maybe soon, hot abs?

I am pretty far behind setting this kind of stuff up, I think. I've been procrastinating a part of my life that I feel I might lose if I don't act more quickly. I'm glad I have a place to do it.

And since the greater part of sentences in this post have begun with a discussion of myself, I'm signing off. Time to sleep. Then time to dream.

2008-03-12T08:00:00.004+03:00

Phoenix, Day 1

I miss blogging. I wasn't ever a great blogger, really. Only was able to do one or two every now and then, but I still enjoyed the creation of a story. I love looking at the finished page. So silly.

It's late but I wanted to send a thank you out into the world to any of you out there who might have been reading and may still be checking in on me. Forgive my absence. I may get around to writing that chapter of my life for you some day, but for now, please accept my sincere apologies for not getting back to the craft much, much sooner.

I'm home now, back in the U.S.A. Back in Minnesota. Spring is coming. The sunrises are beautiful. I miss Ukraine.

I went to my first Russian class today. My teacher spoke in English a lot. I wanted to ask her to talk in Russian. It made me think of my classes in Ukraine. I wonder if my kids ever felt frustrated with my feebling attempts to speak to them, explain to them, connect with them in Russian. Did they sigh, "Just speak English!" while my back was turned?

Will I ever know? Melodrama becomes me these days. Don't worry. I'll bounce back. Summer's on its way. That can only mean good things.

2007-11-22T21:14:00.000+03:00

I Own Two Handkerchiefs And I'm Not Afraid To Use Them

At least, I wasn't, until today. Now there's a big green booger in one of them that I'm afraid to face.

Ha ha! Maybe that borders on TMI, but I don't care. This post is an irreverent act of defiance against my bad, sad mood. I miss home today. It's quite true.

Let's see. How to begin. Where to start. What to divulge, and how.

Yesterday I had a pretty full day. I taught my seventh formers, ninth formers, and one of my eighth form classes. The kids all seem bored, or perhaps it's my moody lens bringing their boredom into focus. I had to berate all of them for not listening or doing their homework (I sounded cross and mean, I hate myself for that). In my ninth grade class, I had the smarty pants help me by asking questions of his classmates to elicit certain responses, such as "What are you going to do this evening?" For some (teenage) reason, he managed to be just fine until he got to the two girls in the back covered in makeup but not much else.

"[Her name]," he said deviously. "Who are you going to kiss tonight?" The class tittered. I made sure she could take the teasing and then said to her, "Tell him 'I'm not kissing anyone you know tonight!'" She doesn't speak English, though. But my student got the hint. His face seemed to be slightly chastened.

But then he moved on to his next victim. This is a girl who I've seen at the local beer tent getting wasted and smoking. She has gone from a fresh-faced darling when I met her last year to a pasty-faced, saggy-eyed, frazzle-haired, middle-aged-looking pre-adult. My heart aches for her. All she wants is to feel alive, and getting wasted is the only way she knows how. I relate to her, remembering what my teenage years were like. I wish I could reach her somehow. I have no idea what I could do, though.

Anyway, to this girl, he asked, "[Her name], will you eat chalk tonight?"

For a second the question seemed so absurd I thought I hadn't understood him. But then the girl's face started turning pink and she burst into tears. I swept my gaze around the class, trying to assess what was happening. Did she have some sort of compulsion that made her eat chalk? Was this some kind of code for something nasty? Was it a joke that she didn't understand? I walked back to her and patted her on the back. "I think you should apologize," I said sternly to the student. He did. I made sure the poor girl was alright and carried on with the lesson. But I still didn't get what had happened.

When I asked Tatiana, she told me that some women eat chalk because they believe it is a beauty secret or something along those lines. Apparently this girl really does eat chalk. Who knew?

And today was Thanksgiving Day. Tatiana called me in the morning to tell me she wasn't going to be at lessons today because she was going to Zaporizhia instead, to trade in some books and a suit she'd gotten her husband that was too large.

She called me again later this evening to say she was hurrying home, but they got into town about 7:30 tonight. I live about a 25-minute walk from Tatiana's house, past the only bar in town. Last time I went over there, I ended up walking home alone at 10:30 at night. It's freezing, dark, and scary. So this time I asked her if they could pick me up and drop me off. "I don't know, Sarah," she said, a worried tone in her voice. "Vova is so tired, you know. He works so hard." Mind you, this is a 5-minute car ride. I explained my discomfort and she said she'd ask him about the rides and call me back. When she did, it was a no-go. "I have bought a cake for you and I was thinking of you all alone in your apartment on your holiday and I wanted to have you as a guest," she rattled off. "And so I wanted you to come over. But Vova said he is too tired to drive, please understand, Sarah," she finished, a pleading note in her voice. I told her it was fine, no problem, we could get together on Sunday. Relieved, she said, "As you know I have so many lessons tomorrow, and it's getting so late..." I think she was secretly pleased at the way things turned out. I guess it's the thought that counts.

And there is something wonderful to be thankful for: my businessman installed a brand-new convector in the English room! No more studying in shockingly cold temperatures. Hooray!

Grandma sent me some great fairy tales on DVD, too, so I tried to have a cartoon club today after school for my seventh formers. When I popped into their classroom to give a little reclama (advertisement), they all gasped with delight at the thought of watching cartoons on the big projector screen like a real movie, and I thought I'd have them showing up in droves. Plus Thursdays are our regular club day, and I added the extra enticement of having a letter from their American Grandma to read. But when the bell rang after the sixth lesson, only seven brave little souls showed up, and only three regulars came. What happened?

After they had gone home, I went looking for the guys to close the computer room and found Vlad, Sasha, Marina and Aliosha in the other computer room playing Counter Strike. They were playing against each other, cackling gleefully. I wistfully stood around watching, wishing I could invite myself to play without disrupting the playful camaraderie in the room, when Aliosha got up and said he had to leave. Marina didn't give me a choice. "Vlad," she ordered, "Show Sarah what to do." It was so awesome! I got the hang of it pretty quick and was able to get a couple of sneaky kills. But the best moment was at the end, when it was a showdown between me and Sasha, who was trying to snipe me. I snuck around a corner and mowed him down with my machine gun. Everyone cheered in awe, Sasha grumbling cheerfully. It was fun.

(Side note: I found out today that, according to Nikitin, the central government in Kyiv bought all the schools in Ukraine computers and projectors and projector screens. Even, in principle, the village schools. I wonder how this works. He told me when I asked him where the computers all came from. The government. Sounds...unbelievable? But where else could they have come from? And if the government is buying schools things like computers and projectors, what the heck is Peace Corps doing in this country?)

And today, during school, my eleventh formers didn't let me down. For the most part they did fine. However, in my second class three boys kept talking during the lesson in a way that made me think they were cracking dirty jokes or something. Certain students laughed in that way that people laugh when something is obscene, and others looked uncomfortably from the boys to me to see if I really didn't understand what they were saying. One of these boys is the son of a particularly important person in my school. On top of interrupting my class and not doing his (incredibly simple) homework, his cell phone rang in the middle of the lesson.

All my students know my rules by now: if I see your phone or hear your phone during class, it's mine. Most hand it over without me even asking for it now. But this student didn't. He played with it for a moment and realized I was staring at him, so he tried to hide it. "Why don't you put that on my desk, please." I told him. "What? Put what on your desk?" he said with a giant, angelic smile. "Your phone." I told him. "You know my rules."

He tilted his head defiantly, smiling all the while. "It's not a phone." As if that solved things. "I don't care what it is, put it on my desk." I said. He stared at me. "No," he said.

I hate showdowns, especially with my older students. This was going far enough. "You can either give that to me, or we can go speak with your [powerfully placed parent] after class," I said. "Well, I'm not giving it to you," he answered, daring me to keep the fight going.

"Fine, that's your choice," I said, and carried on with the lesson. Afterwards, I went to his parent and told on him. I hate this. I remember what it was like in school. I remember how much I hated some of my teachers for how they didn't understand me, especially in the classes I thought were boring and dull. I hated doing this to him, and to myself. But I am also tired of being disrespected.

I went to my next lesson and about ten minutes into the class, the parent appeared at the door and pulled me out. The student was there. The parent said to me, "He says you're making this all up." I was amazed. "Really? You think so?" I asked him. "What was this, and that, and this?" I asked. The parent decided the charade would not go on. "Give me your phone," the parent demanded. The student refused. He also refused to apologize, ending up with his parent marching him down the hall to the office. I went back to class.

About fifteen minutes later, the parent came in again. "Please come to my office," this person requested. "I want you to tell his father what happened." God, this was getting ridiculous. So I went to the office, said what had happened and why I was offended, the student paced up and down, and finally I ended up begging the student, "Please, I want to make friends with you. You know that. I want to be friendly, but I can't do it if you disrespect me. Don't you understand? Please help me, even just a little bit." His face contorted and he wouldn't make eye contact. I couldn't tell if he was about to laugh or cry. The whole discipline thing seems like such a farce to me. It's all I can do not to giggle or look unserious. I empathize too much with the victim and feel it's all so random anyway. Sigh.

I was upset by the whole thing. All this, on Thanksgiving Day? I wanted to be with my family and friends, eating turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce. I wanted to have people around me who understand me and like me and truly want to work with me. I took some deep breaths and composed myself, mentally shaking it all off. You'll be fine, I told myself. You can do this. When I rejoined my class, the aftermath of my feeling frustrated, existential, lonely, and sad written upon my brow for all the world to see, my student Kolya took one look at me, blinked, and spoke up in a concerned tone, saying, "Mrs. Sarah! You cry? We can help you?"

Let me tell you, that almost actually made the waterworks let loose. I really wanted someone to tell me it was all going to be okay, that this wasn't all for nothing, that I was doing a good job and my poor little sacrifices were appreciated by someone somewhere. Instead, I smiled and said, "You can help me by studying and asking me questions. That's what you can do."

And, for the rest of the lesson, that's almost what they did. Little angels.

2007-11-21T22:38:00.000+03:00

Darkness

The darkness falls like a curtain, but this curtain of darkness is early, cutting the scene in half, catching the audience in mid-gasp. I cringe at 4 p.m. when my students and I finally leave our classrooms, fumbling in the darkness to lock the door. We walk blindly through the hallway, knowing the door is at the end, willing ourselves not to stumble and fall through the floor.

Okay, I'm being melodramatic. But dang! It gets dark early and it's a drag. I'm tired of darkness and I'm tired of being cold. And it's only November.

Enough.

Yesterday was a good day! (Trying, trying to be optimistic here. Work with me, people!) We had our regional Olympiad. I arrived at 8 a.m. to help Tatiana get ready. Several nearby village schools participated. Tatiana and I spearheaded the tenth and eleventh graders with two other teachers. Everyone gathered in a little chatty group, waiting for all the other students from various schools to arrive. I attempted to be friendly.

"Hello!" I said in Russian.

"..." said no one in particular. Eye contact was not made.

"Hi," I said in English to the nice-looking lady next to me.

"..." she said. Nothing, really. Perhaps a mutter of something, as she turned away.

Furtive glances were cast my way. I smiled broadly, hoping the human connection could be made. I tried to invite people to my Teachers' English Club. "It will be fun," I said, trying to keep the dismay from my voice. Tatiana sidled up to me and explained that the teachers wanted to meet with me, of course, but they lived 30 minutes away and really couldn't make the journey. Or they were so busy with this, or that, you know. Everyone is so busy nowadays.

What can I do? I felt so rejected by my peers. I was well-coiffed, dressed nicely in a Ukrainian suit, smiled, spoke slowly and softly, tried to project a general air of encouragement and glad-to-meet-you-ness, but to no avail. I've randomly met with these teachers now on five different occasions - three official methodology seminars, the Teacher's Day celebration in the forest, and yesterday - and every time I've made a huge effort to reach out and try to stir up some connection or interest. And every time I've failed.

I'm trying not to be discouraged. But during the Olympiad, the teachers were well contented to let me handle the tasks and run the show. When the students gave their speeches, the teachers chatted with each other and yawned. I kept notes on a chart I made to try to be objective and fair, and to try to explain my reasoning later to Tatiana, who was rushing in and out throughout the task. Part of the task is to have a dialogue with the student, so I invited the other teachers to ask some questions. "I never ask questions during an exam," sniffed one teacher in response.

Some of the teachers decided to leave early, leaving us to grade all the tenth and eleventh form tests. Tatiana and I were in the chilly English room until after 4 o'clock, pulling our hair out trying to decide on how to award points fairly and honestly. Then tonight, during our regular evening chat, she sounded really down. I asked her why, and she told me that she was disappointed with the way the other teachers had graded the eighth and ninth grade tests. She said there was no way to look at it but that they had been dishonest. She's planning on talking with the administration about it. "What to do, Sarah?" she sighed.

The gloom is settling on us all. My students are disrespectful and unruly. The teachers often ask me to let them do other tasks while I'm teaching - we're all pretty busy - and now I can't agree. With the Ukrainian teacher out of the classroom, the students go wild. I end up standing in front of the room full of kids, staring over their heads, my mind blank, thinking, "Bueller...Bueller..."

It makes me snappy and mad. I've taken to scolding the kids a little. I'm tired of finding they don't do their homework, they don't learn their vocabulary, they don't want to pay attention or work with me. They don't want to follow my directions or try the new things I propose. They don't want to talk with me or interact with me. They'd rather be kids.

Today in Lena's cabinet for tea, the regular crowd was there, being jolly - Marina, Lyuda, Tanya, Sasha (Nikitin), Vlad (Martianov), Sasha, Olya, Tatiana, and me. They were talking about a teacher's competition coming up, kind of like a talent show with skits, and I've already invited myself to be a part of it. I haven't heard anything since, and today was the first day they were talking about it again in front of me. They were having a great time talking about their roles, and I said, "What about me?" There was a little pause and no one made eye contact. Marina said, "We'll think of something, Sarah," apologetically and not very convincingly. I felt so left out. Doesn't anybody want to include me in anything???

I'm fighting off a cold, too. It's almost gone but it's been an uphill climb this week. I'm glad the holiday is coming soon. I'll get to hang out with some friends, destress and recompose myself.

Good things:

Grandma sent me the best care package ever!!! It's full of wacky, warm socks, long underwear, and wonderful, wonderful movies. She sent me Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Pride and Prejudice, The Grinch, A Christmas Carol, and a bunch of cartoons. This couldn't get any better - but it just did! She also sent me a bunch of cribbage boards and cards. I can't wait to teach my kids how to play.

Tatiana and I are hoping to organize a Christmas party. Hopefully we can have our kids put on little skits and read poems and sing songs. How to organize it and why and how to get our kids ready is another story. I wish it were simple, like some kids had time after school on certain days, but it always seems to change, and even when they agree to meet with me, there's always something that comes up and they don't show up.

Dang. I slipped back into negativity there. Thus ends the post. I don't like to complain, I'd rather think that there is no problem too difficult to solve, no situation so bleak it's worth complaining so much about. So tomorrow is another day, and perhaps it will be a better one.

2007-11-19T21:23:00.000+03:00

The Cookie Connection

After school today. Wait. Let me rephrase that (with a tired sigh): After I tutored two Zhenias after school today, and after I got a computerized phone call in Ukrainian that I actually understood and didn't hang up on and after it reminded me kindly to pay my phone bill by tomorrow or else and after I rushed off to try to change the dollars I had scrounged up because I'm out of money and there's not a bank nearby where I can take money out of my account unless I want to pay a big fee and after I found out that I got to the bank too late to change money ("The program's done for today, dear," said the teller not unkindly) and after I used the last of the money in my purse to pay my phone bill and sped-walked home, two of our school's best English speakers, Anya and Larisa, came over to my apartment for some speaking practice before tomorrow's big Olympiad.

I'm seriously so done with boring lectures, worksheets, textbooks, translations, preparations. So I chucked it all and we baked cookies. It was awesome. They stayed for over two hours. We babbled about everything, from what we like to do in our free time to what it's going to be like to leave home and go to the big city for school. They were mostly talking with each other - in English - the entire time. I'd occasionally fill in some, just enough to give them some examples of how to say what they wanted. I'd say less than 5% of our conversation was in Surzhyk. Fun! It kind of felt like girl time, too. I hope they had as much fun as I did.

I got to school this morning at 8 a.m. to tutor my businessman. Did I tell you about him? Our first session was last Friday morning. He's the guy who just wandered into school one day looking for me to teach him English. During our first meeting, I kept trying to aim the tiny little space heater over toward us, since the room was freezing. I wasn't even trying to be obvious about it, either, but his eyes lighted up and he exclaimed, "Aha! I will buy you a convector! I will put it in this afternoon!" A convector is the local parlance for a sort of convection heater that is attached to the wall. It's the thing keeping my apartment warm and toasty this winter. They're great.

So he's going to install a convector for us in our English room, but he didn't get a chance yet because when he walked into the room this morning, his nose was bright red and his eyes had a sort of sunken, Lurch-like cast to them. "I'm very sorry," he apologized, "I have been sick this weekend, and..." He trailed off. I excused him (hee hee, that's right, I'm the teacher now!) and we planned to meet later in the week.

After I got home, I let Kathryn go home (she stayed over this weekend for a popcorn and pizza and pumpkin pie extravaganza, it was awesome) and waited for the electrician, who actually came! Finally! It took him two hours and several trips to the nearby village for parts, but I now have a new wall socket and fuse box. He also spliced a new end onto my space heater, miracle of miracles, and so now I can heat my kitchen, no worries about carting that thing to the office in Kyiv for a replacement.

For my first annual Kuibyshevo Pumpkin Carving Party on Friday (it was so fun. Five eleventh formers and eight seventh formers showed up. Three pumpkins were carved. Crossword puzzles and word searches were dutifully solved. The older kids wrote a scary story and read it to the little ones. We had a race to fill cups with water from a big bowl using only spoons in partners. The seventh formers really got into a game where two kids left the room and the others wrote two words on cards, then taped them to the two kids' backs. Those two had to stand in the middle of everybody, hop on one foot, and the first to read the word on the other person's back was the winner. The darlings got into it so much, it was quite hilarious. They bounced up and down, cheering and laughing right along with the competitors. And all this, including the awarding of the grand prize - a jar of candy to the one who guessed the number of pieces - and clean up in the space of two hours. It was great)...anyway, for the party I'd arranged the desks into a big U shape, with two desks in the top of the U together for a demonstration table, and a big open square shape where we played games. I have been wanting to arrange the desks like this forever. It's so conducive to every kind of learning activity imaginable. The kids love it, too. I'm going to fight tooth and nail to keep it like this.

For example, Olya wants me to go back to teaching the entire tenth form class, instead of half. We'd tried splitting it in parts, but it's apparently giving her a headache. That's fine. With the desks like that, I don't mind a large class, since I can take attendance around the room, keep my eye on every single person at once, and call on whoever I want whenever I want. I am the center of attention if I want to be, but they can all see each other, too. The most people a single person can bother or talk to is two, and it's easy enough to feel like everyone is watching you goof off, which they are. So today we were reading this quite abominable story called "Witches' Loaves" in our beloved Plakhotnyk readers about a spinster who falls in love with a draughtsman, who she believes is really a poor artist because all he does is buy stale bread. So one day she puts butter in the bread, dreaming of true love happily ever after, but it turns out she ruins everything! Doesn't everyone know that draughtsmen prefer to use stale bread instead of India rubber to rub out the pencil lines on their drawings? And to think he absently rubbed that butter all over the drawing of City Hall that would win him a prize! He even shouted "Fool! You stupid old cat!" at the poor woman. So apparently she's the witch, because she plotted and schemed, I guess.

Anyway, I digress. We read the story and acted it out and wrote three interesting endings and it was fantastic. Of course, their teacher scolded them afterwards for not knowing enough, but at least she did it when I couldn't see it and I only found out later by being gossipy. I don't understand. I thought they did a good job and paid pretty good attention for such a strange little tale.

Zhenia from the tenth form came out of the blue and asked to read a story with me. How could I say no? And little Zhenia came and found me today, too. She's such a cutie. I like making friends with her. We're reading "Charlotte's Web", and it makes me remember being a little girl all over again. I wonder if I was like Zhenia when I was that age, kind of spacy and self-absorbed but in a completely innocent, smartish way, bookish and outgoing, but shy with my peers, wanting attention but unsure how to go about getting it, awkward but really quite a beautiful little girl.

Last Saturday I hung out at school all morning, tutoring again. Anya and Larisa came to see me. We discussed the topics from last year's Olympiad and I tried to give them strategies for speaking more. The best one I gave them was a variation on "say what you know": talk about yourself. "As for me," they say. "In my life," or "What I do..." It's working, though, because today they were already speaking more about the topics. I hope it helps.

Well, it's early but I'm going to bed. I have another long day tomorrow: the rayon Olympiad and a couple of seventh form lessons. After school, I kind of hope I can go home so I can plan my six lessons for Wednesday. Then Thursday and Friday morning it's Mr. Businessman tutoring time, and my eleventh formers on Thursday afternoon. Nope, just remembered. I've got to get the eleventh formers ready for the make-up test for American Country Studies tomorrow after school. Oh well. So much for free time. It's overrated, anyhow. Right?

2007-11-15T21:52:00.000+03:00

The Long Ride

Well folks, just when I'd snagged your interest, I was called into Kyiv for some medical testing. I headed in on Sunday night, the night of the big storm here. Everyone is talking about it. Five ships were sunk, including an oil tanker which spilled a ton of oil into the Sea of Azov, and eight other ships were run aground. Houses in Berdyansk, the city about an hour south-east of me, were flooded. Some sailors died. Signs and billboards were twisted and crumpled by giant invisible hands of wind and icy rain. It was pretty intense. The wind gusts were so strong they'd twirl you around in place. Awesome.

Anyway, when I got into Zaporizhia at about 5 in the evening I found out that there were no train tickets left. Everyone wanted Kyiv. All around me at the ticket counter people were shouting, "Kyiv? Tickets left for Kyiv?" Hearing that, I figured my chances were slim, but I elbowed my way up there anyway. The harried lady didn't even look up. "No tickets, at all, for Kyiv," she stated flatly.

A lady behind me said there was a bus leaving at 9 p.m. from the nearby bus depot. I hurried over there (that involved catching a marshrutka right outside the train station) and got my 9 o'clock ticket. Then I headed over to Rich and Cathy's, aka "Hotel Brownell" (their last name), and they fed me lasagna soup and cheese and crackers. Heavenly.

The bus, on the other hand, was no such thing. When I got back to the station about eight, the lot was deserted. Thin flakes swirled in the blowing wind. Crowds of people milled about. I waited until 8:50, then I headed in, only to find a big group of people standing at the one open ticket window inside.

"May I ask a question of her?" I said to the next person in line. "Of course," she answered, so I stuck my head into the window. The red-haired woman sitting in the gloomy little ticket office leveled a frosty gaze upon me that said, "Dirt is better than you, dearie, and by a long shot," and when I inquired about the bus, she coldly replied, "It has lost itself."

"I have an 80 hrivnia ticket!" I exclaimed in disbelief. "What should I do?"

"It's not my problem," she snorted. Hearing the bus had been cancelled, the crowd behind me buzzed. People started shouting at her. We have tickets! It is so your problem! Just then a woman's voice announced on the intercom, "The 9 o'clock bus to Kyiv has been cancelled." It was 9:00 on the dot.

I begged a nice-looking little man behind me for help. He turned a kindly eye on me and told me there was another bus leaving at 9:25. The other people had already started forming the mass of elbows and grunts to hustle their way to the window, where the lady was changing the tickets for a 10 hrivnia surcharge. I heard someone in the crowd say, "There's only 15 spots left on the next bus!" People started complaining, saying they had morning appointments in Kyiv, giving all the reasons why they needed that ticket. I felt I had them one-upped. After all, I was a stranger in their land. I needed to get to Kyiv!

Not only that, the crowd had become thicker. After the announcement, all the people left waiting on the platform had come rushing in, jumping in line as if all the people already waiting were invisible. One lady, when informed that we all were waiting to change our tickets for the Kyiv bus too, affected upturned eyebrows and gave a small rising "Ohhh?" as she turned her back on us and promptly shoved her ticket through the window.

I, being smaller than the largely male surge of humanity around me, wiggled my way up through the center of the group. I cast a pleading glance on the stern guy to my right. He glared at me, but his shoulders softened and he let me change my ticket in front of him. Batting your eyelashes gets you places here, I'm telling you.

So the deluxe bus pulled up and the fifteen lucky winners of the golden tickets were left standing at its doors. A lady dressed like a stewardess (indeed, she came around in the morning offering coffee and tea) checked us off on a list. She randomly assigned us to the leftover spots. I got a place in the very back, where the five bench-style seats don't recline, in between two enormous men. Well, that wasn't actually so bad, because after midnight on a ride like that you get so frantic for sleep that normal societal things like "personal space" mean less to you, and so I was able to use their general bulk as props and their shoulders for pillows. The night passed in a stupor of fitful slumber.

Kyiv was snowy and cold. It was very pretty, with about 10 centimeters of snow piled up on all the flat surfaces. I made my way into the subway and found my way to our new office on autopilot, taking in the cityscape around me, so different than the architecture of my village or even Zaporizhia. The people are chic, dressed in expensive western European styles, with accessories like fancy cars and shiny handbags to match. The pastel buildings seem so gentle and historic, there are statues and monuments everywhere you turn, and the kiosks and stores seem modern and busy. Not only that, it's not built in a straight line on "Europe's longest prospect" like Zap, but in circles and angles and hilly, interesting curves.

I spent the next couple of days getting various tests done (all are fine. Don't worry. I'm healthy as the girl next door) and hanging out with a bunch of volunteers who were COS-ing (Close of Service-ing to you non-acronymical humans out there, otherwise known as NAHs). They griped about paperwork and forms, complained about Ukraine and America, daydreamed about the food they were about to eat, the things they were going to buy with their COS money, and the particular comforts of home they missed most. Many were planning trips abroad, cruises, hikes, or siestas in places like the Mediterranean or Thailand. Sounded interesting, but not alluring to me. At this point, I like Ukraine. After a year here, it feels closer to home than Minnesota in some ways.

We ate pizza at Vesuvio's, a great little joint off Kreschatyk (the main drag in Kyiv), one night. As we walked through the sleepy, wintery nighttime city, we capered in the snow and generally acted like loud, crazy Americans. There was another guy from Minnesota in the bunch and we instigated a snowball fight. The two other girls looked at me, Trisha and the four guys with disdain, but seriously. How can you resist all that wonderful, fluffy wet snow? It was perfect.

Tuesday morning on our way into the office, Trisha and I wandered through the bustling city, walking most of the way there and taking pictures. The sky was a brilliant blue and everywhere people were hurrying somewhere else. I'm at the point in my service where I've started to realize that if I don't start snapping photos soon, I'm not going to have the chance. I only have a year left! Gotta hop to it!

Independence Square, "Maidan Nezalezhnosti"

I caught the train home on Tuesday night, finally getting some rest after crashing on the sofa in the cold apartment with seven other people. The rolling train and warm (the retired officer across from me complained "hot") car soothed me and I slept like a baby.

After that, I grabbed the next marshrutka out of Zaporizhia and got home by 10 a.m. Wednesday morning, in time to get to school to meet with my coteachers. I brought them a Kyivan cake (it's a special type of cake made with meringue and cream frosting, light, crunchy, and sweet enough to melt the teeth in your mouth) to thank them for my medical leave. We ate that today with coffee. As we crunched our bites of cake, they started discussing cake, which seems a common occurrence when cake is being consumed here.

"My favorite cake is chocolate, with that [something I couldn't understand] in the middle," said Sasha.

"You know, that cake is alright," countered the other Sasha. "But I like [some other word I didn't understand] better."

Olya gave a snort. "No way!" she said. "The best kind of cake is [something], with [something] and [something] in it."

Tatiana sighed and washed down a bite with a sip of instant coffee. "I like Kyiv cake," she whispered to me confidentially, winking and bumping me on my shoulder with her shoulder and laughing her soft little Marge Simpson laugh.

Yesterday after school we were supposed to have our inaugural Teachers' English Club meeting. I'd done some leg work on that, surveying the teachers at our methodological seminar on the best days to meet (Wednesday and Saturday), and Tatiana had personally called all the teachers in the area, receiving several promises from them to come. I bought tea and sugar and little rolled cakes (these were really decadent, like ho-hos, but with apricot and raspberry filling and dipped in white chocolate). I got a chainik all ready and laid out on a desktop the magazine articles I'd copied, the ice-breaker exercises I'd printed, the survey I'd written, and the "All About Me" introduction text I'd made.

It was 2:15. Everything was ready. In the teachers' room we caught Olya and Yulia and made them promise to come after the seventh lesson (3:05). Vika joined us in the English room and the three of us chatted for an hour. We kept casting little glances at the clock and every now and then, when we heard footsteps in the hall, muttered, "That must be another English teacher!" But no one came.

Finally Yulia showed up. With time spinning out into darkness as the three o'clock hour rolled around, the four of us decided to go ahead and use the materials I'd prepared. I think the others were just humoring me, but in my mind at least they got to practice their English, too.

Finally we wrapped up about 4:00. "Don't be offended, Sarah," Tatiana said, squeezing my hand. With a squeaky note of incredulity in her voice, she added, "I don't know what happened! I called them and they promised to come!"

Today I had three good lessons with my eleventh formers. They are the hardest for me to handle. My 11-A group is made up of 22 students, with varying degrees of language skills. They range from not being able to answer the question "How are you?" to giving nearly-fluent (memorized) dissertations on the political state of Ukraine. There are about eight key students who, when absent, make the class an enjoyable experience. When present, they tend to exert a vacuum-like suction on the rest of the class, draining the capability or desire of the rest of the class to nearly nothing. Sometimes, when it's going badly, I look out and meet the gaze of one or two students, and I think that must be what drowning eyes look like. "Please," they seem to be saying, "Please teach us...please don't let this stop you from teaching us."

So I don't. The eleventh graders are already old enough that if I stray too far from the teacher-centered methods they are used to, they get really rowdy and wild. They focus a lot better when I stay in the comfortable zone of me telling, them repeating/memorizing/regurgitating. So I've learned to adapt my lesson plans accordingly (not without some hilarious incidents, however. One time I tried to do "tongue twisters" since that was the theme in their Plakhotnyk readers. Tatiana had suggested I focus on speaking during my lesson, and liked the idea of discussing some popular American tongue twisters. I chose some classics, like "One smart fellow, he felt smart" and "A skunk sat on a stump..." amongst others. Those necessitated explaining what it meant to "smelt fart" and what a "skunk" exactly was. As I drew a picture on the board of a stripey animal with a cloud coming out from under its tail, one student in the front muttered, "Beautiful girl," in disgust, crossing his arms and staring at the floor. The rest of the students were laughing and chattering in Russian and Ukrainian. When I tried to get them to say the tongue twisters, all hell broke loose. They rebelled, refusing to speak, and I blustered, caught in the trap of a lesson gone horribly wrong. I later regretted this lesson on another level when my administration admonished me to my Peace Corps manager. "She does whatever she wants in class!" my zouch exclaimed. "Her ideas are crazy! Just look at what she tries to teach them!" As I blushed and tried to swallow the giggles rising in my throat, Tatiana, sitting to my left, gave a choking sound and I could see she was trying desperately not to laugh, too. After a moment, she explained that I did follow their lesson plans, but too late. The damage was done. At least now I know that I shouldn't talk about noxious fumes in class!).

Today we had two American Country Studies lessons. I used one lesson to discuss new vocabulary, defining the words on the board in English while the students happily and busily copied into their books. As I acted out or drew pictures to represent the words, they discussed possible translations. It was actually pretty cool. Then I laid out strips with the vocabulary word on one side, the definitions on the other side. They stood around the desk and matched the vocabulary to the definitions. Finally, in the second lesson, I passed out a text with the words missing. As I read, they filled in the right words. It was gratifying to see them referring to their vocabulary lists and know that I had given them some new information. Even the three students who never participate, when I told them they couldn't play the matching game unless they had written all the definitions, seemed almost bothered enough to participate. Instead, though, they sneaked around the room, hiding the other students' bags and books and moving their chairs. Of course I saw that happening, but I didn't want to reward their behavior with attention. When the game broke up, the students happily admonished their unruly classmates and rearranged their stuff so quickly that all I could do was suppress my smile. I remember what it was like to be a kid. Why have another adult around who just screams at you? I'm not going to change the fact that they don't want to learn by berating them or yelling. If I make it more fun to learn than to sit around not learning, maybe they'll get it before I go.

That was 11B. In my 11A class, our theme was "inventions". Tatiana asked me to find extra related materials, so I used my World Book Encyclopedia on my mac to make ten short texts. I made two copies and passed them out. Each student had to find their partner with the same text, then read it, understand it, and discuss it. I was gratified to hear even weaker students shouting, "Who has [this word]?" in English. Then I walked around the room as they read their texts, explaining unfamiliar words. Finally, I facilitated a discussion with them, and it seemed to work. All 22 of them were quiet and listening to each other, giving examples and rewording their texts a little bit, not just repeating them word for word. I felt really pleased with this lesson.

After school we had our Culture Exchange Project club again. Eight students came and we finished the posters of the American students who had written us letters. I got Ludmila Ivanovna's (my director) permission to tape the posters on the wall in the corridor. I'm excited. This will be a big, beautiful result. The kids were so focused, pleased with their task, and chattering away in a mixture of mostly English and Surzhyk. They're seventh graders, so I'm more and more pleased with the transformation of their English, from stilted, memorized utterances to incorporating some of the same flow I use when I'm teaching them. It's cool! As they say.

Tomorrow I have my first meeting with a local businessman who found me at school to take business English lessons. I'm really excited. He bought books and I'll get to see what level he's at. It could be fun, and I look at it as a way to make another connection into my community. If I tutor him for free, his business might make a donation to a project in the future. Right?

I also have my long-anticipated Pumpkin Carving Party! I'm so stoked. Tatiana and I bought candles after school, which necessitated a trip to almost all the shops in town. Since most of southeastern Ukraine lost power for over a day last weekend, people had bought out all the candles in every store. But tenacity paid off and we got some at Victoria's, a great little combination grocery, knick-knacks, cloth, slippers, lottery tickets, and odds-n-ends store. I've made some crosswords and word searches for the kids to do, and we'll have a couple of contests, like a cake walk to take a prize from my prize box and have a "guess how many candies in the jar" contest. It should be a fun time (cross your fingers that some kids come)!

Whew! Catching up is hard work on cold fingers like mine. The electricity is still not fixed in my apartment and the cold is pervasive. My little convector is working hard, but my bedroom is still only 17 degrees (aka 62 degrees Fahrenheit). Brrr! When I called Elena to ask her about the electrician, there were a lot of reasons why he hadn't been contacted yet. She promised to do it "tomorrow", so all I can do is wait and hope. "We're not in America, Sarah," she said apologetically. "Thus we live."

Thus we live.

2007-11-09T00:50:00.000+03:00

Life Should Come in Nutshells

Random Thought Associaion List time!

1. It snowed last night, a dusting that is probably the closest thing to powdered sugar I've come across in Ukraine, and very pretty to wake up to.

2. It snowed again tonight as I was finishing my 8th lap around the track at the stadium in the gloomy darkness. Nearby, the low clouds were underlit by the orange flicker of leaf and brush fires. The air was biting and tasted like smoked sausages. But the dusting (which stuck around all day, didn't melt, so that means it is truly Freezing here now) made it possible to see where I was going, which was kind of cool. And this time, when it came, the snow was thick and luxurious, a true swirl of icy, wet flakiness that got into my eyelashes. As I walked home, it made a crunchy noise that made me think of sweaty fingers rubbing a balloon.

3. Two of my three classes were cancelled today. One was cancelled because the students had to prepare for the Miss Ukrainka beauty pageant which will be held tomorrow. One was cancelled because the students were on an "excursion" (to where and why remains a mystery). How am I supposed to get "results" if the one hour I teach students a week is taken away from me?! Not only that, but the third lesson was shortened for the previously mentioned excursion. But that didn't matter too much, because the students were being terrific beasts and didn't want to play my game and so I gave them a pop quiz to get even. Revenge.

4. The electrical situation remains a mystery that is not solving itself very quickly. But everyone is helping me; it's just keeping up the squeaking long enough and loud enough to get the grease that matters.

5. Dasha, Tanya, Nastia and I made posters for our Culture Exchange Project after school. We sang along to Potap and Nastia Komenskiy, colored in our words, and stayed so late the school was dark and our director shooed us out with a surprised, "Someone is still here? Go home!"

6. I had a normal dinner of hash - potatoes, onions, green peppers and salami with a fried egg - and only ate one potato pirazhok today. I'm concerned: the piroshki are very tasty, and very tempting, possibly habit-forming.

7. A stir was created at school today when a man came looking for me (which is how he was presented. Lena came into the classroom where I was sitting with Tatiana and said ominously, as if it was my fault, "Sarah! A man is here for you." I said, "What man?" and she just replied, "How should I know? A man!!!"). Luckily, my students were practicing for the contest tomorrow, so I had nothing to do! (Sarcasm.) Anyway, turns out the man is a local businessman who studied English but really needs a refresher for some reason. He wanted me to help him learn business English. I said sure, absolutely. I love teaching adults English. We're going to start on Monday in the English room. More justification for an English resource center. I'm working on Tatiana, and we're going to discuss the idea next Wednesday at the Teachers' English Club.

8. Made contact with a returned Peace Corps Volunteer today and we're doing the preliminary discussions for a summer camp, tentatively scheduled for the summer of 2009. The RPCV is the director of his University's International Education Department and wants to bring American students to Ukraine to conduct journalism and writing camps. His focus is on sustainable development. I will find out if the teachers and community members here are interested. The Teachers' English Club is looking more and more useful!

And that concludes the list. Time to practice Beatles songs on my darling pink guitar.

2007-11-07T22:54:00.000+03:00

Pumpkin Carving Party!

Come One, Come All

On Friday, November 16th, after classes (about 3:00), I'm having a pumpkin carving party at my school. Anyone who's interested can come and enjoy the fun. We're going to roast pumpkin seeds and bake pumpkin pie, too. Afterwards, I plan on making pizza (sausage, onion and peppers is the house specialty) at my apartment, which is fairly spacious (especially if you have a sleeping bag). Come on down to the ol' Posiolok Gorodskova Tipa (in the middle of Zaporizhia Oblast, email me for directions), rock my kids' worlds, and see what you're missing by living in a town with more than 8,000 inhabitants! xoxo ~Sarah

2007-11-07T22:01:00.000+03:00

So Weary In My Bones

The day after exercise resumes post-hiatus is always an exhausted one. I raked almost all my yard today after school with Claudia. It was good to feel my muscles stretching out and warming up. Our tools: the stick-bundle sweeper, two long-handled majorly heavy-duty rakes (before we got our rake on, Claudia threaded sticks through the tines, possibly because they would shove the leaves around better that way), a cardboard box, and a big square cloth, formerly a blanket, to gather the leaves on so we could carry them to the leaf pile.

And the pile is getting huge. It's up to my shoulders. I can only assume someone will light it on fire soon. As we carted our loads of soggy leaves out to the roadside, we walked through the little woody area in front of the apartment building. There are several footpaths worn in the dirt. The amount of litter makes me daydream about going out there and just picking up. I might do that this weekend, in fact. I also got to inspect the fort that was built last spring in the corner closest to my apartment. It's pretty serious. The roof is woven so tightly that rain might not even get in there. It seems uninhabited for the most part, however, so that makes me less nervous about its presence.

Typing this makes me want to take pictures. I'll try to remember to do that tomorrow.

School was freezing again today. The lessons were shortened to 35 minutes and we didn't get our normal long breaks (20 minutes) after the second and third lessons. Normally we gather in Lena's cabinet and drink tea, chitchat, and I avoid eating the salo, liver, or other food items being presented. I'll eat hard-boiled eggs with mayonnaise, bread with mayonnaise or ikra ('caviar', but it's a vegetarian puree, quite tasty really), and cookies, but I draw the line at any kind of meat products. I just can't get over my staunchly indoctrinated cultural food safety beliefs. But today, what with the short breaks and my ravenous appetite from the increase in activity yesterday, I ended up in the lunchroom with Vika (English teacher) and Vika (who has amazing, thick, wavy, long black hair). We scarfed piroshki with cabbage, and I caved in to the craving created by Raven-haired Vika's sausage piroshki. It was a hotdog in fried dough. I bought one and wolfed it down as the bell rang.

After school Alina, Alina and Zhenia caught me by the English room. Actually, I'd been hanging around in case anyone was looking for me. In my wandering, I bumped into Tatiana in the English room where she was tutoring Maxym. If you think you've seen an adorable little boy, think again. He is so cute he makes buttons weep, and he loves to study. He's in third grade, and he's shy but tenacious as can be. His favorite part of the lesson is to write on the blackboard. He grades himself afterwards, smiling this secret little grin complete with dimples. Adorable.

Tatiana had had a successful trip to the open lesson and was excited about the Teachers' English Club we're starting. She said the teachers were looking forward to it, but she discouraged me from offering tea. "It's too much work, Sarah," she admonished. "Not only that, you have to buy everything yourself - tea, sugar. And you have to wash the cups afterwards. I don't think you should do it." I may rebel, however, because I want the teachers to come back again and I intend to offer little positive reinforcements, a fairly innocuous one being tea and cookies when they're hungry and tired after teaching all day.

Anyway, my girls begged me to stay and work, even though I thought I saw icicles forming in the windows. So we worked on our posters for our Culture Exchange Project and chattered away in English. It was pretty fun. By the end, they were getting the giggles and insisted on walking me home. Outside the school, I put up my fur-trimmed hood and they followed suit. "We're like sisters!" gasped Alina with something like joy. I felt joyful, anyway. I like it.

Mystery Phone Call #1

In case the caller gets the courage to repeat his performance, I thought I'd document a random phone call I got at about 7:30 pm last night. I forgot to write about it yesterday, but it bears recording. So, it went like this: the phone rings, a man's voice says "Hello" (remember, it's in Russian). I'm like, "Hello, can I help you?" He's like, "Well, yeah. Let's talk." I'm all, "Okay, what do you want to talk about?" And he's like, "Oh, well, anything. It doesn't matter."

So now I'm sleuthing. "Who is this? What's your name?" I ask. He won't tell me. "How did you get my number?" I want to know. He says I wouldn't give him my cell phone number but gave him my home number instead, but he won't tell me when I gave him the number. He doesn't sound like my upstairs neighbor, or like the firefighter I met at my host family's house a few weeks ago, these being my primary suspects. He sounds vaguely familiar, not too much older than me, I don't think younger than me. He admitted that he lived in Kuibyshevo.

We chatted for a while, playing the "cat and mouse" game, as he called it. It was like some sort of bizarre semi-flirting in another language with a mystery man. Well, I guess that's exactly what it was. Funny! He wouldn't tell me how old he was, what he did for work, or his name. But instead of getting mad or hanging up, I wanted to talk more. It was like a test of my Russian skills. And I learned two new, quite useful words: 'to happen' and 'to allow'. So in fact I kind of hope he'll call back.

All day today as I was walking around, I kept my eye out for someone giving me a look like, "I secretly talked to you last night." Mystery! Intrigue! In sleepy little Kuibyshevo. How thrilling.

P.S. My Dinner Confession

This is so silly I had to write it down. For dinner tonight I ate:

A bag of Cream and Greens suhariki (these are my favorite Ukrainian snack, they are croutons, but long and thin, crunchy and satisfying in so many ways)
Two spoonfuls of peanut butter (I'm running low! I don't want to think about it)
A banana
Two glasses of Apple-Carrot juice

What?! I am on strict orders to avoid my kitchen because of the electrical situation, it's literally freezing in there because of previously-mentioned electrical situation, and I'm weary, too weary to even fry an egg. I can always eat tomorrow.

2007-11-06T22:47:00.000+03:00

Today is the First Day of Winter

I'm sure of it. There was frost on the grass and fallen leaves when I walked to school this morning, and the sky was that piercing kind of blue you can only see in the wintertime. School was so cold. The temperature was the major point of discussion in the teacher's room today. The season of our students being wild and wearing their coats during class has officially begun. Everyone's slowly adjusting.

Even me. Yesterday I made the mistake of wearing pantyhose that were, according to Tatiana, far too thin. I was going to kill my ovaries and then myself. She encouraged me to wear thicker hose to ward off the dangers of the cold. So today I wore my tights, to much general approval, although I still felt cold. Maybe after a year here I can finally dress myself. She, on the other hand, was wearing one of her pretty see-through blouses. But since she was wearing thick hose, it was okay. Or something like that. I don't know if I ever really will understand.

After Tatiana and I tracked down most of our Olympiad students and awarded them the certificates, I spent most of the day planning lessons at school. According to the arrangements I made yesterday with Elena (my zouch), I figured the electrician would be coming over after school. Oops! In the middle of my two-lesson block, right as the second lesson was beginning at 1:25, Elena came busily into the English room. "Sarah!" she exclaimed. "What are you still doing here? Go home, now!"

I was bewildered. "Um, my lesson...?" I stammered. "Never mind!" she shushed. Pushing me out of the classroom, she continued, "The repairman has been waiting at your house for over 20 minutes. Why aren't you there?" As I stumbled out into the hallway, I looked over my shoulder. Olya motioned for me to go. "I'll take your lesson," she said as the door closed.

Elena moved me down the hallway and saw that I got my coat on sufficiently fast. "I really didn't know anything about this," I tried to explain under her strict gaze. Her eyes softened and she admitted, "I know. I was supposed to tell you, but when I didn't see you all day, I forgot. Hurry! Run home!" she finished.

So I sped-walked back to my apartment. The school repairman, who yesterday had informed me that he was only in charge of the school and I'd have to talk to my landlady if I wanted someone to fix my apartment, was waiting in his car. We made our way into the kitchen, where he proceded to poke a screwdriver around the burned-out socket. I cringed in the corner.

Finally he wanted to turn the electricity off to dig deeper. I showed him my partially-melted fuse box by the front door. "Did this happen a long time ago?" he asked, eyeing the wonky black plastic that had peeled back to expose the wiring beneath with a look in his eyes that I really didn't want to understand but that was nevertheless coming across loud and clear. "Ye-e-e-s," I said.

He leveled a very serious gaze upon me and said slowly in extremely clear Russian, "Bad. Very bad. Very, very bad."

Turns out the wiring in the place is completely haywire. The specialist will have to come and redo first the fusebox and then my kitchen. I just hope it happens soon, so I can go back to eating more than fried eggs and hash and dreaming about what would happen if I woke up to the smoke alarm blaring in the night. As loyal readers of my story may know, I'm particularly partial to my little electric oven and especially when the cold weather strikes, the sun sets at 4:30, and I'm all alone in my bare little apartment, I like to bake. It soothes me. But the repairman said sternly, "Do NOT plug anything into the sockets in your kitchen. If you do, there will be BIG FIRE. Big fire," he repeated, looking deep into my eyes to make sure I understood. I got it.

We rattled back to school in his cool old Russian car (which had a sticker on the dashboard that said, "No Space War All Around the World" in English on a stylized Soviet star background) and the last thing I heard was the repairman telling Alexey, our other zouch, all about the crazy situation he'd found in my apartment. At least that's what I imagined. I heard the words "electrical socket" and "big fire" and "really bad" and, together with the facial expressions and hand gestures, pieced the rest together. In the meantime, I'm practicing the (Ukrainian? Human?) art of ignoring the problem so it doesn't exist.

After school Olya took me to the music school, where she introduced me to the director. He's a kind-looking sort of fellow with pure white hair and a craggy face. He spoke very softly and, like many people do when I first meet them here, avoided making eye contact with me and addressed most of his questions to Olya, even though I tried to answer. Soon enough, having established a rapport based on our mutual admiration of music, he was leading me around the school by the elbow, showing off the banduras and pianos with a gentle sort of pride. I'll meet with the voice teacher and guitar teacher (who Olya assures me is an extremely serious fellow) on Friday and so maybe soon I can start learning Ukrainian songs! I'm stoked.

When I got home, there was about an hour of daylight left. Galya was out raking leaves and so I decided to join her. I put on all my running clothes and just as I got outside, Claudia - the retired former teacher and self-appointed caretaker of our particular little building - was walking up the drive. "Claudia!" I exclaimed. I startled myself by the happy sound of my voice. I guess I'm becoming quite attached to her, ever since she came to my door to offer a packet of candy to remember her sister who had passed away and cried when I kissed her on the cheek, and since she lets me know when they're selling good vegetables on the street, and sometimes she drops off little pies and things. She was so cute today. She had on black leggings, a blue and purple sweater, and a blue headscarf. She looked just like a little old lady from one of the happier Brothers Grimm fairy tales and it was all I could do not to hug her. We quickly exchanged pleasantries.

"By the way, do you have..." I paused, searching for words. "Instruments...to clean...my nature?" I asked.

She beamed and replied, "Of course!" She lead me to her sarai (little garage shed) and got out a big, long-handled rake, a cardboard box, and a tiny, two-foot-long bundle of sticks, which was actually a broom. She instructed me in the use of these implements and told me she'd help me after school tomorrow. I turned on my ipod and went to town, working with my little stick sweeper and joining the legions of Ukrainian women who bend over at the waist to do things to the ground. I thought about how the stick broom was something people could have been using hundreds of years ago, and probably were, and there I was with my modern self, and it couldn't have been more useful. Home Depot should take note. By the time it was too dark to see and Claudia had come looking for me to tell me to stop, I'd carted three cardboard boxfuls of leaves out to the road about 200 meters away, where a giant pile was taking shape. If there's something I like to do in this world, something that just gives me a simple kind of pleasure, it's raking leaves.

Both Galya and Claudia were smiling at me as the darkness came down around us. Finally, they were probably thinking. The American has learned to do some chores!

After I'd stashed Claudia's tools safely back in her sarai, I went for a jog. It was already too dark, but I had so much energy. I ran to the stadium and did laps. Normally I don't like to run on the track, but I told myself it was like swimming laps and just zoned out to my music and the enormous expanse of universe above me. The stars here are amazing. They are so bright, in such a black and endless sky, I feel like I'm falling off the earth whenever I look up at them. To tip your head upward and open your eyes into such a sight is to feel yourself being thrown back in time and sucked into the vastness of everything. Gorgeous.

For dinner I ate leftover liver-and-potato pies from Sunday at Dasha's house. I have to admit, I put mayonnaise on them. I considered melting cheese but that seemed too much, since after all they are basically fried meat with mashed potatoes and fried dough. But they're tasty!

Tomorrow is a long day. I have six lessons and will meet with some of my seventh graders after school. Not to mention the possible appearance of a specialist, who could be coming to my apartment at any time, just to keep me on my toes. I'll also be on my own for most of my lessons, since Tatiana is going to "open lessons" in a nearby village. "I've never been there before," she confessed in a whisper. "Maybe I'll go there, and never come back!" She laughed, but there was something sad about her eyes. I wish I could give happiness to my friends here. I try, but it seems a daunting task sometimes.

2007-11-05T22:19:00.000+03:00

Let's Lose the "Day X" Routine, Shall We?

This blog entry begins with a sigh. My tummy is full. I just got back from Vika's house where we ate pizza and played with her daughter, Nastia, who's 2. Nastia loves a) our friend Yulia and b) running around without her pants on and c) moving her potty really close to whoever is sitting on the couch, facing them, and grinning while she makes "foo" as it's called. It makes me nervous, but then I've never had a little munchkin of my own around 24/7 to make me an inveterate tolerater of other people's body fluids.

Vika and Yulia are English teachers at our school. They're both around 23 years old, making me feel like the older sister. Yulia almost never speaks English, but Vika forges ahead pretty well. It's fun to hang around them. We watch VH1 Europe and I listen to them giggle and gossip. It's great practice for my Russian, too.

Today was a pretty good day. Although I should let you know that last night I smelled something funny in my kitchen, and it was the electrical socket where my space heater was plugged in. Burning. So I unplugged the heater and felt the wall. It was cold and the burn seemed to not be growing, so all I could do was take pictures and wait until a normal time to begin the negotiations that would bring about the repair of this situation.

First thing I did when I got to school this morning was triumphantly deliver the books Grandma sent me, to the absolute delight of the English teachers and my zouch. (Results! Yes!!!) I then followed the zouch into her office to attempt communication: my apartment was on fire. It must be repaired. ASAP.

"Ah-ha, ah-ha, sure, fine," she said, leafing through a cosmetics catalogue. I tried desperately for eye contact, but to no avail. I had to settle with a vague promise to do it sometime today or tomorrow. "By the way," she asked, never looking up from the pages of wide-eyed, sparkly women promising you'll never look beautiful without spending that cold, hard cash, "Have you gotten around to defrosting your refrigerator?"

(You know, one of the things that really bothers me, that I just can't get over, is that my zouch has a key to my apartment. My landlady doesn't want one, for some reason. Whenever I leave, and she knows it, I come home to find some small thing changed, indicating someone has been in my place. For example, I always close the kitchen door, but when I came home last week, it was wide open. Another thing - and I notice these things with a level of scrutiny bordering on slightly autistic - my glasses were put away in the cupboard, not left out to dry, and they were stacked in threes, not twos. And they were sticky. Eeew. Anyway, when she got back into town from a seminar last week, the first thing my zouch did was come to my house to instruct me how to defrost the fridge. It's like she had entered my apartment while I was gone with the express purpose to look around for things I wasn't doing right. Then she filed them away and had no qualms about telling me to shape up, never mind the fact that she was basically revealing the fact that she'd been in here while I was gone. Privacy? Never heard of it.)

Let's see, the rest of the day was spent going over plans with Tatiana for delivering the awards for the Olympiad we put on a couple weeks ago, planning a pumpkin carving party, planning an autumn festival fundraiser, planning an English teachers' club, and brainstorming about a resource center and sister city project. I felt like we made some headway. At least she's really enthusiastic about the parties. The enthusiasm wanes in inverse proportion to the seriousness of the project, however. Ah, well, I can start small. And she fed me borscht, which was delicious.

Then I taught my tenth graders about "Environmental Protection". It was pretty boring. The teacher wanted me to cover a text from their Plakhotnyk book, so (being that the deal with my school is I do whatever they say when I'm in the classroom) we spent an agonizing 45 minutes dealing with such scintillating sentiments as "We must do everything possible to save the nature, to make our rivers and air clean. The importance of this task is pointed out by scientists." Not only that, but our classroom was a solid 55 degrees, I'm sure. My students' poor little noses (and my poor little nose!) were bright red by the end of the period. We did talk about our school environment, though. We all agreed: it was cold.

After that I met with one of my seventh graders, Zhenia. She's really cute. She mixes her sentences with about half English, a quarter Ukrainian and a quarter Russian. But that's cool with me. It shows her goal is communication and someday she'll be a superstar at whatever language she wants to speak. We spent an hour and a half reading Charlotte's Web. Again, many thanks to Grandma for sending those wonderful, wonderful books. The timing is perfect. It was so fun reading a book I adored as a child with Zhenia. She's in love with the story already, too. We finished Chapter 1. Not bad at all.

Finally I went home, got the word from Peace Corps HQ that I should put a rush on this repair of the electrical socket business, and called my zouch again. "Have you gotten ahold of the master yet?" I asked her ("master" refers to someone with a higher level of technical expertise than, say, an amateur. Usually they are trained with a two-year degree of some kind, but their skills might cross several fields, such as plumber, electrician, and mechanic all at once. Renaissance!).

"Why would I do that...?" she started, then remembered. "Oh, um, no, I haven't talked to him yet. He was...out," she hedged. I wondered out loud if I should call my hazyaika (landlady). "Have you defrosted your fridge yet?" she asked again, by way of response. "Um...no. I'm going to do that later in the week, when I have less food to deal with," I answered, privately wondering what my fridge had to do with an extreme fire hazard in my immediate environment, so to speak.

"Then you shouldn't call your landlady," my zouch stated firmly. "You might end up talking to her mother. No matter what you do, don't tell her anything. She thinks you're destroying the fridge by not defrosting it, and things could get messy." Ah, things were becoming clear. I appreciated the advice, seeing as how burning down my entire apartment building was fairly trivial compared to the wrath of my landlady's mother when it comes to the state of my 15-year-old tank of a refrigerator.

"I'll call you in 5 minutes," she finished quickly, and hung up. I spent the next couple of hours doing my laundry (why do my shirts insist on retaining chalky deodorant marks and sweaty armpit smells even after I've soaked them and scrubbed them and swirled them and soaked them and scrubbed them again? I am really, really missing a washing machine. People, you have no idea how lucky you are) and puttering around my apartment, working and planning as usual.

Soon it was 6:00 and time to leave for Vika's. Still no call, so I set out. At around 7:30, I got the call. "Sarah! Why aren't you at home?" demanded my zouch. I decided to turn the tables. "You said you'd call in 5 minutes, but you didn't!" I exclaimed. She explained that there had been a parent-teacher meeting at school. I said I understood. We agreed to take care of the electrical socket after school tomorrow, and that was that. As I hung up the phone, I felt like I had pretty much taken care of things in a culturally appropriate way. I didn't feel used or manipulated, and I felt like things were in motion. We'll see how far they get tomorrow, but for now, I'm feeling pretty much like I can handle things here in Ukraine. And that's a good feeling.

Not only that, but Vika fed me another bowl of borscht. You can't go wrong with a 2-bowl borscht day, that's for sure.

2007-11-04T23:17:00.000+03:00

Day 14: Two Weeks of This, Two More and It's a Habit

Part I

Word of the day: incorrigible
in·cor·ri·gi·ble [in-kawr-i-juh-buhl]
–adjective
1. not corrigible; bad beyond correction or reform: incorrigible behavior.
2. impervious to constraints or punishment; willful; unruly; uncontrollable: an incorrigible woman.
3. firmly fixed; not easily changed: an incorrigible idea.
4. not easily swayed or influenced: an incorrigible optimist.
–noun
5. a person who is incorrigible: Sarah.

Part II

Today was a quiet day. Gloomy, gray, windy, chill. But the gray background made the yellow leaves and crimson berries bright. So it was pretty.

When I called Olya to discuss our classes tomorrow, she asked me to let her teach the 8A, since we're starting a topic. She said I could have the Wednesday class. We talked over the 10B class and then she sighed. "I have...depresia," she said. "Why are you depressed?" I wanted to know. She replied, "I'm just, so, tired." Such is life.

This afternoon I went over to Dasha's house to hang out. Her mom ran out and corralled their tiny, fierce dog and shooed me into the house. "My hair is wet! Hurry, hurry!" she said. First, we all made piroshki from potatoes and liver. They are actually quite tasty, and it was fun patting the little dough balls in their kitchen with Dasha, her mom, Oxana, and grandma, Nella. After we ate copious amounts of borscht, piroshki, cabbage, apples, and tea, we played Go Fish and Uno. Then I taught Dasha how to play Heart and Soul on the piano. Good times.

Part III

I forgot to tell you a story that could up my street cred. When I got into Zaporizhia on Wednesday night, I missed the tram at 9:30 by inches. I even pounded on the door as it swung slowly away. I sat on my luggage for an hour and got the next one, so I wasn't to my friends' place until near 11 pm. I walked across the street and up the dark driveway between towering Soviet blocks of flats. There was a clear dividing line from the lighted street to the shadowy place between the flats. I felt a twinge of unease at walking into the dark but no one was around, and the walk was short, maybe a couple of minutes. I walked quickly up the drive into the black space and called my friend to find out exactly which building they lived in. As I hung up, I felt someone plucking at my coat sleeve.

"Give me your phone," he said in Russian. "I need to make a call."

I looked him up and down. This was a young kid, not older than 24 or 25. His long dark hair hung into his eyes and he was wearing a big black felt jacket. His jeans were pretty clean, and his shoes were neat. He was about my height, not much taller, and slim. Like hell you do. My phone is so cheap this is just not worth it. I thought, thinking about all the phone numbers I would lose if he got my phone. He'd discover it was cheap and worthless in a heartbeat anyway, and then he'd just be mad. Out loud, I told him no. No way. I sighted a lighted area about 100 meters ahead and made for it.

"Give me your phone!" he repeated, getting angry, still plucking at my left elbow. I told him to get lost and transferred my phone into my right coat pocket.

"Where do you live?" he demanded. "Do you live here?"

"Of course I do!" I said, shaking him off my elbow. We argued for a minute about this. I kept walking, feeling more irritated than afraid. But then he said, "So, what's in your bag? You got a lot of stuff in there?"

"Quit touching me!" I said, louder this time. I eyed the lighted windows of the block of flats nearby. The darkness enveloped us gently, insistently, like ink running across a table into a sponge, seeping from the trees and broken playground equipment and lopsided benches and garbage bins in the yard between the buildings. "If you keep touching me, I'll scream!"

"I bet you have some nice stuff," he said, grabbing a plastic bag hanging off the back of my luggage. He was really angry now. He gave the bag a sharp tug and the plastic straps gave way, leaving him with a bagful of cheap cowboy hat.

I strode away, looking over my shoulder, angry myself now. "Take it!" I shouted. "It's yours!"

He paused to inspect the bounty he'd been so bold as to take from me. When he saw what little he had plundered, he threw it on the ground and shouted a bunch of stuff I can only suppose were Russian swear words. He evaluated the growing distance between the two of us and turned and stomped away. I walked to the end of the building, where it was light, then paused for a moment to watch him disappear into the shadows. I thought about going back for my hat, but in the end I decided a hat was not worth losing my other stuff or really getting assaulted over.

I quickly found my friend who was meeting me at her entrance. But I still really wanted my hat, so the two of us went back to get it. Afterwards, when I thought about it, I got a little scared. The guy was trying to rob me!

But whatever it was, he failed. Ha! Score one for the incorrigible American.

2007-11-03T22:43:00.000+03:00

Day 13: The Longest Hour

I'm happy to report I got up at a reasonable hour this morning, inching me along towards my goal of going to bed by 11 pm and up by 6 am. My plan is to even start jogging again in the mornings. Today, to help with that, I put on my black long underwear with my terrycloth kelly green running shorts over, as well as my long-sleeved black shirt I stole from Tom when he left and my tomato red sweatshirt, also Tom's, with inherited cigarette burn in the shoulder. I also wore my pink running hat and my orange Asics, just to complete the look. I told myself I'd go for a jog all afternoon. Instead, I tried to go find another charger for my phone to replace the one I lost on the old dusty traveling trail.

No luck, though. The specialized cell phone store was mysteriously closed. But the nice lady in the furniture store under "Everything for the Home" assured me they'd be open tomorrow morning. I swung by the corner store to get water, cheese, juice and bananas and my friend Inna (?) was there. She's my favorite. She's 25, got this great bouncy red hair, sparkling eyes and gorgeous little freckles, and this kick-ass attitude. "Why get married so I can wash some guy's laundry and cook him food all the time? I can do that for myself. I don't need no man," she says when we have a beer after work sometimes. I'm thinking about inviting her over sometime. Anyway, she got all happy and said "Priviet!" to me, which is like saying "What's up, girlfriend!" and looked me up and down. She giggled and asked me why I was dressed like I was. I made some lame excuse about going in for sport, which was good enough for her. As least she's kind about it, unlike some other characters in my life. Sometimes you just have to wear a pink hat, red sweatshirt, and green shorts over black leggings with orange shoes.

But at least I dragged out all the sporty clothes, one step closer to actually doing it. I did even go out and jogged for like 3 minutes at about 5 o'clock, but it was so cold and dark that I just decided I'd wait until tomorrow morning. I didn't want to start my jogging regimen with a twisted ankle from a loose paving stone or a fracture from falling into a sewer pipe, the risk of which is quite great in my town, despite the leafy branches kind-hearted people stick into the gaping holes to warn the nearsighted, drunken, or crazy Americans who stumble upon them.

I worked all morning cleaning out my email and researching options for my culture club. I want to find a place on the web our kids can use to post discussions or develop a newspaper in English. Our school already has an online newspaper in Russian (I'm featured, too! Check it out: Interview with Sarah! Below my picture, click on "Читати далі" to see the rest of the article), so it seems a small leap to develop one in English. I have to find out if we already have hosting anywhere (what is the Russian for "web hosting" anyway?), but in the meantime I found some cool websites. One is a great place for school newspapers in the U.S., but it costs $50 to register, although after that it's free. I'm thinking Rockford can register and then my school can contribute. I also started a group page on yahoo just to see what's up, and that has potential too. I envision our kids starting discussion threads to throw questions and answers back and forth. I'm not sure how many pictures we can put up, but we might be able to post pictures, too. It seems pretty cool. I just have to wait to see what my adopted counterpart in Rockford thinks about these plans.

I also got on the internet to look at ideas for a fall festival party at school. I'd like to raise some money to buy a bulletin board and some shelving for our English room. It would be great to have some extra funds for printing and photocopies, too. Right now everyone sort of scrambles for that out of our own pockets. I will propose this idea to Elena on Monday morning to see what she thinks. Ludmila has already told me to go ahead and do anything I want like this, but I need some kind of support to bring it all together. Things we could do at the party:

Carve jack-o-lanterns
Apple bobbing
Act out scary stories
Make masks
Dance party
Costume contest?

We could even make it a community party, too, and maybe I can get the lunch ladies on my side and use the kitchen. Then we could have:

Apple cider
Roasted pumpkin seeds
Pumpkin pastries
Honey roasted nuts
Pot luck dinner

We'll see. At least I have the preliminary plans ready. These are all pretty low-budget things. Even if we could charge enough to break even, just to have a fun party would be a blast.

I've also got to discuss with Elena the potential to have a community adult English club at school in the computer room. There are some tables and chairs there, it's light, and the computers mean I could teach people about the internet and teaching resources the teachers can find there. I wish we had a printer in the computer room so we could print interesting things we find. Maybe I can get the administration to help us buy a printer. After all, I am quite good friends with the leader of the rayon. Hmmm...

I made pizza for one tonight (it will feed me for 4 days). It got me to thinking about the story "Like Water For Chocolate" though, because the last two times I made pizza with Kathryn and Joaquin it rocked, but this time, by myself, it didn't quite work. It's edible, but the dough didn't rise for some reason. Either the yeast was too old, or the water was too hot, or the room was too cold, or I used too much yeast, or my heart too heavy with a saddish sort of loneliness. The dough turned out sodden and chewy to match. It didn't help that I started reading "Riding the Iron Rooster" by Paul Theroux, which seemed to incite my imaginary self to fly out to trains and traveling and people I wasn't traveling with. Sigh.

You know, you can actually make quite a killer peppers-onion-and-sausage pizza in Ukraine. I found this bolognaise sauce in a packet that's exactly the right size for one pizza. And the salami is super tasty. So that's good.

2007-11-02T19:53:00.000+03:00

Day 12: Sleepy Friday Like A Sunday

Missing a visit with my darling Zhanna and Roma and Igor back in Mironovka this weekend was mitigated by the fact that I was in town to be able to see Dasha sing at a concert today.

That statement requires some backstory. Here goes: I got a call on the road from Zhanna. She wanted me to come visit them since Roma and I were on vacation. I figured, why not? My coordinator was on vacation at the end of the week anyway and most of the teachers and people I work with are traveling for seminars or personal holiday this week. When I called her, my coordinator seemed fine with the idea.

Unfortunately, spontaneous travel decisions on the road aren't always the easiest to deal with for the people whose job it is to keep track of all these other people bouncing around the country. There was some discussion as to whether or not I should be travelling so much from my site. In the end, I decided it would be better not to press the issue. If someone was concerned, I figured I should be too. It's just hard. I miss my family so much. I was really looking forward to Zhanna's amazing cooking and seeing Natasha's little Maxim. He's the same age as me, Ukrainian time, since he was born a week before I got into country! I hope I can see them around New Year's.

And the second necessary piece of info is that Dasha is a 7th grader at my school. She's something of a celebrity in Kuibyshevo and sings at all kinds of events and contests. We've been hanging out a bit. Generally her grandmother tries to force me to eat and then we watch old videos of Dasha singing. Anyway, she called me on Monday to let me know about the concert today. And actually, there are plans in the works for us to sing together. Her featured songs are "Strong Enough" by Cher and "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion. Two great lung busters for sure. It's funny, though. "Am I strong enough to live without you?" she sings to a roomful of teachers to celebrate Teacher's Day. "I quit crying long ago, because I know - you've got to go," she sang to the gathered social workers today in honor of Social Worker's Day. It kind of cracks me up inside. But you've got to love it at the same time. The other thing is, Dasha is really talented and hard-working. It's fun to hang around with her.

So I'm happy that I got to go be a zritel (spectator, that is) at the concert. It is definitely one of those steps in the right direction.

I also got a couple of packages from my grandma today full of children's books. It's awesome. I can't wait to put them in the library at school. There are some excellent short stories in there too, perfect for listening comprehension work, and fairy tales for us to act out and play around with. This is just what I needed for my after-school English clubs. Thanks Grandma!!!

2007-11-01T22:50:00.000+03:00

Days 4-11, Condensed and Sweetened Like Milk

So. Finally back at home via Konstantinovka--Harkov--Zolochiv--Senkove--Zaporizhia! It was awesome to do some travelling, and thankfully by the time I got on the road, the sickness had completely passed. I was afraid it would rear itself back up, reappearing in the lungs or sinuses, but it has done no such thing.

On Thursday I was in Konstantinovka to be a guest teacher at my friend's school. I've made friends with his coordinator, Inna Borisovna, and it was fun to be able to give her a favor as a speaker in her classes (I taught 5 lessons!). My own school had nothing for me to do: they had cancelled all my classes for the commission (and most of my classes last week, too, for the same reason), all the teachers were frantic about the commission, and the poor students were attending more than 8 classes a day all week to get ready for the commission. So I figured I should just do some long-term planning for my site instead of getting in the way. And it turned out great!

It was really neat to see the kind of situation other volunteers teach in. My friend's school is specialized in English (unlike mine, which is specialized in math and biology), so the students all have tons of English classes every week and English is a major priority there. It really makes a difference in the quality of the English being spoken and taught. I'm jealous!

After teaching, my friend and I headed in to Harkov on Friday night. We caught a ridiculous "S" class, which we were really hoping meant "Sleeper". No, it means you sit up in a slightly reclining chair for the duration of the trip with fluorescent lights shining in your eyes the entire time you're trying to sleep. By 3 a.m. I was hallucinating. But we survived.

Harkov at dawn was gorgeous. I got some shots of the train station and we had breakfast blini at a nearby Potato House restaurant. Not too bad, except for the sawdusty cappuccino and the ridiculous eighties dance music. Time then traveled to a weird standstill/fast-forward motion sort of thing. We wandered past the giant Lenin statue trying to find everybody...More than 100 volunteers were rumored to be gathering for the party...Finding each other involved lots of stomping around in circles and getting the sun in our eyes. Eventually we rendezvoused at the Shevchenko statue (awesome, by the way) and found our way to the apartments. The whole thing was wonderfully executed and went off without any problems. I was so impressed by the organizational mojo of the volunteers who thought this thing up. It was awesome.

Anyway, we all rested (some people had gotten in at like one in the morning) and ran out to get liquor and food. My friend Diane and I made hash and scrambled eggs for 10 people while we all talked and got tipsy. It was a fun time. We all ate and climbed (or wound) our way into our costumes and then set off for the club. The Ukrainians we passed on the streets seemed to love our costumes. I tipped my cowboy hat to them to be polite, and they laughed. It was hilarious.

The Harkov crew had reserved an entire club for us. You went in on the first floor and then down the stairs to a sweet dance floor. The second I got there I was running on complete sensory overload. There were so many people in so many amazing costumes. I think my brain went into its own orbit. We danced and made merry and it was absolute heaven.

That's Diane as a "Nich" or magical nighttime creature, Jason as the Mummy, me as Cowgirl, and Katie as Ukrainian Girl Scout. We rocked.

Then on Sunday I made my way to Zolochiv with a little group of volunteers. I am now an afficionado of
Flight of the Conchords thanks to Max (someone who loves me, please please please send me the DVDs! Also Arrested Development, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Royal Tennenbaums, and The Big Lebowski - hell, just send me a Cohen Bros. Box Set. Oh, and any cartoons you don't want, to show to my kids!).

We were invited to speak at a methodology seminar the three Zolochiv volunteers were putting on for their new resource center, so Monday morning we had a chance to interact with teachers from all around the region. It was really rewarding to interact with interested Ukrainian English teachers, to field their questions and learn about their interests, not to mention learning about the projects other volunteers are taking on. It's super cool the way each person finds a way to interact with their site in a unique way. The teachers were really interested in my "Culture Exchange Project" since they are also just learning how to use computers and the internet in their teaching. I hope I gave them some good ideas.

Tuesday we headed to Jeremy's village. It's always so neat to go there, since it's so tiny. Sasha drove us from the bus station in a nearby town in his enormous, gas-guzzling boat of a car. We made another great dinner and played poker. I was not a shark. Dammit.

Wednesday Hilary and I began the long journey home. She was heading to Odesa actually to fly away somewhere wonderful and exotic. We ate lunch in Harkov at Charly's (the hummus was pretty good but it was made with tahini, not chickpeas, and could have used more garlic, but the burger was delicious even with coleslaw on top). My train got me to Zaporizhia by 9:30 and I headed over to Rich and Cathy's to hang with them. I can't believe they'll be gone by the end of the month. It seems so soon. I will miss them so much.

Today I slept in, ate a fabulous as usual breakfast with R & C and went book shopping. I got some Anton Chekhov and some fairy tales in Russian. Edward, who is a very smart person, recommended I start reading with the Chekhov, so we'll see. At least I'll have something to do in the long, cold, dark winter months ahead. As if I'm not busy enough! Sometimes I feel like all I do is get up in the morning, start typing, and don't stop until I go to bed at midnight. I'm about a third of the way done with the American Country Studies manual Tatiana wants me to make, and I try to make every lesson count now that I have a printer.

I have to remember to take the check in to school Monday for the copies I made for the Olympiad. It cost 87 hrivnias! That's a big bite out of a volunteer budget. We'll see. It was worth it to have the materials for the Olympiad, though. I was so proud of my students for coming even though all their math and science teachers were trying to make them take extra lessons like crazy before the commission came.

I hope everything will be different now that the commission has been and gone. All the "changes" we were supposed to make at school just completely got subsumed by the idea of the commission coming. Tatiana, my coordinator, hasn't been to a single one of the eight meetings we've had for "our" culture exchange project. The other teachers are just as busy. They say they want to meet or for me to meet with their students, but whenever I suggest a time there is always an excuse: the students will be too tired, they are too busy, we are too busy, we are too tired, it's too dark, someone will be too hungry. One of the teachers who promised to help with the Olympiad never even showed up until the very end (literally, the last student was writing her last sentence when this teacher came in). I don't know how to overcome this dichotomy of [we really want results] vs. [we won't help you get them].

I suppose it's by taking baby steps, one after the other. Let's hope I don't trip up too much.

2007-10-24T13:32:00.000+03:00

Day 3, Time To Get My Travel On

Hooray for antibiotics! My fever's gone and my throat don't hurt no more. I'm glad. So now I'm going to travel a bit and see my fellow volunteers after all.

Today I take a bus to Donetsk, hang there a bit, and head the rest of the way to Harkov on Friday. The big Halloween bash is on Saturday night, and then I'll figure some way out to get back home. It will be great to have the following week to plan and get work things in order, I think, especially after seeing everybody this weekend.

Alas, for I have managed to post three days in a row, but I think I'll have to take a hiatus. That is ok, since absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that stuff. When I get back, I should have a story or two to tell!

Happy Halloween!

2007-10-23T13:51:00.000+03:00

Day 2, Part My Head Hurts

Woke up, got out of bed, felt like my head was going to explode. I have a temperature and my tonsils are all swollen, red and white. Gross. I took a bucket bath to try to get myself moving, walked to school at noon, and discovered that I'd forgotten all my lesson materials at home.

When I walked into the school, I was greeted by a massive, gorgeous display of photographs of "Our Teachers" on the giant new bulletin board on the first floor. Everyone had a picture up. But not me. Hm.

Went upstairs, and the posterboard I'd created to make English announcements was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there are a ton of pretty Ukrainian posters hanging all over the walls. I found my poster taped to itself in a little roll in the teacher's room. Feeling less and less important. Does anyone care that I'm at this school trying to do something positive? Do they even consider me to be a teacher? Why am I here?

Then the teacher who was supposed to bring the teacher's book for my lesson didn't bring it and I had to ad-lib it with a pounding head, ringing in my ears, and the inability to swallow - both my tears of frustration and my poor throat. Needless to say, I was fed up and went straight home after lessons, stopping only to swing by the apteka (pharmacy) for some fancy throat spray, to nurse myself with the aforementioned throat spray and cheesy scrambled eggs. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel better, but today is a gigantic, ugly write-off.

Uck.

2007-10-22T23:46:00.000+03:00

Day 1, Part II

Today is the beginning of the last week before fall break. It's also the last day before the Commission - regional authority figures from Zaporizhia - comes to "check" our school. The teachers and students have been preparing like mad for the past three weeks. I have been largely in the dark about everything, because my coordinator is so frazzled she doesn't have time or energy to translate even a part of what is happening.

The school is shining and clean, with two new, giant bulletin boards posted in the stairways. I put on an English Olympiad on Saturday for part of the preparations (results! We must have results!) and our Culture Exchange Project with Rockford Middle School has been printed in "colored paint" as my coordinator puts it and is being displayed in our English Cabinet. Kathryn came to help out with the Olympiad and we had a fun weekend of pizza and homemade kahlua-fueled White Russians. Joaquin, from Berdyansk, came too.

Unfortunately for me, I'm feeling sick. My throat is all swollen and sore, and my temperature is over 100 degrees. Chort! The end of the week involves much travelling and revelry, which I don't want to miss. It's buckets of water, juice, vitamins, and NyQuil for me.

I went in to school today to teach my tenth formers. Normally I teach eighth today too, but Olya Anatolyevna wanted to give them a test. For the third week in a row, something prevented me from teaching them. Last two weeks it was that another teacher was out sick, so Olya took an earlier lesson and they didn't want to stay for the 6th lesson (mine). This week, they had to go practice math to get ready for the Commission's testing. It's frustrating not knowing ahead of time what will happen, and to have my lessons snatched out from under me at the last second. The teachers don't seem to respect me very much; they barge into my lessons at any time, take my students out to take photographs or do word processing for their personal files (again, to show the Commission), and generally seem to act like my lessons are the least important in the school.

And it continues. I understand, but it's still a trying experience. Tatiana is taking my ninth formers from me on Wednesday to prep them for grammar. Not only that, all my lessons on Thursday are gone, for testing. The Commission will test the 9th and 11th graders' English, so she's particularly nervous, since both those levels are taught by her. We don't really know what kind of exams they will give, just that our students struggle. I'm hoping they can do well. Many of our best students are out sick now, too, so things just get better and better!

On a positive note, the "convector" my school installed in my apartment last Tuesday is working splendidly. My room is a steady 22 degrees Celsius, warmer than my dad used to keep our house growing up. I'm dreading taking a bath, though; there's no way to heat the bathroom and it's getting colder every day. Today was really windy. The trees are starting to change from gold and light yellow to reds and oranges now, but there are still plenty around with green leaves clinging to their branches. Fall here is gradual and slow, with no brilliant bang of color that I'm used to from the north woods of Minnesota.

I've also been having a ton of fun meeting with my seventh formers. Almost every day after school somebody finds me and we play games and practice English. It's a good time. I need to come up with more activities than hangman, bingo, and twenty questions, though. I think I might start a little mini-newspaper, just for us. We can have a little club and practice writing, something they can do on their own during the week and about which they can feel proud. Something to keep.

I leave you, dear blog, to read "Little Women" and drink some tea. I highly recommend it - I found this delicious red tea, or rooibos, in Kyiv and I'm hooked. It's so tasty!

2007-10-22T23:27:00.000+03:00

Day 1 Of The First Day Of The Rest Of My Life: Part I

I haven't written much lately, lovely blog. The past two months have been...strenuous. I'm making it through, though, and I want to give you the attention you deserve.

And if there are any readers left out there (sigh, that seems so assuming), how disappointing is it to check a blog and not find anything new? So here's some candy for you, too!

I think I'm going to attempt a little readjustment to the blog, first of all. One of my sort of wide-angle goals for Peace Corps was to write more. I have daily internet access, and the links to post on my blog in my bookmarks, so why not write as close to every day as I can? But this means I can't craft delicious stories every single time I post. So I'm taking the lofty goal down a notch and just going to throw my thoughts out there. We'll see what we get.

I want to document more of the daily routine of living here, too. It's not going to be that interesting, I'm afraid, but I'll try to find a little moment here and there. My friend Kathryn found a website where she posts a picture of her outfit every day, and she's having tons of fun with that. As I have neither an interesting wardrobe nor the desire to dress pretty every day, I'm gonna go with writing. Plus, it might actually be interesting to someone not living it. Not that my life isn't interesting, it is. I'm just. Well.

That being said, we'll see, right? We all know what it's like to declare an idea, make a proclamation that this WILL happen...

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

2007-08-07T11:02:00.000+03:00

This Moment of Change

The first thing I did when I got home was make a big furious fuss out of myself. I was impatient with everything. The maze of parking at the terminal started it. To reach "First Floor" you apparently wind your way up and down three randomly placed escalators. Then the waitress at the first restaurant we headed for - all I wanted was a cold beer and a salad - wouldn't serve me without my I.D., which was in my purse at the time but I had convinced myself was in my luggage back at the house. Such is the power of my imagination in times of transition, you could say. Storming with quiet fury out of the place in my Ukrainian dress with Dan trailing in my wake landed me at my parents' house frustrated, feeling like a comet hurling at my people from outer space.

My mother quickly disarmed me as I revved up to high gear with a short but effective lecture on not saying anything critical or negative. We breathed tensely for a few minutes, then Dan came inside the house, and the spell was broken. A vital moment passed and the bond pressed, still sealed.

My dad is a harder egg to crack. He wants to hang out, and I need to make time for that. We all went up to Grandma Vi's on the lake in Wisconsin, and that was fabulous - Gary and Betty brought homemade chewy chocolate chip cookies. And it's been wonderful being together with Grandma and Grandpa. Laurie is here, arrived yesterday. The family feels loving and stong, and that's quite beautiful.

Grandpa had a rough day today when Grandma left to get groceries. Laurie helped him to bed, and their nurse Julie came. Mom walked in in the midst of the episode and Dan and I arrived shortly after that. We ended up relaxing with Grandpa in bed for a while, sitting in a circle and chatting. I sat by his side and held his hand. It felt cold, and the skin was so soft and smooth, like filo dough from the fridge. He told me, "You have found your eye," when we were talking about my adventure. I suppose I have, in a way. It's an eye that looks inside and sees really interesting things.

It's like my imagination is wandering. We'll see where it goes. Hopefully somewhere happy.

2007-07-12T18:26:00.000+03:00

Pochtalion (the Postman)

The story goes like this. About four weeks ago, my husband and I ordered plane tickets from Travelocity for a little summer vacay back in the states. For whatever reason, you can't do e-tickets from Ukraine, so the actual physical tickets had to be mailed somewhere to someone. At the thought, my stomach churned; not only was I going to be in and out of site for the next month and a half, but the mail service here...let's just say that although the cheddar cheese my grandma airmailed to me got here in ten days, the vanilla extract and peanut butter my mom and dad sent me for xmas never arrived. Finicky when it comes to food products, how would the Ukrainian postal system handle something special and express?

I'm sorry to say that I lacked confidence, because today I can attest that, while it does not work the same way it works in the U.S.A., the Ukrainian postal system is a miracle machine.

First, I did take measures (not that they accomplished anything). When I was about to leave for Kyiv two weeks ago, I stopped in at my local post office. The ladies - a brunette, the one who sits at the window; a blond, whose job it is to rush around and hand things to other people; and a very large woman, who reminds me of a broody hen somehow, it's probably in how she waddles out and wraps her wing around me whenever she has a chance - all know me well by now. They routinely ask me all kinds of questions, and it's kind of fun to practice my Russian there. Sometimes they want to know if these are my real teeth, or if they're ceramics. Other times they want to know which I know better, Russian or Ukrainian, and why don't I know Ukrainian better yet? Luckily I can make the ready joke: chooyoo (I hear) ee (and) rozumeeyoo (I understand) po-Ukrainskiy (Ukrainian-speak)...they usually laugh at this point. I'm a big hit at the post office.

Anyway, I elbowed my way up to the little window with marching orders for my postal compatriots: something is in the mail, it's coming for me, and I'm not going to be here. It's very, very important. Please don't do anything to it - don't give it to someone you know to give to me, don't send it back when you call around and can't find me, please just keep it for me and when I get home, I'll come get it. I offered to write my schedule down, but that wasn't necessary. The kind ladies understood completely.

Thus I arrived home a week ago from Russian camp to get the semi-frantic phone call from my coordinator, Tatiana: "Sarah! A package came for you, and you weren't here," she accused. "So they sent it back to Zaporizhia!" I gasped, cringed, moaned, and pretty much panicked at this point, imagining my precious tickets mired in the dungeon of the Zaporizhian post office until January, at the earliest. "But don't worry," she said, sensing my distress. Incidentally, Ukrainians seem to love to set you up and then soothe; they always give you the harsh realities of life followed by some light-hearted petting (if you're lucky or sufficiently upset). She continued, "The postman from Zaporizhia will bring it back for you in a week or two."

A week...or two? The vague post-Soviet bureaucratic animal loomed over me, snorting and chuffing, perhaps taking a ten-month nap break. I envisioned desperate weeks spent waiting to no avail, followed by last-minute hours-long phone calls with the airline and began to tremble, but said, calmly, "When? Oh my god, Tatiana, this package is very, very important. Can you call your neighbor-" her neighbor is one of the ladies who works in the post office "-and find out exactly when he will come?" She reluctantly agreed, and I thought, well, this is it. That's all you can do.

Meantime, I decided to mosy down to the P.O. and check my mail. Maybe I could sleuth something else out about my package. When I got there, the ladies all exclamed in a chorus, "Sarah! A very important package..." and told me the whole story again. When I opened my P.O. box, I found the little slip of paper to claim the package. So when the brunette was telling me that the postman was coming next Thursday (which was verified by three other people, including that it was this week, not next week), I had her write my home and mobile phone numbers down. "Call me when he gets here," I pleaded. "I will wait. All day. Just call me and I will run here!"

I have to reflect, at this point, that my survival Russian survives in myriad situations. I'm not entirely unpleased with that.

So today, Thursday, arrived, and I actually had forgotten about this whole arrangement. I got up and went jogging in the early morning swelter (for me, early, anyway; about ten-thirty, I guess), the heat of the sun having already baked off all the clouds in the sky and left a dusty gray haze on the horizon. I staggered home and and was taking a straight-from-the-six-liter-storage-bottle bucket bath, as the water dependably goes out whenever you need it most in my town, when my home phone rang. Hm, I thought. Who's calling me? Then my mobile rang. I still didn't get it. At least they called the cell, I can see who to call back in a minute.

I was just drying my hair when the mobile rang again. This time I answered it, dripping only slightly, and it was the excited voice of the brunette. She was speaking so rapidly all I could do was repeat the most important information in one or two words. "Postman...here...to me?" I stuttered. Just then my home phone rang. I picked it up and tried to talk so whoever it was would know I was there, but would hopefully wait. "He will come...to me?" I stammered into my cell. From the home phone, a woman's voice started yelling faster than the post office lady was talking. "Me...here...wait...postman!" I begged, and I thought the brunette agreed. I gave her my address and finally put the home phone up to my ear. It was Tatiana, who had figured everything out. "Okay, fine, you know about it," she said curtly. "Great. Bye." And hung up.

I stomped back and forth in my apartment for the next ten minutes, hoping I had figured it out and managed to communicate. Would this be the package I had been waiting for? It was, and more.

Staring through the peephole, I opened the door as soon as he made his way up the steps. The pochtalion looked a lot like a giant papa smurf, actually, with wisps of white hair floating around his reddened ears. His all-blue uniform lent alot to that impression, too, but it was his larger-than-normal head and rounded nose that really did it. He grinned and hopped over the threshold cheerily, wafting a late-morning scent of about 300 grams my way in the process. I didn't really register that at the time, since many people seem to drink at all hours here. Normal!

He asked for my passport, which was in the kitchen, and boldly followed me in. Okay, I thought, we can do this here. You're not invading my space or anything. I smiled bravely when he told me he'd left his glasses in the car and couldn't see well enough to write, so I'd have to do it, in Russian, and dotted the x and crossed the i where he told me to. After we were done with our exchange, he eyed the empty beer bottle on my table (I admit, I left it out, I'm a terrible housekeeper). "Got any beer?" he beamed.

"Um, no, not really," I replied.

"No problem. What else do you have?" he said.

"I've got some...vodka in the fridge," I hedged.

"What? Water?" he asked quizzically, probably thinking, crazy American, water's not alcohol! (By the way, "vo-da" is water, and "vod-ka" is, well, I think you know.) Papa smurf seemed hard of hearing as well as blind and drunk.

"No, vod-ka," I said. "Alright!" he shouted. "Davay! Let's go!"

So I got out my tiny coffee cups and poured him a shot. What else could I do? He'd done me a huge favor by making the special delivery, and he was in my kitchen. I sort of figured, par for the course. Luckily, all the vodka I had left was enough for one shot. I pretended to pour some into my cup, and we clinked glasses.

"Sank you wery much, my leetle friend!" he exclaimed, and hopped back out the door, chortling to himself. The pochtalion had scored once more.

And I had fared not too badly in the process, either, I have to admit. My local postal ladies had saved my hide and my tickets were in my possession a full two and a half weeks ahead of time. I felt cared-for and looked after, not to mention relieved. Most importantly, Ukraine had come through for me right when I needed it, kak fsigda (as always)!

2007-07-10T22:02:00.000+03:00

Platzkart is Coming Up Better than Roses

Well, I rode home from Kyiv for the first time on *gasp* platzkart (all of you who were never afraid of this can cram your snorts of laughter back to where they came from)...and loved it! Ha! That dose of extreme be-afraid-be-very-afraid I received in dear old Prolisok when we first got here is finally diminished to a very tiny seed stuck somewhere in the bottom of my sock.

When Kathryn (who lives in the next village over from me) and I arrived, banging the knees of virtually every other passenger in the car with our enourmous unwieldy luggage, we were met with eight shafts of curiosity beamed from the eyeballs of four men. The two teenagers sharing one seat across the aisle were not a big deal. They were harmless, that could be seen from the start. All we would have to put up with was a running commentary on everything we did, including discussions of whether or not we understood what they were saying (we did), punctuated by manly giggles.

It was the other two guys that were not exactly a plate of savory hors d'ouevres, or so we thought at first.

The first one - the Drinker - was what they call smoogly - ruddy, gently rounded, with slightly craggy features. He was small, but tenacious. He asked us to drink "just sto gram" about sto times, until I pulled out the one and only trump card seized from Russian camp, which I told to the other man as a kind of off-handed commentary on the situation: "He can tianet patianet, but vueytianet ne mozhet!" Figuring that a girl who would make a weird reference to a turnip-themed fairy tale meant business, the Drinker quietly downed his fifth and final shot alone.

The second one was a different story. Silent. Teetotalling. Lon Cheney and Leonard Nimoy's love child. Every time I looked at him, I had to blink to make sure he wasn't about to observe, of me, "It's life, Captain, but not life as we know it." He was the one who broke the ice, finally, by asking us the now-classic question in Ukraine: "What is your name?"

And once the ice was broken, it turned out that our new pals the Drinker and the Thinker were not such creepy guys as we first thought. I pulled out my trusty deck of cards and showed off by shuffling rapidly, as only a true Minnesotan with years of cabin experience under her belt can. "Anyone for Durok?"

We played nine rounds, the girls winning a landslide 6-3 (the Drinker was, simply, really bad; the Thinker openly scolding him by the end), and then everybody tucked into bed. One of the last things I heard, as I clumsily wrapped the sheets around my lumpy mattress, was the boys from across the aisle exclaiming about my tattoo. "Did you see that? A shark," one said. "I bet that shark would eat you!" giggled the other.

Ah, platzkart. Is there any other way to travel?

P.S. By request:

Platzkart: (n.) the wagon of the car where the beds are all open, as opposed to kupe (coo-PEY), where there are 4 beds in a little room. Platzkart is much cheaper. In an area there are 4 beds stacked bunk-style, with 2 beds across the aisle running lengthwise. It's more crowded, less private, and generally filled with kids and drinkers. Whee!

Prolisok: (n.) the Soviet-style "resort" where Peace Corps volunteers often stay. This palace of paradise includes moldy ceilings, bumpy parquet in the hallways, and a volleyball court, which kind of balances things out.

Sto gram: A phrase, colloquially meaning "Have a drink"; literally meaning "100 grams" of alcohol, the size of a shot.

Tianet patianet, no vueytianet ne mozhet!: A phrase, literally meaning, "He pulls and he pulls again, but pull it out he can't!"

Durok: (n.) literally, "fool". A freaking awesome card game played in Ukraine.

2007-06-18T15:45:00.000+03:00

Saglasna

Today at about ten in the morning the sky opened. Fat steady streams poured through the leaves and branches and porches into the muddy ground. I stood at the window and watched the puddles grow and looked at the shiny, transformed world outside and thought about strange things, like my childhood and my friends and being home, in the States. Strange things for the rain.

I spent the weekend in the village next door. My friend Kathryn and I did what we normally do when we get together - we cooked. For once, we didn't get drunk on homemade cocktails, though. For some reason we're both kind of drunked out in this culture of endless toasts and rituals involving the necessity to drink. As I was climbing onto the bus in the wake of three dusty, immensely curious little boys ("Does your friend speak Russian?" they asked. "What's the English word for 'squirrel'?" they wanted to know. "You're Kathryn," they told my friend, "You're here with a big group of people." They were surprisingly well-informed for boys that appeared to be living somewhere between the doorstep and the street. Kathryn sees them around her town, carrying loads of scrap metal on a dilapidated bike to the junkyard. The leader, slightly taller and standing in between his companions, wore a cap and asked all the questions; his friends stole glances, posed like toughs and grinned at me secretly), we also realized that we should have been celebrating something, because the summer is going to kick itself into high gear within the week and we will only glimpse each other until the fall.

She's going to Kyiv for one thing, then the next week I'm going to Kyiv, then she gets home for a bit, then goes back, then we will meet for a Russian language camp at the old training compound where we spent our first three days in-country, then I'm going back to my village and she's doing this and that - including going to Turkey, exotic! - and I'm doing this and that, pretty much travelling every other week all summer and not being in the same place twice until September. Luckily, in the Peace Corps, time stretches.

I'm even going home home. I'm a little concerned. Not so sure if it's a good idea, given the loneliness and homesickness that I currently struggle with. I suppose, though, that in the end I'll eat out every day, go shopping, see my people, and come back to finish the job I started. Won't I?

Sure I will. Despite struggling with teachers and students and systems and language and simple, everyday existence, it's a struggle that makes life worth living. Heck, I'm building character. Last Friday, Kathryn invited me over by text message. She wrote, "Coming over this weekend? Saglasna?" Do you agree? I wrote back that I would, if lasagna was on the menu, and at the same instant that I hit send, I received another message from Kathryn: "And let's have lasagna!" Great minds think alike, right? Tell me you're saglasna.

2007-05-12T00:21:00.000+03:00

Update! New Pictures

Check it out: a few pics of the ol' apartment...

Enjoy!

2007-05-11T16:53:00.000+03:00

Multivitamin Pizza

With the recent acquisition of a working oven, I am now a full-blown hazyaika (housekeeper, homemaker, domestic goddess). My oven is beautiful, the apple of my eye. In fact, I think I'll refer to her as "Apple" from here on out (apologies to celebrity children). It's a long time since I felt so proud of a thing in my possession (dang! That's hard to spell! But it does yield a deliciously Freudian word list) as I now feel about my wonderful little Apple.

I have to admit, the whole concept of having an oven on my countertop was a little disconcerting at first, and it was kind of weird to reconcile myself to. Like, why couldn't I use the one in my stove? (Aside from the fact that it's the perfect, out-of-the-way corner for my landlady to stash her dirty frypan and assorted random, mostly plastic castaways from the - I'm assuming - cleaning-out-of-the-apartment-for-the-new-tenant process.)

But now that I can once again experience the joy of baking cookies for the teachers at school or my students during our "extraordinary lesson", the sheer pleasure of baking myself a pizza (oh, sweet deity, pizza whenever I want it and reasonably plan ahead for it!), or the good times of drinking too many homemade (and I do mean that!) White Russians with my friend from the next village over and baking a good, old-fashioned tuna casserole, I've gotten quite used to my little oven. I'm proud of her, in fact. She's a miracle of modern science! She has options: upper and/or lower heating elements! A timer! And she's red!

Little Apple, Hard At Work

Enough gushing. You get the point. What I really wanted to tell you about was the thing that happens after you live in Ukraine for 7 months, which is: you start fusing. Especially when it comes to food.

The crowning feature of my food fusion so far is the multivitamin pizza I created yesterday. In Mironovka, my host mom made pure Ukrainian pizza: ketchup, caramelized cabbage and onion, kalbasa, mushrooms, mayo...oh, and a little cheese. This is actually pretty tasty food, but not really in line with what I culturally considered in the category of "pizza". So I took it to the next level. Oh, yes.

First I created a sauce from tomato paste (widely available in this land of borshcht and galubsie, or cabbage rolls), fresh homemade tomato juice, and preserved peppers (also widely available in the local magazine). I added some fried onions and garlic for flavor. This is the first layer on my pizza.

I sauted, in this order: shredded beets! Yes, seriously, shredded beets. But you have to start with them because they are tougher than nails, and take a little while to soften up. (See how I just avoided your shocked expression and silent question? Beets are a fact of life here, get used to it!) Next, garlic, sliced onions, and cabbage. Finished with shredded carrots. This was the next layer on my pizza, and lends credence to the "multivitamin" part of my claim.

Finally, I finished the delicacy off with some chopped pineapple, "milk" sausage (really just bologna) slices, and a ton of cheese. I'm lucky enough to have found a source (recently developed, but I hope my weekly - sometimes biweekly - purchase keeps the luck flowing) of "cheddar" cheese in my town. I have to call it "chye-drrrrr" but well, I adjust.

I baked this creation in Apple and out came delicious pizza! I have been eating pizza my whole life and this pizza tastes good. Don't flinch at the beets, they absorbed the caramel sweetness of the onions. Don't cringe at the pineapple, there's a rather large contingent of "Hawaiian Pizza" lovers out there, we can't all be wrong. Don't wince at the cabbage or carrots, they cook down to a lovely afterthought, really. The overall effect is a mellow, savory-sweet experience that comes with the extra bonus of being "healthy" (it's the food pyramid on a plate!). Am I crazy? Nahhh...

2007-04-17T08:56:00.001+03:00

The Night Of Friday The 13th

Should have seemed like a no-brainer: Friday the 13th. Something's got to happen. But it never crossed my mind.

Sure, it's Ukraine, and springtime. Birds chirping, shrubbery blooming, tulips and hyacinths and lilies all pushing up through the soft dirt like girls emerging from the walls for a Sadie Hawkins dance. Sure, it had been a nice, warm week.

A week that followed the most traumatic airport moment I've ever lived through. I was sick, puffy, red, and snot-filled as I gasped and choked my way out the door, onto the bus, into Kyiv and away from my lover, my husband. I snorted into cups in the medical office and started the antibiotics, making it home after a mere 12 hours on the dusty train with the accompanying smells and 3 incoherent hours spent bent up in a single seat on the mashrutka to my village. Then I spent the next day suffering the humiliation of one of my coteachers' near-utter desperation and lack of trust in my teaching ability, forced into observing her classes and the inadequate but inviolate Grammar Translation Method ("Otherwise, how will they learn? All you do is play with them, and that's nice, but you've got to teach them, too."); and then, finally, home. But a week through which I'd lived, and at last, I could stop moving.

I thought I would be able to collapse onto my bed and finally, finally, finally rest. Slip into the sweet oblivion of sheer, absolute, obsidian sleep.

But I didn't think that it was Friday the 13th.

So, I'm laying on my bed. I've wasted all afternoon and night (if you call going for a nice jog and cleaning up with a cozy little bucket bath a waste) just doing this and that. It's Friday, after all. I'm under the blankets, got the mac propped up on the pillow next to me, and I'm laying down and zoning out to - you guessed it and what else but - Moonlighting, when a spider crawls across the computer screen.

More like it was fleeing for its life.

In the faint blue light of the computery glow the spider's body looked twice as big and three times as fast, all the more grotesque as Cybill Shepherd had just opened her mouth to say something snarky to Addison. I gulped while a flash of calculations seared through my brain. Scream. Jump. Hide. I opted for "Slowly But Quickly Turn The Lights On, Trying Not To Touch Anything, And Simultaneously Locate A Wad Of Some Sort Of Material Appropriate For Fast Disposal Of THE THING".

I caught the spider just zipping into the crack of my computer towards my mattress as the lights came on. Luckily for me it made a break for it across my pillow. I lunged, triumphant. What made me look up onto the wall above me I couldn't say, other than perhaps the sheer magnetism of a particularly gory and disgusting sight.

A giant, segmented, flesh-and-black colored monster with hundreds of sentient slender appendages clinging to the wall over my bed, cursing the luck that had allowed its prey to escape on an invisible thread thus alerting me to its presence, burned into my eyes. A centipede. The word doesn't do the thing justice.

Understanding seeped into my brain: so why did the spider desperately descend? Oho, that's it, that poor little green porch climber had scrambled off the ceiling just a foot and a half away from my head because the wolf was poised, hunting for flesh, on the wall DIRECTLY ABOVE MY HEAD.

Am I overusing capital letters here? I don't think so. The situation was dire. In fact, I think I remained remarkably calm for the scope of the dire situation that faced me. Perhaps too calm. I felt the adrenaline flood my body, turning my limbs into icicles of resistance. Like my adversary the ginormous centibeast, when the lights came on and we locked eyes-to-hundreds-of-long-slender-legs, legs so large I could see the striped detail on the exoskeleton of each limb from fully five feet away, I froze.

While I could take swift action when it comes to the (comparatively, now) gentle little spiders I have been killing by the half dozen daily, it took me fully five minutes to actually think anything but, "Oh god, oh god, oh god, above my head, oh god, no, no, oh god WAS IT ON ME? What about last night? Was it here BEFORE?" I finally realized that I would have to dispatch the thing. Myself.

Now, before you start, I've done it before, don't get me wrong. But that was in Phil's house. In Dinkytown, Minnesota, where my husband and my brother and Anthony and Katie and my dog Sadie were all there to pet me and tell me how good I was for killing the creature. Where I could feel superior, since I was oldest, and know that I had an example to set. Back then, I'd killed so many of them I'd even researched the things, learning that while they were carnivorous, ravenous creatures of the moist, dark night, they rarely had a taste for human flesh and even rarer still could sting or poison.

But that's nothing to possible ravages of the Ukrainian Killer Centibeast. In my BEDROOM. Above MY HEAD.

Granted, it was 2:30 going on 3:00 at night when this episode in my life in Ukraine occurred. I'm not one to say that I wasn't entirely not delirious from mild fever, lack of sleep, and the kind of sheer soul-sucking exhaustion that comes from seeing your husband for the first time in 6 months for a total of 2 weeks and then saying goodbye for the next 9 months to come. I'm not one to deny that I was, perhaps, slightly more than agitated. After a serious internal debate about whether the thing would move if I left the room, I finally roused myself. I went to the kitchen, donned my bright yellow all-purpose touch-anything-gross rubber gloves, grabbed a wad of toilet paper, returned to find the vile thing in the same place. Terrified by the sudden change in environment. Confused maybe. Vulnerable. I climbed onto my bed, poised with my hand about 6 inches away, ready to go in for the kill.

And froze again.

What if I missed? What if it fell onto my bed and climbed down in there and I'd never find it because the beds weigh like 150 pounds and I can't move them and I'd have to sleep knowing it was down there, ready to crawl on me? What if I missed and it slithered onto my arm and up my sleeve? It was paralyzing.

Finally the agony of holding my arm up over my head like that overcame the agony of what might be and I sprang, smashing the thing to a million quivering, twitching little bits. So much for the villain of the night.

I haven't even mentioned how, back when I flicked the light switch on, three more spiders went scuttling for different corners of the ceiling and another, smaller centipede clung to the wall above my curtained windowsill. I spent at least an hour stalking all the insects I could find. In the disoriented slumbery wakefulness of being startled by that first spider, to find my apartment seething with insectival wildlife was gut-wrenchingly horrifying. Back in my other life, in my household, I'm the stalker of bugs, the smasher of spiders. But this was just too much.

After close scrutiny of every corner, nook, and crevice, I finally collapsed. I curled up by my computer with my new stuffed monkey and called Dan for some much needed "Don't worry, honey, it's the only one there. You killed it. It's not going to come back. Even if it did it wouldn't want to hurt you. It's more scared of you than you're scared of it." I taped the holes on the wall with masking tape (convinced like a paranoid that it had slunk out of one of them, I kept replaying the image of it emerging stealthy and hungry in my mind's eye, all those legs slithering out of the tiny cracks) and took his advice, retreating into my sleeping bag (after thoroughly shaking it out) and pulling the hood tight around my face. I was trembling, couldn't stop shaking, I had a tinny taste in my mouth, and I startled awake several more times that night - or should I say morning? By this time it was 4:30 at least.

What a night. Who says that Friday the 13th has to be evil? Just one mother of a centipede, its smaller cousin, and a minor stampede of green garden spiders determined to turn my room into an entomological exhibit, that's who.

2007-03-09T15:48:00.001+03:00

My Little Paradise

I've moved into my own apartment!!! Yes, that deserves three exclamation marks. After five months living with a host family, I'm not too proud to say that I can't stand it. There's a reason I'm not a teenager or living with my parents any more, and it's that I like my space. And my own time. And the chance to cook my own food, store it properly at the correct temperature (42 degrees, covered, no longer than a week), and eat as much of it as I want, whenever I want. Ah, yes. The apartment of my dreams is finally here!

Let me paint the picture for you, since right now I don't have my own internet connection (I'm using the one at school in-between classes) and it takes forever to load photos:

After wrestling with a stubborn key (press in, press down, lift and twist), you open the light-tan, varnished wooden door. You're greeted by a pleasant and kitschy little corridor, with a hallway on the left, and three white doors at the far end: left, center, and right. Little frilly curtains hide the glass pane in the center of each door, the fabric slightly yellowing and frayed in only a few places. The linoleum flooring is a dark brown geometric pattern with a natural-looking wooden design. A slight draft hits you across the face as you step in (it is March, after all), but you're too busy taking in the mirror hanging on the wall between the corridor and the door on the left, and its cascading frame of dusty cloth vines to notice much. Trust me, you'll notice later tonight, when you're sleeping in your long underwear, pajamas, and bathrobe all at once. As for now, "Cute," you might think. "Homey."

You push the bead curtain aside as you turn left to head toward the kitchen. Ah, here's the toilet room, how charming, the toilet is on a little wooden pedestal. Exposed pipes must make repairs a cinch! You pass the door to the bath-room, too. The tub has its own little cupboard, how interesting! You will only make the mistake of sliding one of the cupboard doors back to look beneath the tub once. Trust me, it doesn't need to be repeated. How lovely, those rusty holes in the white tiles on the wall must be where the water heater was. Well, what doesn't kill you...as they say.

Keep going and you're in the kitchen. Bear in mind, you've taken about five steps so far. Oops! You made the mistake of leaning against the curtain on the door to the kitchen, and gee, the glass behind it was broken at one time, and you've just broken it again. Looks like that old packing tape didn't hold. Well, that's nothing that duct tape won't fix. Alright, you're in the kitchen. There's some lovely gray speckled cupboards, plenty of storage room, nice counter space, a little table with four stools, and an excellent fridge - you could store a whole pig in there if you wanted! Why is everything sticky? Well, no one's lived here for two or three years, so...you'll make do somehow (by scrubbing for a day and a half, that's how).

Go ahead and turn on the gas to your stove. It's in the closet in the hallway. Just crank the knob at the top, go back into the kitchen, strike a match, and light your burner. Great! Now you can cook anything! Well, don't try baking, no one's sure if the oven works, and actually it's really a fantastic storage place for this grime-coated, used frying pan. Hmm, looks like eggs! Anyone for sausages?

Let's check out the living room. Plenty of space, if you like hanging out in subzero temperatures. That carpet on the wall? Classy, but not exactly warm. Why it's not on the bare wooden floor is a mystery that you'll contemplate after you've sealed the room off to save energy for heating in the rest of your apartment. Take in the glass cabinet residing in the center of the main wall. Four tea sets, six shelves of dusty books in Russian, some small glass animals and ornaments . . . What's that? Why would you want to move those beautiful things? Don't you have enough space in the rest of the place? Really! Oh, and be careful when you flip off that light switch! Since it doesn't have a panel, you wouldn't want to shock yourself, would you?

Okay, and here's your bedroom through the next door on your right! Use this tiny but thankfully brand-new space heater for all 16 square meters of it. It's sure to heat the two feet nearby quite nicely! Go ahead and move the beds if you don't like banging your legs on them the second you enter the room. It's your apartment, you can do what you want! Once you've moved them away from the door, just try not to gag at the coating of dust, abandoned condom packages (complete with a nudie pic), and, yes, that is a fish carcass. You might think finding a dried-out, decaying fish under one of your new beds is unusual, but darling! Then you wouldn't be living! Who doesn't like to enjoy a mug of beer and some dried fish in bed?

Once you've cleaned everything a couple of times, you'll be tired-out. Why not boil yourself a nice cup of tea in your new electric kettle (from here on out referred to as a "chainik", a much better word in my opinion)? What's that you say? Sudden darkness? Oh, poor thing, didn't you know that to have two heaters, the fridge, and your electric kettle all plugged in at once would overload the system? You've got to unplug something if you want to have boiled water. Just wait two hours for the landlady to come and show you how to flip the fuse by the door. Silly American.

That, my friends, in a nutshell, is my new little corner of paradise. And I love every inch, every moment of it. I am proud to declare myself a truly seasoned Peace Corps Volunteer as I have now successfully taken two wonderful bucket baths, complete with heating the water on the stove and scooping the combined hot (from the bucket)/cold (from the tap) water over me. How refreshing!

Although, last night I did find myself dreaming about Target...

2007-02-25T18:14:00.000+03:00

Happy Birthday!

To me. All week I knew something was brewing. Despite falling dreadfully ill last Saturday night - I'll spare you the details - by Wednesday I was back at work, and it seemed to me that people were even nicer to me than ever. I also sensed (seems like "using the force" is something I'm getting very good at these days, since I understand next to none of the details) they were talking about me. My coordinator wouldn’t translate, and I felt a little slighted. What was all the fuss? Sheesh.

I got to find out! First, allow me to set the scene. For my birthday on Friday, Ukraine decided to present me with an icy-cold, snowy morning with no electricity or running water for the first time at my site. Gee, and imagine that I’d been counting on a shower as I hadn’t washed my hair in over three days! On top of that, I’d slept fitfully the night before. I tried vainly to make myself look decent, “disguising” my greasy hair with a ponytail and headband, and applying a little mascara and powder over the deep hollows of my eyes. It’s so funny. I feel like I looked like a zombie clown, but all the teachers told me how much more beautiful I looked than normal, just because I’d put on a little eye makeup. Yes, the conditioning runs very deep here.

Well, after the fourth lesson, my coordinator, Tatiana, and I set out to buy the cake for my party (traditionally, the birthday person buys something to eat for the guests). Another teacher, Lena, called us back. “Your host dad, Kostya, is on his way and he’ll take you for the cake,” she said. “It’s too cold out to go yourself.” She was right, sort of: it was minus 20 degrees Celsius, about negative 11 Fahrenheit. Brrr!

So my host dad pulls up to school, and the teachers start unloading the car. What? This was news to me! A train of people unloaded box after box full of plates of food. As I joined in, with a giant box dripping mayonnaise down the front of my coat, I slowly realized that my host family had been feeling me out about my birthday plans all week. And I thought I’d gotten off scott-free simply by being evasive. They’d sort of ask me what I wanted to do the next weekend and I'd sort of provide some non-answer. What I wanted to do? I wanted to move into my own apartment! It had seemed imprudent to reply this way to their kind inquiries at the time, so I had mumbled something in response, making sure to include the word “galubsie”, as that’s my favorite dish, just in case.

Left to take matters into their own hands, my host family provided an incredibly over-the-top extravaganza for the 16 teachers that would attend my little celebration. There were roasted beef and mushroom foil packets with melted cheese and gravy in them; cornmeal baked fish fillets; breaded fillets of chicken with sliced pineapple and melted cheese; three kinds of salads, including crab, olivie (the pickle, peas, hardboiled egg, and mayo specialty of Ukrainian parties), and a tasty apple and chicken salad; and the Amazing Fish, bigger and more impressive than ever. My eyes were popping.

As the school gradually emptied of students, teachers came into the freezing little “cabinet” where we normally take our lunches on the second floor. At the sight of the spread in front of them, they were stunned. “I have SHOCK. Shock!” said Marina, the events director, pressing her hand to her bosom in astonishment. My director was presented with a liter-sized bottle of vodka. There were two other half-liter bottles already in service, and a sweet white wine, and when that ran dry, a partially-consumed bottle of chardonnay was produced from somewhere in a teacher’s desk.

I was a little surprised myself. Extravagant doesn’t do it justice. Having slept poorly the night before, I had been outwardly numb, albeit happy, and sort of just trying to get through the day – every time I turned around a teacher or student, even the ones I didn’t know, were congratulating me in an enthusiastic mixture of Russian, Ukrainian, and English – but inside I felt truly overwhelmed by my host family’s display of kindness, not just toward me but toward my whole school.

When everyone was finally assembled, my director presented me with a single long-stemmed pink rose and a chainik, or 2-liter water boiler. These little pots are as ubiquitous in the electronics aisle in Ukraine as toasters are in the U.S., maybe even more so. I was very pleased, as my new apartment comes with a gas stove for which I have to buy the gas in canisters, making boiling water an inconvenient task, to say the least. They also gave me 100 grivnias, as they put it, “to buy tea for your chainik!”

Toasts were toasted, the feast was consumed, decimated rather, and everyone got jolly. One of the zouches (vice-principals, but doesn’t “zouch” describe that position much better?), Alexey, made the sweetest toast I’ve ever received. Translated (I didn’t understand it at first), it went something like this: “Let’s drink to this exotic flower that’s landed in our garden, to ensure she blossoms more beautifully than ever in her Ukrainian life.” This blond, blue-eyed, middle class Minnesotan has never felt exotic in her life. I was touched. Exotic flower! Me!

And that’s the way it’s done here in Ukraine. Getting tipsy with your friends at work, toasting, laughing, feasting, sitting all crammed together in a tiny, freezing room, and living life to its fullest. This exotic flower has landed in the fragrant garden of life, surrounded by blossoms of love and friendship, and the growing season has just begun.

2007-02-25T00:32:00.000+03:00

Making Monkey Faces

When was the last time you had the giggles? Gut-busting, goofy - "I can't breathe!" - fantastically silly giggles?

Living with a 12-year-old, I've witnessed more than my share of giggle fits in the last two months, but I seldom joined in. Maybe it was the stress of moving and adjusting to new places, new faces, new workspaces. Maybe it's my home life, which has been challenging me to be a very patient, flexible person these days. Whenever the seemingly unremitting laughter would break out afresh, I generally grumbled to myself, "Damn! Is this what my mother had to put up with when I was 12? She should be made a saint!"

Then, one night, Friday night, my birthday night, to be exact, that all changed. I was hanging out with Nastya (on the left), Oxana (on the right), and Yulia (not pictured) in Nastya's room. We were knitting and just sort of lounging around. The little girls were taking turns making faces at each other and trying to make each other laugh. Good fun. My ears were ringing with the natural mirth of youth.

In fact, it suddenly reminded me of a little game my brother and I used to play called "Monkey Face". It's not a very complicated game, really. It consists of staring very seriously at one another with one's lips pooched out. The point is to laugh last. I quickly explained the rules of this game to the girls, and a new era in giggling had begun.

For the rest of the night, they played Monkey Face (we're talking hours, here). Every time the game ended, they begged me to join in. How could I resist? I'm not ashamed to say that I giggled like a 12-year-old. Then, the next morning at the breakfast table, I caught Yulia's eye, made the Monkey Face, and it was all over. Even my host dad joined in (behind my host mom's back, which was even funnier). My host mom kept muttering, "Quiet, girls. Quiet at the table," and when her back was turned, my host dad would make the Monkey Face and the room would ring with peals of laughter, mine included.

Laughter, the elixir of life. Thanks to my little brother, when life gives me lemons, I've got a Monkey Face to make.

2007-02-14T20:54:00.000+03:00

Time Management

Time flows, runs, drags, stops, blinks - and I'm caught in the middle like a helpless fly on its back. That buzzing sound? It's me, trying to wing my way back on top of life.

Not that I'm not getting anything done, because every day I seem to work, eat, sleep, and work some more. But I can't escape the feeling that I'm just running around in these absurd little circles, made all the more bizarre by the fact that I understand only a tiny fraction of what's going on around me. I blame my apparent inability to DO on everything from my host-family living situation to my lack of language skills, from my definite amateur status as a teacher and organizer to a steady winter diet of potatoes, eggs, bread, and chocolate. If I only had some vegetables to eat, I'd be fine!

But ideas are forming, that's true. The slow drip in the cavern of my mind is starting to create delicate little stalactites clinging from the rafters, inching their way into the space of my daily routine. I've just got to let go and not touch, just let myself trust in the process that I've started. To tell myself: these ideas will continue and grow and someday sparkle in fruition.

I just need to believe the whole thing won't cave in before that happens.

Time Management, Part II

Today was a blast of bright sunshine. I was running late this morning, as usual. A recurring theme in my life. I've been pretty good about managing this tendency up until the last few weeks, when a vague seasonal/situational lack of zest has overcome my senses. The snooze button is all too comforting a friend, so I end up rushing when I could have been strolling, stopping to smell the...chickens, as it is here.

Anyway, this morning was lovely, despite my lateness-induced semipanic. The sun was high and the sky was blue, and not only that, I was wearing my brand new Ukrainian suit and sure to get plenty of compliments when I got to school. I looked sharp, as only Ukrainian women can: a short, pleated skirt and matching petite jacket, hooked up with incredible Ukrainian pantyhose. Seriously, I have never enjoyed wearing hose until today. The top has an extra-wide band so it doesn't pinch or roll. They were sheer yet thick. Supportive without cutting off any circulation. They didn't fall down or scrunch. I actually felt feminine. I imagined my legs were the legs of a supermodel. Killer gams. It helped me with the power walk, as I tried to cover 30 minutes in 20.

I was a mere three speed-walking minutes away from school at 10:26 when I ran into my director. Blast - my luck! She was headed the other way to the center of town. She stopped me in my tracks, gently grabbing my hands with her soft, grandmotherly ones. She shook them with each congratulatory phrase, declaring the holiday a perfect day, a happy day, full of love and happiness. "To the holiday!" she crowed, pleased as punch. I felt comforted by her cheer and good natured words, as always tinged with the tiniest bit of something mischievous, but I felt guilty, too, and wanted to run as fast as I could to get to school by half-past 10.

Not so fast. A few steps behind her, on their way to school, was a pretty blond teacher and the school librarian. They stopped, turning back, when they heard Lyudmila talking to me, and appropriated me for the rest of the walk to school. "I'm late," I desperately intoned, smiling and trying not to look too worried. "So am I!" trilled the teacher. The librarian joined in her light, easy laughter. As the ladies had hemmed me in on either side and were solicitously asking me simple questions appropriate to my childlike language skills, I felt trapped in the sticky Ukrainian honey of time and its management. In the end, I made it to school at 10:32.

Late or not late, it doesn't seem to matter. In the long run, as several of my students have written in their journals, life is for living. Seize the day. Live the moment. Don't worry about it. And anyway, as my teacher friend explained, "The students are late, too. And they'll probably like it!" Be a little bit naughty, her sparkling eyes said. The weather is good. We are young, and healthy. We only get this chance once.

2007-01-26T23:19:00.000+03:00

Millions of Fishes

The Ukrainians I've met seem to adore all things fish, believing that not only is fish uncommonly tasty, but it's also extremely healthy. While some foods, like peanut butter and maple syrup, are all but impossible to find here, fish is high on the list of frequently available foods. Ukraine is a seafood-lover's paradise.

Growing up in Minnesota, near the center of the North American continent and subsequently pretty much as far as you can get from the source of, well, any kind of even mildly exotic oceanic sort of fish, I was rarely exposed to the wonders of the world of seafood. As far as I can recall, the only fish my family ever ate on a regular basis consisted of the breaded, processed, frozen variety, preferably dipped in ketchup.

Now living only 100 km from the Sea of Azov in Ukraine, I find myself confronted with fish of an incredible variety on all sides. Dried fish in plastic bags are in the door of the refrigerator at my family's home, just chillin' next to the mayonaise, kefir, and kalbasa (store-bought sausages). In the mornings, vendors stand on the street corners selling striped and headless fish out of plastic pails. The ladies wear puffy coats with frilled aprons over them, and chat animatedly with one another as I walk by on my way to school. Sometimes they have to shoo away a lucky stray dog that manages to get his head into one of the buckets. If you enter a local magazine (Russian for 'store'), your nose will be most likely be accosted by an unmistakeably fishy odor. At the markets, giant fish as big as an adult human leg flex their gills open and shut, slowly suffocating on the long wooden tables.

Fish here, fish there, fish and seafood everywhere. What am I going to do?

For the holidays, we ate an incredible amount of food, and a significant percentage of the festive dishes contained fish of some kind. Shrimp cocktail was served with sliced citrus; fist-sized calamari tentacles stuffed with rice and mushrooms, covered in mayonaise and melted cheese slid greasily around on our plates; Ukrainian salads were crafted with pickled fish, baked and shredded fish, diced fish, smoked fish.

But I met the crowned king of fish at our New Year's celebration. He was bought fresh, twisting slowly in his bag for a day and a night before my host mother stuffed him with mushrooms and liver pate, baked him in his skin, drizzled an intricate pattern of mayonaise on top, robed him in black olives, lemon slices, and pomegranate seeds, and accompanied him with a retinue of sliced cucumbers, flowered tomatoes, oranges, and rare, expensive lettuce leaves. His eyes were glistening black olives, his lips tender red slices of tomato. He was coronated in a carefully sculpted tomato circlet encrusted with an olive. The result was truly a masterpiece:

Alas, for the poor crowned king of fish was not to be eaten. Frankly, I'm not sure why, although I was somewhat disinclined to indulge, myself. I can't really explain why I lack the gusto to dive into eating all this fish, but for some reason I approach seafood reluctantly at best.

I might blame my lack of fishetite on my upbringing, saying that culturally I've never gotten used to eating fish, but many Minnesotans regularly enjoy fish of a more local variety and more exotic fish has always been available. It is true that in my family we tended to stick to chicken, pork and beef. And I've all but convinced myself that I'm allergic to shellfish, since my mother is, and I had a feverish run-in with a shrimp dish in China. Whether I'm truly allergic or not, I can't ever bring myself to chance eating a food that required I had to endure it twice. Urp.

And then there's the issue of environmental contamination. I'm living in a heavily industrialized part of Ukraine, with little to no governmental regulation of emissions or dumping. As American Volunteers, we're already forbidden to eat fish caught locally from streams and lakes because of pollution and possible radioactive particles. I also guess that much of the industrial waste generated in this part of Ukraine runs off into the Sea of Azov, which might be cleaner than the Black Sea downstream, but still poses enough of a mental threat that I feel I might be healthier if I just avoided fish altogether.

That said, it's awfully hard to have to say "no" all the time to offers of intricate, interesting fish dishes that represent the heartiest goodwill of your friends and neighbors. When you're a guest at someone's home in Ukraine, the host always feels a deep-seated obligation to feed you, and feed you well. If that food is fish, finding a culturally sensitive way to decline is the first thing on my mind, when I'd rather just be sitting back and making a few new friends. And I can't help feeling like there's something fishy about that.

Thanks to a great book by Wanda Gag that my Grandma Marilyn used to read to me when I was little, and that I read in my 5th form class today, Millions of Cats, for inspiration for this post.

2007-01-24T16:28:00.001+03:00

Welcome Back! or, Here We Go Again

Well, Blog, this is it. It's time to get rolling again. Here I am, happily situated with a computer and internet access at my site these past four weeks and I haven't written to you once. That's about to change!

The last time I wrote, I was sitting on a red Ikea couch in my comfortable, familiar living room, pounding frantically (everything seemed frantic in those pre-departure days) at my keyboard, wondering if I'd get everything I needed to get done done. I'm happy to report that 1) I pretty much did, and 2) it doesn't matter anyway: life goes on.

I am in Ukraine! How can a few words even begin to characterize all the feelings I've felt these last three months? After the adjustments and the challenges of moving, of training, of missing my husband and family and friends, I have to say that I'm finally feeling fine. Mostly because Ukraine is such an irrepressibly interesting, paradoxical country. How can you explain jellied chicken? It's jello, and it's chicken, together, in one dish. My mother would be horrified. Is it delicious? Ukrainians think so! In fact, galubiets is one of the national dishes.

Or try, just try, to grasp the deeper meaning of having tea. Sounds easy enough: steep, stir, drink. Not so fast! You've got to simmer down, to savor things a bit. Tea is, simply put, more than tea. It's time to relax, time to enjoy one another's company, time to sip some of the sweetness of life. Here in Ukraine, I have tea at least 10 times a week. Life is good.

Just today, in fact, I was sitting in the teacher's cabinet (i.e., lounge) with my coordinator, Tatiana, and a few other teachers. We were drinking tea and eating buterbrod (bread, butter, and a yummy balogna-like sausage, the staple of Ukrainian lunches), when the bell rang. It always rings, since we only have 20 minutes for our lunch break. I sighed, looking into my cup, which was still three-quarters full. Since I wouldn't get to drink my tea (read: the bell rang, it's time for class), I stood up. "No, no," they all exclaimed in a chorus, bodily dragging me back onto the bench, "Sit down! Drink!" I felt strange - shouldn't I be getting back to my class? "Not at all. Don't worry, the students are always late, you'll be fine. Drink! Drink," they urged. They cajoled. They insisted. I was helpless to resist, so I guiltily finished my tea as fast as I could, and got to class five minutes late. Such can be the pace of my new life.

Slowing down, breathing, and taking time to finish my tea is only the start of all the changes I have to make here. Sometimes they feel great, like eating fresh, organic fruit, meat and vegetables 24/7. Other times I have a harder time adjusting. Wouldn't I have felt better if I just chilled out a bit and relaxed as I drank my tea? It's too soon to feel completely comfortable with a looser interpretation of "being on time" for me. But I'm working on it, and I think that as I steep in the Ukrainian culture that surrounds me, I'll soon be the better for it.

2006-09-14T19:40:00.000+03:00

O Blog, How I Miss Thee

Sort of. In between all the shopping and the deciding and the packing and the moving and the eating and the cleaning and the running and the writing and the playing lots of scrabble with Dan and the little Sadie that I love so much, yes, kisses, right, puppy? I haven't had a chance to actually sit down and write, my darling. How long it's been.

Well, don't take that tone with me! Lots of it wasn't my fault, like the internet connection having been turned off for a bunch of days right in the middle there. We only just got it back last week, Tuesday, so that was only...nine...days...ago. Wait a minute. Aaaaagh! Time is doing that thing again, where it jumps around so quick.

Speaking of which, Dan and Ben and I watched a crazy cool existentialist sketch on comedy central the other night, where a dude discovers a time machine but to test it, sets it for 30 seconds in the future, which isn't enough time to realize what's going on and so it just repeats, endlessly, but with sort of generational genetic mutations, and ends up exploding. Neat.

And now, for the finale, I announce: the day is so beautiful it brings tears to my eyes, and Sadie is nibbling my heels. To the deep blue, and beyond! Here's to the fall in Minnesota, the most lovely season of all! I have a feeling Ukraine is going to be just as glorious, if not more so. And so, I go!

2006-08-25T07:40:00.000+03:00

Am I Neglecting You, Little Blog?

It seems like so much is happening, but I'm just not thinking about anything right now. I do things and finish things and send things off and sort things, but somehow my brain is numb, I'm working hard but hardly working in my head. I feel disjointed, as if my mind is off three or four days in the future, when I know I'll be able to focus on fewer and fewer things, but for now, my poor body is stuck doing just about as much as it can handle. Wheeee!

I think I'm going to focus on the fact that I'm writing down everything that I can, and reviewing and sorting things into smaller and smaller piles of relevance, until I'm just down to living out of my luggage. Thank goodness I finished sorting out the files, and revising my Peace Corps resume, and composing my aspiration statement, and packing eight boxes (yay, go me)! I feel cleansed and well-organized; Dan's set up for the next two years, and all the rest has been sorted through, recorded, and sealed for posterity (whatever that is).

I have to say that my past self set my present self up pretty well for all this. I was able to find the dates and hours of volunteering I did in 1999! And I found records of certifications I'd taken as a paraprofessional, complete with syllabi tucked in. Not to mention I obsessively filed all my class syllabuses (which way is it, syllabi or syllabuses, or even syllabusses, anyway?) with course descriptions and major papers I'd written. Behavior successfully reinforced: file everything! Sort it often!

Now I'm about to start packing in earnest for the move, or so I say; I still have to root out any treasures that might be lurking in the kitchen. To save or not to save? That, my friends, is the question, indeed.

Well, I'm off to learn the Ukrainian alphabet. Ta-ta!

2006-08-22T09:18:00.000+03:00

...And Thus Four Days Pass, Like a Blur

Thursday night's class went well. Very well. I brought 15 items of realia, as it's called in TEFL lingo, and got to teach both a lesson on prepositions and give away all that stuff! The things I brought were: a large, unopened can of oatmeal; a small fish-inside-a-fish statue; a large, unopened jar of honey; two little jars of apple butter that my Grandma and I had made together last Christmas; a big vase; an ornate gold set of salt and pepper shakers; a box of pancake mix, still sealed; a little red beanie toy (it's like a smiling salamander, and one of my students just fell in love with it, she giggled every time she saw it); a candle inside a blue jar with a lid; and a few other trinkets. After the lesson (in which the students had to write sentences in their groups to describe the locations of the objects, then go up in front of the class, read their sentences to a group member, who had to put the things back how they were) I told them, "These are for you to take with you, if you like." And by the end of class, they were gone! Poof! My random things now become mementos of a fun English class. I liked it.

Then, I worked Friday and Saturday and Sunday, pretty much in a long row. I felt really anxious, like I just wanted to be thinking about the Peace Corps and packing for the move, but I had to fulfill my obligations to my employers. Luckily I got a couple of shifts covered this week, giving me a bit more breathing room to do laundry, pack, and (hopefully) move this weekend. We'll see about that!

Tonight I had a great time biking around with a new friend. Her sister is moving to Alaska tomorrow. Like, she's on the plane at 11:00 a.m. It was neat to be able to just hang around and relax; I saw a sneak peek of what's in store for me--no sleeping that last night, packing, repacking, laughing with friends, going with the flow. Because at that point, you're just along for the ride.

2006-08-17T01:17:00.000+03:00

It's Official!

I have officially accepted my invitation to serve as a Volunteer in the Peace Corps!

Wow. I pictured this moment many times over the last several months and, I suppose you could say, over my lifetime, but I never thought it would look and feel like this. This is it!

So what is the Peace Corps, anyway? From what I can tell, the Peace Corps is a governmental organization that seeks to effect worldwide change--hopefully change for the better. Better meaning: more tolerant, more accepting, more diverse, more effective, and more reaching human communications. And what is peace? Can I actually be so idealistic to think that I can contribute to peace in a significant way? Maybe I can change the world, just by reaching out my hand.

I feel like I need a helping hand, too: to discover my place in the world, to find out what I'm capable of, and to figure out what the world is all about these days. I savor the idea of having "global citizenship"; that is, I feel proud of feeling a kinship to all humans, no matter where they live, what language they speak, and what their culture. It's all beautiful out there.

The psychology and sociology of "others" has always fascinated me. Growing up, my parents somehow gave me the self-confidence and the skills to learn to empathize with others, pretty much no matter what (I wish I could know exactly how they did that, but whatever, it worked; how many of you out there think I'm afraid to say what I'm thinking?). But I also feel like it's turned into something I cultivate and nurture in myself: I put myself in positions in which I'm forced to examine my role and the effects my behaviors are having on others, and what others' roles, as well as their behaviors, the effects, and the desired outcomes, may be.

In serving as a Volunteer in the Peace Corps, I am not only bringing to bear a long-held dream (if it has been long in the making, I'm all the stronger and more wise for it--although I still have a long way to go!!!), but also making a very specific, dedicated commitment and following through with it. This is important to me for reasons I am not altogether certain of; yet being unable to articulate them diminishes them none. I feel very strongly that it is right for me to serve the Peace Corps. I feel very sure that this will be a good thing for me. I am certain that my life, as well as Dan's and that of my family and friends here and abroad, will be better for my serving a cause like peace.

I believe in the Peace Corps. I believe in the people that make the Peace Corps work, and I'm proud to be going to join their number soon!

2006-08-14T07:27:00.000+03:00

Ukraine: Far Away But Not Forever

Generally speaking, it is now acceptable to refer to this country as "Ukraine", without using the definite article "the", although it was apparently common up until recently in the U.S. to use it in speaking about "the Ukraine". Because Ukraine is an independent nation-state and not a region, it's more fitting to drop the article.

Things I've Learned in the Last Three Days:

It's hard to paint a house.
Sadie gets nervous when lightning strikes across the street.
I'm going to become a Peace Corps Volunteer (I think; the phone call will be made tomorrow).

Been talking to Dan, and everybody, about getting the invitation. I've mostly just been saying, "I've got some news," and everybody reacts in a different way, according to what they know and believe and assume the Peace Corps to be. My husband Dan got really withdrawn and stressed out for a day or two (that resolved after a good several days of eating homemade chicken dumpling soup and a couple of strategic massages), but by today he'd worked through whatever he needed to work through and was defending the Peace Corps--even to me when I broke down with uncertainty tonight. Our trust is so deep, it's like a well that begins not in the middle of the earth but in a whole new dimension, and it feels like falling, plummeting down that ancient well toward the blue heavens of another world. Yet, I'll believe him. I'll believe me. We can make the world how we can. It's up to us. I believe.

My mom and dad both said the same thing, "The decision is up to you and Dan, we'll love you and support you either way," but then Mom got online right away to learn more. That was Friday night, and then today she informed me of several new facts about Ukraine newly researched. It seems like she's excited, and that makes me feel excited, too. I love hearing more about the country I'm about to serve! Dad told me, "I'm not worried about you--I was never worried about whether you could do it. I'm more worried about Dan, and about you and Dan." I love how it's just assumed that I'm PCV material. I love my family!

Katja called me this morning out of the blue and we went to the Farmer's Market. It was raining cats and dogs, just a good old real Minnesotan downpour, as she put it. We talked and shopped and it seemed like she was really happy for me. I'm so excited, because I'll get to learn a language that's similar to Croatian, and maybe this will make it easier to learn for me down the line. She generously offered to be my liason here in the U.S. for when I need help setting up a resource center or library or anything, in fact, which I really appreciated. She's got great experience with that sort of thing, what with sitting on the board of their co-op for all these years. I just love the fact that she seemed excited for me, too. It's thrilling to be looking forward with such anticipation.

Near the end of our trip, though, I figured out that she thought I'd already accepted the invitation, so I let her know that I was still considering my decision. Despite her earlier enthusiasm, she sobered quickly and made sure I understood that (something along these lines) the Peace Corps was not going to make me who I wanted to be--I would have to do that. She really stressed her belief that the Peace Corps will not fill me up if I'm empty inside, and that I shouldn't give up my community here to try to find satiation in a far-off imaginary community somewhere else. I appreciate her candor and frankness; she has my best interests at heart. And it's really true, I'm going to have to do all the work when it comes down to actually being the Volunteer and serving my host country. What is so hard to express, for me, is how gratifying and liberating the responsibilities of serving in the Peace Corps will be. Dedicating myself to this service is a value I've longed to express, and this is how the Peace Corps will "make me who I want to be".

Doug and Ben haven't said much, choosing instead to smile and listen (as usual). Ben made me reveal my country early, before Dad got back with the pizza, so I know he's interested and happy for me. He seems prepared to see me go. I feel glad that he and Dan work together now. I feel like that's a connection, a support for Dan.

Grandma Marilyn said the same thing that Mom did, that the decision is mine and Dan's to make. I appreciate the lengths my family goes to in assuring us of our independence and capability as a couple. I feel respected and supported.

There's a part of me (however overshadowed by my need to do this, it does exist, and it's a tough little survivor) that doesn't want to leave Dan, to live without him, to spend even a moment away from him. Whenever I express this side of myself, or if I doubt myself, Dan is the most steadfast, solid rock I've ever stood upon. He lifts my chin up and tells me, "You knew this would be hard. But it is the right thing for you to do," looking straight in my eyes. He doesn't want to talk about it anymore. He's ready to do it. We've discussed and thought and cried about this decision, agonized over all the details, asked ourselves every question we could think of and more, and we're in this together. Every step forward of this journey so far has been taken together. Dan, my husband, my partner, my friend, does have the right and the space to share his reservations, and he will continue to have that for as long as I'm able to provide it. He has shared his feelings with me, and he won't let them stop me from doing this. He's as determined as me to make this work. It's beautiful, more beautiful and amazing each day.

One of the last things Dan said to me tonight before he went to bed was, "When you leave for your orientation, we will have been married for the same amount of time as we will be apart while you serve in the Peace Corps." Two years, three months. Yet another wild coincidence we've discovered on this path. "Is it a long time or a short time?" I asked him. "Waiting is," he said, kissing me on my forehead.

So I'll call tomorrow. It's time to begin.

2006-08-11T22:52:00.000+03:00

Hint, hint!

Doesn't this program sound cool?

And the best part is (in fact, every moment I discover another best part), right now, I'm thinking: I'd get to bring my mukluks! Yeah, the Ukrainians will be so jealous...

Oh, gee. Shall I catch you up a bit, blog? Okay, here goes:

On Wednesday afternoon (luckily during my only day off this week), I participated in an interview from my placement officer at the Peace Corps via phone call. My cell phone did not run out of batteries, but only just. After having a deep conversation in which every part of my personal decision to join the Peace Corps was scrutinized--but I am thankful for his asking those questions, they really needed to be asked, and I'm also grateful that Dan and I had asked ourselves these questions already, many, many times--the placement officer, in soft, polite tones, related as to how he felt confident in me and my decision and based on having read my file many times and conducted our interview over the phone, he would like to invite me to serve in the Peace Corps!!!

I felt like Olive in Little Miss Sunshine. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Yet, the Peace Corps mystery continued, for I was to wait until today or tomorrow for the invitation packet to arrive. And arrive it did. But I'm not giving anything away just yet. I've got to take a moment. Just breathe.

Peace!

2006-08-09T17:51:00.000+03:00

Is Marriage Holding Me Back?

Funny question. Being married to Dan certainly isn't holding me back from anything! He supports me and my effort to find and better myself. For other people looking in, however, what does it look like? Some day, it will look like profound dedication and love.

Right now my file in placement is one of the last ones being considered for the program that leaves this summer (if you can call September "summer"). My placement officer is going to call me to ask me about leaving my husband. I hope I can impress upon him how much we love each other and, at the same time, why Dan and I are special enough to make it work. Also, I'd like to make the impression that I would consider myself to be truly committed to serving in the Peace Corps. I do not want to start something I can't finish. Part of wanting to serve in the Peace Corps is dedicating myself to that cause. In dedication grows edification.

Now I'm nervous, because the officer is going to call by sometime tomorrow. I hope he calls today, since it's my only day off, and Thursdays are my busiest day of the week! The phone is now going to be a part of my outfit for the day, I believe.

What Do I Believe About Leaving My Husband?

I believe we'll still be together after 27 months apart.
I believe we'll be able to communicate over the distance.
I believe we'll accomplish great things in our lives during this time.
I believe we'll be sad at times, but that sadness will not interfere with our duties and our lives.
I believe we'll find a support network wherever we are.
I believe we'll be okay.

What Do I Believe About Myself Without My Husband?

I believe I will be strong enough to complete my service.
I believe I will be happy.
I believe I will be sad, and miss him, but that I won't stop loving him.
I believe I will appreciate the gift of independence and dedication he's giving me.
I believe I will discover talents I know are inside me, and develop them, use them, and bring them home.
I believe I will be a better person for him to love.
I believe I will be proud of him for his sacrifice and care.
I believe I will be proud of myself, and a more loving, giving, focused person than ever before.
I believe I deserve to try, and so does Dan, and that's why we will be okay.

2006-08-09T04:35:00.000+03:00

Patience Versus Wanting To Know: the Battle Rages On

Today was the (obsessively exact, you say? Pish-posh, just punctual, don't you know) two-week-later date I'd heard about "a couple of weeks back" from a placement assistant in the PC D.C. placement offices, where my nomination is currently waiting patiently for its turn in the spotlight.

I, however, am turning to increasingly creative means of passing time these days: making four batches of chocolate-chip cookies last week; rocking out to the Hasbeen; seeing Little Miss Sunshine, which must be seen, it must, it really must; making Dan to-do lists with gmail (wheeee!). My very kind recruiter assured me that Friday could be a day by which more will be known.

We shall see, yes? Oh we certainly shall see. (That's incredibly hard to say ten times fast, you know. Try it! You'll see!)

2006-08-09T03:43:00.000+03:00

My Reflective Letter of Resignation from Joe's Garage

Dear Joe,

It seems like a lot has changed for all of us since I first met the Joe (“Oh, really? There is a Joe?”) of Joe’s Garage and his crew back in May of 2003. My first day, I walked in to find Kiki, Dave O., and some other happy drunks behind the old bar (though I didn’t know it then, they were the last few remaining servers of the old days, those gone days when Joe’s Garage had first opened and times were, reportedly, wild). They were hanging out taking shots, just having a good time between brunch and dinner service. Dave O. took one look at me and slurrily growled, “Dinner’s not ‘til five! We’re closed!”

Shortly thereafter, I worked a Sunday brunch with that comedian, the one pictured on the cover of the Rake, oh my god! The one dressed like Rosie the Riveter with a semi-automatic machine gun! She writes a column! I spent time being too impressed to be more than fairly shy. Since then, working with Colleen has always been a pleasure. In fact, Joe’s Garage has been full of witty, adorable, hard-working people. People like Colleen, Nicole, Blake, Mike G, Dave O., Kiki and so many others I'd like to name or have never had the pleasure to meet. I can remember nights when Nicole and Dave O. would get going sometimes, hanging out after work, and I thought I’d choke from laughing so hard. Joe's Garage has been a funny place.

What?! Where's the front door, anyway?

The truth is, I found out fast what the world was like, working at Joe’s Garage, for good or ill. It has always been, if nothing else at the end of the day, fun to work with you, Joe. I loved hosting that first summer; you always cracked me up on the microphone and I felt like I could just be myself at my job.

I’ve worked my butt off at Joe’s Garage and I’ve been drunker than I’ve ever been at Joe’s Garage. I’ve met the best friends of my life at Joe’s Garage. I’ve seen the most pitiful case of a good man full of potential just ruined: wanting to be everybody’s friend, a good father somewhere deep down inside his lonely heart, simply losing himself to drink. Even death (well, not literally with my own two eyes at the restaurant, but--members of our crew, their loved ones, our hearts). Loss of many stripes has been borne generously there, too. And that’s the way it is: life goes on and we all try our hardest to do what we need to do, the best we can do, even if sometimes that’s losing ourselves in a pint glass of Jagermeister.

So, it’s been four summers of opening up the restaurant to find everything from tossed managers passed out on the liquor room couch to serving a lesbian wedding ceremony that had every last hardened one of us crying our eyes out and everything in between. Joe’s Garage at its worst; at its best.

As it turns out, growing into myself at Joe’s Garage, as I suppose I did in many ways, has brought me up with some good people I will truly miss. I am really proud of you and Tammy and your beautiful baby boy. Leo is a very lucky little guy. His parents are unique and interesting and deep people with such life experience and wonder to give, and he’s so loved. I wish your family - at home and at work - all the love in the world.

Well. You’re probably wondering what’s gotten me in this nostalgic frame of mind, after all. It’s this: my official notice. I am hereby giving notice that by the end of August, 2006, I will seek other futures (hopefully setting out to the Peace Corps for a few years before settling down, myself, to having a baby with Dan; that’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it, may life be so kind), making my last available work date Saturday, August 26th.

Thank you for everything, Joe. Whenever you miss me, just look at your big toe, right? At least I can be satisfied that I’ve made some small mark in the world.

Sincerely,

Your Former Hostess and Server

2006-08-04T07:04:00.000+03:00

Of Cookies, Running, and Dinner

The thing about cookies is that it's always too easy to eat them when they're there.

And of running: if you like to keep track of your workouts for motivation's sake or whatever other sake gets you out pounding the pavement morning and night, visit a free site that lets you keep track of practically every aspect of your workout that your heart desires in an easy-to-use and simple-to-personalize format with a quick setup. It's cool!

Also cool (perhaps surprisingly so) was the dinner I concocted. I made a brown-rice-with-onions-and-red-and-green-bell-peppers dish for dinner. I sauteed 3 thin-sliced onions (nearly including a thinly-sliced section of the tip of my thumb) in 3 tablespoons of butter for 30 minutes, covered, over medium low heat. Then I turned up the heat and threw in 2 sliced green peppers, 1 sliced red pepper and 2 more tablespoons of butter and stir-fried it all together for another 10 or 15 minutes. Meanwhile, I scalded 3 cups of milk, then stirred in a mixture of 3 tablespoons of flour with nearly 1/2 a cup of water. I added salt and pepper, stirred for 5 minutes until it got thick. Then I added the milk mixture to the vegetables, and - here's the magic! - dropped in a couple spoonfuls of dijon mustard, and voila! Served the whole mess over sweet medium-grain brown rice. Dan even went back for seconds. It was simple and good.

Such is life, when it should be.

2006-08-02T18:14:00.000+03:00

My Blog Turns One Week Old!

Six out of seven ain't bad, right? Still no word from the Peace Corps. Last night I had another heart-to-heart with my husband about going. Am I crazy for wanting to do this? He's so supportive. I worry that if I leave, he'll be too lonely. I don't want his heart to break! I want this time to be good for both of us. I want us to grow as individuals, to find our purpose, to realize our dreams are within our grasp. It wouldn't be worth it if I'm out there in the world, finding my success, while Dan's back here slowly dying inside. I want to find a way to make this work for both of us. I also want Dan to feel confident of me and my abilities as a person. I want to make him proud of me. I want to feel sure that he's going to be okay. Some things are not always easy to know before you do them, though.

Try as I might to imagine how it will be, I just don't know how I'll react or how Dan will react. I just know that 27 months is a finite amount of time. I know that now is a good time, while we're young and flexible and willing to do these outrageous sorts of things, and before we have kids. I know that Dan is a very good husband and person. I know that I'm committed to him and our family. I feel that the Peace Corps will change my life for the better and I'll be able to embrace strength, confidence, and skill, all the while contributing significantly to the health and well-being of my global community. Is that reason enough to try?

Last night, my sister-in-law, Katja, remarked, "Just make sure you don't sacrifice your community here to find a community somewhere out there." She's right in many ways. Will I be able to forge enough bonds and links of communication to make this effort a success, without sacrificing my family and my future with Dan?

The waiting continues...

2006-08-01T07:10:00.000+03:00

If I went to the Peace Corps, what would I take?

An army duffel, a medium backpack, and a small shoulder bag. (Eeek! Could I really live for 27 months with no luggage?)
My mukluks, brown flipflops, running shoes, black maryjanes with velcro strap, and I'd wear my cowboy boots.
How many pairs of socks? 12?
How much underwear?
I figure I'd wear jeans, and bring some running shorts, cotton pants, windproof pants, set of long underwear, and bring 2 or 3 skirts. I'd bring 4 or 5 tank tops and wear one, 2 or 3 tee shirts, 1 or 2 sweaters, and a hoodie. Would I have room for the suit? Should I bring it? Would pants or skirt be better, or both? What about a dress? And I'd need a "dress up" set of clothes, and a "dirty work" set, too.
Kleenex pocket packets.
Blank journals and notebooks. How many?
2 or 3 big books. Dostoevsky. Zinn's History of the U.S. A poetry compilation. Neruda in Spanish and English.
A sleeping bag and a pillow in a bag. A small blanket? A sleep pad?
A shortwave radio, possibly with alarm.
An eternal flashlight.
A new, good watch.
Letterhead with envelopes.
My DVR, with tons of AAA batteries.
A 35mm camera. Digital or film?
A grooming kit: small/medium-sized box, nail clippers, files, toothbrush, toothpaste, bandaids, first aid cream, hair binders, clips, brush, comb, shampoo, conditioner, soap, washcloths. Towels, small and medium.
A sweater-knitting kit (pattern, needles, yarn) or a crocheting packet (hooks, yarn, patterns for hats?).
Drawing/journaling kit: pencils, sharpener, pens, eraser.

I can't wait to compare this impromptu list with the official one. I wonder what I've forgotten, and what I could forget!

2006-07-31T07:16:00.000+03:00

Date Night Sizzles in the Heat Wave

Why do people care for each other? What makes humans live and die for one another? Where do these deep-seated principles of love and honor and treason reside - in our flesh, or in some other spiritual dimension? What stirs a heart to forgive, rejoice, even, to move on? How can so much love be contained in so much as a glance, a touch, a whisper? Ahh, le sigh...romance.

Too bad I can't remember a specifically inspiring quote from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Still-Beating Heart and its Adventures Around the Sea, since it's the pulsing orchestral soundtrack that sounded in the back of my head as I was inspired to inscribe those flowry words into my blog. Overall, though, actually it's a decently good flick, more or less, in my opinion. Especially the first rolling-cage-full-of-people down the cliff-strewn-island-hills-to-the-shore scene. For some reason that just cracked me up from start to finish. The second one, well, been there, done that.

Ick. Stay cool, everyone. Try not to sweat it. It's only a little heat. We've had worse. Right? Take the dust bowls of the 1930s and 1950s, for example. Right now we're just at "Grapes of Irk" level, right? I wonder what it's like for people in South Dakota, though. My heart goes out to them.

2006-07-31T07:09:00.000+03:00

My portrait, by Dan: Date at Grumpy's Before Movie, 30 July 2006.

2006-07-29T19:11:00.000+03:00

Running is one of life's pure pleasures.

I hope I never take for granted my ability to run, as long as I can. I love the challenge of a hilly route. I love the monotony of a long, straight route. I love running around things, like lakes. Running is, for me, a release, an achievement (no matter how small), an ego boost and good for my body and heart.

Today Sadie (my little Shepherd/Lab mix) and I did 4.5 miles, and in 45 minutes, too! There were distinct moments when I just. Wanted it. To stop. But somehow I kept moving, focused on relaxing, and managed a great run on a hot day! The announcer on the Current said it was 86 degrees when I started at 10:00, but that the gigantic purple bruises amassing on the horizon would break up, leaving only a blindingly bright, sunny sky and a heat index of 106! The clouds were so substantial-looking and brooding, I scoffed at her suggestion that they would just drift away; but, disappear into the heat they did.

My whole body feels energized now. Sadie's pooped, but she's wagging her tail. I might even get around to folding my laundry. Might!

Peace!

2006-07-29T01:28:00.000+03:00

Friday afternoon, a busy week behind me.

What better to do than relax by reading some news on line for a bit? Great idea! Gee, look at this cool new website I found: Click here if you WANT to know - you were warned! Alright, cool, Condaleeza Rice plays classical piano. That's random and interesting. Oh, here's something about Lou Dobbs. Um, is he liberal or conservative? Anyway, let's check out this video-ohmygod, HOW CAN THIS MAN STILL BE PRESIDENT?! Why does he get to do things like this? Does he somehow envision a bold new future where things are simple, right? All lined up in nice, neat little rows? That it would be so much easier for all the little people to get along if the President just told them how to do it? Are spankings on the horizon?

I can see it now: the press conference of the future. The President points to a cartoon drawing and goes, "Here's the Bad Guys over here in this box. Bad!" And - big grin - then, "Here's the Good Guys. See? What-what's that you're asking? Constitutional rights? Well, you couldn't get to the store on the corner without making a right turn, now, could you? Sure, you know that four rights in a row is just as good as a left? Might as well make that an amendment right now, outlaw that other word when four rights would do just as good. Alright, just signing this here bill with that note at the bottom, then, and we're all set! Huh? What about signing statements? Unconstitutionality of presidential line-item veto? Aw, shucks! You're making noises, but I don't understand. Are you speaking English or what?" Aarrghh!!!

And now, for all you political sado-masochists out there, who know it's going to hurt but just have to go ahead and do it anyway, without further ado, I hereby commit to my first political commentary by posting a link to the offending video: The only universal constant is change, right?

Peace!

2006-07-28T05:42:00.000+03:00

Surfing in Waves of Humanity

There's a point in the ESL classroom, it seems, when the teacher just has to let things fly. Take, for instance, the discussion of what we do in the bathroom or bedroom; it seems the innuendo and humor translate pretty easily across language barriers. Tonight's class was going well, for the most part, with over twenty students including three new ones in this third week of the semester, but I felt disaster staring me in the face when people started breaking out into covert little giggles. Whispers and covered mouths. Guilty looks on their faces. So I tried to divert them from the obvious way they were going by revealing - gasp! - that I, for one, don't make my bed every morning. They happily admonished me and I was satisfied - we were no longer on the risky precipice of what we do in the toilet or the bed. I'll let some other teacher handle that!

I was satisfied, too, when one of my students returned with his dialogue journal (I'd handed out about twelve). It was neat - he revealed his favorite day was Friday, because that was the day he got to go to the mosque to pray. I love peeking into their lives. Dialoguing is definitely something I will incorporate into my future classrooms. For the beginning language level, it gives a chance for the teacher to guage a student's level, all the while learning about their background and concerns. It gives the student the chance to experience the joy of one-on-one interaction in their new language. It's also secret, and fun anticipating the next reply. Connecting and sharing, which is what language is all about at its core. I wonder how much time it would take to do that with forty students instead of only one?

No word yet from the Peace Corps. Time. Oozes. On.

2006-07-26T20:32:00.000+03:00

I'd like to present Gilbert: truly the coolest town in Arkansas.

Somewhere in the vast undulating belt of time past, I'm still sitting on that stilted wood-slat porch under an inky sky dripping stars, laughing my ass off as my little brother-in-law, David--actually called 'Spigot' for much of the night--, me and our two cousins, Wells and Clay, all tried to outdo each other in a thirsty game of Presidents. My cousins became Jack Nicholson and Couchon. I blushingly admit I was addressed as 'My Lady'--by my own twisted hand, no less, when it was my turn to be President and make the rules. Where else but the thick wooded hills leaping through the furrows of the ancient Ozarks could we lose ourselves in such fun?

Eighteen people, some no more than strangers, coming together for six days of harmonizing, relaxing, and being yourself--no matter what--could not take place in a less idyllic setting. All day, every day, the place smells like cinnamon french toast and stewing food. The sunshine is brilliant and hot, the river cool, smooth, and secret, like thick glass. This place cradles our short time of being togetherness, its gentle embrace more healing than a dose of midnight chocolate, a hundred lonely runs, even Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese; it sooths away our differences and self-doubts. In a dusty little backwater paradise, we all found a way to get drunk in our souls on riotous laughter, closeness, and sharing the warm love of family.

"Everything is material, actually...Writing is how we realize that we're not so alone." --Judging Amy, 'An Impartial Bias' Wed. July 26, 2006.

It's amazing how serendipity moves the mind. I start a blog in my bathrobe one morning, then find epiphanies in daytime tv later that afternoon. They're everywhere, people. They're all around us, all the time. Yikes.

2006-07-26T19:00:00.000+03:00

Man Set Against the Setting Sun

Something about the juxtaposition of these gorgeous clouds and the starkly imposing electrical pylon moved me last night. The small, man-made light of the streetlamp in the foreground, powered by those giant electrial lines across the street, is dwarfed by the outline of the sun's final rays on the towering clouds in the background lit by the faraway (and out-of-sight) sun.

2006-07-26T18:39:00.000+03:00

My Mission Statement for Blog #1: Why Do I Blog?

Recently I've been wasting all my time on the web surfing celebrity gossip blogs. So I thought: why not just use a fraction of that time to record my progress toward the Peace Corps? I'm almost there, it seems, anyway. So now might be a good time to start.

Yesterday I spoke with the placement office of the Peace Corps. They've got all my medical and dental clearances and are now considering my file. I sent them my updated resume, with my new tutoring position and experience. This will be a good place to record all that progress for my friends and family.

Not to mention that one of my primary motivations for applying to the Peace Corps is to find myself by writing a ton. Yet...I've been slow to start. I haven't been exactly churning out the pages this summer. That's okay, though: I've been volunteering, laying around with friends, and getting in all the "American" things I can before I go away for two years.

Site of the day: Define: wonder

Peace!