Interesting Winter Observation

Slippery walking conditions are a huge problem here in Ukraine during the winter. My guess is that they don't have the resources to put down salt/dirt or shovel in front of businesses to keep the walking paths clean. The obvious issue is that people walk a lot more here than in the United States. So walking from grocery store, to pharmacy, to bank, and back home is completely normal. People kind of plod along lightly and slowly on the ice, bracing themselves for a slip or fall. When it’s slippery and dangerous to be carrying heavy, bulky or just plain awkward packages, Ukrainians don’t carry them. They drag an old school sled with metal runners on it behind them and pile the packages on. Ha, amazing. Picture it, tons of people dragging sleds behind them packed with groceries.

Photo courtesy of Stephanie Somerman

Catching Up

It has been a super long time since I have written. A lot has happened, and I have a lot to catch up on. I don’t think I ever wrote about my amazing hiking trip to Crimea. I think time has given me a more positive perspective of the trip. It was beautiful, extremely beautiful, but also extremely physically challenging on several levels. My bag was too heavy for me to manage with the steep inclines and declines, the food bothered my stomach and made me sick, there were two really annoying teenage boys on the trip, and it was incredibly cold at night. But, on the bright side, I met some amazing people, I survived some daunting physical challenges, I did my very best to maintain patience and understanding, and I got to see a very different region of Ukraine. I think, all in all we hiked between 50 and 60 miles in 10 days. That was a pretty good feet, even more impressive when you consider the extra weight we were carrying on our backs.

November went by pretty fast. There were a few notable things that happened. I have a new friend in Ukraine. One of my students at the Lyceum has sort of taken me under her wing and has been inviting me to walk, or to have tea, or to watch movies. It has been great. She invited me to her very AWESOME 16th birthday party and it was a really memorable day. We met at the train station and took the electrychka 2.5 hours to Kharkov for a really packed day. It was me, two 16 year old girls, a 13 year old girl and my friend’s mom. Her mom actually lives in Kharkov, so I think she came all the way to Balakleya to ride with us on the train to make sure everything went safely. Ukrainians really take care of their own. And I’m glad the mom was there on the train, because of course we were speaking English so the girls could practice and a drunk man came over at a certain point and expressed that he had a problem with us speaking English. He was angry for no reason other than he was worried about foreigners taking over his country. The mom quickly told him off and he soon after got off the train. My Russian isn’t very good, so I don’t know if I would have been able to get rid of him so swiftly and the girls were obviously really uncomfortable with the situation. But in the end, all turned out fine.

Her mom armed us with a pocketful of metro tokens and we were set free in Kharkov on our own. We had lunch at a nice restaurant, then we went bowling, then we met up with the mom for a pizza dinner and cake, and then a dolphin show and a tour of the aquarium. The dolphin show was really something else. Picture a variety show with different dance sequences, singing, gymnastics, some water ballet and then the actual performances with seals, a sea lion and then dolphins. I was really worried ahead of time that it would be horrible, but it was actually really fun. We had a great time and then took a cab back to Balakleya (1.5 hours) with all of us squished into a car. It was great. At a certain point, I asked how old my friend’s mother was since she looked really young. As it turns out, her mom is 4 years older than me. I asked my friend how old she thought I was and she came out with 21 which of course made me laugh. Then 23, then 26, then 28… it took awhile and finally I just told her how old I was. She couldn’t believe it. She really thought I was 21 years old. This I find hilarious. 26, I have heard a lot… but 21? Gee.

I also made a trip to visit Conor in Khartsitsk. This was great, because in addition to seeing Conor and being able to swap movies and TV episodes on our hard-drives (Conor now has high-speed internet that a friend helped him jerry-rig), and finding a great store to buy a pair of Ukrainian jeans, I got to eat pizza at Xar Pizza. Xar pizza is the best pizza we have managed to find thus far in Ukraine, real pizza. (Note: what passes as pizza in Ukraine is often ketchup and mayonnaise instead of tomato sauce and to me is absolutely disgusting). But the real highlight of the trip was when we met with Igor, Marina, and Father Leo for dinner and a movie both Saturday and Sunday nights. Igor and Father Leo were friends we met on the hiking trip. Father Leo’s wife Marina, and their son, Daniel both speak English really well. Marina has taken Conor under her wing and has been tutoring him in Russian, but also teaching him how to cook Ukrainian dishes. Marina is a great cook and only uses natural ingredient in her cooking. She and Father Leo are vegetarians, but she will cook meat for her sons. We always walk out of there absolutely stuffed. One of the nights she introduced us to quail eggs. They are supposedly extremely healthy for you and you should drink them raw. Yes, I drank two raw quail eggs, and you know what? It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It was actually pretty good. Will I go out and purchase quail eggs and drink them raw on my own? No. But I am certainly no longer afraid to drink a raw egg.

The other BIG occurrence in November was Thanksgiving. I decided that I wanted to be wherever Caroline was for Thanksgiving, because Caroline is a great cook. I figured if anyone could pull off a Thanksgiving dinner it was Caroline. And let me tell you, this girl did not disappoint. I had a few things sent from the states like brown sugar, coconut flakes, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie spice. We managed to get together almost the whole cluster for a group trip to Lugansk + a handful of PCVs in the area. One of the cool things about this was that Conor, John, Kim and Arden all met up and got on the train in Konotop to head to Lugansk at about 7pm. I got on the same train at around 3:45am. I woke up around 7am to someone poking me in the butt. I thought it might be Conor, but I couldn’t understand why he was up so early. Turns out it was two 12 year old boys in the beds across from me. Jerks. They could have at least waited until 8am to poke me in the butt. Apparently they were part of a large group of young boys, perhaps a sporting team that took up half the train car. After that, I packed up my stuff and went to the next car to have breakfast with the others. When we arrived in Lugansk around 9:30am it was like a real home-coming. Caroline and Wyoming were waiting for us at the station waving their arms around and hooting and hollering at us. It was a great welcome back.

As for Thanksgiving, everybody brought something or contributed a couple bottles of wine. Caroline actually managed to find a turkey. One of the vendors in the market had real turkeys and Caroline was able to ‘order’ a 12 pounder for our Thanksgiving. The turkey took up her whole oven, but it worked. We had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, I made a family sweet potato dish with pumpkin instead of sweet potatoes (for a country that loves their sweets and potatoes, you would think they have sweet potatoes here, but no), the brown sugar, and the coconut flakes, a few other people contributed some family dishes, Caroline busted out with both an apple and a pumpkin pie. We had a traditional Thanksgiving feast and we had a great time with a great group of people. There were 14 of us, we ate, danced, sang, and laughed. I have to admit it was the best time and a great Thanksgiving with friends and PC family. I hated leaving Lugansk, we had such a blast with each other it would have been great to spend more time, but alas we were all expected back at ‘work’.

December has been barreling through at a fast speed as well. My organization and I have gotten together a project that we have started the grant-writing process for. Our project would be a 3-day intensive volunteer training camp that would train a group of youth volunteers about volunteerism and how to do volunteer projects in their communities. In addition, we have added an element of healthy lifestyles and HIV/AIDS education and awareness. It looks like a great project, hopefully we will get funding. We submitted our draft to Peace Corps last week, the final is due mid-January. So we shall see.

We have started a very important countdown at this point. December 18 marks 6 months at site. So after the 18th, we will have a year and a half to go. But the more important countdown for me and my cluster mates is the countdown to our trip to Egypt. Yep, that’s right, we booked a package trip for a weeklong trip to Egypt for our Christmas. We will be there from the 22nd through the 29th. We’ll get to see the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx, but more importantly, we will get to spend the Christian Christmas holiday with good friends/Peace Corps family. I am really looking forward to this.

YakTrax

YakTrax are awesome. Recently, I was in Kiev without my YakTrax, the temperature was at freezing and it rained. The rain, of course immediately turned into ice and the sidewalks were just a slick sheet of ice. It wasn't pretty. I am really not sure how I didn't fall. Today as I ventured outside to go to work in a winter wonderland, I thought, wait, YakTrax... and I walked the entire 40 minute walk up and downhill with absolutely no problem. YakTrax give your feet supergripping powers. They will certainly improve my quality life here in Ukraine with the winter just starting to rear it's ugly head.

Thanksgiving pics are up

Thanksgiving Lugansk 2010

pics are up from Crimea Hiking Trip

Crimea Hiking Trip 2010

September 2010

Well, a month has passed since I was able to update the blog last. I am currently packing up my big backpack to go on a 10 day hiking trip with one of Conor’s secondary organizations. Well, this could prove to be rather interesting. There will be 10 people going including me and Conor. We are packing and carrying our food for 10 days. Water is a concern since we are going to be taking it from natural resources. This will be a real barebones operation. Food is a concern for me as well. Apparently, dried fish is a big part of the menu for the next 10 days… not sure I can partake in that since my stomach doesn’t take well to certain things. Another big part will be salo (the raw, cured pig fat that is a Ukrainian delicacy). Well, let’s just say it remains to be seen whether I will be able to eat anything that will be offered. I guess I will be toting my own supply of peanut butter, Nature Valley granola bars, and, well, does anyone know how long hard-boiled eggs keep without refrigeration? Temps are supposed to get down into the 40s at night. Well, this will certainly be an adventure.

As for the last month, things have kind of come to a head at my site. I am under a lot of stress right now that I won’t really go into. I am still waiting for the renovation in my bathroom that should have happened over the summer. The moldy wallpaper is a problem. It’s more of a health problem now that it is cold and I can’t keep my windows open all the time. I went to the PEPFAR conference in Kiev for a week and learned how to do trainings on HIV/AIDS and how to write grants, etc. I also got sick that week so ended up in bed for part of that training. I finally held my first English club at the high school. It went great and two of the girls took my phone number. So now I have two definite friends in town. I also have a budding romance with ‘Melvin’ the black kitty in the hallway in my building. I would love to adopt him, but am hesitant to do so since I travel so often and don’t really have anyone here I can rely on to take care of him when I am gone. He seems to do fine and doesn’t feel to skinny. He’s eating somewhere. So I guess I will just be satisfied with our hallway rendez-vous’ and hope that he belongs to someone as winter approaches. As I write this, it’s in the mid-40s. It’s October 8th, gee. Well, that’s it. Very brief, will have a ton to report after the camping/hiking trip. Keep your fingers crossed I make it!

Weekend in Khartsitsk back in early September

Well, now that the summer is over and signing up for summer camps to hang out with Conor is a thing of the past, I figured I had to go for the gusto and try the haul to Hartsitsk for just the weekend. It’s an overnight 5 hour train ride and then roughly another hour of travel via bus to Conor’s city. Unfortunately, we don’t have a straight shot between my town and his city. In the grand scheme of Ukraine though, it really ain’t bad. I would leave my town at 12:30 am, and get to Markeevka at 5:30 am, take a cab across town to the bus station, and then take a marshrutka to Hartsitsk, arriving at Conor’s around 6:30/7am depending on whether the train arrived on time.

The funny thing is that technically speaking we are only 130 miles apart. But due to poor infrastructure travelling takes a lot longer than it would do in the states. I think I heard somewhere that the train speed maxes out at 40 miles per hour, so slow travel it is. Actually, we are really lucky we are only 5-6 hour apart. I’m a good 8-10 hours from John and Kim and around 15 hours from Cassie. I live relatively far East, so it is more than feasible in Ukraine that it could take me 30 some odd hours to cross a country the rough size of Texas. It really puts things into perspective. As much as travel in the states can be a hassle, our roads are in good enough condition for me to travel at 90 miles per hour if I want to take that risk. My train ride from Penn Station in NYC to Windsor, Connecticut is two and a half hours to travel roughly 120 miles. Faster if you take the Acela to Hartford. It’s faster for me to train to Kiev and fly home to NYC than it is to travel to see some of my friends in the outskirts of Western Ukraine. It’s mindboggling.

The Friday before I left, was actually chock full of activity. At some point over the summer I had showed my office mates my photos from Lugansk. We were cooking with Caroline and I was chopping up cilantro (kinza in Russian) to add to fresh made salsa. My boss saw that picture and demanded that I make that for the office. Knowing that fresh tomatoes will likely be a thing of the past soon, I figured I had that I had to jump on making the salsa soon. So last Monday, I pointed to the picture again and asked when he wanted me to make the salsa. He said, how about Friday. And then the discussion turned to something where everyone would contribute something to a feast. I heard the words shashliki (shish kebobs) and kartoshka (potatoes) so I had an idea that we were going to have a big lunch.

Turns out we were having a picnic. I’m glad I wore jeans that day. Our office is in the forest, so we didn’t have to go far for a picturesque place to picnic. We chose a place across the street by the river. There was a little shack set up expressly for the purpose of barbequing. So we took over the shack. Tony cut potatoes in half, inserted a piece of salo (raw bacon) between the two halves and wrapped the potatoes up foil. Then we just threw the potatoes in with the coals. They were delicious. The pork that we marinated for the shashlik was amazing. We had watermelon and we used bread to eat my salsa (corn chips and tortilla chips are a rarity here). And of course there was plenty of beer and vodka to go around. It was a great day bonding with my workmates. It was extremely difficult, because it turned out to be a 4 hour affair in only Russian, so I had a lot of trouble understanding most of what was going on. I’m still at a point where I understand a lot of words, but not the context. It’s exhausting.

My train trip to Hartsitsk was relatively uneventful, however, it was freezing. I was wearing jeans, socks, a long-sleeved t-shirt and a pretty warm hoody. I wore the hood on my head all night. After I made my bed, I went and asked the train attendant for an O-day-ya-lo (a blanket) which I totally botched the pronunciation while holding my dictionary. Thankfully, there was a pile of blankets that I could point at, but the jig was up, I gave it away that I was a foreigner. The train attendants either love this or hate this. This guy loved it. I think the male train attendants feel protective of solo female travelers, especially if they are foreign. He woke me up about a half an hour before arrival with Pra-see-pie-yoos (wake up), and then we will arrive in Markeevka in half an hour. He said it really slow, so I understood every word. I got into the station, took a cab to the bus station, took a marshrutka to Hartsitsk, and the walked into Conor’s building, gave him a call and told him to let me in.

When I bought the tickets to Hartsitsk, I envisioned a relaxing weekend just hanging out. It turned out not to be the case. Conor’s town was apparently having a weekend chock full of festivals and being Peace Corps volunteers with part of our job description being cultural exchange, he was required to attend. So after about an hour long nap and breakfast we had to hit the road. The first festival we attended had something to do with chickens. It’s still not clear what it was we were celebrating, but there was a lot of ‘chicken specific’ artwork up and many signs that said something about chickens. That one was a bit of a mystery, but after we met up with the deputy mayor and he took us in a car to the Kazak festival that was being held in a large field.

The Kazak festival was great. People wore traditional costumes, served traditional food from a war canteen, there was a ring for traditional wrestling, sword-fighting, and horses. There were army tents set up and tables filled with defunct army gear. I got a couple of great pictures with Conor’s camera of a little girl wearing an army helmet and playing with a dead landmine. From there we headed to another festival in the park celebrating all the couples that got married in the past year. And after that, we seemingly were free. We stopped on the way home for a bowl of the Okroshka that Conor has been raving about. Then a much needed NAP. With very little sleep after a freezing train ride and a day full of activity, I was seriously pooped. Post-nap, we shared a bottle of wine then went to grab some pretty decent pizza for dinner. Overall a good day.

The next day we had more festivals to prepare for. We had to be somewhere so that Conor could take pictures, but then it turned out that we either weren’t needed or had missed something. So we took a long walk instead and found a sushi resto that Conor had been to at some point in time with the deputy mayor. It was alright, but over-priced. The beauty of sushi is that it is pretty much the same wherever you have it in the world. A salmon roll is a salmon roll, a tuna roll is a tuna roll, as long as they don’t sneak mayonnaise in, it tastes alright.

In the end, Conor had to be in the town center for a big concert that was supposed to celebrate his town. Apparently, a famous Ukrainian singer was coming to perform, and he was supposed to meet with the Deputy Mayor and meet the singer. I had packed my backpack to be ready to catch a cab to the train station. It was pretty hectic with tons of people. Not exactly cool to be weeding through tons of people carrying a backpack with your laptop in it. In the end, I decided that maybe it would be better to leave for the train station a bit earlier since I was dragging around all my stuff. So we said goodbye and I jumped in a cab. It was a good, but busy weekend.