So much to write…

I just sent Dad through check-in at the airport, and I’m taking advantage of the free wireless here to download a bunch of big updates to my laptop. 12 MB down, another 100+ to go. I hope my battery my lasts long enough to get it all.

The last two weeks were a lot of fun, a lot of food, and a lot of walking. I hardly know where to start! I’ll post photos next week, and will write more about the day-to-day adventures then as well.

For now, many people have asked me for more details on the engagement and such. Dad seemed very happy, and surprised! We told Igor’s family on Friday. We went to Korosten for a quick visit on Friday (5 hours round trip on the bus for a 4 hour visit!). Igor’s parents had wanted to show Dad their house in a nearby village, where Ivan (Igor’s father) grew up. The house is pretty much as it was 100 years ago, except that it now has electricity. Ivan keeps a large (and beautiful) garden there, as well as rabbits. He spends 3-4 nights a week there in the summer, and talks all the time about how when he retires he will live there all summer long. It really is a peaceful, quite and lovely place.

So, we got to Korosten, and went to meet Igor’s parents at their house. We drove in their 43-year old car about 15 minutes to the village (chugged along is probably the more appropriate term!). Ivan proudly showed us around the 2-room house, the 2 small barns, and the lush and green garden. Nina picked some onions, herbs, carrots, beets and cabbage to send back with me to Kyiv. We admired the pear and apple trees, and ate some berries off a bush. Nina had brought some snacks for us, so we sat down to the table, Igor poured shot glasses of Ukrainian cognac, and we toasted Dad’s birthday (which was the 28th). Then Igor told his parents that he had asked for and received Bill’s permission to marry me, and they both just beamed. It was really wonderful! Ivan commented that his grandmother, who had lived in the small village house all her life, would have been very happy to hear such news. And Igor said that he had wanted to tell his parents there, in that house, because it was a special place for the family.

We ate and drank and joked for a bit. Igor’s mother told us about the old traditional ways of negotiating a Ukrianian marriage. The parents of the wanna-be groom would go the parents of the intended bride with gifts, and they would ask for the daughter for their son. If the daughter agreed, she would present the young man with a hand-embroidered cloth. If she was not interested, she would give him a watermelon.

Dad jokingly asked where the gifts were, and Ivan jumped up to bring him some beautiful old (100+ years) dress – hand-woven linen cloth, with hand-embroidered detailing. He explained that the long skirt part is made of a thick strong cloth to protect the woman’s legs from the bushes and such outside. The upper shirt part is made of a thinner, lighter cloth, over which would be put a kind of apron top or a jacket. Dad said he’d been expecting a Lada (a Soviet car), which was pretty funny. I was curious to see a pair of men’s pants, but Ivan couldn’t easily find any in his storage room. Instead, he brought out another woman’s dress and a long man’s shirt. Dad, of course, had just been kidding about expecting any presents at all, but I told him they wanted to give him these interesting and impressive family heirlooms.

After a few photos in the village, we headed back to Korosten for lunch with the rest of the family. Dad had printed some photos from our previous visit to Korosten, and everyone seemed really excited with them. Grandma and Grandpa fussed to no end about how old they look, but I think they both look pretty darn awesome for over 80.

We sat down to another humongous meal, and of course the toasts started. First, everyone toasted Dad, wishing him great health, a long life, and much happiness. For the second toast, Igor shared the news of our engagement, and his sister Oksana literally clapped with delight! I was so happy – I am really so very lucky not only to have found a wonderful man, but also a wonderful family.

A few hours later, as we were having a last toast before heading back to Kyiv, Dad asked Ivan to take good care of me. Ivan became very serious, looked Dad in the eye, and said “As one father to another, I promise you that no one will hurt Ann.” It was really touching.

Dad and I had a quiet, sleepy ride back to Kyiv. Igor stayed in Korosten to take care of some things there over the weekend. I understand the celebrating went on long after we left, and I am sorry we couldn’t have stayed longer to celebrate with everyone too. But, it is certainly not Dad’s last visit to Ukraine or to Korosten, and the next time, I am sure, will be as much fun. Ivan wants to take Dad to the village house for a couple days, just the two of them, which would be very interesting since they don’t speak the same languages!

As for the next steps, we don’t have any plans yet. It’s my understanding that, like so many other things in Ukraine, it’s a complicated process for a Ukrainian to marry a foreigner here. We’ll figure it out eventually, and if it’s too much of a pain, maybe we’ll just go the U.S. and do it there! Neither of us wants a big wedding, but of course it’s a great excuse for a fun party – several parties even!

Old Ukrainian Tradition

Tonight Igor, following traditional Ukrainian way, asked my Dad for his permission to marry me. Dad asked me if I was agreeable to the idea, to which I said yes. I’m not entirely sure, but I think Igor and I are engaged!

Back in Kyiv

It’s hard to believe Dad’s been here over a week already! We had a really busy first week, and I’m planning to take it easier this second week.

The day trip to Chornobyl was really interesting, as always. We went from there almost directly to the Carpathian mountains in western Ukraine. Gosh, it is sooooo beautiful! It was really interesting to notice in myself all the adaptations I’ve made in my behavior after spending so much time in Chornobyl-effected areas. In the mountains, it’s so beautiful and clean! We drank the most delicious water from a spring way up in the highest mountain in Ukraine. I ate forest mushrooms like there was no tomorrow, and we had my beloved blueberries. I hesitated at first, then realized that all of these things are OK in the west.

I’ll write more later, and post lots of photos later too. Suffice it to say, I’ve totally fallen in love with the Carpathians. We stayed at some incredible places, met wonderful people, and we were surrounded by breathtaking beauty and fresh clean air all the time. I can’t wait to get back there! I told Igor that if our plans for Crimea don’t work out in August, I’d love to spend our vacation in the mountain agains. Who knew there was such an amazing place? I hope not too many people! We want it all to ourselves. 🙂

Meet the parents

Or more precisely, parents meet each other. It went well! Dad was a good sport with all the food and drink, and he made a good impression as well. He gave Igor’s family a couple picture books about Ohio, which I think we’ll enjoy looking through together another time when I’m in Korosten. He also gave each of the guys (Igor’s dad, his brother-in-law and nephew) an Ohio State baseball cap, which they really liked. The surprise hit was a big bottle of barbeque sauce! I didn’t expect that they would like it, since they pretty much haven’t liked any other American food that I’ve brought them, but the BBQ sauce was the right thing! Igor’s brother-in-law Volodymyr couldn’t get enough of it, and was even slathering it on slices of bread.

The biggest gift was a digital camera. Oksana, Igor’s sister, had asked me awhile back if I could help her to buy an inexpensive digital camera from American, but Dad and I decided to give a good camera as a present. It was a HUGE hit, they tore right into it and are quickly on their way to becoming paparazzi.

Most of Sunday was spent at the table, but we took a break in the late afternoon and we all went to the park in the center of town. Igor’s parents had not been there in years, and had not yet seen the wonderful renovation work that has been done in the last two years. They were very impressed with the park, and I was amazed that they actually joined us for the excursion! They joked about it taking guests from America to get them to see their own town, and Dad told them that despite having grown up on Long Island, he never visited the Empire State Building until he went with my Mom, whom he met in Ohio. Oceans apart, yet so much in common. 🙂

We’re back in Kyiv tonight, bellies so full we probable won’t eat until Thursday. We had a really nice time in Korosten, and we will probably go back one day next week. Igor’s Dad really wanted to take us to his house and land in a nearby village, where, as he says, Dad can see how people lived a hundred years ago. We unfortunately ran out of time (and energy) to go there today, but I think it will be nice to go back next week again.

Tomorro we go to the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone!

Vacation!

Yes, I have been at my new job for exactly two weeks and I am going on vacation! Actually, I’ve had the vacation planned for months, and my new boss very kindly agreed to let me keep my plans.

I am really enjoying this new position, I have to say. I wake up in the morning excited about going to work! While I enjoyed my work in the field with the Chornobyl Programme, I really didn’t care for the time in the office, which was mostly spent proofreading and editing poorly written English-language documents. It looks like I’ll have leadership on several new and really exciting projects as UNV Programme Officer, and well, frankly, I love being in charge. 🙂 And I love new and exciting projects.

But these first two weeks have worn me ragged! I wore my pedometer one day and tracked over 10 miles of walking – to different buildings for various meetings, up and down three flights of stairs about a hundred times, etc. I decided I didn’t need to count my steps for awhile; I’m definitely getting my 10,000 a day.

So, I’m looking forward to a couple weeks of rest. Dad arrives tomorrow morning and we’ve got some fun and interesting things planned. This is his third time in Kyiv, so I decided we’d travel outside the city as much as possible so we both can see some new and different places. First, we’ll go to Korosten so he can meet Igor’s family (eek!). Then we’ve got a trip to the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. Then 5 days in the Carpathian mountains. I haven’t decided exactly where we’ll go after that, but I’m thinking some day trips to places not too far from Kyiv. We’ll play it by ear.

So folks, enjoy the next two weeks! I don’t expect to writing much until July.

Water

Like most public utilities in Ukraine, water is supplied to residents in Kyiv via a centralized canalizatsia system. For the most part, it is not unlike the water/sewage system in most of the U.S. The big difference is that hot water is also supplied communally, which means that rather than individual houses or apartments having their own water heater, there is some giant boiler somewhere in your neighborhood, and hot water is supplied to the entire neighborhood from that one centralized, communal system. This is generally an incredibly inefficient system, and one of the negative implications is that individual households cannot be billed separately for their use and consumption of hot water since there is no way to meter individual household use, thus there is very little incentive to conserve excess water usage.

Another big problem is that this run-down system seems to be a nightmare to maintain. Hot summer months mean it’s time for the annual “prophylactyka na truby”, or “preventative measures on the pipes.” This always means several weeks of no hot water in your neighborhood, and sometimes they turn the water off completely for days even. I have yet to meet anyone who actually knows or understands what the heck is being done to these pipes that requires the hot water to be turned off – I can at least understand some maintenance or repair that requires the water to be shut off completely, by what can they be doing to the pipes with only hot water shut off? Another one of those mysteries I’ll probably never get an answer to.

Anyway, I am one of the lucky few who has an actual water heater in my apartment. This means that even when the communal hot water is shut off to my neighborhood, I still have hot water in my apartment. Woohoo! I had not realized the extreme value of that little device in my apartment when I first rented it, but that water heater has become the one thing I love most about where I live. It makes the absurd rent worth it.

But having my own water heater doesn’t help much when the water is out altogether. This happens once every few months or so, sometimes during the work day so I don’t really notice. A couple times it’s been out for about 36 hours, which makes for a challenge. After my first such experience, I now keep 2 10-liter bottles of water stored in my bathroom just in case.

Kyiv city water is pretty gross. I don’t know anyone who drinks it straight from the tap, and most people instead by bottled water. Being (a) cheap and (b) opposed to contributing to the mountains of plastic bottles that result from all that bottled water, I have for the past 20 months been using the tap water. I first filter it and then boil it, and for the most part it’s been fine for cooking, tea, coffee, etc.

My skin and hair, though, have been a wreck from bathing in the water. At first I couldn’t figure out why my hair was so awful here – I tried different kinds of shampoo and conditioner, different gels and mousse, but to no avail. I brought products from the US with me, thinking maybe the Ukrainian stuff just wasn’t as good. And my skin is soooo dry, itchy and flaky. I’ve never had to use so much cream in my life! On one of my trips home, I noticed that after exactly 1 shower and hair washing in Columbus, my skin and hair are back to normal. I could only conclude that the problem is the Kyiv water.

About two weeks ago, I came home after work and turned on the faucet. The water spurted out like it does when there’s air in the pipes, and I guessed that probably it had been shut off during the day while some work was done by the city crew. Then I noticed that it smelled different, not horrible but not particularly great. And the color was worse than ever, a very ugly rusty yellowish. Not at all appetizing. And thus I am finally making the leap to using only bottled water for drinking and cooking.

The crazy thing is that my hair seems to love the new water – it is looking and feeling better than it has since I left the U.S. in 2004. Go figure!

Roof Festival

I attended the “roof festival” for the new center “Our Kids”, which is being built for street children in Kyiv. As the head of the German-Polish-Ukrainian Society, the organization implementing this project, explained, a roof festival is both a German and Polish tradition (and apparently an old Ukrainian tradition, too, that seems to have been lost in modern times) when people get together to celebrate the completion of a roof on a building under construction. We would have liked to have had an Opening Ceremony, but the construction gods weren’t ready to let that happen quite yet.

The workers worked their buns off the last 48 hours before the ceremony. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw how much they had accomplished so quickly – they even managed to get some flowers planted to brighten up the territory. Every other time I’d been at the site, there were 3 or 4 melancholy-looking men and women, usually standing around, smoking cigarettes, not even attempting to look busy. This morning, there was a crew of at least 30, cleaning windows, sweeping off the freshly-placed pavers, and moving the hordes of boards, wires, and other construction materials and trash out of sight. As Igor showed me around the site a few hours before the ceremony, I made a not-so-subtle comment as we passed the head of construction – “Gee, imagine how much would be done by now if they had this many people working here every day!”

The list of bigwigs was impressive, including dignitaries and donors who flew in from Germany and Poland. The ceremony was very nice, and it is a true credit to the Baroness (the head of the G-P-U Society) that the project has gotten this far. It was her vision to create this center, and it has been her blood, sweat, and tears, that have convinced people to contribute their time and resources.

There is still a lot of work to be done before the first building can open this autumn – after which construction will begin on the second and third buildings!

Ukrainian School of Customer Service

A recent post by Carpetblogger reminded me of one of my early restaurant experiences in Kyiv. About a month or so after I moved here, two Peace Corps/Moldova friends came for a long weekend. I still didn’t know my way around the city well, and certainly didn’t know the restaurant/café scene at all. Eating out with the girls had quickly proved to be a nightmare in and of itself. Neither of these so-called world travelers, who had been living and working in Moldova for over a year, understood any Russian or Ukrainian at all, and for some reason they decided all their hard-earned adaptation and survival skills could be checked at the border, leaving me to hold their hands and take care of absolutely everything.

After a long day comprised almost entirely of them trying to see every pair of boots available in all of Kyiv, we ended up near Kontraktova plosha, hungry, tired, and desperately in need of someplace easy to go to (at least, easy for me). We saw a café called Double Coffee, with an English name and a sign written in Latin letters. Personally, I find this to be one of the more obnoxious and annoying trends in Kyiv, when a place tries to be so “cosmopolitan” by using an alphabet the majority of the population probably doesn’t read. But at that particular point in the day, an English-friendly place was just what I needed.

Earlier in the day, we had stopped at a food court in a shopping mall for some lunch. After describing the experience to a friend a few days later, she said “Man, it sounds like taking a group of retarded kids on a field trip.” If only it had been that easy. I foolishly thought it would be easy for all of us to eat there, since most of the food kiosks had the food on display in glass cases. No such luck. Both girls, I learned, had the annoying habit of not paying attention at the same time. For some reason, they didn’t quite grasp that they could both hear the descriptions of the food choices at the same time; instead, I would finish going through all the options with one, and then the other would ask me to start from the beginning. By the time I finished the second time, the first girl had forgotten her choices and wanted me to tell them to her again. Then they wanted detailed explanations of the ingredients. I’m a vegetarian, so I’ve never really bothered to learn all the meat words. But I managed to get most dishes explained. Same routine started again – by the time I explained all the choices and all their ingredients, one girl would want me to start over from the beginning. Then the other girl asked me if such-and-such was good or not. I had to remind her each and every time that I don’t eat meat and thus have no idea if the beef in tomato sauce is good or not. The first girl finally managed to make a selection and ordered, while the saga of the food inquiry continued with the second girl. The first girl got her food and went to get a table, then came back to tell me she needed mayonnaise. By this time, I was in the middle of difficult negotiations with the cashier to order food for the second girl, who wanted a million exceptions and needed everything explained again for the hundredth time before being sure of what she was ordering (you’d think it was the last meal of her life!). I asked the cashier for a packet of mayo, but she was too engaged with the process of the ordering to immediately offer it up. Girl 1 stood behind me for the next 5 minutes, repeating every 30 seconds or so, “Ann, I need some mayonnaise.”

So, by the time we hit Coffee House, I was at my wit’s end and had high hopes that the girls could manage some ordering on their own. The first hint of the impending disaster was the ambivalence that greeted us at the door. “No tables,” shrugged the bored-looking waitress. “What about that one over there?” we asked, pointing to an empty table on the far side of the room. She shrugged again and walked away. We made our way to the table, and I sighed with relief when we were handed menus not only with pictures but also with English names and descriptions. But my dear friends were prepared to make even this experience difficult. Both girls came up with a bunch of questions not addressed by the menu, and both wanted substitutions and changes to their selected dishes. We quickly learned that the English language friendliness of the place did not extend to the wait staff, and thus I was stuck again negotiating all their intricate food needs.

Girl 1 ordered a Caramel Ice Cream Sundae, and even pointed to the picture of it in the menu. Several minutes later, Waitress brings her a chocolate sundae. Girl 1 looks at it, looks at Waitress, looks at me. “This isn’t what I ordered,” she says. Waitress stares at us with a blank look. “That’s not what she ordered,” I repeat in Russian. Blank stare continues. “I wanted the caramel sundae,” Girl 1 says, pointing on the menu to exactly the item she had pointed to when ordering. “We don’t have that,” Waitress says. “But I don’t want a chocolate sundae,” Girl 1 says. Waitress shrugs her shoulders and starts to walk away. I started to think our waitress wasn’t sharpest knife in the drawer.

I had ordered a latte. A few minutes later, Waitress brings me a cup of tea. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I think you brought us someone else’s order.” “No,” she said, “it’s your tea.” “I’m sorry,” I repeat (why am I apologizing?!), “I didn’t order tea. I wanted a latte.” “No, you said ‘mint tea’,” she stated, and walked away.

At that point, I thought we had just encountered the World’s Stupidest Waitress. Later, I realized we had met a graduate of the Ukrainian School of Customer Service.

When Waitress returned, my friend resumed the debate with her about the sundae. Waitress seemed to have no intention of remedying the situation, so Girl 1 finally said “Well, I’m not paying for this. It’s not what I ordered and it’s not what I want.” Suddenly, Waitress understands English really well, and she takes away the offending chocolate sundae. My friend is left to reflect on her bad behavior.

In the meantime, I still have my mint tea but no latte. Waitress has disappeared. I wait a few minutes for her to come back, to bring me my latte. No sign of her. I finally take the tea to the coffee bar myself, and order a latte. The woman at the coffee bar looks surprised, but I calmly explain that this is not my tea and I would like a latte. A minute later I have it, and I rejoin my friends at the table. Suddenly Waitress reappears and scowls at me – “What did you do? Why did you go to the coffee bar yourself?” she growls. “I wanted a latte, and it didn’t seem like you were going to do anything about it,” I growled back. Waitress stomped away, leaving us again to reflect on our bad behavior.

sleep

I feel like I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks. First, it was the nightly crazy storms. Every night for over a week the heavens let loose on Kyiv – rain and sometimes hail, tree-bending (and sometimes breaking) winds, loud thunder and bright lightening. One night, there was such a loud CRACK in the middle of the night, before the rain started, that I actually thought something had exploded near my apartment building. At first I thought maybe it was a firework; after all, it had been a few days since we’d had a salut in Kyiv, which is a weekly, sometimes twice a week, event. But it was awful late for fireworks, I thought, and they aren’t usually set off right outside my window. “Maybe somebody finally had enough of the Bitchy Turtle Brigade* at the supermarket next door and blew it up.” I fell asleep with a small smile, content with the thought that the People had taken revenge on that horrible place. (I was a bit disappointed the next morning to see the supermarket still standing, and to hear on the news that it was just an especially strong storm that had been kicked off by the really loud thunder burst.)

Then the mosquitos started attacking in force at night, their annoying buzzing keeping me awake. I finally found a thing you plug into an outlet and the mystery liquid inside heats up and releases some mystery aroma that keeps the little devils away. It’s probably slowly killing me in my sleep, too, but I’ll die without a mosquito bite!

Then there are the nights, like last night, when the cat gets a burst of energy and wants to play. She tears through the apartment, leaping on and over me in her madness. Early this morning she decided she wanted company, so she started attacking my hand in a vain attempt to get me to play with her. When that didn’t work, she attacked my foot. That definitely got me up and out of bed, but in no mood to play with her at all. She has wisely moved to the balcony for a quiet morning meditation in the early sunlight.

*The Bitchy Turtle Brigade are the oh-so-lovely team of young ladies who work at the neighborhood supermarket. They work with the speed of a dying turtle, but if you should not be sacking up your groceries at the speed of lightening, they will yell at you. They will also yell at you if you don’t have exact change (in fact, sometimes you have to actually show them them contents of your wallet to prove you don’t have it), if you take too long trying to find exact change, and if you don’t move out of way fast enough so she can start yelling at the next customer.

New job

Gosh, I haven’t had any time to keep up with my blog lately, and frankly, nothing seems interesting enough to write about.

I started my new position as Programme Officer for the UN Volunteers Programme in Ukraine on June 1. So far, so good. I’ve mostly been occupied with getting set up – a computer, a telephone, network access, etc. We did, however, conduct two interviews on my first day with Ukrainian nationals who are being considered for International UNV positions in South Africa. That was really cool. One of the candidates already served for 4 years as an IUNV in Tanzania. It’s really exciting to see Ukrainian specialists who are interested and willing to serve as UNVs in other countries, to share their skills and expertise (both of these candidates are doctors and will work in hospitals in South Africa). I’m looking forward promoting such opportunities to other Ukrainians!