Film debut

My debut movie “Our own kids” will be shown tonight at 20:50 on the TV channel INTER. Igor saw a commercial for it Friday night, but I haven’t seen the ad myself yet.

You can read more about the film and my role here, here, and here.

Candid Camera

We learned last week that permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not enough to marry a foreigner in Zhytomyr oblast. Instead, you have to also get permission from the oblast administration, in a particular office that only accepts the public on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Thus we finally hit a wall that we couldn’t get around, and we both took the day off to finish this nightmare that is called “trying to get married in Ukraine.”

We started in Zhytomyr, where a poofy-haired over-the-hill devushka with nothing better to do today examined all our documents in great detail, including all the ones she couldn’t read because they are written in English. Since these kinds of civil servants typically get some kind of sick pleasure out of putting up barriers and telling people “no”, I wasn’t surprised by her scrutiny. We are experienced bureaucrat fighters, though, and were prepared with everything in order. The best she could come up with to complain about was my poor penmanship, but we managed to convince her to overlook its sloppiness given the fact that I learned to write in an American school and not a Ukrainian one, and thus it’s not entirely my fault that I write poorly in Ukrainian.

After we paid 27 hrivna (about $5.50), she reluctantly printed and signed a one-sentence letter which stated that all our documents were in order (which was surprisingly similar to the letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had also cost about $5). We drove on to Korosten, to the ZAGS (an acronym that almost no one seems to remember what it stands for), the place where you register to get married. They also very conveniently only accept the public on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

To make a very long and irritating story short, after pulling strings with numerous people and calling in favors from several of Igor’s acquaintances, we were at last able to submit our application to get married. The girl there also commented on my poor penmanship and the one small mistake I made, crossed out, and corrected. But since she had insisted that we each fill out the sections ourselves, in Ukrainian, she really didn’t have any right to reject my application based solely on my bad handwriting. Oh, and she didn’t like that I signed my name in English, either. Get over yourself, girl.

So, I think we have finally jumped through all the hoops of fire the Ukrainian bureaucrats could think up and we actually succeeded to register our wedding for 22 December.

We also bought our rings, and made reservations at the hotel. We are up to 13 people coming from the US, plus probably another five or six who will come from Kyiv. It was another struggle to make the hotel reservations, as they didn’t want to book the rooms more than a week or two in advance (oh, the joys of being a monopoly! The only hotel in town…), but we also managed to convince her to write down our reservations.

At one point, I actually started to wonder if there wasn’t a hidden camera somewhere following us, and that perhaps we’d see ourselves on TV next week on the local version of “You’re on Candid Camera!”. In the end, though, I do have to call the day a success. We checked off several critical items from the “to do” list.

Still to go – a dress, the reception menu, and various logistical issues.

Winter

It’s snowing in Kyiv. *sigh*

I have been super busy at work and haven’t had anytime to post on my blog, even though there is a lot I want to post about – like my trip to youth centers in Crimea, the international conference on Peace and Tolerance Education I attended in Crimea, and some meetings and discussions I’ve had with Chornobyl-aid organizations. But I am overloaded at work. Things to do: prepare one briefing on the status of civil society development and volunteerism in Ukraine for the UNDP Resident Representative; prepare one project proposal on youth development to submit to UNV headquarters; prepare and conduct briefings for 4 new UNV volunteers; finalize recruitment of an international consultant to conduct a final evaluation mission for the UNV component of Chornobyl Recovery and Development Programme; facilitate said final evaluation mission so that the final report is ready by end of November; plan, organize and facilitate the annual UNV retreat; and prepare contingency plans for managing the work of the UNV country operations assistant, who will be out of the office indefinitely due to a family emergency.

Furthermore, we still have to register our wedding in Korosten, but this can only be done on work days, and I have no idea when we will both be able to take a day off to go to Korosten to take care of this. We also need to make hotel reservations for everyone there, and plan the party. I still don’t have any outfit to wear at the wedding. We don’t have rings. Anyone want to be my wedding coordinator?

Something good that _is_ happening is that I have started exercising regularly again. I am embarrassed by how flabby and weak I’ve gotten in the last 3 years; I had been doing so good with my weight and exercise in the US. But I’m starting to get back on track, working out 3 times a week with some colleagues and a personal trainer. I’m sore as hell, but it feels good to be physically active again. It’s going to be awhile before I can back anywhere near the shape I was in 3 years ago, but I know I can do it.

Hopefully I will get my head above water this week and can post more on the weekend.