Drinking champagne from our OWN balcony!
Month: July 2010
What we love in the US and Ukraine, cont.
Last year, we posted a list of some of the things we especially appreciated after a long vacation in the US – things in the US that we thought were awesome, and things in Ukraine that we had missed. We have a few items to add again this year. As usual, Igor’s list mainly consists of food and drink, mine is a bit more eclectic.
in the US:– Dad’s back yard (this photo doesn’t entirely do it justice, it’s really a lovely sanctuary full of beautiful flowers and lots of birds)
– Max and Erma’s Garbage Burgers (that would be Igor)
– steaks (again, Igor)
– recycling
– how bicycle-friendly Columbus has become
– riding bicycles around town without fear of becoming roadkill
– drivers that defer to pedestrians, even if you aren’t crossing at an official crosswalk
– the Smithsonian museums, and in particular the National Air & Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Ukraine
– Ziggy (we missed him sooo much while we were traveling! He makes us both laugh so much, and he is a purr machine.)
– good, cheap beeer (and even though it’s not legal to drink alcohol on the street anymore, a savvy investor could have made a killing on brown paper bags, as they are now all the rave for covering that cold beer you are drinking on the street)
– delicious, delicious, delicious fruits and vegetables (wow, even the produce at the farmer’s market in Columbus didn’t taste like food)
– Kyiv metro (so efficient and easy to get around town)
– some of the wild and crazy things you do here, like pay in cash for an apartment (talk about excitement and terror!) My usual manicurist is on vacation, so I tried a different salon last week when I needed to get my nails done. The salon was actually a bit nicer than my usual place, the girl did a really good job, and it was only 20 hrivna (about $2.50) more expensive. I was starting to think maybe to change to this place in the future, but then the girl figured out I as American and started the mantra that just makes me tired: “Oh, it’s so much better ‘za granitsa’ (abroad, aka anyplace but here in Ukraine).” And then she bitched and moaned for the next hour about how much life and everything else sucks in Ukraine and how great life and everything else is in any other place. I didn’t feel like arguing with her, but did say a few of my lines that usually touch the national pride button in Ukrainians – like the produce is great, so natural and delicious – but she wasn’t having any of it. “The food sucks and is too expensive.” And that started the rant about prices, the cost of living, the crappy salaries. Well, I wouldn’t disagree with some of her beefs, but when people here try to tell me how much better everyone in the US has it, I quickly point out that noone in the US received a free house or apartment, like pretty much everyone here did when the Soviet Union split up. Most Americans, I point out, pay rent or for a mortgage their entire lives (and that’s not even getting into what’s been happening the last couple of years with the economic collapse). She wasn’t budged by that arguement, either. “Oh yeah? I had to take a loan for both my car and my apartment in Kyiv. How much is the percentage (interest rate) on loans in the US? I bet it’s not 20%, like we have to pay here.” Ugh, I hate conversations like these, trying to convince each other that life in one place is worse than in another. It’s stupid. There are pluses and minuses, good and bad, rich and poor in every country. And you can’t argue with a person who’s already convinced, especially those who’ve never been anywhere else. So I sat quietly, stuck for over an hour with her as she did my nails, thinking how I’ll never go back to that salon again. And also thinking to myself “Gosh, I kind of like living here.” And that’s all that matters.
For every 10% increase in female literacy, a country’s economy can grow by 0.3%
Among the many interesting things in this UNICEF press release are some very powerful statements:
WASH IN SCHOOLS AND GENDER EQUALITYWomen who have been to school are less likely to die during childbirth; each additional year of education is estimated to prevent two maternal deaths for every 1,000 women. Research also shows that for every 10 per cent increase in female literacy, a country’s economy can grow by 0.3 per cent.
“We had to find a way to make second-year French not suck.”
I love it! This is sooooo what language education should look like.
from “Languages Plus”, Inside Higher Ed, 23 July 2010http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/07/23/languages
…as Timothy L. Wilkerson, an associate professor of French put it, “We had to find a way to make second-year French not suck.” In the traditional composition class, as he explained, “Everything you do is wrong. Everything you do is circled in red and everything has to be rewritten and often by the teacher.” Prior to the curricular changes, the French department was struggling. It wasn’t uncommon for Wilkerson to teach upper-level literature courses with just three students. But after he taught an intermediate French course on the natural environment this year – the title of the French-language text he used translates as Ecology for Idiots – three of the students from that single class signed up for a French minor, Wilkerson said. “It taught them something about the world, in French, that they didn’t know. It was all bad news unfortunately,” Wilkerson said, cheekily.
United Nations Volunteers from Ukraine
Even thought I’m not involved with UN Volunteers anymore, I still can’t help passing on this nice article about UNVs from Ukraine serving around the world. I worked with several of the UNVs interviewed for the article, and am very happy to see them being highlighted like this!
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/73822/ Ukraine is one of the more unique countries that both “imports” and “exports” UN Volunteers. Learn more about the UN Volunteer in Ukraine on their website, and sign up for the vacancies newsletter.Apartment photos
Now, sit down and prepare yourself. The apartment looks like sh*t, we know. The lovely woman we bought it from, Olga Fyodorovna (87 years old), has lived there 55+ years. The last “update” was about 20 years ago. So, everything is in pretty crappy shape.
We are OK with this. We will start from scratch on the renovation, and the “destruction” crew is ready to start working next week. Everything will go, some walls might even come down. I’m hoping to add a window in the kitchen, but that will depend on how much such a “reconstruction” will cost us – not for the labor, but, rather, for the city permits and various associated bribes. So, here are some of the first photos of our new property! I really like this photo, with Olga Fyodorovna. She’s one of those people that you instantly adore, she just has a lovely aura about her. She wished us many years of love and happiness in our new home.
Entryway
The first room, which probably will be our bedroom
Kitchen/living room (this is the largest room, so we’ll probably make it a kind of great room)
2nd room, behind the kitchen. Probably will be office/guest room. 
The full set of photos are on Flickr.
Like I said, it needs a little work. 🙂 But it’s ours!
We are homeowners!
Photos to follow soon, once we’re back to the (rental) apartment. The
rest of today will be spent in various government offices, the
acronyms of which I can’t begin to decipher. Lots of paperwork to file
with various offices to record the sale, transfer ownership records,
and who knows what else.
Last few minutes of a debt-free life
We’re off to meet the realtor and finalize the purchase of our
apartment! Yikes!
debt free for the past six years, and it’s a bit daunting to take on a
mortgage again, not to mention all the renovation expenses. But it’s
all good, and definitely worth it to have a place that is really _our
home_. Wow.
Door To Door Atheists Bother Mormons
I thought this was hilarious – and timely! I saw a poster this past weekend that a Mormon temple is set to open in Kyiv in September. Yikes!
http://embed.break.com/MTg1ODA2Yes, we are alive
Yes, we’re alive and well. We’ve been back in Kyiv just over a week and already are swamped – work, apartment purchase, and lots of little things to be taken care of after a one month+ absence. Plus, it’s been one of the hardest time transitions for me in a long time – I’m still not entirely acclimated, which is rather frustrating.
If all goes according to plan, we’ll close on the apartment next week! I had to get a Ukrainian tax ID number before we could finalize the purchase. It’s the one government process that everyone agrees is the simplest – you submit a short form, no fee, and in 1-2 weeks you can go pick up your number. I’ll pick mine up on Monday, and we’re scheduled to close on Wednesday. Keep your fingers crossed! It will still be several months before we can actually live in the apartment. It needs total renovation- I’m talking we need to strip it down to the studs. The lovely elderly woman we are buying it from has lived there for going on 56 years, and although she’s done some updating over the decades, we’ll need to start from scratch. It’s kind of exciting to get to plan everything, to design our own living space (within the existing structure, of course). There will be lots of photos along the way, don’t worry! What else is going on with us? Let’s see, we popped into Kraina Mriy (Country of Dreams) festival last weekend, but the crazy weather kept us away for most of it. We tried to go Saturday night to see Skripka perform, but got trapped in a passageway when a hurricane-like storm came out of nowhere. When it finally let up, we decided sitting in the muddy park was not exactly how we wanted to spend the evening, so opted for dinner at our favorite Georgian restaurant with Bill & Eilene instead. Yum! Yesterday at 9:30 am, the outside temperature was 33C (91F), and at 9:30 pm it was 29C (84F). Igor had no objections when I said I wanted to buy a fan, and much to my delight he even let it run in the bedroom last night (folks in this part of the world tend to hate having air blow on them, including air conditioners, open car windows, drafts, breezes, etc.). He also announced he wants to get air conditioners in every room on the new apartment, not just the kitchen, which I thought was pretty awesome. Why not central air?, my American readers are asking. Heating and cooling is done differently here. We don’t have hot-air-blowing furnances, rather most apartments are heated by radiators. Thus, no air ducts, and thus no central aid. Instead, you can get these really cool and compact wall-mounted air conditioners, which are conveniently mounted up high on the interior wall, out of the way and, best of all, not taking up your window. Dad gave me an iPod Touch for my birthday, which is helping me to waste enormous amounts of time. I love it. (Yes, Jenny, you recommended this to me more than a year ago and I finally took the plunge and can’t figure out why I waited so long! It’s fabulous!) We saw our first iPad while in the US last month. It’s pretty snazzy, and there was some debate whether I should get the iPod Touch or the iPad, but in the end I decided the Touch fit my needs better. Plus I’m not crazy about buying the first generation of anything; I’d rather wait until the bugs are more-or-less worked out and the price comes down. I would, though, definitely buy an iPhone if they were legally on the market in Ukraine. Plenty of folks have brought them from Europe and cracked them, but I’m not crazy about doing that. It’s kind of ridiculous that the iPhone is legally available in many of the countries surrounding Ukraine (including Moldova, for pete’s sake!), but not on the market here. I can only imagine why. Ziggy lost some weight and learned how to jump up on the kitchen counter while we were gone, which is good and bad, in that order. Our friend Natasha stayed with him and seems to have mostly broke his habit of waiting someone to get up and feed him at 5, 6 and 7 am. He waits semi-patiently until as late as 9 am now, before jumping in my face, whining and generally making a nuisance of himself. Thank you Natasha! Well, as a friend mused, life is just life now, it doesn’t seem so much like an adventure anymore, which makes blogging about it seem kind of lame. But if you’re interested in my occassional ramblings and updates about our plain old life in Kyiv, I guess I’ll keep writing about it now and then.
Anka in Kyiv 