Dear Family and Friends, The sun came out this week for the first time in two months! Spring is in the air and I think I might be able to say now that I have made it through my first winter in Ukraine without losing all sanity! Despite the “waterproof” snow boots no longer keeping the water out and the jagged ice covering my entire path to school, I have made it through with only a handful of falls onto my butt (Yak Trax saved my life!) I cannot express how relieved I am to finally see the sun and know that summer holidays are only a few months away!
Since my last post regarding the holidays and a general update on how my first month at site passed by, I have experienced a few Ukrainian cultural moments as well as been able to travel a little bit and so I would like to share these experiences with you.
My first cultural differences experience occurred over a few separate occasions over the last two months. I do not quite understand why this is still true today, but in Ukraine, especially in the minds of the older generations, there is a terrible fear of “the draft.” Now when I say draft I do not mean to an army, I mean a draft in the terms of a cool breeze coming in through the window. Back during the Soviet years, mainly the Stalin years of starvation, Ukrainians were so afraid of becoming sick as they were so malnourished that the cold was seen as a silent killer and anyone who was chilled was destined to die. It is not uncommon to hear a “babushka” say that you should bundle up because if you get cold you will die. Now that extreme of a consequence would make most Americans laugh I believe but here it is accepted and strongly followed as truth. My host mom deals with this fear by heating the house to about 90 degrees. This extreme has made sleeping quite uncomfortable and difficult. A few days after arriving to site I was able to open my window and I began to open it in the evenings to cool down my room. My host mom’s fear that I would get cold in the night brought her to nail shut my window when I went to Nova Kahovka for New Years. Rather than causing a fight, I pulled out my trusty Swiss Army knife and unnailed shut my window as the house was still 90 degrees. This led her to renail shut my window which I unnailed shut again and a fight ensued over her fearing I’ll be cold and me telling her a sauna is not the answer. The fight was intense but we are now ok as Peace Corps is going to buy me a new window which will be plastic (the current one is an old drafty wooden one) and will keep out the draft when closed but more importantly cannot be nailed shut – safety hazard to the max! My host mom though has informed me that we cannot change the window until it gets warm out as she does not want the cold to get in during those hours of construction. Oh the Ukrainian draft fear!
My second Ukrainian cultural differences experience was quite a comical one. As I mentioned above, my “waterproof” snow boots held out about as much water as a pair of nylons and with the snow beginning to melt these last few weeks, my feet were always painfully soaked through. I began bringing a change of shoes to school, as I’d arrive with dripping socks and boots and have to be at school all day. When my school director learned of my boots situation she freaked out (if you take the above story’s extreme reaction to a cold fresh air, then you can imagine how terrified the director was that I would die from my wet feet dilemma! They also worry that I am weak and will die so I am often asked to eat extra and taken care of like a child to ensure “their American” survives). The director said she would take me to the bazaar to help me buy a new pair of boots. I was very grateful and walked with her to the bazaar. This day had been especially cold so the water on the street had frozen and made the walk to the bazaar slick with ice. Now when Ukrainians think of snow boots – they think of stiletto heeled leather boots with fur lining – about as impractical as you can possibly imagine. As we walked to the bazaar I had to hold the arm of my director to help her over the ice as I was still wearing my snow boots and yak trax and she was wearing her “snow boots” – a pair of 3 inch heeled leather boots with no traction. The director took me to a stand and immediately pointed out a “beautiful pair” of stiletto heels with way too many sparkles and buckles. Despite my insistence that the boots needed to be flat and practical, the heeled ones kept coming. I finally found a pair of very classy boots with an inch heel in my size that she approved of, but I really wanted a pair that I could attach on my Yak Trax. We walked around the bazaar and I pulled out all the men’s snow boots – cheap ones that looked like they were from Walmart or galoshes that were made of foamy rubber that were incredibly uncomfortable looking but waterproof!! With each pair I grabbed at in enthusiasm to their practicality my director gasped in horror that I would buy such ugly boots and put them down and pulled me back to the heeled boots stand. I did buy the 1 inch heeled boots ($31!) and later that day bought from my host mother’s stand a pair of galoshes for $3. Neither of these will be appropriate for next winter but it is a start from the wet feet of before. I then had to help my director back to the school once again as she almost fell multiple times due to the ice but continued to exclaim how much better the boots I bought would be than the snow boots I kept showing her I wanted. I just don’t get it!
On the topic of travel, I mentioned in my last post that I had plans to head to Kiev and to Crimea. The Crimea trip was canceled due to a change of scheduling so instead I made it back up to Kiev twice. Peace Corps has many “working groups” a volunteer may join to further develop projects that work on different topics for the betterment of Ukraine and its citizens. I have joined two of these groups: the Safety and Security Counsel and the Environmental Working Group. These two groups had meetings in Kiev in consecutive weekends and offered me a chance to escape to Kiev for some city time and American conversing. The first weekend was crazy with snowy weather! I have attached a few pictures below of the city including one of myself in front of the President’s governmental offices building where the camera couldn’t even focus on my face as there were too many snowflakes in the way to confuse it! I was able to spend some quality time with my friend Meaghan (the NU alum) and we roamed the city to see a few landmarks I had not yet seen. I will admit that I had McDonalds the first night I was in Kiev with some PCVs – Big Mac and fries, not at all what I’d chose to eat in the states but at that moment delicious! The best experience of all from the two weekends was on Sunday evening of the second weekend, I went to see the Ballet at the National Opera House in Kiev. The ballet was “The Marriage of Figaro” a comedic ballet in two acts. The ballet began at 7pm, ended at 9:10pm and my train was at 9:44pm about 2 Metro stops away. I did leave 5 minutes early and made it to my train 20 minutes early so no worries. The ballet experience was spectacular. I sat in a box (I believe my first time ever sitting in a box seat). The ballet was fantastic with the male playing the older housekeeper role complete with numbers on pointe – hilarious and easily my favorite character. And the ticket was only $4! I am planning on making the opera house a frequent stop on my trips to the city as there is a different performance nightly be it ballet, opera or other talents.
As for life at site things are moving along smoothly. My 9th grade English club has been proceeding along well and I have been asked to begin a 7th grade English club on Thursdays. I had my first “communication lesson” with the English teachers this last week where we conversed in English only for an hour to get them to practice free speech rather than the daily habit of read and translate. And lastly I have been teaching four men on Tuesday evenings English as an adult English club following my bandura lessons (two of the men are music teachers so I don’t have to change venues!) These English classes/clubs on top of my regular classes plus the new responsibilities of my two working groups have increased my daily activity (I am the new co-vice president of the Safety and Security Counsel which I am quite excited about!). All this has been a nice change of pace from the excess free time I had in January. I am though about to complete War and Peace which I must say was my greatest accomplishment of January/February!! Bandura lessons have been difficult as I learned the left hand/bass clef two weeks ago and have been working to put the two hands together without looking at my left hand constantly. My fingers are blistering from plucking the thick strings – if I was coming from a bass or cello background it would be a lot easier than the violin background of small strings! However I have been loving the experience and I was able to get my Bandura teacher to take my picture at the last lesson. Please check it out below!
I have one last thing I would like to comment on before I close this blog post. This coming summer I have been so fortunate to be offered one of the spots as a camp counselor at ABCamp. This camp has been designed to increase civic service among Ukrainian youth by empowering and inspiring them to become active leaders in their community. The camp will take place outside Kharkov, the second largest city in Ukraine and will be led by a mixture of Ukrainian and American volunteers. The camp is currently fundraising the money that will be needed to provide the facilities and general needs of the camp in order to keep costs down for campers wishing to attend. I would like to ask you all to please take a moment to check out the donation page (below) on the Peace Corps website and consider if you may spare some money for the cause. I have appreciated all of your words of support and encouragement and would love your support with my upcoming participation in ABCamp.
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=343-171
I hope the spring brings warm weather to you all and lots of sunshine!!
Love, Megan
P.S. Should you be interested in learning more about what is going on in Ukraine. The best place to read about Ukrainian news is on the Kyiv Post website - a paper written for Ex pats living in Ukraine. It has all the coverage of the latest Presidential Election which just came to a close this last week with the Russian supported Yanukovych taking the win.
http://www.kyivpost.com/
Pictures Include: My house covered in snow, the 7ft snowman built at school, in the music school practicing my bandura!, two types of seats on the train to Kiev (the first being a side seat which I had my second trip up and the second is a lower middle seat which I had this trip), the Golden Gate of Kiev which is the ancient entrance into the city, ice skating on Maidan, House of the Chimeras, the Presidential building sign, The Marriage of Figaro and following pictures are of the Opera House both on the outside and then on the inside.
No comments:
Post a Comment