Live from Kyiv

Acccidents of birth

2007-07-20T12:58:00.000+01:00

I lived in the same place for twenty years, then moved twice last year, from my old condo in Arlington to a new one, and from there to Kyiv. Now I'm moving again, back to the U.S. After this I'll be ready to stay put--for a little while, anyway.

Yesterday I had lunch at "Chili Pizza" which is spelled "Cili" and, of course, called Silly Pizza by all the English speakers here. Sitting outside, I suddenly saw that the building across the street was on fire.

Whoa! Did anyone else see it? The wait staff stood around watching. One finally pulled out a cell phone. People across the street were pouring buckets of water on the flames (it was a small, localized fire). A couple of fire engines came screeching around the corner, but by then it had been extinguished by the amateurs and their buckets. It was like something from a Marx Brothers movie.

This year, unfortunately, I haven't really gotten to know local staff at the school due to language barriers. But on Tuesday I got a chance to spend time with a Ukrainian teacher who's about my age. Zina's English is pretty good, and she became more loquacious after we drank some wine.

She grew up in a two-room flat with her parents: they slept in the living/dining room/kitchen. She had her own room, which led directly into the other room--no privacy for the parents. When Zina got married, her husband moved into the flat. Then she had a baby, so there were five of them.

She divorced and wanted to get on a waiting list to buy her own flat. To do this, Zina had to earn points by doing work required by the state. So she, a teacher, took a course to become a crane operator. She taught during the week and operated the crane on weekends and after school.

Zina was close to having enough points to move up the list. Then the USSR collapsed. The points were worthless. "I was number 82 on the list in 1991," Zina told me, "and I am still number 82."

I couldn't help but think of the ease with which I bought that new condo last year. So many people were screwed, in so many ways, under the Soviet government and then after its demise.

Exit

2007-07-18T14:23:00.000+01:00

It's not easy to pack up and leave anywhere, but it seems especially hard to depart from Ukraine. I dread looking for bubble wrap in this city, where the search for a pair of shoelaces can turn into a week-long quest. I can't find boxes either; I called several shipping companies to ask if they sold boxes. Nope. I asked Igor my landlord where to get boxes. "No, it is not possible, you cannot buy," he said, "You must go to outdoor market and ask sellers for boxes."

But after spending two and a half hours at the post office, waiting in the customary three lines and getting varying answers to my questions, I don't have the energy to go ask for boxes.

Road Work

2007-07-08T09:46:00.000+01:00

For the past few weeks, while crossing the street near my apartment in Kyiv, I've seen a big hole in the asphalt. This is not a pothole, not a shallow crevice, but a deep pit you can look into, right in the middle of the street.

One morning last week I noticed that some tree branches appeared to have fallen into the street. In the afternoon the branches were still there. "Well, that's a hazard," I thought, and decided to pick up the branches when I crossed the street.

The branches were there for a reason. They were stuck into the pit.

Independence Day

2007-07-04T18:55:00.001+01:00

Patty was inspired to have a 4th of July party here in Germany, partly because this is the first time I've been around on July 4th. Last week she told me on the phone, "We'll have the usual American stuff--hamburgers, hot dogs, corn on the cob, potato salad. And in your honor, let's have a Commie Corner!"

So, in Kyiv, I bought caviar, chocolates, and this wonderful Ukrainian vodka, called (roughly, with transposition) "Horlytsya." I brought the vodka in my carry-on and managed to get it out of Ukraine. However, I arrived in Prague for my connecting flight and remembered those pesky EU regulations that prevent you from carrying liquids on board.

Those security agents get enough free booze. I went to the duty-free shop, gave my Ukrainian vodka to a startled and grateful clerk, and bought Russian vodka, properly packaged and vetted to carry on board.

Today my nephews and I made red, white, and blue rice krispie treats which unfortunately look like the French flag. Mac painted a Ukrainian and a Soviet flag for the Commie Corner, and Manfred contributed a big chunk of the Berlin Wall that he acquired in 1990. I hope no one's offended.

Exact change

2007-07-02T11:45:00.000+01:00

A rich person living in a poor country should always remember to carry small change. Here in Ukraine, someone with only a 100 UAH note (about $20) might as well be penniless, or hrivna-less. It's impossible to buy a bottle of water at a kiosk, or a few pieces of fruit at the market. You'll be met with aggrieved shocked stares. So I've learned to keep several 1, 2, and 5 UAH notes on me all the time.

It's important to carry coins as well. Vendors ALWAYS ask for exact change. After a few weeks here, I knew what clerks were asking after I handed them money: "do you have 50 kopeks? or 20 kopeks? or two hrivna?" I tried to buy water at a kiosk and was refused; the water cost 4 UAH 40 kop., I gave the clerk a 10, she asked for 40 kop., I didn't have it so she wouldn't sell me the water.

It's understandable at kiosks, but this happens even at big stores. I bought some CD's at "Mega Makc" which is something like Best Buy. The price was 29 UAH; I gave the clerk two 20 UAH notes and he asked me for a 10. Since I didn't have it, I was the cause of much consternation as the clerk ran to a couple of different cash registers to get change for the equivalent of a $4 bill.

If you try to pay for something with 50 UAH, hoping to hang onto those 20 UAH notes for a taxi ride or something, salesclerks have been known to peer into your wallet, point to the 20 UAH, and try to get you to pay with that instead of the 50.

Right now I'm visiting Patty in Germany, a rich country, where you can give anyone a 20 euro note for a 1 euro purchase, no problem.

Serendipity

2007-06-29T20:40:00.000+01:00

It's been a wonderful, satisfying, lively, but somehow peaceful end to this year. School was over last Friday but I had to go in several times this week to pack boxes and download my personal files from the school server. This morning I walked along with two Ukrainian staff members, the accountant and an administrator.

"School's out, why are you here?" they asked. "I've got to finish up a few things. It's easier to work when the kids aren't here." "It's easier to work when the TEACHERS aren't here," they said, and we all laughed. Complaining, picky, critical ex-pat teachers (as some of us are) must be an annoyance for these local staff members. They're paid a pittance compared to what we get (between $200-$400/month); there must be resentment, but since I don't know the language I don't hear about it.

All this week I kept running into people who dragged me off to tell me stories. (you could say "gossip" but I prefer "stories.") Some of these encounters seemed more than coincidental, more like providential. For example, Pat and Roman were flying to Lviv on either Monday or Tuesday, I wasn't sure which. They were my first and have been among my best friends this year; I really wanted to see them before they left. I tried calling them on Sunday, no answer, dang.

On Monday, I visited Michael and Masha and their new baby Andrew, or "Androoshka" or "Andrivska" these loving Russian diminutives. When I left their apartment, Michael walked out with me to direct me to the metro. Along came Pat and Roman, WAY out of their usual "tunnel" between school and their home. They'd tried to call me all day Sunday, but we missed each other. Now here we were. We all turned around and went back to Michael's and Masha's.

Serendipity or providence? "was MORE than wonderful" as Father Guido Sarducci used to say on Saturday Night Live.

Many different English

2007-06-27T20:55:00.000+01:00

Graham, the librarian, is from Norfolk UK. He has this fascinating, mostly incomprehensible, accent, but I usually understand him because I hang out in the library and hear him all the time.

One of my grade 5 students, finally showing some verbal English skills, asked me "Ms. Panneton, English in US, different English in England? different language, England, US?" "No," I told him, "it's the same language, some different words, different accents, it's all English."

Taras was puzzled. "But Mr. Graham in library, he speak English, but I no understand him!"

I told Graham about this, was momentarily worried that he'd be offended, but he laughed.

He and his wife Sue taught in the Canary Islands for several years. They're fluent in Spanish. I've been trying to get Graham to speak Spanish in a Norfolk accent. He refused until the end-of-year picnic and a few beers.

Photo at left is Graham with Manuel, the Spanish teacher from Guatemala, and me, listening to Graham speaking Norfolk Spanish.

Housing and dysentery

2007-06-25T20:15:00.000+01:00

My school here in Kyiv arranges housing for the ex-pat teachers, which is typical of international schools. Departing teachers usually "will" their apartments to teachers who are staying. For example, next year Trevor is moving into Larissa's place, Heather is moving into Paul's place, and Patty is moving into Charaine's place.

This is the first year that Igor my landlord has rented to a teacher from the school. It's a good connection for a landlord---reliable income in U.S. dollars, tenants who (usually) don't trash the place, and you never have to find a tenant again; the school does it for you.

I've been very lucky this year both in my apartment and my landlord. Everyone has heard about Igor. My friend Victoria has been to my place several times and decided she'd like to move in after I leave.

This was good for everyone: me, because I could leave stuff behind that future generations of teachers could use; Igor, to have another reliable tenant; the school, to have Victoria's old apartment available for a new teacher; and Victoria, because Igor said he would raise the rent only $50/month. Also, she could move stuff into my place before she goes back to the U.S. for the summer.

So Victoria hauled suitcases and boxes to my apartment last Sunday. On Tuesday, Igor told the school that he was raising the rent by $600/month.

My wonderful landlord changed his stripes! I was so upset and disillusioned (when I called to protest, he told me "no signed contract! this is not illegal!") that even though I haven't been able to flush my toilet for a week (gotta pour buckets of H2O down it instead), I haven't called him to ask for repairs.

Not very smart considering that dysentery has been going around the school because a sewage pipe broke and leaked all over the carpet in the music room where little children were sitting. And I'm a delicate flower when it comes to raw sewage and digestive systems.

Infrastucture in this country is a weak point. "I have high-speed internet access but can't flush my toilet" I've been telling people.

Guess I'll have to call Igor. He did find another apartment for Victoria, at the original agreed-upon rent, and she says she likes it more than mine. Good.

Last days of school

2007-06-23T22:09:00.000+01:00

It's the end of the year and everyone wants a break, both kids and teachers. I've been showing my grade 6/7 group the movie "Babe". They watched it for two class periods, so saw only about half of the movie. I really wanted them to watch the scene where taciturn Farmer Hoggett sings to Babe and clog-dances.

The class ended at 1:30 so I kept looking over at the clock---that scene's coming up! in how many minutes?

Farmer Hoggett sang and danced at 1:26 and the kids shrieked with laughter. I turned off the DVD and announced "Today is our last class together. I want to tell you that you have been my FAVORITE class!" The kids all yelled and applauded. "You have worked SO hard and learned SO much and it's been wonderful teaching you!" I wasn't teary-eyed then, but I am now as I write this.

All the girls came up and hugged me, saying "I will miss you, Ms. Panneton!" and the boys looked embarrassed so I stuck out my hand for them to shake. It was just terrific.

Then today I was thrilled that 8 (out of 19) of my ESL kids in secondary received "honours" (because this is a Brit school) at the awards assembly. Their grades were overall the equivalent of B+ US. Two of them got "high honours" or A in US grades. Of course I can't take all of the credit but I'll take a little. I teared up some more whenever I talked about it at the teacher picnic today.

It was a great way to end this year of teaching dangerously, as I've sometimes thought of it. I'll be back in the US at the end of July but will have more stories between then and now.

Religion

2007-06-22T04:55:00.000+01:00

I've been going to chuch semi-regularly here. I figure, hey, the practice of religion was suppressed for 70 years, take advantage of being able to go. There were a lot of underground churches here during Soviet times--literally, people worshipping in caves.

The only Mass held in English is near Maidan, a walk and a subway ride, then a walk up a very steep hill, which was an adventure in winter, with the ice. It's also at 8:30 a.m. But right around the corner from me is one of the few Roman Catholic churches in Kyiv. No Mass in English--Mass in Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian.

The Mass in Ukrainian is at 10 a.m., and there's no need for public transportation, it's a 5-minute walk. And though in Ukrainian, the ritual is the same. I went to Mass in Latin until I was 7.

I like church because it's a chance to see Ukrainians shedding their public faces, those grim dour stony visages. In church they smile and soften up. A mental image I'll carry with me forever is that of a tiny gold-toothed babushka, during the Sign of Peace, turning around and nodding to everyone, her hands over her heart, with a huge joyful grin.

I've become friends with an American family from Massachussets due to the convoluted circumstance of my mother in Bowie MD being very good friends with the husband's aunt. Their three kids all go to my school. Their oldest daughter, Mary Kate, asked me to be her Confirmation sponsor. Of course I was honored and delighted.

The Confirmation class was only 5 kids. At the ceremony, Mary Kate was the first candidate called forward by the bishop. I wasn't sure what to do, but, being first, what I did was what all the other sponsors copied. I don't think I screwed up too much.

Elton John in Ukraine

2007-06-17T19:38:00.000+01:00

Everyone has been buzzing about Elton John. He was scheduled to give a free concert in the city center last night, a benefit for AIDS research. (How can a concert be free and also a benefit? The government paid millions.)

I thought it would be cool to see Elton John--here I am in Kyiv, here he is in Kyiv. I grew up with his music. The lyrics to "Philadelphia Freedom" and "Benny and the Jets" are forever in my long-term memory, although not much else is getting in there. But my friend Steve was having a party last night---I couldn't diss him.

I was curious about preparations for the concert so I wandered around Kreshatyk and Maidan yesterday afternoon. Cops everywhere, barricades, entries to the metro blocked off, giant TV screens with Elton John's face. A bus was unloading young volunteers in red AIDS awareness T-shirts.

As I walked back to my apartment, I ran into Larissa and Charaine, fellow teachers on their way to the concert. "Come with us!" "Gotta go to Steve's," I said. More teachers came along, Ronnie and John. "Going to see Elton John?" "Going to Steve's," I said morosely.

By then I REALLY wanted to be part of this giant Elton John Kyiv street festival. But I went to Steve's.

Steve's new girlfriend was there. Steve didn't seem to mind that a couple of hours into the party, everybody jumped up and ran off to go see Elton John.

It was wonderful to watch Ukrainians singing along with Elton John's music from my youth. There were wild bursts of applause to the opening chords of some songs, not those I expected. Maybe only certain albums were sold as bootlegs in the USSR.

I didn't get to bed until dawn, or 3:30 a.m. Life in a northern latitude!

Bloody footprints

2007-06-15T06:29:00.000+01:00

Yesterday on my way to work I was taken aback to see a trail of blood on the sidewalk. It looked as if someone had been walking along, dripping blood at regular intervals, or perhaps walking with a bleeding foot. It went on for a few hundred yards. The other teachers who walk that route were all talking and speculating about the bloodstains.

No blood this morning--the rain last night washed it away.

This city has a reputation for violence, though I've been fortunate to see it only second-hand. The violence is associated with drinking. On national holidays, it's apparently a tradition for some men to start drinking the preceding afternoon, drink all day long on the holiday, and then beat each other up. On every morning that follows a holiday, as I walk to work, I see men with black eyes, bruises, or dried blood on their faces.

My friend Michael, who is married to a Ukrainian woman, said "and have you noticed how many men have scars on their faces? either from falling down drunk or getting into fights drunk." Another friend had to wear a band-aid on her lip for a couple of days. 'Now I could pass for a local, I've got that "life is hard" look,' she said.

Food isn't that cheap here, but alcohol and cigarettes cost pennies.

The Cup

2007-06-13T20:09:00.000+01:00

Internet access at home has been restored thanks to my landlord Igor and his tech geek friend Nikolai. So I can stop reading about Hitler and Stalin (a mild obsession this year, no wonder) and write about my last few days at the school.

As the ESL teacher, I'm required to give (by whom? not sure. nothing is sure here in the FSU) an end-of-year test from the US that's full of culture-bound vocabulary, along with bubble-in answers to multiple choice questions. It's very NCLB and a style of assessment never seen before by these international school kids brought up w/PYP and MYP assessments. (this year I've learned a lot of new jargon. PYP, MYP, IB, not FCPS and NCLB)

It was a pain for everyone. The kids sat there quietly and filled in bubbles. I kept waiting for an explosion from someone "Why are we DOING this?" but none came. They're probably not confident enough in their English.

Today, as a reward for the grade 8/9 group, I scrounged around for a TV/DVD player, wrote up some background information, and showed them the first 20 minutes of "The Cup," a film set in Bhutan. It's based on a true story about young Buddhist monks who were determined to see the 1998 World Cup in their remote monastery.

It's in Hindi, with English subtitles, so I figured that was the educational part--listen to Hindi, read English. They seemed to understand and get into it, as my nieces and nephews did when I showed it to them when they were all about 6 years old.

The movie is 2 hours long. There are four days left of school. That covers it.

Book signing

2007-06-09T07:19:00.000+01:00

The weekly English-language rag "What's On Kyiv" had a blurb about a book-signing at a cafe not far from me. The book is called The Steel Barons. It was written by a Ukrainian-American lawyer who has lived in Kyiv since 1991, pre-independence. The book is a fictionalized account of his own experiences in the criminal world and the black market of Ukraine after the collapse of the USSR.

I thought it would be interesting to hear this author, so I invited a couple of other staff members to meet me at the cafe. I got there first and was disconcerted to find myself the only person there except for the author and his press agent, also that the stacks of books were all in Russian and that the author was going to speak in Russian.

But the author, Alex, and his press agent were very friendly. The agent gave me a free copy of his book (in English) and Alex chatted about his life in Kyiv, wanted to know what brought me to the city, what were my impressions of Ukraine, and so on.

It turned out to be a real treat to be the first arrival. As the cafe filled up, he kept bringing his cronies over to our table so they could meet "these interesting people" (no doubt, it helped that I was with the director of the school and his wife). Because of us, he gave his speech in Russian, then in English.

The fictional characters in the book are based on real people, some of whom were at the book-signing. These are men who are enormously rich now, due to the privatization of former Soviet-run industries (ie steel mills, mines, oil). They acquired shares at very low prices, taking advantage of the lawlessness of the post-USSR world.

One of the characters is based on the father of a girl at my school. The girl and her father were both at the cafe. "Now you know how my dad made his money," she said to us on the way out.

Odessa

2007-06-03T15:12:00.000+01:00

At the beginning of May, we had a four-day weekend (to make up for having had two in-service days on Saturdays). I took advantage of it to go visit Odessa on the Black Sea. Odessa is even more heavily influenced by Russia than Kyiv is. A few times I asked for directions in Ukrainian and got startled responses "you're speaking Ukrainian!" yeah, forty words.

A silent movie from the 1920's was filmed in Odessa about the mutiny of sailors on the Battleship Potemkin in 1905. Sailors were told to eat "maggoty meat" (nice close-up of the meat) and revolted. Citizens of Odessa supported the sailors, and soldiers of the Czarist regime fired on them.

One of the most famous scenes in cinematography (not that I ever heard of it before this year) is a slow-motion take of a baby buggy bouncing down the Odessa Steps. I climbed the steps and saw a couple with a baby carriage at the top. "Don't do it!" I thought.

Gazebo

2007-05-30T18:12:00.000+01:00

My class of 6th and 7th graders is held on the top floor of a "container", or temp building, made of metal with a flat roof and a lot of windows that don't open. It's suffocating. The kids have been clamoring to have class outside. The other day I relented, so we all descended the hazardous ladder-like stairs and headed for the playground. "Some of you go to the picnic table, everybody else to the gazebo," I told them.

Some of the kids thought this was hilarious. "Gazebo! What means gazebo? That is funny!" "That little building, with a roof and no walls--that's the gazebo," I explained.

Yesterday they came into class saying "Ms. Panneton! we like that word! Gazebo! yes! it is so funny!" So I amended the assignment that was already written on the board: "Write original sentences using eight new vocabulary words" "and the word gazebo" I added.

It was a joke, but Emily in grade 6 rose to the challenge, and wrote sentences incorporating all of the new vocabulary along with "gazebo", i.e. "When I feel tension I go in my gazebo and all is better." "It is entertaining to drink tea in gazebo." "My brother irritate me and I close him up in gazebo."

I laughed and laughed. Emily is one of my favorite students. She's from Poland and arrived this year without a word of English. She's just jumped into the language--but she has an advantage in that there are very few Polish speakers at the school.

In my grade 8-9 combo class, six out of nine kids speak Russian as a first language. In grade 5, seven out of eleven do. But in the grade 6-7 class, there are twelve kids, with German, French, Turkish, Polish, and Russian spoken by two kids each, and Danish and Dutch each spoken by one.

So English has to be the common language, and it is--these kids have learned much more English than students in the other classes. ESL classes require conversation. In the other classes, I tell the students that they can talk, but they have to speak English! In grade 6-7, I have to tell them to quit speaking English, and listen to me! Preferable.

More governmental upheaval

2007-05-29T19:36:00.000+01:00

But not a word of it reached me until I got emails from a few people asking what's going on there anyway? Armed troops clashing in the streets? The president has taken over the Ukrainian equivalent of the National Guard? I had to talk to Roman, my Ukrainian-Canadian friend, and read a Ukrainian news blog to see what was happening (link, hopefully, at left).

Troops were called in, but the ones I saw were DISarmed and buying water. Yushchenko claims he called in the Interior Troops to maintain calm during the Ukrainian Cup between Donestk and Kyiv (seems likely. This is like the Superbowl but with vodka instead of beer. It took place at Respublikansky Stadium, the metro stop closest to my apartment. Rivals were massing all over the place, wearing their colors)

Concessions have allegedly been made between Yanukovich and Yushchenko. They sat together at this major soccer match to show solidarity, I guess. Roman said that the government is in "its usual state of chaos" but that things have gone too far in the democratic process for them to go backward. That's encouraging.

If the link works, you'll be able to read about the confusing series of events that led up to these concessions, maybe an infant democracy at work, maybe something else.

School performances

2007-05-27T16:53:00.000+01:00

School was miserably hot on Friday. Happily, there were two special activities--I took my classes and we just sat and watched and sweated.

In the morning, grade one put on a play, written by the teacher, Gael Harrison, (an author! look for her book "The Moon in the Banyan Tree" about her experiences as a volunteer in Vietnam). The play was called "Seven Dwarfs in Search of a Fairy Tale" and featured the dwarfs blundering into one fairy tale after another, looking for home. It's hilarious to watch little kids act--my favorite was the witch stating "now I'm going to eat you ha ha ha ha" in a completely expressionless voice.

Then in the afternoon, my buddy Steve the band/music teacher had arranged for an a capella group from Yale to perform. They were great--they sang and replicated the sounds of percussion instruments with their voices. So now we know what the grade 5 boys will be doing for the rest of the year. One of the students was from Arlington, so we got to chat about our shared zip code.

Television

2007-05-26T20:27:00.000+01:00

Although I'm paying $7/month for cable (imagine that!), I've watched almost no tv since buying a DVD player way back in October. The huge old tv in my apt. can accommodate cable or a DVD player, but not both at the same time, unless I get intensive assistance from people who don't speak English and don't get paid enough to figure out the media access difficulties of a rich American.

So I've been reading a lot and watching DVDs. Every now and then I watch non-cable tv, all in Russian or Ukrainian, usually in Russian with Ukrainian subtitles. The Ukrainian language was suppressed under the soviet system--so there's not much on tv in Ukrainian, on non-cable channels, anyway.

The free channels do have old American sitcoms from the 80's and 90's--Married with Children, Friends, etc. But they're not dubbed and there aren't subtitles. Instead, you can hear hear the original soundtrack in English with someone SHOUTING IN RUSSIAN over the actors.

With subtitles in Russian, or English, people here could be listening to English and learning it. With subtitles in Russian, I could be learning Russian. But, as it is, nobody's learning anything.

Oh well, entertainment. Anyone my age or a few years older or younger might remember early episodes of SNL, w/Garret Morris on Weekly Update doing News for the Hard of Hearing: Jane Curtin intoning "our top story tonight", G. Morris, off in a corner of the tv screen, hollering "OUR TOP STORY TONIGHT!!!" That's what I think of when I see American tv in Kyiv.

Ukrainian sangria

2007-05-24T19:11:00.000+01:00

Kvas is a malted low-alcohol beverage served from trucks, like the one on the left, during the summer. It's allegedly made from "old black bread" but that must be the home-brewed version. It sounds kind of scary. It's traditionally served in a tin cup that everyone uses, but now you can pay extra and get your own plastic cup.

Wendy, a Ukrainian-Canadian teacher who has been here for 10 years, was talking about the quirky beliefs of Ukrainians towards health.

On Oct. 1, no matter how hot it is, kids are bundled up in wool hats and winter coats (and it was HOT this year in October). It's dangerous to sit in any draft, the dreaded "squazniak" which will make you sick and possibly cripple you (in the computer lab, an evil local Dennis protested that his computer was near the open window--I wanted to yell "get over it!" but being, sort of, culturally sensitive, remembered that this was serious, so I let him move). Women of child-bearing age shouldn't sit on cold concrete because it will freeze their eggs (my younger friends have been admonished by strangers for taking this risk).

"And then I go to the kvas truck and they give me the same cup everyone else is using!" Wendy chortled. "what's the sense?"

Long-engrained beliefs of safe vs. dangerous.

Now it's summer

2007-05-23T20:22:00.000+01:00

It snowed three weeks ago, but last week summer started all of a sudden. The temperature has been 32-34 C, or 90-93 in REAL degrees, as I delight in saying to Europeans and Canadians. (recently I had a slight fever. I bought a thermometer and then had to figure out what normal body temperature is in Celsius. 37 C, in case you're wondering)

The walk to work in the morning has been fine but the walk home is grueling so I've been taking one of the many marshrutkas. They're packed and sweltering. This is the "hottest May in a hundred years" the local staff members keep saying. I feel as if I've been cheated out of a genuine Ukrainian winter. I brought all these winter clothes: long underwear, my mom's fur coat, wool tights--and needed to wear them for only a couple of months, not from October to April as I expected.

The school isn't air-conditioned so it's sweltering as well. By afternoon the kids are subdued, limp, and dragging around, which is nice for me, with my hyper grade 5 kids during period 7. "Oh, please, it so hot, can we something easy? we watch movie? " Me: "It IS so hot, can we DO something easy, CAN we watch A movie---okay! Let's watch "Thumbtanic"! It has a glacier in it! That will make us all feel cool!" No worries about SOLs here.

Field trip to Chornobyl

2007-05-14T19:55:00.000+01:00

On Sunday a group of teachers and two Swedish tourists went to Chornobyl (not CHERNOBYL, that's the Russian spelling, gallantly though obviously covered over on the sign to the town).

As might be expected, there was a lot of gallows humor. We were told by the 30-year-old guide not to walk on anything green, especially the moss on the asphalt at the amusement park (bereft-looking never-used Ferris wheel and bumper cars. This park was supposed to open on May Day 1986, five days after the disaster). Moss on soil isn't as bad, but moss on asphalt has absorbed all of the radiation that didn't sink into the ground.

Yuri, our guide, kept putting his handheld docimeter on the road, the soil, the grass, asphalt, moss on asphalt. The counts went up and up. A count of 12-20 is normal radiation here on earth. The counts went up to 1500 on the moss on asphalt.

We all squeamishly stepped over the grass and moss and wondered about the guide. He works for two weeks and has two weeks off. He's from the area. There aren't many job opportunities other than tour guide or tearing apart the reactors, two weeks on, two weeks off. Then they go home and throw away their shoes, where the radiation collects.

I went home, showered, washed my clothes, looked at my watch, and left it out on the balcony. "Yeah, leave it there for 300 years" one of my friends joked.

Snow in May

2007-05-01T18:04:00.000+01:00

It's May and it snowed today. Spring was normal up until now. I've never before lived in a place where it snowed in May, although my colleagues had plenty of stories to tell ("in Canada! on July 5th! I couldn't believe it!"). Snowflakes wafting through the blossoming trees were a very pretty sight.

The last couple of days the walk to work has been nice and calm because hardly anyone is out on the street--today is May Day/Soviet Workers' Day. They still have commie holidays here but they've been renamed. This is also called "the May holiday." ("Soviet Army Day" on Feb. 23 is now "Men's Day")

Most people had the option to work on Saturday, so they were able to take yesterday off, and had today off as well.

Then next Wed. is a school and national holiday for "Victory Day" (victory over what? I have to check on that...victory with the Allies over the Nazis in WW2? but then the Allies became enemies of the USSR which no longer exists, you really have to know your history here)

I visited Babyn Yar a couple of weeks ago, a Nazi killing site. About 100,000 Jews, Roma, communists, and other enemies of the regime were shot and dumped into a huge ravine there during the war, 33,000 Jews on Sept. 30, 1941 alone. Some who may be reading this have relatives who died there--I said a prayer for them.

It was odd to see a couple of children frolicking around the Children's Memorial, but then I remembered that in D.C. people frolic around memorials all the time.

Then I remembered that, in D.C., memorials aren't on the actual sites of mass murders.

Wish I knew Russian, then I could eavesdrop

2007-04-22T17:38:00.000+01:00

Yesterday Igor my landlord came over to deal with the washing machine problem--every time I open it, water pours all over the floor, with the result that my bathroom floor is cleaner than it's ever been. He fixed it, and I got to ask him about the political demonstrations.

"Are people really getting paid to stand around holding flags?" (which I've heard from various sources)

"Oh yes, they were paid 130 UAH day at the beginning, now they are paid 50 UAH, there is no ideology, this is a job, they have no jobs, they come on buses from the villages, Yulia pays, Yanukovich pays, Yushchenko pays, everyone knows, it is a waste of money..."

So according to Igor these political parties are paying people the equivalent of $26 to $10/day to demonstrate. When I go to observe, it looks like a town festival.

Spring in Lviv

2007-04-18T17:17:00.000+01:00

I returned today from Germany via Lviv, a beautiful city in western Ukraine. It didn't get bombed during WWII, and is a lot more "Ukrainian" than Kyiv, having been under Soviet domination for only about 50 years, from the war to 1991. So people there speak Ukrainian. It was a pleasant change. I didn't have to constantly guess "are they speaking Russian or Ukrainian?"--it was all Ukrainian. I got to use my 40-word vocabulary and be understood, for once.

People in Lviv seem much more friendly and relaxed than here in Kyiv; that could be because we were on vacation and were friendly and relaxed ourselves, or because of the distance from Moscow. Another teacher from my school was in Lviv at the same time, so I toured around with her. She's in her 20's and everyone probably thought I was her mother. She was a good traveling companion, someone with an excellent sense of direction, a big help for me, I who have none.

One of the quirky things about Lviv is that it's the birthplace of the original masochist, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Naturally, I had to go take a look at his house, which isn't marked by a plaque or anything! Now, why not?

Yammer

2007-04-05T19:55:00.000+01:00

This week was as stressful, for once, as most other teachers' weeks are all the time, like Pat and Roman's. The spectre of the overdue student newspaper (I'm the sponsor) is hanging over me, it's too much trouble to ask the tech people for help so screw doing it online, I'm just going to lay it out and xerox it. And that won't happen until AFTER the break, the xeroxing, at least.

I helped w/props for the student play "After Juliet" (a story about life among the Montagues and Capulets after R. and J.'s suicides) so that was three late nights this week.

Parent conferences were yesterday, I had to keep explaining why kids don't have a ton of homework and why spelling isn't that important.

I still haven't filed an extension for my taxes, oh shit. John Farrell was here on Tuesday for Michael P.'s peace project, he was a charmer, bright blue eyes, played guitar and sang a song for me there at his CD sale table in the hall.

There's a university student following me around all week to see what ESL is like, what with one thing and another she's not seeing much. Yesterday the ninth graders never showed up to the combo 8-9 class; they were practicing for their PE dance show which somehow I hadn't received the news about, surprise. So the 8th graders and the student and I trooped over to the gym to watch the show, very amusing to see Igor, Vova, and Stepan in the gym dancing, not in ESL class with me yelling at them to stop speaking Russian.

Last night I came back after the play to discover H2O all over the bathroom floor from the washer, who knows what happened? I'm leaving for Germany/Lviv on Sat., now I wish I had a few days off in between, before family/social overload.

AND the government collapsed....why did it have to happen this week?

This evening I left the Actor Dom, it was a lovely night so I walked through Taras Shevchenko Park and heard music. Up on a wooden stage, six people were dancing, a line/contra dance, to what sounded like English medieval/Georgian/Jane Austen era music on a tape player. Facing each other, stepping rhythmically, taking each other's hands, back and forth. I was charmed. No matter how the day went, I live in a city where I can see people dancing in the middle of the night.

Gov't update

2007-04-03T18:01:00.000+01:00

I walked down Kreschatyk (main street) to check out the coup-related action, thinking that maybe I shouldn't be carrying a long duffel bag full of swords (props for the school play).

It's a polite low-key revolution so far. Communist/Socialist Party with their red flags on one side of the street, Our Ukraine party with blue flags on the other side. I was looking for Julia Tymoshenko's flags, white with a red heart, but they weren't around.

The crowds on the red side of the street were listening to a woman singing in Russian, which is the division here---Yanukovich, eastern Ukraine, pro-Russia; Yushchenko, western Ukraine, pro-Ukraine.

But my friend Roman, of Ukrainian descent, says that nationalism is not the real issue. "Everyone here knows who they are." People in Ukraine want to end corruption and bribery in government and private industry. They hoped the Orange Revolution of 2004 would bring about changes, but not so far.

I just got off the phone with friends whose son is in the same class as the president's daughter. Tomorrow is the day for parent conferences. In grade 2, the Yushchenkos' conference was scheduled first, and theirs was second. They were mildly thrilled to be after the president, knowing that they'd probably get to meet him. Not likely now.

Start of a coup?

2007-04-03T10:43:00.000+01:00

After a weekend spent here in Kyiv with my mother, sister, and nephew, I came to school to discover that President Yushchenko just disbanded Parliament and that civil unrest is looming. "Thank God we're flying out of the country today" Patty told me when I called her from school before their return flight. "Don't tell Mom the government collapsed" I said.

"Ukrainian President Dissolves Parliament" I read online, in Vasiliy's classroom, every now and then glancing over at the president's little daughter, there for her ESL lesson with the other second-graders, wondering how much a 7-year-old knows about what her father is up to.

School is closing early every day for the rest of the week, but we're TOLD that's because traffic will be so bad due to roadblocks, demonstrations, etc., not because of potential bloodshed (which newscasters in Russia are predicting, rather gleefully). Who knows? Check the news for updates. Wish I could get CNN here.

Dental problems

2007-03-28T15:42:00.000+01:00

My mother, Patty, and Kai are coming to visit tomorrow. Kai will spend Friday at school with me. He's fourteen and in the eighth grade. I have eighth and ninth graders together in the same ESL class, so I told them about Kai and asked them to show him around on Friday.

"What does he look like?" the girls asked, naturally enough. "Oh, here's a picture," I said, and handed them the photo at left.

These kids can be pretty wild, but they looked at the picture and passed it around in shocked silence. It wasn't until I heard a whisper "what's wrong with his teeth?" that I started laughing.

Public art

2007-03-25T17:04:00.000+01:00

We walked past this sculpture in Helsinki one night after dinner. The three of us, two women and one man, stood and silently contemplated it for a minute. My male friend finally said "I don't know what you women think when you see this kind of thing, but as a guy, I see penises near heavy machinery and I know I'm gonna at least put on some underwear before I break out the buzz saw..." This guy is one of the funniest people I've ever met. I'm incapable with laughter when he's around. He's usually in the classroom when I'm teaching grade 5---it's hard to keep from guffawing in the middle of some explanation about adjectives vs. adverbs.

Lenin's statues

2007-03-25T16:48:00.000+01:00

People here in the FSU (former Soviet Union) don't hate Lenin the way they hate Stalin. A joke among ex-pats (among citizens as well? not sure, probably, where else would this joke have come from?) is that whenever anything goes wrong, just blame it on Stalin. Your rent went up? Stalin's fault. No hot water? Stalin. Slipped on the ice? Stalin again. But he and his henchmen did so much damage, most problems here really can be attributed to Stalin.

However, every town and city still has one statue of Lenin. There may have been ten or twenty statues before 1992. Most of them were pulled down, but, in every community, one has been allowed to stay.

This statue is just off the main avenue in downtown Kyiv, Kreshchatyk vul./blvd. I walk past the statue all the time, and always look up at (not to) it.

Another bad thing about Stalin

2007-03-19T20:37:00.000+01:00

Stairways in public places often have steps of different heights. The steps leading down to the subway stations vary, so you can never take climbing stairs for granted, you always have to pay attention, keep your head down, watch your feet. Stalin knew what he was doing. He killed off the "intelligentsia" in the purges, and no one was left who understood how to design public stairways, or nuclear power plants.

Jokes in translation

2007-03-04T15:07:00.000+01:00

I thought it would be interesting to have my grade 8 and 9 students translate jokes from their first languages into English. Would the humor come across? Well, no, partly because of their language skills, but also because humor is so culture-bound, especially puns.

One Russian-speaking kid translated a joke that requires you to understand that the Russian word for "woodpecker" is also the word for "snitch." (the joke was about a legendary Russian spy named Shtirliz who allegedly infiltrated the Nazi system in Germany during WWII.) Stepan couldn't explain the joke very well in English, although all of the local kids laughed their heads off.

A few days later, I was at a party with Ukrainian teachers. I asked about this spy, this joke, the pun on the Russian word for "woodpecker." They were happy to explain it to me.

The derivation of the pun is the knock on the door in the middle of the night, knocking like a woodpecker knocks against a tree, the knock that means there's a snitch, one of your neighbors or friends or family members has betrayed you and now the KGB is here to cart you off to the gulag. It was chilling.

Scandinavian winter break

2007-03-04T06:15:00.000+01:00

Public schools in Kyiv have been closed for the past couple of weeks for the annual "quarantine." Apparently every year when there's a flu outbreak, schools and businesses close. I'm not sure exactly how serious the flu epidemic is, and think that maybe the quarantine is scheduled to give people some time off--there are no snow days to look forward to in a city like Kyiv.

My school was not affected by the quarantine, but we had a winter break last week. My friends Regan and Zig and I visited Stockholm, then took the ferry to Helsinki for a few days. It was a real contrast to leave a poor cold country like Ukraine and spend time in rich cold countries like Sweden and Finland. People don't appear miserable and beaten down by weather and circumstances, as they do in Kyiv.

Everyone dresses well but not flashily, everyone looks healthy, you don't see anyone drinking in the streets. (a gauge of public health: how many citizens are swigging beer at 7 a.m.?)

The greeting in Stockholm and Helsinki is "hej" which sounds like "hey." So all day long we were hearing "Hey!" "Hey!" "Hey!" It made for a jolly atmosphere.

Probably not on the 9th grade SOL

2007-02-19T17:12:00.000+01:00

The 9th graders are studying the French Revolution. One of my students handed me this document (link at left) to see my reaction. I read the first few lines and burst out laughing.

Wayne (history teacher) later told me that it's a primary source from a revolutionary newspaper written by the "sans-culottes". He said that he introduced it by telling the kids "you may be offended by this, so I won't give it to you unless you raise your hand." They all raised their hands.

Emergency sweater

2007-02-15T20:41:00.000+01:00

The busiest streets of Kyiv have pedestrian underpasses, many of which are markets for people selling coffee, batteries, socks, flowers, beer which some men drink like coffee on their way to work, Victoria's Secret-type bras, etc.

I walk through one of these underpasses every morning. There might be an opportunity to buy something to cover up my undershirt from a vendor who seems to sell sweaters, though her stall is barely visible through the crush of commuters. Would her stall be open so early? Would she have sweaters, or only thongs?

But she was open for sales--I was able to get a big purple sweater (which smelled of cigarette smoke from being hung in the smoky underpass for, probably, weeks)

My friend Pat of Ukrainian descent told me that I'd brought the vendor good luck. A big sale first thing in the morning ($10, 7 a.m.) is, according to local lore, a harbinger of good sales the rest of the day. So it was a stroke of luck for both me and her.

"You just went and BOUGHT something, you're such an American!" another friend said. Well, yeah.

Dressing (or not) for the weather

2007-02-10T18:46:00.000+01:00

On Friday people kept complimenting me on my sweater. "This sweater has a STORY," I told them.

Kyivian winter weather has arrived, and I'm still walking to work (30-35 minutes). It just takes longer to get dressed in the morning. Underwear, polypropylene long johns or wool tights, long undershirt, socks, more socks, top layer of sweater, skirt, pants, whatever, scarf, headband, hat, glove liners, mittens, coat, boots. I'm puffing before I even start walking.

Last week it snowed every day. By Thursday the snow had been compressed to solid ice in a lot of places (sidewalks are cleared sometimes, but not often). I tried walking but realized it would take twice as long as usual, so waved down a marshrutka (local minibus, cheap: 50 kopeks or 10 cents, expensive where you might actually get a seat: 1 hrivna 50 kopeks or 30 cents).

Patty had given me a pair of black rubber straps studded with spikes that fit over boots. I decided to try them out on Friday--one more thing to put on, but they worked! no sliding or slipping as I clattered over the ice!

But more than halfway to school, too late to turn back, a dreadful realization: under my coat, above my waist, I was wearing only my long undershirt. In the glee of donning black rubber and spikes, I'd forgotten my sweater.

What to do? wear my coat all day long? borrow something from Victoria, the grade 1 teacher next door? she has a couple of extra sweaters, but she's a size 0. wear the science teacher's lab coat? bluff my way through the day wearing an undershirt?

to be continued.

Subway

2007-02-10T08:25:00.000+01:00

Snow came late this winter but there's been a lot of it, transforming the city and giving it a festive air. People seem more cheerful.

My friend Steve and I were stuck in a claustrophobia-inducing jam of humanity at the subway station on our way to the opera the other night.

The subway system is fast and efficient in most ways, but not in channeling passengers from arrival platforms to departure platforms at transfer stations.

Trains arrive every two minutes. Hundreds of people get off and then squeeze through a narrow tunnel with the same number trying to get through from the other direction. It gets worse with the arrival of every new train. You feel as if you're in a soccer mob or that Who concert in Cincinnati where 23 fans were trampled.

But everyone pushed through an inch at a time, patiently, even jovially. A man in front of me held up his cell phone camera to take a few "Hail Marys." "Dobre!" I said (good!). He grinned at me. The man behind me said something with a smile, too bad I couldn't understand a word of it. Then someone broke into the chorus of "Volga Boatmen" (which you'll know if you ever took piano lessons "yo, ho, heave, ho") and there was general laughter. Laughter under (literal) oppression! For me, it was a new view of the people of Kyiv.

Family vocabulary

2007-02-03T20:57:00.000+01:00

Earlier this year I did a "family" unit with my fifth-graders. We started with "who's in your family? This is how you say mother, father, brother, sister." Some of the advanced kids wanted to know the words for "the sister of your grandmother, the daughter of your cousin, the brother who has the same mother as you but a different father."

One kid (luckily towards the end of class) raised his hand to inform everyone that his uncle had married a man, and what was the word for that man? I wasn't really paying attention because this kid ALWAYS has his hand up in the air, and I said something like "your uncle's married, you want to know the word for your uncle's wife?"

"No! He has a husband! What is he called?" Most of the kids were oblivious, one or two smirked, and I just said "oh, he's gay, he married a man, that's possible in some countries. He's your uncle."

This kid is from the Netherlands where, of course, gay marriage is legal.

The classroom teacher had come into the room and heard this exchange. I saw him later in the day and he said "nice teachable moment! you handled that very well! I think in the Netherlands it's not only legal, it's required!" "Yeah, like those cafes in Amsterdam where you HAVE to smoke dope" I said.

Later on this kid told me that he shouldn't draw a line connecting his parents on his family tree because they aren't married.

"Geez, what's going on in your family?" I thought, but didn't say. "Your straight parents aren't married and your gay uncles are?" I felt very conservative.

My landlord Igor

2007-01-28T19:34:00.000+01:00

Elena is the liaison for expat teachers here at the school. She finds apartments for new teachers, relocates teachers who hate their apartments, and gets paid very little money for a lot of hassle. A couple of months ago, Elena stopped by to tell me "Mary, you are very lucky, you have best landlord of the school! He calls me to ask how is Mary, does she have problem? but you have no problem! He says you are good tenant, beautiful! intelligent!" (which is now a running joke with me and Patty "beautiful! intelligent!" what was lost in translation?)

I was tickled to hear that I had the best landlord, but just learned that Elena has been going around saying that to several teachers, probably to quell dissent.

However, Igor IS a great landlord. He runs over whenever I do something stupid like locking myself out (only once). When internet/phone service is down, he immediately takes steps to correct it--it may take a few weeks, but that's how things go here, and Igor takes care of it.

The first time he came, in August, he arranged water delivery (can't drink the water here, it's full of radiation from Chernobyl), helped me buy a cell phone, and sat around telling me stories about his life in Kyiv.

He comes over at least twice a month to take care of bills. He's usually in a hurry but I'm always trying to pick his brains. Early in January a Ukrainian politician was shot and killed in a hunting accident. Yevhen Kushnarev was supposed to be well-supported and well-liked, but this is a country where the president was poisoned by dioxin in his soup (his kids go to my school!)

"Hey, Igor," I said,"what's the deal with this hunting accident? was it an accident or an assassination?"

Igor paused as he was pulling on his boots. "Oh, it was accident, they were drunk, I don't know how it is in civilized countries, but here, hunting, bottle of vodka, two bottles of vodka..."

Of course, all of the Americans here were making jokes about Dick Cheney.

Living space

2007-01-23T05:34:00.000+01:00

Here are photos of my apartment. Everyone who sees it says it looks very "Soviet"--the furniture is bland and utilitarian (fine with me!) and the kitchen is rather stark and simple, but everything works! Some of my friends have had real problems with their apartments and their landlords, ie Victoria kept getting electrical shocks when she used her stove, Pat and Roman were without water for several days and without hot water for two weeks, someone else's toilet leaked, etc., so I'm lucky.

I'm also lucky because my landlord, Igor, speaks English. He's about my age and managed to survive and even thrive under the Soviet system. Some of my friends say he must be crooked--anyone who has any money here is suspected of being connected to the criminal underworld. But Igor may have other connections. He told me that when Ukraine gained independence in 1991, the new president received the first visa to the US, and he (Igor) received the second.

On the other hand, as his tenant, I'm supposed to be his "cousin from America who doesn't speak Ukrainian." So who knows?

Pubs and Catastrophes

2007-01-14T17:59:00.000+01:00

My cultural events for the weekend were Canadian Pub Night and a visit to the Chernobyl Museum. The order should probably have been reversed.

The school staff is a mix of Ukrainians, English, Irish (Republic and Northern), Australians, Americans, a few other nationalities like German, Dutch, Guatamalan, and French---and a LOT of Canadians.

Canadians have a nice accessible embassy (unlike the US embassy which of course is a fortress, you go through two metal detectors and surrender all potential weapons: water bottles, cell phones, chapstick).

The Canadian Embassy also has Pub Night! So nine Canadian and four American teachers had a jolly time discussing Canada, the U.S., and Ukraine, and fighting about Alice Munro (well, that was just me and a couple of Canadians).

Then on Sat. a friend and I visited the Chernobyl Museum (here in Kyiv, not in Chernobyl, which is 60 miles north of here). I remember eating lunch outside with my colleagues at Holmes Middle School, on a beautiful day in April 1986, when one of them looked up at the sky and asked if we'd heard about the disaster.

The USSR wouldn't admit anything had happened until Swedish scientists noticed rising radiation levels from a giant radioactive cloud blowing north from Chernobyl. The Ukrainian public had no idea until about a week later. People in Ukraine tend to blame any health problem on Chernobyl---no wonder.

The museum was heartbreaking. ID cards of the first responders, before and after photos of the hundreds of towns and villages that were evacuated, photos of weeping elderly displaced "babushkas" (Ukrainian for grandmother, generic term for old woman), walls of photos of children, now dead.

The first responders were firefighters who had no clue what kind of fire they were really fighting. Apparently the higher-ups called them "bio-robots" (see link) .

The official death toll was just raised from 31 to 56. But it's probably in the hundreds of thousands.

Road trip to Berlin

2007-01-07T16:24:00.000+01:00

Our Christmas break is a wonderful three weeks. I took the train to Berlin from Bohl-Iggleheim after spending Christmas and New Year's with Patty and her family. She and Kai met me there a couple of days later. We managed to see quite a bit of the city, thanks to a walking tour led by an extremely enthusiastic guide. It was supposed to be four hours long but turned into seven hours. Kai was impressed to stand on the ground above the site of Hitler's suicide--it's now a parking lot.

The next day we toured Hohenschonhausen, a Stasi prison for political dissidents or anyone suspected of being a political dissident or anyone who might have known someone who might be suspected of being a political dissident. "The centre of communist repression", as it's called. I never thought much about freedom of speech before coming to a place where it was unheard of. Our guide was the daughter of a former prisoner. She didn't tell this to the entire group, but Patty asked her how she happened to become a guide. Apparently all of the guides have a personal connection to the prison; some of the guides were prisoners themselves.

So the guides have inside information about various methods of torture---psychological, not physical. Psychological torture is easier and doesn't leave any outward marks. It was harrowing even to hear about it. Patty and I agreed that we'd be very easy to torture.

(Patty: "I'm cold!" Me: "I need privacy!" My friend Zig, when I told him about it: "This is the wrong kind of ice for my martini!")

Today is Orthodox Christmas. It's great to celebrate Christmas twice!

More about faces

2006-12-31T16:52:00.000+01:00

Waiting in an interminable line at the post office at Maidan, I watched fascinated as a clerk used a sewing machine, right there behind the counter, to run up a cloth bag to enclose something for mailing. When have you ever seen a sewing machine in use at a post office? Never.

Obviously the lines are going to be slow if they’re sewing customized mailing bags.

My friends Pat and Roman are teachers at the school. They’re from Alberta, have Ukrainian ancestry and know all about the history of the area and the “breaking of the Slavic people” under the Soviet system. They're always helping me to put the difficulties of living here into perspective.

Last week I rode the trolley with Roman and Pat. Trolleys have this system where you buy a ticket and stick it into a little machine to punch a hole in it. It takes two hands--one to hold the ticket and one to push down the lever.

No one on a trolley has two free hands. Almost no one has one free hand. You’re holding a bag, you’re holding onto the bar for stability because the trolley is reeling back and forth and there are no seats.

I mentioned this to Roman. He told me that this is a remnant of the Soviet era, when everything on the “ground level of living” was difficult, and calculatedly so, to prevent people from having the energy to think about ideology. “You have to hold the ticket AND punch the ticket while grabbing onto your potatoes after waiting in line for three hours to buy them. And you‘re told that you‘re living in a Soviet paradise.”

So...no extra energy to grin at a stranger.

Kyiv Faces

2006-12-24T07:21:00.000+01:00

I'm in Germany for the holiday break visiting Patty and her family. Such a happy cheerful smiling country! This may not be your impression of Germany. Well, compared to Ukraine, that's what it is. As soon as I got off the plane in Frankfurt I was struck by the difference. People make eye contact with you! They nod and smile! They even say "Guten Tag!"

I'm delighted to be in Kyiv but, to fit in, I can't show it. On the street, I've adopted a "Kyiv face." This is the face of everyone in the city: dour, unsmiling, flat affect, grim, staring straight ahead, never acknowledging the presence of another person. I walk to and from work every day (I LOVE walking to work!) and recognize fellow pedestrians. Never do they indicate that they recognize me. But they do: a friend who has worked here for four years said "oh, yeah, they know you. They even know you're an American, and they watch everything you do." I told him that by the summer I want someone to smile at me on the way to work. "Fat chance, " he said.

Sometimes my face hurts at the end of the day from the effort to keep my face Kyivian. Now and then I get on a bus, turn to the window, and grin widely, stretching those smiling muscles that haven't been used for hours. I probably look like a gargoyle to the people outside.

Shopping

2006-12-17T19:40:00.000+01:00

It's hard to find some stuff here that, to an American, is pretty basic--stuff like index cards and rubber bands. (thanks to everyone who has sent/brought me these necessities from the US or Germany!) They're not sold in office supply stores. Where do you find them? It's a mystery.

Yesterday I spent three hours tracking down envelopes for Christmas cards (which are sold without them). The only reliable place to find envelopes is the post office, where there are ten windows. Five had visible clerks. There were about twenty workers behind the scenes. Two windows had lines. One window had a bunch of people brandishing passports. The other line had people filling out endless forms. These people were not just buying envelopes.

One window (without a line) had a rack of envelopes behind the clerk. I approached her, pointed to the envelopes, and said "Mozhna?" (translated as "will you help me? I need help. hey!")

The clerk waved me away. I went back to the line with people who were filling out forms. After about twenty minutes, that clerk finished her task, waved me over, and was wonderfully helpful, asked me which envelopes I wanted, did I want a mixture, bolshoi (big) malinky (little), ran back and forth showing me the envelopes.

I like the post office, it's not that different from my local P.O. in Arlington.

Night Life on a Tuesday

2006-12-12T20:55:00.000+01:00

I just got back from a $3 night at the National Opera House--this gorgeous "belle epoque" building dates from 1901. Somehow Stalin and Hitler didn't get around to bombing it. The last tsar of Russia, Nicholas (of Nicholas and Alexandra) had a prime minister who was assassinated here. (Yesterday I went to a restaurant where an alleged Ukrainian mafia hit took place.)

The opera house is ridiculously cheap for anyone who's not earning a local salary. I went at least once a week the first month I was here, before reality set in: I'm working hard, exhausted at the end of the day, it's usually not fun to go out at night during the week!

But this is the last week before the holiday break. Tonight was ballet, "Giselle." Friday it's opera, "Madame Butterfly." Tonight I went with the wife of the director (principal) of the school, her friend from France, and her daughter from Damascus. On Friday I'll go with American, British, and Colombian friends. A good mix.

Teacher Jargon

2006-12-10T17:12:00.000+01:00

One of the best things about teaching at an international school is the freedom from federal requirements and the constant emphasis on standardized testing. What a relief! I can teach whatever I want as long as it's "related to the curriculum" and includes some grammar and vocabulary.

Well, EVERYTHING includes grammar and vocabulary, and pretty much anything can be related to the curriculum. So my fifth-graders are writing about Flat Stanley and exchanging him with kids all over the place, my sixth- and seventh-graders are practicing for a 5-minute version of Hamlet, and my grade 8 and 9 students have read Ionesco (inspired by my friend Regan, the drama teacher, and her grade 11-12 students' performance of his play "Tales for People under 3 Years of Age." It was hilarious!)

It's a lot of work but, interestingly, the harder I work, the easier it gets.

Ukrainian Mystery Date

2006-12-04T17:13:00.000+01:00

I've always dreamed about teaching overseas. Since about 1997, my goal was to do it before hitting 50, which back then seemed very far away. A couple of years ago, I realized that my target age was creeping up, and I'd better get moving.

Well, I got in just under the wire, and here I am, half a century! Whether here or in the U.S., I'd have turned 50 anyway, and I'm happy to be here, experiencing a new culture and learning new things, like the alphabet.

Patty visited from Germany for the weekend, which was wonderful. She came to school with me on Thursday and students immediately began calling her "Ms. Panneton #2." She noticed aspects of the city that I've already begun to take for granted, like the mix of architectural styles in Kyiv: Soviet-bloc buildings, baroque, contemporary, junky vacant lots, art nouveau.

Friends came over and I received a bunch of joke gifts good for someone turning 50 in Kyiv, ie the tiara pictured at left and a Ukrainian version of the old "Mystery Date" board game. Most Americans born circa 1956 recognized this game and could even sing the jingle ("Mystery date! behind the door, a dreamboat or a dud?") but it puzzled a young Ukrainian teacher.

"We did not have such games when I was a child," she said. (her childhood was spent behind the Iron Curtain and was free from corrupt western influences like Mystery Date. Read After the Wall by Jana Hensel to get an idea of what it was like to grow up in the USSR).

I think I'll play Ukrainian Mystery Date with my fifth-graders.

Famine Stories

2006-11-27T19:48:00.000+01:00

The weather was mild yesterday and, wanting to take advantage of the weather before the onslaught of -20 degrees, I wandered around the neighborhood of Podil. I ended up at St. Mikhayil's Monastery of the Golden Domes, a beautiful Orthodox church that was blown up by Stalin and just reconstructed in 2001.

As I approached the plaza, I saw hundreds of flickering lights---candles in glass holders, lining the square, arranged in the shape of crosses or circles, some with sheaves of wheat before them. Crowds of people were walking around, carefully stepping over the candles. Everyone was quiet. There were families, teenagers, old people.

The memorial to victims of the 1932-1933 famine is at St. Mikayil's. This is a famine I'd never heard of before I got the job in Ukraine and started reading up on Ukrainian history. Ukraine was known as the "breadbasket of the Soviet Union" but in the early 30's, Stalin forced farmers all over the country to give their grain to the Communist government. At least 6 million people died of starvation.

The candles and sheaves of wheat were in honor of the victims--yesterday was the 2nd official commemoration of the famine. Today at school, when I talked about seeing the memorials, every Ukrainian teacher had a story to tell. Olga said that her grandfather had worked in the city and was able to get food. He took it to his parents in a village, they ate too much (after being starved) and died from the shock. Natasha told me that her grandmother had had a baby and was unable to nurse him. She fed him whatever food she had been able to hoard. Children in the village scrambled around to eat the baby's "poop"--there was nutrition in it. The grandmother and the baby both died. And on and on...

Ukrainian Thanksgiving

2006-11-23T20:39:00.000+01:00

Thanksgiving was an ordinary workday, although a couple of American parents brought in pumpkin pie and talked about "things to be thankful for" to the uncomprehending sons and daughters of local millionaires and rich ex-pats. "If you have food, shelter, and clean water, you have more than 75% of the rest of the world! If you have all that and a few kopeks in your pocket, you're in the top 8% of the world's population!"

Any local kid who goes to the school is from the stratosphere of the Ukrainian economy---the average income here is $4,000/year, while tuition is $15,000. I've never taught rich kids before, let alone rich kids who live in a poor country, and who are possibly the children of the Ukrainian "mafia" (as the gossip goes).

Very early I identified the phenomenon of the "evil local Dennis"---three of the Ukrainian/Russian kids in my ESL classes are behavior problems, and they're all named Dennis. The ESL classes are full of kids who speak Russian. Most of them want to learn English, but the Dennisses seem to know they're already set for life. Why bother learning English? So they spend all of their time trying to distract their classmates by talking Russian to them. I anticipated a lot of problems, but not this one!

Ukrainian vs. Russian

2006-11-21T20:24:00.000+01:00

I've been trying to learn some Ukrainian but have inadvertently learned some Russian. Ukrainian is the official language but Russian is still the "language of the marketplace," at least here in Kyiv. The first week I was here, I thanked somebody in Ukrainian, saying "dyakuyu." The clerk corrected me: "spaseeba!"

That trained me to always say "spaseeba!" And now I'm stuck with it---I was saying "spaseeba!" in Germany over the fall break, despite years of saying "danke!"

I can understand and say numbers in Ukrainian, but when I ask "skeelky" (Ukrainian for "how much"), the response is in Russian. Numbers in Russian sound something like numbers in Ukrainian, but are different enough that by the time I process it, the clerk has given up and punched out the price on a calculator and shown it to me, the poor dumb monolingual westerner.

And then I pay the equivalent of sixty cents for two pounds of carrots at the rEEOOHnok (can't even try to reproduce the sound of that Cyrillic letter, a backwards N), the giant covered market, five minutes from my apartment, with dozens of stalls where local merchants sell fresh fruits and vegetables. A vegetarian's paradise.

A rainy Monday

2006-11-13T07:47:00.000+01:00

After living in Kyiv for almost three months, I find myself unable to keep up with emails (internet access is sketchy at home and there's very little, ie NO time at school). I'm taking the plunge into the advanced technology (for me, anyway) of creating a blog. So...live from Kyiv, here I am!

Winter's on its way but not here yet. The temperature drops to freezing and it snows, then it gets warm again and I open the windows and mosquitos buzz around, even here on the seventh floor in November in Kyiv. (flypaper strips are still hanging all over the place) The first freezing spell was the week of October 15. Coincidentally, October 15 is the date that city workers begin to turn on the heat in apartment buildings all over the city. However, it's turned on over a period of two weeks, neighborhood by neighborhood. All of the ex-pat teachers were asking each other "did you get heat yet?"

I hadn't, and by Wednesday I felt colder in my apartment than out of it. I finally gave up and went to Mega Mart (the local version of Wal-Mart) to buy a little electric heater. Usually I carry a Ukrainian/English phrasebook, but in my rush to get out of my arctic living space and into a heated store, I forgot it. Then I couldn't figure out which appliances were heaters and which were fans or dehumidifiers or whatever...juicers, for all I knew. Luckily, one of the clerks spoke enough English to help me out. Basics like "hot" and "cold" are really words I should have known by then! I know them now (haryachyy and kholodnyy).