Live from Kyiv

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.