Some Pictures

Hi everyone! I'm in Kyiv for a few days for a committee meeting (more on that next entry), and thought I'd take advantage of the high-speed internet in the office to post some more pictures I've been carrying around on my flash drive, from Bratslav, etc. Hope that you're all doing well!! Miss you all - take care

Love, Virginia

Rainy Day Running Errands

Hi everyone, how are you? Shortish entry today, I think . . .

Things are going well here, am continuing to settle in, and the weather is continuing to settle into spring, although I woke up to snow and freezing rain yesterday (what is it with Thursdays in April . . . in Ukraine . .?) I have an oven set up, and I’ve inherited some nice things from the departing Volunteers in Vinnytsia, such as a rolling pin, so my kitchen seems like the place to be, lately.

Last Wednesday, I visited the English club that the aforementioned Volunteers, the Jacobs, are leaving behind, and which I’ve offered to help continue. It’s definitely different to visit an English club for adults, though I introduce myself the same way to every group – name, where I’m from, and that I have parents, a younger sister, and two dogs. Pretty universal, and I can say it in English and Ukrainian!

On Thursday, I attempted to make chocolate chip cookies . . . which prompted the first, I fear, of many battles with my smoke detector. Unfortunately, the cookies spread out pretty thin, so that about half had to be scraped off and put aside in a “cookie scrapings” container (the same thing often happens to us when baking at home, and there is a similar practice – they’re not burnt, just too flat to pry off in one piece, and they still taste good!). I’m told I need more flour, or possibly baking soda, will try both. The ones I salvaged, I divided between my neighbors, and the English teachers at the 1st School and orphanage, who have still not attended my teachers’ club as of yet. So I handed out cookies, but despite changing the meeting time to an ostensibly more convenient one, two days ago was another repeat of the same thing. Luckily, I found the “composer” function on my cell phone to entertain me while I waited – it lets you try to make your own ringtones, and I came close to getting “O Canada” right, along with some others, so that was exciting.

On Saturday, I went down to Vinnytsia again, with Clara, to visit what appears to be a budding English club of our own, at the Windows on America Library. We may merge the two clubs – and have Saturday morning movie meetings . . sounds fun! The library has a good selection of movies, and I was asked about Breakfast at Tiffany’s and what state Scarlett O’Hara is from; sometimes being here makes me feel so smart – I get to be a local expert on things that, in America, I only know an average amount about! Later, we met up with other Volunteers, in town to say goodbye to the Jacobs as they head back to the States. We had a very good time, and I took a lot of pictures. If you ever read this, Jacobs – you will be missed!!

I’ve had a few electrical struggles this week, which appear to be resolved now, but highlights included: power strip wires warming up; adapters sparking and making crackling noises; and even a power strip wire somehow breaking open to reveal inner wiring, and to melt a small section of my kitchen table cloth. Basically, everything I buy around here is suspect, and I should maybe look for such purchases in larger venues – but it does not seem to be a larger problem with the outlets.

My fifth graders are really impressing me with how quickly they’re learning – they’re definitely improving faster than older students, probably because they are the youngest. Something that has proved to be a huge hit with all of my classes is Mad Libs – I write out basic Mad Libs, and then ask them for the appropriate type of word, and every age group loves to hear the stories they wrote. They think it’s just crazy, to end up with a story about meeting William Shakespeare in the park to go ice-skating. I tried to make a health-themed one for the fifth grade, since that’s the section they’re studying, and they about died when the resulting story had a doctor telling his patient to “Drink two Coca-Colas and call me in the morning.” One of the boys, seemingly inspired, announced “Goodbye Doctor!” which made me laugh – he especially, and several others will occasionally come out with the most bizarre statements, sometimes when trying to answer my questions, but they’re never offended when I start laughing, they laugh too.

The tenth grade continues to be terrified of me, and last week I resorted to singing to get them to read out loud: “I need a volunteeeer . . . I need someone to reeeeead . . . . I come from Ameeerica . . .” which made them finally respond, though they still won’t raise their hands – they’ll just start reading out loud without warning, but it’s better than nothing. I’m not sure if you remember my mentioning the Plahotnyk (textbook author) lesson about how John Lennon was shot. I discovered it last fall: it’s a completely random text, with no introduction of who he is, that very abruptly describes who shot him and how, and that’s it – I about fell over the first time I saw it. So the time for that lesson, for the ninth grade, arrived on Tuesday, and I decided to attempt to do it right, and brought in my iPod and speakers to play “Imagine,” and discuss who he and the Beatles were, etc. etc. This prompted my coordinator to bring out her supplemental materials on the Beatles, which offer such vital trivia as the fact that John and Paul disliked each other’s wives. A little early to introduce all that, I think, when the kids didn’t even know what country the band was from, but whatever works. The subject continued yesterday, when she taught the class to sing “And I Love Her” – I’ve offered to bring back my iPod so they can actually hear the original next week . . .

I made some holubtsi, Ukrainian cabbage rolls, this week, which was pretty successful, and yesterday, some chocolate-chip banana bread, which I recommend that everyone make, whenever possible. Cooking is at least a more interesting chore than laundry and mopping, so I’m trying to be creative . . .

On Tuesday, I heard from other Volunteers, and later from home, about the shooting at Virginia Tech. I’ll try to get more details while here at the internet today. Obviously, I was very sorry to hear about it. It’s made the news here as well, I think unsurprisingly, but no one mentioned it to me until I said something to someone; she said she had known but didn’t say anything because she didn’t want me to find out. I realize they mean well, but occasionally I feel like the people who have toasted, and spoken at length about their hope that I never have any problems here, neglected to mention the promise “by any means necessary.”

I got some wonderful mail this week, from the Roberts, Katie B., and former-clustermate Luke, who fulfilled the requirements of my poetry-for-news exchange, and requested “an original Virginia Suellen Pasley poem!” (how could I refuse a request like that?) To top it off, Gigi sent me a long awaited video, which was apparently lost in the mail when it was first sent last fall, of some fellow W&M alums celebrating homecoming five or six months ago. It was very very funny, as were the other videos on the CD, including one from a wine-and-cheese binge that Gigi hosted last spring, and a very well done montage of friends and others, including a little boy who I assume is someone’s two-year-old cousin, dancing while “Call On Me” plays. On the Homecoming video, the alums asked me several questions about life here, in addition to asking each other if they were really going to send this thing, and about when they were due to arrive at The Green Leafe. I’d love to make a video reply, and surely one of the three hundred crazy Volunteers here has the necessary tools, so watch out for one . . . sometime in the next twenty months . . .

So, that’s about it! Thanks again for the mail, etc., and I hope you’re all doing very well at home, or wherever else. Oh, and although I love hearing from you all in any form, those of you who are wonderful enough to free-text me (details on my facebook profile) . . . just give a little glance toward your watches, and add seven hours, when you do . . . I don’t mean to discourage any communication, really, but early this morning I found out that the free-text messages must have a limit on length, because I received a message about extortion at the Post Office in four parts . . . when I finally figured out what was going on, I stopped trying to go back to sleep during the intervals, and even managed to write a text back saying, I think, something to the effect of “Kristen, you are so dear to me that I don’t mind it being 5 am right now. I am assuming you are Kristen, not because you signed your name, but because I don’t think anyone else would text me about New York City post offices and sign off in Spanish.” (Kristen is my correspondent in Spanish, valiantly attempting to help me keep at least a little of the language.) Of course, my reply might have been a little less coherent than that. So, sorry, Kristen, or whoever you are.

Take care everyone, and keep in touch!

Love, Virginia

P.S. And another short story: The other day I thought I might have discovered sliced lunch meat at Ukrainian Walmart, down the street, so I thought I'd take a chance. Now, I know I'm not good enough at Ukrainian or Russian or whatever language the ingredients were listed in to ever really know what I'm buying . . . but I see no way to reconcile the picture on the front of the package with what I found inside . . .

. . . a chunk of meat encased in gelatin. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, and, actually - I really wasn't.

If I weren't so confused now, I wouldn't get to be so smug about understanding things in a year

Hello again! I’ve finally racked up enough interesting stories to write to you once more, and I have a few pictures as well . . .

I mostly spent my spring break waiting for repairs to be made, and two Saturdays ago I came home from a trip to Vinnytsia to find new wallpaper where the mold used to be! (To clarify, the wallpaperer didn’t break in – I had left my neighbors the key.) So now, I’m sleeping in a bed, my clothes are no longer stacked on chairs, and everything is looking a bit brighter.

Unfortunately my cold came back last week, so I missed a few classes again, but was there enough for a few fun things to happen. On Tuesday, my English club for younger students met again, and the kids were really enthusiastic and excited about everything, which was very nice. We played the clapping rhythm game where we go around and each person says a new English word, and a game where I give them made-up headlines with missing words for them to fill in. Having kids from the other school (though not from the orphanage yet, we shall see) really helps, because they’re not used to or sick of me yet, and when they yell out the right answer first, it puts my kids more on their toes. The classroom was full, and since there were a lot of excited fifth graders, the noise level was sometimes a bit high. During the beginning, my coordinator yelled at them a few times to be quiet, but then she had to leave. The noise wasn’t that bad, but I needed to have all of their attention – and so, in a flash of brilliance, I remembered the “hands up” technique from the program I taught at last summer. Teaching there, I probably said “hands up” at least thirty times a day for six weeks. So the habit came back quite naturally, including the snarky follow-up: “When your hand is up – your mouth is shut!” Like the American kids had, the Ukrainians caught on pretty quickly, and it was a nice way to get their attention again without yelling. The biggest hit was the True/False game, where I had two chairs at the front of the room, one for True and one for False, and two volunteers poised a few feet away. When I read a statement out loud, they ran to the right chair and tried to sit down before the other person. Even the really quiet little kids from the other school, who are especially shy since they don’t know me, got excited and wanted to play. One little girl ran to a chair before I had gotten through more than three words of the statement “Virginia Robertivna’s dog has five legs” – so that was really cute. They even applauded at the end, which was encouraging!

Last Thursday, I woke up to find it snowing hard outside – I heard that you all had a similar experience at home last week. It didn’t stick, but it was bizarre. I finally got to visit the “small school,” which the self-assured fourth grader had asked me so nicely to do, and that was fun. I spoke briefly to the third and fourth graders about myself, in English and Ukrainian, and they told me a few English sentences, and I said I’d be their teacher either next year or the next, which they were excited about.

At the end of the week, I took a trip through Vinnytsia again and got to eat at the Jacobs’ – unfortunately, one of my last chances to enjoy their gourmet cooking! When I came home, I attempted to make Ukrainian dumplings – varenyky – with so-so results. They were definitely too big, and the dough too thick, but I suppose it’s a start. I tried to salvage them as best I could so I could give some to my neighbors – hopefully they believe that it’s the thought that counts . . .

(But I’d like to point out that I made good alfredo sauce earlier that week . . . so I’m not totally hopeless.)

This weekend, as it was for Catholics and Protestants, was Orthodox Easter. No one had invited me over, and a trip to visit Clara and her family had been cancelled, so I was planning on just dying some eggs with dye I bought at the “Ukrainian Walmart” down the street, and giving them to my neighbors. You may have heard about Ukrainian Easter eggs – or “peysankee.” The eggs that are dyed just one color are called “krashankee” (the kind I made), but there’s a more elaborate option involving painting a design, using wax etc., to make peysankee. Sandy Jacobs went to a class and got to make one, so I hope to try that next year. Each region has its own designs – and, apparently, my region, Nimerov, has eggs that are painted all black and red. I’m assuming the best option for preserving them is the make little holes in each end of the egg to get the insides out, but Sandy was told by her classmates that actually, because it was a peysankee, it would not go bad. So there’s always that hope.

Anyway, as it so often happens here, my day did not go as planned, but that was a nice surprise. My neighbors woke me up with traditional Easter food: Easter bread, cabbage rolls, sausage and two krashankee. A habit that people have here, that is somewhat unnerving at first, is to try someone’s doorknob repeatedly before resigning themselves to knock – so at any time of day you may realize that someone is trying to get in, whether you let them in or not. My neighbors tend to combine that with yelling my name and asking if I’m still sleeping. Anyway, it was very nice, and I decided to get down to business dying eggs to give them in return. Then Ira, the English teacher from the orphanage who’s my age (but with a husband and toddler), called and invited me to come have Easter with her family. I had enough time to finish the eggs and change, and then I went over for an Easter meal at her parents’ house (and brought some eggs, which the toddler liked). They had a family of dachshunds! One of which, the daddy, even got to live inside, so that was exciting to see – and I got to pick up one of the puppies outside, later. After the meal, we went to the Russian Orthodox cemetery, where they went to one of their family’s graves. They decorated it with fake flowers (all of the graves were covered in wreaths of fake flowers, possibly a seasonal thing?), and then placed Easter bread, eggs, chocolate and candies on the sod. I was a little confused, to say the least, and wasn’t sure if this was an offering, or what. Then – little kids came by and pocketed it all! So it turns out, this is their version of an egg hunt. I’m not sure if it’s the same with the Ukrainian Orthodox church, I only know what I saw . . . Also, elderly, possibly-senile women were collecting the food and candy. I saw a lot of my students going from grave to grave with bags, and they all said “Hi.”

We went for another meal with relatives, and then Ira invited me to the café that night with her friends – basically the Ukrainian equivalent of a bar (well, they have bars, but they’re more sketchy . . . ). So that night, I got to “go out” for the first time in like seven months (did I mention that most bars here are sketchy? Not a habit we’ve been encouraged to pick up), and I got to meet more people my age, who are also married. She and her three friends, who came, all met at school, training to be accountants (even though she’s also a teacher)! So, that made me think of all of my number-crunching friends at home. After Ira explained that I majored in Spanish, I was asked to say something, and sadly came up with something mixed with Ukrainian – my Spanish is forever crippled by this whole “third language” thing, I fear. Anyway, it was fun to meet people, and very nice to be invited to Easter festivities.

Yesterday, the 10th grade had to exchange English class for a class devoted to what you should do in case of a nuclear war. Yeah. Apparently, you are not simply screwed – there are old posterboards filled with information on what to do, and covered in pictures of mushroom clouds and warheads. Although I stayed in the room, I have no idea what was said, since it was in Ukrainian, and I’m not sure I really regret that. This may or may not be a part of the national curriculum – I’ve gotten mixed reports. Anyway, it made me think of two things: first, the “Post-Apocalyptic Alcatraz Adventure” exercise that Alyssa and Rebecca B. and I organized for our youth group in high school, and second, an SNL skit I watched on a DVD, this week. The “Alcatraz Adventure” basically posited that a group of people are touring Alcatraz when the Apocalypse hits, and some how or another, blah blah, the island is saved. It was really just a pointless introduction, that we thought was funny, for one of those exercises where you have to decide who on a list is worth saving and why, do we need the nun, do we need a horse, etc., etc. Yes, a nun and a horse were taking the tour, as well as a prostitute, and possibly some chickens, I can’t quite recall. Someone else has done one of those pointless debate exercises, right? The SNL skit was on the “Best of Gilda Radner” that my parents sent me, which is hilarious – she plays Lucy Ricardo in the conveyer belt, factory episode, except instead of food or whatever she was originally dealing with, she is to decorate armed nuclear warheads with whipped cream and cherries. Of course, it goes out of control, she can’t stop them coming, and when Dan Ackroyd comes in to check on her, she drops two and they explode. When she then asks, “Am I fired?”, he says, wearily, “No, Mrs. Ricardo . . . we just have to go live underground and eat canned food for ten to fifteen years.” And, of course, she says “Waaaah!” Anyway, I thought it was hilarious – but the funniest skit was her PSA on behalf of “the extremely stupid.” That officially surpassed the Chris Farley candid-camera-decaf-coffee skit in making me laugh until I cried.

The rest of my life is just mundane cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, and killing spiders in the bathroom (a major part of my life right now). I’m not quite brave enough to carry my camera around town and act like a complete tourist yet, but I’d love to get pictures of village life for you. Just yesterday morning, I passed a man walking a goat on a leash, and a horse-drawn wagon loaded with a cart full of piglets. It is my dream to pet and/or jump onto one of those horses, they’re so pretty, but, again, haven’t quite reached that point yet.

In mail news, I heard from Lauren L., in Cameroon, Gigi, and Archer and Jack – thank you all! And I got another wonderful batch of magazines from Ellen, which met my poetry-for-news exchange requirements, so Ellen, be on the lookout. A tragic element of that though, was that no one else was with me to see the look on my face when I opened her package and took out a roll of toilet paper. So, thanks very much, Ellen.

And lastly, a question from our readers at home. “Loumev” wrote in to ask, “Molly heard Ukraine has some dessert that is pork fat covered in chocolate. Is that true? Please address in next blog entry!!” This was later followed up by Molly herself, who added, “Gross!!” Fortunately, I have no personal experience with this dish whatsoever, but, to be perfectly honest, I have no doubt that it exists. Again, I haven’t seen or heard of proof, but it just makes too much sense. They love pork fat. They love chocolate. This is clearly the next step. So, I’ll let you know if I hear more, but if I can never tell you for sure, again, I won’t be too sorry.

That’s it! Thank you for your e-mails and texts, I hope you’re all having a wonderful tax season! Have a great week, and keep in touch!

Love, Virginia