![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
How long has it been since my birthday? A month and a half, you say? I…I thought I’d wait until you’d all stopped expecting something December-y and surprise you all with my delightful holiday adventures. Yes. Aren’t surprises fun?!
So. Off we go, then.
I decided to busy myself out of winter holiday doldrums, and on my birthday threw my first ever dinner party. Four days later, I threw another one. The decision to open the door of my tiny apartment for holiday celebrations meant that December was, for the most part, a haze of party preparation, mostly involving experimentation in the kitchen to ensure that birthday/Christmas dinners were, at the very least, better than noxious. The weekend before the holidays, which I had slated for a massive oblast center shopping trip in order to gather exotic ingredients (ie celery, red peppers, and various soft cheeses), an afternoon rain followed by a swift freeze left everything from my town to Kirovograd covered in a thick layer of ice. I took the trip anyway, and picked my way down the slick city streets with 8 kilos of food on my back. I also took my first spill of the season, also with 8 kilos of food on my back. I don’t know if the embarrassment was heightened or lessened by the fact that I had seen a Ukrainian fall just before me. On the one hand, they do it, too! It wasn’t just one more indication of my general incompetence. On the other, shouldn’t I have been paying more attention to my own footing in a spot only moments earlier proven perilously slick? I did manage to take the brunt of the fall on my ass, so nothing was broken. I don’t worry as much as I should about ice, but I have always been clutzy, so I learned how to fall a long time ago. I am also young and I bounce, not break. Having made it back to my apartment with only a single fall to add to my December total (2! And in a winter spent mostly in heels!), I relaxed for the evening. Preparation began in earnest on Monday.
Soups and pies and 2 kilos of mashed potatoes later, thrown together while Eartha Kitt sang “Santa Baby” in the background, I was left on my birthday with a few veggies to chop and some dressings to mix. I left for school in the morning, hoping, but not really believing, that the day would pass mostly unnoticed. Birthdays are a big deal in Ukraine. A big deal. Half an hour into the day, I had been serenaded by at least 3 students and, mysteriously, had my ear tweaked by many an individual – co-workers and kids alike (ever had an 11 year-old tweak your ear? It’s a weird experience). Nobody has been able to tell me precisely why one must have one’s ear tweaked on a birthday. I am told it is tradition. Fair enough, I suppose. Though it seems to me that a person ought only be subjected to undignified, unsolicited physical contact for some good reason -- being saved from being pancaked by an onrushing car, for instance ...or as punishment for failure to do homework. It seems to me.
Students dropped by throughout the morning to give me cards and little presents – planned and purchased for the event, very different than the impromptu gifts of pencils, candy and scraps of stationary that I usually receive with surprised and inadequately expressed gratitude whenever the whim strikes a student. I took their considered offerings with an awkwardness increased in direct proportion to the demonstrated thoughtfulness.
As I chatted with my counterpart in the hallway before school began, I noticed one of my students hovering around the corner, just out of my direct line of sight. She was waiting. When the conversation ended and I entered the room, she let two or three minutes elapse before she came in with a chocolate bar and birthday wishes. Normally she hangs out with me before class starts and tells me about various things – the weather, how she feels, etc – in breathless half-English, as though excited out of measure about talking to me and terrified of boring me. I realized, as she hung at the edges of my sightline, watching me but hoping to remain out of sight, that that is what I must have looked like as a student; she is the student I am: smart and hard-working, a bit insecure, and given to falling in love with teachers. For years, I felt for my role models not simple admiration, but rather adoration. Much like a little girl with a crush, I shyly kept to the side, wanting to be noticed, hoping to delight, but simultaneously petrified of being seen or suspected. I have always been subject to the love that Tolstoy describes in his Childhood: disinterested affection composed of both boundless admiration and paralyzing fear. It wants nothing but to be in the presence of the beloved. It idealizes, embraces faults, which seem natural parts of a most loveable and unique character – and make the idol simultaneously, wonderfully human and all the more lovely – and delights in the most commonplace acts and silly or unattractive mannerisms, remarkable because theirs. I want to tell this little girl that I’m not really deserving of worship. I’m very normal. Nothing I do is fantastic, instead mundane. I want to show her my heroes. Part of me realizes that perhaps the teachers I have loved feel the same about my affectionate, sincere, insecure self and consequent, wholehearted admiration, but most of me persists in believing they are ACTUALLY extraordinary and are TRULY teachers, whereas most of the time I feel like I’m only pretending.
I was faking being a real teacher earlier in the week, making up a future-indefinite drill as I went along, when a conversation with my 5th formers about the year to come led to “when will your birthday be?” questions. The inquiry naturally turned back upon me when the quickest student perceived a way to persuade me to talk, therefore delaying the usual, inverted arrangement – me asking, them talking. I sped through the date, thinking maybe they would misunderstand. No such luck. “TOMORROW!!?” Cue a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday.” (The 5th form sings whenever they think they can possibly get away with it. They break into the ABCs at the drop of a hat. I need to teach them another song…)
I did teach my 6th formers a new song: “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” The day before my birthday, two students came to ask me to burn the song onto a disc. At some point during the burning process, they asked me if I would sing with them. I said, “Of course” and was a little surprised at what was, I felt, disproportionate glee at my assent. Moments later I discovered that my negligible Ukrainian and their negligible English had, combined, led me to misunderstand precisely what I was agreeing to do. When their class teacher entered the room, they excitedly explained in Ukrainian that I had said I would sing with them in the New Year’s concert. What?! No one said anything in English about singing in public!
Thus, my birthday was unexpectedly spent running back and forth between the woman in charge of the concert, the computer teacher, my apartment, and rehearsals with the kids, attempting to find, burn, and practice an appropriate version of the song (my initial recording had vocals and was ill-suited for performance). During most of my time at school, I was followed by all three of them – another teacher called them my fan club – who informed everyone (EVERYONE) that it was my birthday. There was no singing or ear-tweaking from most of the teachers, thank goodness. It did make for a… hectic birthday, however. Side note: The performance, which took place two days later, was only slightly disastrous – the music started too early and we were only saved by one of my more mature, truly generous girls stepping up to start – and the kids seemed to be proud that they’d done it. Which counts as a win.
I mentioned that birthdays are important in Ukaine? So important, in fact, that the teachers gave me three periods (out of four) off in order to prepare for my party. A day off. So I could prep a PARTY. After all the running about with the singing students, I set up the apartment and chopped veggies and tried to figure out how in the world I was going to keep everything warm at the right time with only an itty bitty oven and a two-burner stove. Only one of them can be turned on one at a time because I only have one extension cord and, even if I had two, would not have enough free outlets to plug them in simultaneously without risking a fire. This crisis was solved by my guests, who ate veggies and salad and some soup… and then said they were full. I forced pie on them, but was nevertheless left with three main course dishes. Ukrainian parties usually consist of sandwiches, salad, veggies and cheese. I guess the full dinner-party thing where we gorge ourselves is probably an American thing. The Americans in Ukraine all talk about how much we eat here, but, from what I’ve experienced, the two or three feasts we indulge in every year are more fantastic than most Ukrainian celebrations. They’re just not as frequent. I informed my American friends during party number 2 that they were to eat better. In the end, though, it was all for the best. I actually had something to eat while cooking for party number 2! I lived on sandwiches and oatmeal during the 4 days prior to party number 1.
Party number 1 was lovely – everyone came, we looked at pictures, talked, sang a little (they had me sing in Chinese), and listened to The Barenaked Ladies sing a “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings” medley, Michael Cain valiantly attempt to carry a tune in the Muppets’ “Thankful Heart,” the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s various Christmas recordings, and other fun holiday music. They seemed to like the food – especially the soup and the pie – and were all, for some reason, very surprised that I could cook. I’m surprised that I can cook and more surprised that I can bake, but I know me well. I wonder what it is about me that makes others think I survive on pasta and tea. (…maybe it's my weight)
Party number 2 went in much the same way. Except that the Americans ate their share of the food. Poor Jessica showed up a few hours early and I pawned all the jobs I don’t like off onto her. Colleen, as per my request (she’s in a city with a better bazaar), brought the star for the top of the tree. Christmas complete. Picture below: Jessica, Laurie and Colleen, 3 of the 7 other PCVs in K-grad. Also, look at the pies I managed to make! They looked like real pies! They tasted like real pies!
Also on the table are my Christmas cookies. My students and I, three different groups, actually, made Christmas cookies during the holidays. It was great fun. It was a few days later, however, that I came into some cookie cutters when a 31-er COSed (Get that? A Group 31 PCV finished his service and went home, “close of service," COS). My baking classes over, I decided to make cookies for myself. I even figured out how to make icing and mixed the colors. Shouldn’t that qualify me for some sort of home-ec award or something?
My “serious” cookies, when I was actually trying to make them pretty. Aren’t they pretty?
Then I realized I had the colors to make the flags of all the countries I’ve lived in.
Then… I got silly.
The green-and-pink thing at the top is the Grinch. The blue cookie at the top under the tree cookie is a whale. The snowflake in the center and the tree to its right bear the Chinese characters for “water” and “wood,” respectively. The yellow thing at the top right is my attempt to make Mrs. Pac-Man out of a snowman’s body. (Don’t judge. It was 2 in the morning. I was a little loopy.) The yellow blob at the bottom I call “Sneech in a blender” (See the star on its belly all swirled and the red coconut flakes… See?). The smear of color on the bottom right is my re-creation of the work of sculpture Charlotte, Clare, Charlie and I saw at the exhibition on the roof gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s a faithful representation, I feel.
Hope you enjoyed. Happy Holidays! (We all need holidays in the middle of February that are not Valentine's Day.)
