Bomphiologia,

Aaaand...we're now down to once a month.

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:51:18 GMT

We'll say the neglect is due to being super active at site. Ahem. To continue:

1) Hi!

It's been forever. I'm back at home now, but...I'm leaving again in a few days. This time for Turkey. Yes, my friends, Turkey. A friend, Zhenya, and I have planned a very last-minute mini vacation in Istanbul and Antalya. Ferries and the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque and the Grand Bazaar for a few days and then two days of lying on the beach on the Mediterranean in Antalya. I'm very excited. I have to do all the research for this trip last-minute in the Peace Corps office hours before we take off, as my internet is running perilously low due to an infuriating McAfee update download goof...but all will be well. I am confident. I managed Budapest and back all on my own. This time there will be two of us. Surely that can only mean twice the competence...

Anyway, this means that I will not really be at site for more than 6 days between now and August 8. Lots will be happening, but...I'm not confident about how diligent I will be at reporting it. I think I said it last year -- summer is busy and beautiful. Less time sitting in front of my computer. Sorry.

2) Quick story from Charlie's recent adventures in Ukraine

Our last day in Kyiv before his flight out, we stored our luggage in the Peace Corps office. It was a weekend and I hadn't gotten permission for him to come in, so I shouldered it all and shuffled inside on my own. All went well with the drop-off. On the pick-up, however, I hit a snag. The luggage room was newly stuffed with bags. The door was heavy. The Peace Corps had recently installed a lock on the door that required me to push a button from the outside to release the catch and open the door. There is no such mechanism on the inside. Yes, my friends. I swung around in the room and knocked the door closed...locking myself in the luggage room. That wouldn't have been so embarrassing, except that I had done the exact same thing a week and a half earlier. On that day, a weekday, I just knocked on the door and a staff member kindly opened it for me. An understanding glance from her, a sheepish grin from me, and problem solved. No such luck on a Saturday. I managed to crack open a window a few inches before it hit the security grate and spent a few ridiculous minutes pathetically calling, "Charlie! Charlie! ...Help?" No luck. The luggage room is a actually just a stairwell, so I went up the stairs and knocked on the door a floor up. Nope. As I'm imagining a full day spent trapped amid duffel bags and smelly socks, I remember that I have newly programmed the Peace Corps's number into my phone. Thank goodness my wallet had been stolen earlier in the trip. Otherwise I would never have programmed business numbers into my second SIM card.

The guard at the front desk answered the call. The same one who let me in five minutes earlier. And I rattled off: "Hi. My name is Gretchen, and I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer, Group 33. I'm...um...locked in the luggage room. Can you come get me out?" He came, of course. Held the door open while I wheeled all the luggage out. And saw me off.

This can't be the first time this has happened! Others must have been trapped by the lock-thingy on the door. Right? ...Guys?!

3) Summer garden update

On a recent day at site, I went over to my host-mother's apartment to make soup. She had asked me a number of times to teach her a specific mushroom soup I made for my birthday and, six months after the party, I thought maybe I should make good on my promise. Katya was at her grandmother's. I had just returned from traveling. This meant that Alla had no food. I had no food. I figured that, both of us being hungry, we should make lunch. The soup turned out okay, not great. Alla got it right, saying that it would be better after a night in the refrigerator. After the late lunch, though, we headed out to the countryside surrounding town to see if there were any white cherries on the tree in her garden.

On the way, we stopped at every single mulberry tree along the side of the path to strip the branches of ripe berries. We hadn't brought anything to carry extra berries in, so just filled our bellies. After a few minutes at each, Alla would call out "should we stay longer or go?" When we went, she would stop a few minutes later at another tree, "just to see if these berries are as sweet as the ones on the last tree." Like little kids, we tore into the ripe berries, unmindful of the meal we had just eaten, eager to enjoy the fleeting fruits of the season. After a few minutes, we were both covered -- mouths, hands, and shirts -- in mulberry juice. As I poked my stained head out of a tree, two students I'd had during my recent drama project passed, smiling heartily at the sight. "Hello!" And my muted reply: "Hello." Nothing like being a respected adult in the community.

After crouching in the high grass to wash our hands and faces in the pond down the lane, we continued onto the garden, a bright blue sky above and the slopes and spikes of field and tree in varied shades of green extending into the distance to the left. At the garden, Alla commanded me to eat the few strawberries left on her plants, and then exclaimed, in surprise, "There are raspberries!" So we ate still more. The raspberries were tiny because there was very little rain this spring, but they were the sweetest I'd ever had. We did finally get to work, though. After we'd shorn all the bottom branches and filled 2/3 of the bucket Alla brought, she hoisted herself into the tree, and I went to eat more raspberries, combining a handful of raspberries with a strawberry or two every few minutes. I kept swearing I couldn't eat any more...and then going back. I told Alla about being a child and over-eating summer fruit. And then eating more. And then being very, very sick. I was hoping to, this time, put the hard-earned wisdom of my 24 years to good use but Alla insisted it was probably all the chemicals in the fruits that made me sick, not their volume. And there would be no fruit left in the winter. Best to eat it all now, stomach-ache be damned. She had a point.

We hitched a ride with a neihbor back to town, too stuffed to walk properly, cradling a bucket and a bag of cherries in our respective laps. When we arrived at her apartment, the sun began to set, Alla began to make white-cherry jam, and I waddled home.

4) Graduation

Graduation was Friday. Most notably, it poured cats and dogs onto the graduates as they paraded through the city center and went through the city-wide ceremony on the steps of the performance center. One teacher said it was because the class studied poorly. But the principal of our school reminded the audience that rain was looked upon as good luck at the start of a new undertaking -- it heralded abundance.

The girls and boys all looked spiffy in their cupcake dresses and white suits. Actually, the trend was short dresses -- fortuitous, considering the rapidly-formed puddles that dominated much of the students' walk to the ceremony. One of my students had a real 18th c. look -- the curls to each side of her face, the mass of her hair pulled back and into a small bouffant at the crown of her head. Plus she had a full-skirted graduation dress, frilled and generously adorned. There were a few dresses I mostly liked this year; I don't know if this year's students are more fashion-conscious or if my tastes are changing (yeesh). The Dolynska student who went to America on an elite exchange program for the school year had returned and, though she has to repeat the 11th grade and will graduate next year, she paraded with her graduating friends, sporting a blue mortarboard and jeans instead of a gown. I appreciated the tribute.

At the city-wide ceremony, where gold and silver medals are awarded for distinguished academic performance (our school had two gold medalists and three silver -- yay Yura, Anya, Anya, Natasha and Maxim!) -- doves were released and one particularly perturbed bird flew directly into the windows of the performance center to escape the rain. When it was thrown back out again, it promptly flew into a second window. Representing some poor graduate who desperately doesn't want to leave home. ...Or maybe the smart graduate who doesn't want to fly with wet wings and sees a chance to stay dry. The bird made an attempt to shield itself from the elements while we all stood gaping in the rain.

At the school's graduation ceremony minutes later, our graduates performed. There were folk songs sung chorally. A solo. A waltz (for me, evidently, because they wore graduation gowns as a nod to American tradition). It was all very heartfelt and sweet. I got flowers. The other teachers got flowers. The students got flowers. The class teachers got flowers galore. There were so many flower exchanges that re-gifting happened almost instantly upon receipt of a bouquet. It was like a game: the one who gets rid of his/her flowers fastest wins; the one with the most flowers at the end of the night loses. The obvious target? The young, inexperienced American. In the middle of the ceremony, my counterpart turned and handed me a bouquet of roses she had just been given with the words, "Because you are a rose like a Shakespearean sonnet." Afterwards, a teacher -- sharp nose, sharp jawline, hair pulled back in a tight twist...a strict one -- I barely knew ran giddily (giddily!) over to me, gave me a quick hug and a giant kiss, and thrust her red roses into my hand with some Ukrainian words incomprehensible to me. Two seconds later, the art teacher, the tall, puppy dog one who taught me about pysanky last year, came and gave me a giant kiss, presenting his recently acquired roses to me with the words "From Ukraine!" I don't know what exactly I did to warrant all of the roses, but I was happy to have them. Add the nine red roses and five pink ones to the lilies my Ukrainian tutor (another class teacher) gave me out of her stack, and I came home with quite a scented haul. And in quite a good mood; flowers always make me feel better. Surefire cure for the blues: brightly-colored gerber daisies, carnations, or tulips.

5) Also, for those of you who were legitimately confused by my last entry a month ago, I have fixed it...if you feel like re-reading. Sorry for my general technological ineptitude. I was so happy to have a working computer that I forgot to use it correctly. Sounds like me, right?

So that's the news. Not much after a month, but it's something. Continue on with your lives. Go!

Worst updater ever. But...

Fri, 29 May 2009 20:41:12 GMT

After mid-June I will be blissfully free for a month, during which I promise to post the things saved on my computer, write more for you all, and, oh yes, frantically do all those real-life things I've put off for far too many months.

In other news, my computer is working! Well! The internet too! I took the laptop to the cell-phone/internet service store in Kirovograd, where the people are super friendly (best customer service in Ukraine) ...and was promptly frustrated. The man did everything I'd ALREADY done and, when it inevitably didn't work, told me to go home and try to log on in an hour and throughout the day. Then, the clincher. When I asked him what to do if it didn't work, he said, "It must work." Cue me: "There's no MUST about this." "It will work." "It's not working now. Why will it work in an hour? What have you done that's different from what I've done over and over for three days? Why will today be different?" "I've entered in all the settings. It must work." Exit me, doubtful and bad-tempered for spending my day off on a bus for nothing. But lo and behold, it works today! I'm ecstatic, but... WHY does it work? I am aware that computers are fickle and temperamental creatures, but why must it make me spend hours finding someone to fix it who does nothing that I do not do? God humbling me, I suppose. It's probably good for me to swallow my pride and go look and sound like an idiot in a Ukrainian store every now and then to keep my hubris in check.

To top everything off, my computer began charging once I got it home! My computer hasn't charged properly for months, but it's back to normal now.

Clearly, the cell phone store man is magic. Also, kudos to him for trying to speak English to me. Always much appreciated.

Also, today was Last Bell. Last official day of school. I asked to present some awards to students who had worked after school on English projects throughout the year, so got to stand on stage with the important administration people. Because the audience was not only students, but teachers, parents and city government officials, I gave my little speech in Ukrainian...complete with a dramatic pause and deep breath after every paragraph, during which my kids cheered me on. It was unnerving. But my Ukrainian tutor was standing just to my right (she was a class teacher {like a don for secondary school kids} for the graduating class this year and so standing up front). I could hear her muttering "Good. Good. Right" throughout, which helped. My goal was to refocus the attention usually directed at me as the strange American teacher onto the students who had displayed extra effort this year and encourage others to participate next year, but somehow the moment made ME the "event" of the ceremony. Students typically bring bouquets for teachers to Last Bell, and as I was thanking the school, students, and teachers, a few kids ran up with bouquets for me, which cued more students...and very soon I was buried under peonies (peonies have just come into bloom and most of the flowers were gathered from the garden). So I stammered out a "thank you, everyone" and went back to my spot, where the bigwig administration guy who came to the ceremony gave me the bouquet students had given him a few minutes earlier. Kids I've never even spoken to wanted photos. (I wish I could get my hands on one to show you all the mountain of flowers. I could barely get my arms around them.) I got thumbs-up and handshakes (handshakes! No-one's shaken my hand for AGES.)

Afterwards, I got to sit around and get tipsy with the other teachers at the celebratory lunch. Which, of course, is nothing exceptional. It seems that after every methodological meeting this year, I sent e-mails to various friends with, "We sat around and ate sandwiches and candy and I drank three glasses of wine...and then went to teach my 3rd period class." What was exceptional was that this time I was really a part of everything. Usually I'm just on the edges of faculty meetings. They even toasted me twice. The principal had me pour his vodka so he could say an American poured him a shot. There were also toasts to the teachers, the graduates, the class teachers, women, love... etc, as per usual during Ukrainian celebrations. No singing this time, though.

One of the English teachers said I had 'studied' Ukrainian -- perfective tense, meaning "studied thoroughly and completely." Of course I haven't. There's no such thing. I think the fact that my Ukrainian is still elementary is proved by the fact that I stood there and conducted myself while I spoke, my hand at my stomach, waving in little circles to propel my voice forward and get the cadences right. They THINK my Ukrainian is better than it actually is because my accent is good. Just because I can say things prettily does not mean that I can say a lot.

I was puzzled a bit by all the attention. Parents moved around to the front of the courtyard to watch me talk. They took pictures of me. I think, when I was planning my presentation and intending to honor students, I overlooked the impact that speaking Ukrainian would have on everyone. My kids either find it exasperating or cute. They are engaged in their own linguistic struggles and empathize with mine. My language difficulties are a point of similarity -- "she's like us." Plus my students and I understand one another. They know me, I know them. They like me. I realize now that it's different for the school community that does not interact with me daily and who are not my students. I usually think that people see me and my struggles to form a complete sentence as something different -- something sort of funny. I usually assume the attention comes from the novelty of it all. I forget that here I am both me and my country. When I stand up and speak in Ukrainian, I am the American who speaks fluent English, the language so many in the world study...and who yet took the time to learn Ukrainian. Not Russian. Ukrainian. I am not just cute. I thank them for helping me learn about their language and way of life when I could have easily stayed in Amercia. I am me, but the "me" I am here is inextricable from my nationality -- from the power and influence of my country. I am interesting not just because I bumble, but because I didn't have to try, and I did. They are gratified that someone from so far away sees the value of who they are and how they live. And are proud of me for doing so.

Or so it seems to me.

Spring. Garden Adventures (Part Deux)

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:47:28 GMT

(Part one is the simile post from last…August, maybe? Just in case anyone was confused.)

The sun began to shine the first week of April. It has not stopped, except to allow us a measure of darkness for sleeping, since. The chestnut trees put out leaves -- Nature's first green is gold and all that -- and the apricot trees began blooming three days ago. We are in a curious stage of vegetable availability, however. I find fewer vegetables in the market precisely because everything is on the verge of becoming locally available. Effie wants outside. When she does manage to evade my attempts to keep her in when I, distracted by my bag and my key and my shoes, walk in the door, she is too frightened to actually go out the building’s door. Happily, I have yet to need to chase her much beyond the landing.

I accidentally volunteered to go work in the garden on an early spring day, when the sun was bright but the winds cold. My host mother was exhausted, her son ill and demands on her time quadrupled for the week. I offered to help her out when she mentioned yet another thing she had to do – go with her friend to plant vegetables – meaning “Is there anything I can do here while you are out,” and actually saying, “May I help you?” The difference was in the verb – an “am I allowed to” vs. “am I able to.” Well, the verb and a few words (like “here”) that I left out. And, as usually happens in Ukraine, a whirl of activity that I seemed to have no control over soon resulted in my work skirt traded for sweat pants, a large blue-and-yellow jacket donned in place of my green one. I am considerably taller than any other woman in the apartment, with correspondingly large feet, so open-toed, flip-flop-type sandals were the only footwear option.

Outside, greetings and expressions of surprise prompted by my unexpected presence all complete, we loaded up a bicycle with rakes, hoes, and a basket of seeds and bulbs, and set off, Max the dog alternately speeding ahead and lagging behind. Alla’s garden lies to the north of town, and Valya’s to the south, where I had never been. The fields are more open to that side of town, the road running straight and flat beside fields stretching into the distance. Still bare soil, the plots look uniform, as though a part of one large, corporate farm. Only when the vegetables and fruits begin to sprout, when the individual crops and layouts are visible – kabachki to the back, strawberries in front, lines of onions filling the right, parsley creating a border between the squash and the fruit – will the fact that the field is actually parceled into half-acre plots become clear.

Reaching Valya’s plot, our first task was to rake up and burn all the dried remnants from last year. Alla set these great, tumble-weed sized balls of snarled twigs aflame, and I finally understood pyromania. My experience with fire has been limited. Crackling hearths in the evening at home, a quick flame to light a burner, the lighter I carry around – just in case (… a really awesome rock concert just springs up in front of me? I don’t know.). I couldn’t properly strike a match until Ukraine. In 2005 I had to ask Carol Pelletier for her lighter during costume design class so I could set fabric aflame with the rest of the class (Ah! That’s what the lighter is for. Emergency fabric identification. Quick, Scotty! Is it cotton?). Anyway… used to small fires for cooking and evening fires for warmth and comfort, the uncontrolled but controllable, destructive but useful, awful and beautiful nature of fire was something I’d never confronted. I sort of just stood, dazed and useless, while the piles burned, thinking “that’s the way for a king to go” and imagining Beowulf and Dido on their pyres. It does signal, like nothing else, definite and irreversible destruction as well as power, beauty and grandeur that is simultaneously terrible. Showy and hypnotizing, as though it could go on burning forever. I think, more than anything, the burning piles seemed Milton’s chaos substantiated. Earth and wood and flame jumbled together. The smoke billowing white, becoming blue, edged in yellow, the air becoming like the sea and then drifting away. No reason, no order. Perpetual destruction. Anti-creation.

My trance broken once the flames did inevitably die – in the real world, unlike my imagination, there are physical laws; materials are consumed, smoke is smoke. We weeded a bit – nothing too difficult, hacking away with hoes here and there at anything green in the soil – and planted a few kabachki. Dig a hole, put in some seeds, cover it. No problem. Then the real work began. Onions. Over 20 lines of onions. That’s a good few hours of bending over the ground, working individual bulbs from the fistful with gloved hands, and pushing each into the soil. Of course, real work to me is almost nothing to everyone else here. It gets hard later, when there is weeding and harvesting to be done. So says Alla. I was only a little sore later, so she’s probably right. And I worked and didn’t complain, so everyone was happy with me. Valya more than once remarked that she would tell others the unbelievable – the American helped her garden. Sometimes people seem to think that we don’t work at all. To be sure, I am much, much more unfamiliar with garden work than just about everyone here. But my parents and grandparents have had gardens. We still peel potatoes. The immense variety of American experience – upper/middle/lower class differences, country and rural life – is understandably difficult to imagine… just as new volunteers expect some similarity of lifestyle here and find it hard to accept the general “it’s hard to say exactly what you will face because every site is so different.”

The hardest part was not the work itself but the cold. As night approached, my fingers became stiff and my toes, only protected by the nylons I initially wore to Alla’s, ached continually, the chill sunk deep into the muscle. As we finished, though, my energy returned – probably spurred by the desire to get up and moving as soon as possible – and we tucked in the last few lines in record time. The walk home seemed faster than the walk out, and we were back in the warm apartment, attempting to keep the dirt to a minimal.

To that end, I ended up in the bathroom in my borrowed coat and underwear, Alla beside me in a similar state of undress. I didn’t even think twice about de-robing in the hallway the second we walked in. Alla washed our dirty socks (my nylons) and I went into the family room for my skirt, where my sick host brother was waiting for our return. Not awkward. Actually. Not much. Earlier that day as I walked to the apartment, when I couldn’t have conceived of the onion adventure that would fill my evening – visits to Alla have always increased the likelihood of an unexpected evening, but I go on expecting normalcy regardless – I recalled, for whatever reason, my first day with my host-family in Beijing. They walked into their apartment, said, “Make yourself at home,” and promptly stripped to their long-underwear. I remember because it was at that precise moment my line came squarely into focus: “I may eventually love you people dearly, but my pants will never, NEVER come off. Ever.” Three years later, line crossed. Line sprinted across, actually – no long-underwear, even.

The rest of the night saw a quick supper with Valya – Alla has decided I am too skinny and insisted I eat a few meat patties – and a very cold run home (the nylons that had kept my legs warm were still drying).

Fin.

(One day I will figure out a less awkward way to end posts.)

Dead mouse infestation!

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:37:45 GMT

And by “infestation,” I mean… there was a dead mouse in my junk closet. How did it get there? More worryingly…where there’s one, mightn’t there be more? It was about this time last year I found a dead mouse in my classroom. Is spring the time for flowers, kittens, AND deceased rodents?

Effie found the dead mouse while I was putting some stuff away. My counterpart’s cat recently died from eating a poisoned mouse, so the frantic mother part of me was not keen on letting Effie have anything to do with the corpse. I shoved her in the bathroom and swept up. I was just going to throw it off the balcony, but there was a babushka gardening below. Now, it’s not very neighborly to send dead mice raining down on an unsuspecting old woman, so I carried it all the way downstairs to the dumpster instead. When I let Effie out of the bathroom, she ran for the closet and started throwing herself against the door. I let her in. She is now very perturbed by its sudden and mysterious disappearance. I know this because for the last few minutes she has been punctuating her sniffing about with a cry up at me in her confused voice. Yes, she does have a confused voice: it is short and rises to a question mark… very cute.

Effie has decided the best way to handle the situation is to slowly stalk about the apartment with dilated pupils and carefully investigate every corner and darkened space. She’s gone all hunter on me. It’s sort of cute and pathetic to watch the fat house cat pretend to be a lion. But then, I pretend that I’m a good dancer and have solo dance parties in my apartment every now and again, so I probably shouldn’t judge. Nothing wrong with a little self-delusion. …I don’t have mice. I don’t have mice. I don’t have mice…

Update: As of this writing, Effie is still not normal. I’m beginning to worry. She’s acting scared, startled by any small noise and running for cover. She even shies at me. She’s always been social and unafraid, free from timidity and the wide-eyed “if I pay very close attention, maybe nothing bad will happen” cautiousness that characterizes so many cats. She flings herself down on the floor and stretches out wherever she feels like, whether on one of her beds or in a stranger’s lap. Her easygoing temperament is one reason I thought taking her back to the US wouldn’t be a problem. Now I worry that the mouse has caused some sort of psychological shock – the realization that something completely outside of her experience and slightly disturbing not only exists, but can find its way into her world. If you think about it, from a sheltered cat’s perspective, this could be a huge event. …I’ve been reading a lot of George Eliot. Specifically, the moment Daniel Deronda first became aware that he might possibly be Sir Hugo‘s son: a few words, a brand-new path for thought, and a suddenly altered worldview. George Eliot has me thinking about the peculiar combination of nature and circumstance that form character. I can’t help but think of my cat as a little, psychologically-complex being with assumptions and expectations and confusions. How deep will this go? …Unless I just actually have mice. And she’s only now realized it. Like a bloodhound. One sniff put her onto the trail.

Therefore, the real question of the moment is: is my cat a person or a dog?

Friday Night Narcissism

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 22:07:54 GMT

After arriving back in Ukraine after my spring break trip to Budapest (which I will write about soon. Promise promise.), I was a big brave girl and went all by myself to get my first Ukrainian haircut.

Unfortunately, I chose to get my hair cut on a bad language day. I did not realize this fact until I opened my mouth in the hair salon and a string of nonsensical syllables rolled out. I wanted to say “I need a trim. It’s been a long time since I had one. But I want my hair to grow longer, so please only cut off a little.” What I think I managed to say was “Hair long. I want short…er.” I was put in a chair. Then, instead of wetting my hair down, the hairdresser brushed it . I panicked a bit, torn between exclaiming (or, attempting to exclaim) “You can’t brush curly hair! Not when it’s dry!” and “OWW!” When I had a nice halo of frizz, the woman began to cut. My worries about what I was going to look like were not assuaged until I’d gotten myself home, wet my hair down, and checked to see what had actually been done. Now…even though she cut my hair dry, she did a nice job. She really did. I will admit to being doubtful, but I’m happy. However… I haven’t brushed my hair since mid-high. The straight-ish frizzy mess confused me. I lost all perception of what my hair actually looked like. When she showed me how much she was going to take off, it looked fine, but I forgot that when my hair went back to normal it would be much shorter. …As a result, for the first time since freshman year of college, I have shoulder-length hair.

I think maybe it might look better than it did long. Well… perhaps the shorter hair is more becoming, but it is definitely much less striking than the uncontrollable mane of curly hair I boasted for 5 years …and occasionally let loose. This haircut will be a good thing to keep in mind for when I want to be a grown-up. For now, though, I will continue to be young and wild and desire hair to my waist. “Hair: The...Musical” hair.

Also, ALL of my hats look better now. Especially the new hat I bought in Budapest!

By the way, this is the outfit I will wear until it gets too hot for a hat and a scarf. I have lived in my trouser-cut jeans and brown wool sweater since October, and the changing seasons mean it’s time for a new obsession.

Mid-photo shoot, I had a visitor!

That's all for tonight. I am, in fact, still in Ukraine and will have Ukrainian/Eastern European things to post soon.

Feb 2008-Mar 2009 in books (warning: really, really long)

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 15:20:15 GMT

In an attempt to make manageable a year of sprawling, unconnected reading (because you do not want to read the title of every poem and short story and article and half of a book I read), I present you with: things -- not magazines -- that I read cover to cover since my post-apartment post in February of last year.

Bleak House – Charles Dickens Based on how much Amy loves this work, I expected to like it. I didn’t expect to be so thoroughly in love with Esther. Or so worried about her; someone so generous and capable, yet so self-deprecating, is apt to guide herself away from the road to contentment, believing herself infinitely less worthy of happiness than she actually is. On a completely different note, from the moment he entered the novel, I wanted to shoot Skimpole. I love that Dickens’s characters compel such visceral reactions. Five years later, Uriah Heep still makes me squirm (I’m serious – mention his name and I convulse). It had been some time since I picked up a Dickens novel, and I forgot how much I smile at his grand sentences, his magnificent, joyful, magical English, his evocative descriptive passages, his controlled oratory infused with playfulness – and criticism – his broadly sketched but vivid characters, each with his attribute – Mr. Boythorn and his bird, Mr. George’s march, Vholes, black-gloved and buttoned up. I think everyone needs at least some Dickens in their year.

One of Ours – Willa Cather

Scenes from Clerical Life – George Eliot

Adam Bede – George Eliot This novel brought my “George Eliot works read during Peace Corps” count to 3 (4 if you count my Peace Corps preparation period reading of Silas Marner). Middlemarch is still my favorite for a number of reasons. Among them is my great affection for Dorothea, the limits of her self-knowledge, her devotion to work, her attempts to throw herself beyond herself, her cuteness – burying herself into the study of geography of Asia Minor in order to subdue her restless mind. I have a special affinity for that act, which reminds me of myself, turning to the memorization of Chinese characters as therapy whenever life gets too complicated. Anyway, Adam Bede is a lovely novel, and one that got under my skin. George Eliot’s concern for psychology and devotion to the close examination of human nature is evident – the novel is remarkably, uniformly populated with mostly good, albeit flawed and occasionally floundering, individuals. Eliot presents to the reader a fair share of human folly, generously portrayed. Throughout my reading of her works, I have been fascinated and moved by her forgiving treatment of our well-meaning but confused and bumbling, prejudiced, limited selves. Human life is somehow smaller, no grand trajectory, just daily struggles to make ourselves, each so different, at home in the world. At the same time, out of the sympathy for our fellow creatures that she inspires, the reader finds that humanity is all the more deserving of love, flawed but trying its hardest in a difficult world.

Autobiography of a Face – Lucy Grealy Bob and Judy sent this to me after they read my thoughts on Truth and Beauty. After reading Lucy’s voice in the letters Ann Patchett excerpts in her memoir, it was interesting to watch Lucy apply the same analytic eye to her past, an adult creating meaning out of her childhood experience. Now that I think about it, that tendency belies the poet in the memoirist. A poetic mindset applied to prose – the impulse to examine details and extract larger significance. This quality, for me, reveals Lucy as a remarkable individual; it is testament to her strength that she took such a lesson from illness. Sickness and pain seem so meaningless. And after the ravages of treatment and recovery, survival – of mind, personality, passion – is a whole new struggle, asking the intellectually and emotionally alive to make sense out of the senseless. I remember that, more than the story, I was struck by how the author emerges from illness triumphant, not because she survived, but because she came out with a mind alive to the world. Turning that mind onto sickness itself is a staggering achievement. The account shows us a thinking person engaged in carefully, feelingly charting an experience. The result is smart writing of great rhythm and beauty.

The 6 Barsetshire books – Trollope The series ranges across Barshetshire county, and each book is part courtship novel, part examination of church politics and personalities, and part social satire. The series, taken as a whole, is a portrait of the life – richly complex, joyous, heart-breaking – of an entire county and the individuals who populate it… all the while skewering government, journalism and Dickens, to name just a few. Trollope accurately illustrates the experience of human life in community, which is stitched together rather like a quilt – each story vitally important to those immediately concerned, but just a piece in the whole – and the reader can imagine characters continuing their lives even as they move out of the central frame. Every time I look back, I am increasingly astonished with the breadth of the books: a map of the patterns of interactions, ambitions, affections, and personalities that make up Barsetshire life. As it accomplishes this bird's-eye view, the series simultaneously manages close-ups of particular events and characters – who are all very well-wrought, idiosyncratic and as comprehensively depicted as the county. From the first, Trollope struck me for his linguistic precision, his prose straightforward and elegant. Among all the stories and individuals, it was poor, beleaguered Mr. Harding who was the heart of the series (for me, at least) and it was for him I kept reading, hoping with every novel to spend just a few pages with him. He is a person who deserves the world, a good man who is forced to question all he has and, worse, himself. He is profoundly concerned with the justice of his actions, delights in what is left as age and circumstance strip him bare, but, though unable to ignore wisps of longing for what is gone, accepts both the loss and the longing with grace. The world would be better if we were more like Mr. Harding. At the same time, if we were, I don’t know how we would survive – at least in Trollope’s world. Though not considered “the best” novel in the series, I liked The Warden – the first book and all about Mr. Harding. Side note: I believe that, had I been born a boy in post-Reformation England, I would have made a very good clergyman in the Church of England (I’m not entirely sure that this says much good about me…wouldn’t it be better to recognize Caleb Garth in oneself?), and so Trollope’s focus on the very human clergy fascinates me (See, what did I tell you? Man’s relationship to God and God’s creation. Subcategory: men of God.).

The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton

The Transit of Venus – Shirley Hazzard

Enter Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse If you haven’t read tales of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, please go read as many as you can get your hands on. As soon as possible. That’s all I have to say. Bertie and Jeeves are perfectly paired and perfectly posed to perform for the reader – polished and gleaming. I can’t remember when I laughed so hard. At this writing, I can imagine few pleasures to match spending an early spring afternoon with P.G. Wodehouse’s prose.

The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa I don’t know if I read this at an ideal point in the year, but even as I sat straight up in a strange bed night after night, awakened by visions of slow decay under the bright Sicilian sun, I recognized the work as particularly brilliant. Perhaps because it is so evocative. I can only imagine how lush the Italian must be. At times the English recalls overripe fruit, death scented just under the autumn sweetness. At other moments, I recall blinding light and aridity, the sense of dry bones draped in sumptuous fabric. I was left with the impression of Sicilian light and heat, the inevitability of excess’s slow disintegration in that climate. I remember sense, not story, the tragedy of watching your life disappear, aware but powerless – even if you’re a leopard. A novel that simultaneously seems a beautiful painting, illustrating life’s bleak truth. One to re-read.

Ivanov – Chekhov

Mrs. Warren’s Profession – Shaw

Man and Superman – Shaw

Major Barbara – Shaw

Jitney – August Wilson

Lost in Translation – Nichole Mones

A Cup of Light – Nichole Mones

The Keepers of the House – Shirley Ann Grau This book keeps coming back, haunting me, rising in my memory in the most unlikely moments. As concerned as it is with ghosts, the past, stories, remembering as a way of living, etc., I suppose my reaction is only fitting. I am particularly interested in the listed themes, so I found much food for thought in the book. For all of you not convinced by my poor, self-centered review… it won a Pulitzer! And deserved it. Read it if you get the chance. I hope to read it again.

The Quiet American – Graham Greene

The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson

Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood

Life Before Man – Margaret Atwood

Rasselas – Samuel Johnson

Walking Zero – Chet Raymo Look! Actual non-fiction! Essentially traces changes in human understanding of space and time – from the Earth-centered conception of creation to our modern belief in a universe almost unfathomably large and mostly empty, from the human-centered teaching about the arc of time in reference to the divine to a geologic frame that cites evidence of millions of years before us and implies eons untold in front of us. Raymo takes the reader through the history of major discoveries about space and time and man’s place in it all – Copernicus, Bruno, Galileo, Darwin, etc – and cogently explains the how and why. I most enjoyed the first sections, the first about man’s attempts to map the Earth and the second about the series of discoveries revealing Earth’s position in space. A lot of interesting information, presented with good examples and analogies – this man is obviously a teacher – that sometimes lead to random lectures about the function of architecture and what constitutes poetry. I could have done without his obvious contempt for religion as nothing more than man’s childish compulsion to cling to a comforting fiction – the self-centered universe. Raymo is allowed to believe what he wants and perfectly free to attempt to convince us of the same, but it is inappropriate to be so insultingly dismissive. I think. Religious tradition does deserve respect.

Raymo delights in the casting aside of “local assertions of centrality,” which extends to Earth-centered thinking, but every now and again this tendency (not necessarily of his particularly, but of the scientific community as a whole) strikes me as disturbing – and a bit ridiculous. When discussing means of measurement – meters and seconds – he notes that distance is no longer measured against a standard physical object – a platinum bar in France – and time no longer measured by reference to the rotations of the Earth. Instead, “the meter has been defined as the distance traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of precisely 1/299,792,428 second” and the second as “the duration of 9,192,631,770 vibrations” of a particular atom at a particular temperature. He almost exultantly concludes that “the new definitions make no reference to the Earth at all.” This is puzzling to me, and Raymo’s approval disquieting. Are we really headed to a place where an absurdly high number of atomic ticks are more important to measuring human life than how long it takes the Earth to move around the sun? In themselves, both definitions are equally arbitrary, I suppose, but the latter is so much more than itself; it is light and dark, summer and winter, all the thoughts and sensations connected to the ever-revolving, ever-renewing world. The new means of measurement are calculated to match existing standards, and, separate from their earthly antecedents, are completely arbitrary and meaningless. I understand the scientific need for the most consistent measurement possible and that, presumably, the speed of light and the vibrations of atoms are stable – more so than the speed of the earth or platinum. But… surely measurements of Earthly phenomena can and should refer back to the Earth. Our lives happen on Earth. What is wrong with using our home to measure our experience at home? How is a “cosmic” frame of reference helpful? It seems simply self-congratulatory – scientists patting themselves on the back for being so high-minded, capable of relinquishing the “local”… the Earth. But for what purpose? Which of us feels the progress of a day in the vibrations of atoms? Or measures the height of our growing children in the speed of light in a vacuum? Is precision more important than meaning? Aren’t measurements in place to make sense of the world we interact with? We can’t escape our human mind. We experience life in earthly terms. We will always understand our world through a human lens – a light-year is far, an atom small.

Perhaps this is also what bothers me about Raymo’s condemnation of religion as childish and self-centered. We are, to some degree, self-centered (especially if “self-centered” is defined as being preoccupied with Earthly matters). We can’t make meaning of our lives from the abyss of space and time. Friends, children, society… all of it focused around us, around men. All of the knowledge science offers about the unimaginable vastness of the cosmos is exciting, but that’s not where we live. By all means, we need to learn to consider things outside of our borders – beyond ourselves, our families, our countries, our species, and maybe even our planet – but at the end of the day, we step away from the wide open world and back into the circle of friends, family, co-workers, clients, etc, who share our lives. I believe that the lesson should not be “Grow up!” but something more along the lines of “think cosmically, act locally.”

Їжачок та Соловейко – Юля Мітченко and Юрій Ярмиш A kid’s book. Yep. That’s all I managed in Ukrainian all year. Cute. And now I know the Ukrainian for ‘hedgehog’ and ‘nightingale’ and ‘pine tree.’

Homeless Bird – Gloria Whelan

Biting the Wax Tadpole – Elizabeth Little

Everyday Drinking – Kingsley Amis Yay for fun! “The distilled Kingsley Amis” is liable to leave you hankering for all the unrefined material the editor sifted through in order to present its essence to the reader. A mixture of quizzes, recipes, ‘General Principles’ of drink and drink preparation, anecdotes, and articles (from ‘The Hangover’ to ‘The Mean Sod’s Guide’), the collection is a delightful mix of writings on all things alcoholic. Sort of… a really good cocktail party. Actually, I don’t believe that such a pleasant cocktail party could ever exist in real life – regular conversation is occasionally dull. Amis is as an engaging host as could be wished – a witty, commonsensical, unstinting (I’m so glad to find someone else as riled as I am by stinginess of food and drink… and someone able to deliver his censure with infinitely more bite and simultaneous charm than I ever manage) and knowledgeable champion of the common tippler, even though he himself could hardly be called such. I think I need to learn more about alcohol so I can appreciate the quizzes that make up the final section of the book.

Mere Christianity – C.S. Lewis I have tremendous respect CS Lewis’s Christianity. It is intelligent and reasoned. It’s also very, very tough. You want to believe it and dread believing it because it’s complex and it’s hard. It is an act of will against ‘ourselves’ and submission to the divine. It says that there is something very wrong with the world and insists that God requires us to do difficult things – put aside personal security, opinion, and self-regard and accept either the master or the judge. As I read his argument, I think that Christianity may just be true, but it is most certainly not pleasant. Not that pleasure is vilified. On the contrary, CS Lewis makes sure to point out that that there is to be much rejoicing in an ideal Christian society and that God “likes matter. He invented it.” There is a balance, but it is not found in exactly the way we would like. Though his instruction is hard, CS Lewis possesses a charitable, humane Christianity, acknowledging our limitations, hesitations, and struggles – his included – and asks the reader to show “a real desire to believe all the good you can of others.” The world is “a good world that has gone wrong, but still retains the memory of what it ought to have been.” That memory and our ability to tap into it and make it more tangible with our every action – in ourselves and in society – is the book’s comfort. On a semi-related note, it is clear that CS Lewis has read his Dante and Milton (and much, much more, but those are the two I most clearly identify). I love Dante. I’m much more likely to listen to a Christian writer who does too.

The Assistant – Bernard Malamud

Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance – Gyles Brandreth This was one of my least favorites this year. I found it poorly written and predictable, but it was sort of fun from a ‘fan-fiction meets murder-mystery’ point of view. Oscar Wilde the detective! Oscar Wilde meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyle! Actually, more of Conan Doyle and less of Brandreth’s Watson character would have made the novel better. Only really worth reading to enjoy the gimmick. Go read The Eyre Affair instead.

Cannery Row – Steinbeck I really liked this a lot. Of the works of his that I’ve read, it might be my favorite.

Of Mice and Men – Steinbeck I can’t believe I’d never read this before this year. I was astounded by how like a play this read. Each chapter was a ‘scene’ set in a single location – carefully set at the beginning, recalling dramatists’ detailed stage directions – in which the plot was propelled forward through dialogue, characters had their entrances and exits, and noises from events outside floated in the windows.

The Robber Bridegroom – Eudora Welty

Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen

Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman

Lake Wobegon Days – Garrison Keillor I have a great desire to read bits of this book aloud. Especially the Memorial Day, perils of January, and tomatoes and the comparatively meager pleasure of obedience passages, and most of the School chapter. Stories are meant to be told, and we all know that Garrison Keillor has a particularly acute ear for the music in English. The tales of boyhood and grand fantasies, the small town and its many inhabitants are very funny, very full of love, and, in a profound way, very true to both the humility and the greatness of experience.

Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

The Awakening – Kate Chopin Thank you to Paula (and probably Melissa Frazier) for teaching me things that made me capable of seeing the precise end of this novel before page …twenty-five, probably. An SLC education at work! There was really no other way for this story to go.

The Once and Future King – T.H. White I realize now that this is the only Arthur novel I’ve ever read. I was really only introduced to Arthur in Comedy and Romance, and coming at White from the Malory was an education in 'the novel' as a particular genre of prose. White has obviously loved and digested the Malory. He has illustrated the characters in much more detail, created psychological interiority, linked the sprawling tales to create a linear story line that steadily tracks Arthur’s rise and fall. The Malory is a sea of knights and battles and quests and events. Malory illustrates an entire world of chivalry…the scope, purpose, grandeur and tragedy of Arthur’s work. Poignant moments amid the formulaic language evoke the real humanity in the characters, but White explores those moments in much greater detail. He really does an excellent job of shaping Malory's effusive outpouring of plot. You get explanation along with events. It’s definitely more accessible – I mean… we are used to reading novels. But comparing them (people often ask me which I like better) is difficult because they are each doing their own work with the myth. It seems that White is concerned with the men and the story of Arthur, whereas Malory sets before us the teeming world of knights and their deeds.

I love Arthur. One thing that White has done is created an utterly endearing home for Arthur as Wart. The lovable, bumbling characters fade to make way for Arthur’s round table and the brilliant competence of his might-for-right fighters, and Arthur becomes more and more alone as his system collapses on itself despite all his efforts… and his entire life looks like a failure, questions of war and justice uselessly spinning around in his tired head. Only we can see the nobility in what is well-meant. Which is very emotionally affecting. I’m actually sitting here tearing as I think about it. White spends pages talking about what Arthur accomplished, but the work Arthur does fades in comparison to the reader’s feelings for Arthur and Guenever and Lancelot. I think.

Jewel – Bret Lott

Middle Ground – Margaret Drabble

Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers

In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

Pure Drivel – Steve Martin

And, to supplement, New Yorkers and other magazines, short stories, articles in Chinese, and various anthologized poems. I think I’ve done relatively well, considering my resources. I can’t decide, though, if the relative lack of non-fiction in favor of novels is a reflection of my general taste or of my circumstances. I think if I had my druthers and a good English library in town, I would have had a few more nonfiction works on the list, but I’m not entirely certain. There will be many years and time enough to find out, I suppose.

Currently working on: Essays of EB White (Yes, still. I’m savoring!), Ovid’s Metamorphoses (It’s about time I read all of this), Eliot’s The Mill and the Floss (officially at 4!). Intending to start serious, regimented study of modern literature and poetry in English, which I stubbornly avoided in college. Really. Sometime soon.

Note: Since writing, I have finished The Mill and the Floss. I have stuff to say. Give me some time to work it all out…

Whee!

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 14:30:51 GMT

After the previous post, I’ve decided I’ll use “or” when I title my first book and eschew the catchy title, colon, description of work -convention.

Compare.

After Yan Hui: The Traditional Intellectual in Modern Chinese Fiction

After Yan Hui, or, Scholars, Society and Fiction

Instantly cooler. As cool as Yan Hui gets. …Hooray for nerdy obsessions!

I actually did write that paper, the first one, for my Chinese lit course in Beijing. You know, all of my intellectual work comes back to the same three themes:

1) man’s relation to God and His creation,
2) boundaries and connection, and
3) Yan Hui (and, by extension, all the things that Yan Hui represents – the goals, process
and effectiveness of education, relationships with teachers, etc).

Oh, God. My work is about my life. I like to think that I’m objective about my work and not trapped in this endless cycling, but… I build conclusions filtered by the same preoccupations and concerns, reconfigured to reflect my state of mind at any given moment, unconsciously trying to make sense of the world I experience through the words I read and write. I delight in the abundance and complexity of what I find. I do. At the same time, I am afraid of the hamster-in-his-wheel syndrome, blindly, perpetually re-hashing the same ideas.

All of this has come from my current procrastination activity: I have been going through my papers from college. Doing so, I have found a few “I’ve been up all night, and oh God! What’ll I title this damn paper?!!” doozies. Here, to delight you, I present some of my favorites:

“Place of Rest: The Ecological Significance of Repentance in Paradise Lost”
-- how grad school is that? I’d get in on the title alone.
“Cecilia, Projectrix”
-- this is the time OED handed me my argument on a silver platter. Projectrix is one of my favorite words.
“Duck, Duck, Ghost: The ‘Here’ in Ibsen’s Domestic Dramas”
-- Amy’s favorite
“Bird of Prey: Brand’s Fowl, Compromise”
-- tee hee
“I Miss Ibsen: Fun with Strindberg”
-- I wish it had been fun

Joe’s Modern Theater course inspired the most playful titles. I think I was so flattened by desperation at the modern world he was forcing me to examine – devoid of connection, meaning, hope – that my writhing brain started firing in random directions to make words fun and keep myself sane. My worst college paper, “Imagination and Intensity: ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ and ‘Dejection: An Ode,’” was the result of Joe sitting me down and ordering me (ordering me) to see the “darker side of the Romantic imagination.” I don’t like looking at despair; my mind rebels.

Honorable mention goes to:

“A Breath of Fresh Air: The Basics of Breathing Coordination”
-- The paper I put least effort into during college, a book report for breathing class.
The title’s not bad, actually. Or maybe it is, and staring at all the worse ones have
warped my senses.

“You Be the Magistrate!”
-- Did you ever read the “You Be the Jury!” books? The book presented cases and you had
to decide whether the suspect was guilty or not. When Ellen had us do something
remarkably similar in her class on Pre-modern Chinese Law, I couldn’t resist.

“Activating Human Potential at the Boundaries of Self”
-- ‘Say that again?’ The most laughably, stereotypically “SLC” of my paper titles, I
believe. Written for Sandra Robinson, if that clarifies anything for SLC grads among my
readers. Notable, I suppose, for being the first paper I ever wrote about China.

“From the Mouth of God to the Magus’s Hands”
-- Sounds rather indecent, doesn’t it? It’s really about Giotto’s painting of the Adoration.

“Love in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre”
-- Just in case you confused it with another Jane Eyre. …What a vague title.
Love? What about love?

“1+1: Dickens, Lawrence and Hemingway on Human Connection, Sex, and the Experience of Significance in Industrial Society”
-- Cumbersome enough for you? I was just going to call it “Industrial Sex,” but then
realized that would be the title Joe put in my evaluation. Thought better of it.

“Nature Ne’er Deserts the Wise and Pure…or the Repentant”
-- Quoting an unrelated poem by Coleridge to title a paper on Dante is totally
legitimate.

“Rare Egyptian!: Regal Self and Statehood in Dramas of the Renaissance and Restoration”
-- Fancy, intelligent-sounding title. Awful paper.

“Lost Petrarchan Poem Uncovered in Vatican Library!”
-- Title for an academic paper, headline… same difference. Contains my imitation
Petrarchian sestina. Notable for forcing me to realize that I am not Petrarch. It could
have been worse. I could have been Meaghan and facing the fact that I was not
Shakespeare.

“A Vanishing Narrator and Fictitious Publishers: A Fitting End to The Captain’s Daughter”
-- My paper on Pushkin’s historical fiction. Schlegel’s quote, “The historian is a
prophet facing backwards,” intrigued me (did I mention the process of
studying/writing/interpreting history among my obsessions?). I tried to use the quote to
read Pushkin, taking a final passage, written as though by the book’s publishers, and
tracing its statements backwards into the body of the work. Besides being here because
it’s an awful title and deserves mocking, I am sorry I never quite worked my thoughts out
about the historian. This is the trouble with most of my literature papers: reading
them, I can feel myself overreaching, straining to come to conclusions too complex and
sophisticated for my young brain.

“哦加拿大!” (translation)
-- That’s, umm, “Oh, Canada!” …If you were stuck on a train for 30 hours with a friend,
you just might come up with a similar activity to pass the time. I’ll tell you all the
story sometime. It’s better bilingual, but, among my acquaintance, there’s rather a
limited audience for Chinese-English storytelling. All of you – get to work studying
Chinese! It’s an awesome language. Really. Go! Study!

“辣椒”
-- Poem about hot-sauce, written in couplets and as close an approximation of
trochaic tetrameter as I could accomplish in Chinese. (missing the last unstressed
syllable on each foot – I could label it headless iambic tetrameter, but I like
considering most the two-syllable words together as a foot. Is that allowed?) …All the
cool kids were doing it.

I hope you enjoyed the jaunt down memory lane. I should compile my paper titles; it would provide an interesting picture of my college career. For myself, of course. I wouldn’t subject you all to that. Or I could amuse myself with a recap of semesters in terms of their papers…and webboard posts. I think fall 2004 (and maybe even spring 2005) would just say: “Webboard! GAH.”

Christmas,

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:26:06 GMT

or, Concerts Galore

Christmas itself involved going out in the morning and, discovering the hordes of people carrying trees back to their homes, impulsively buying one myself. It was the first day they had really been up for sale around town. I took a trip to a chain grocery store to buy lights and ornaments. I stood the tree in my emptied trash bucket and wrapped a red plaid skirt around the base. A real tree skirt! The afternoon involved making my very first very own Christmas tree pretty. Once I had set up the Christmas tree, however, I couldn’t very well tear into the presents and destroy the display. I willed myself to leave everything alone so birthday party 2, with the Americans, would look festive. See picture below. Amy’s gift arrived soon after the Christmas tree arrived, so I had a picture of an American Christmas tree to overlook my little corner. A picture of a Christmas tree over a Christmas tree in Ukraine erected to refer to Christmas traditions in America. Is there such a thing as meta-Christmas? I think I had one of those this year. Presents were opened over the course of the next few days, rewards for getting this or that completed.

Christmas evening my host-mother invited me to Katya’s New Year’s celebration. I arrived before the concert to find the apartment in disarray, fabric all over the rooms. Alla and Katya were creating her New Year’s costume. This year, she went as a bad mushroom. Picture!

The concert actually consisted of three parts: a large concert in the auditorium, a competition of sorts between classes, and a New Year’s skit performed in a secondary hall by the 7th form, which was the precursor to a dance. The large concert was a poorly prepared affair, when compared to the usual Ukrainian school concert. My host-mother was outraged. It was made up of the general mix of songs and pop-culture parodies (a skit about the Addams family practically ruining, but then saving, New Year, for example), though dance acts were noticeably sparse. My favorite skit was a silent takeoff of a popular cartoon featuring a skillet-toting house-wife, her bumbling husband, who occasionally gets one to the head with the aforementioned cooking implement, and a bear (it was awesome). Side note: My school just had a “safety” concert, where different classes put together skits to teach lessons about fire safety and first aid. The skits were really good. I admire that most students here are unafraid to perform and given a comparatively large number of opportunities to be creative and write and perform their own stories. My American self sighs, though, thinking, “If only that energy was more often channeled into their studies and they were encouraged to create innovative answers and think beyond what the textbook says.”

Ukrainian concerts feature the familiar. The acts most often reproduce, refer to, or (perhaps) reconfigure cultural standards that everyone in the audience recognizes and enjoys. Popular cartoons. The Addams Family. Folk songs are performed at annual concerts year-in, year-out. Students have repertoires, two or three pop songs and/or dances they can pull out at a moment’s notice. Even when more than a moment’s notice is given, the finished product of a dance act, for example, will feature old dance steps reconfigured to fit a new theme. The new and unexpected rarely make an appearance. Concerts are a chance for a particular community – school, town, camp – to connect, and the well-known reaffirms common identity and comforts, allowing the entire audience to participate. Everyone knows what’s going on. Everyone can sing along. It is easy to appreciate and interpret whatever variations on the usual theme occur. American PCVs tend to find this repetition dull; we are trained to expect a greater degree of variety in performance. Innovation.

I think it follows that, where Americans value and, indeed, expect virtuosity, Ukrainians expect preparation (thus my host-mother’s outrage at the students’ many missteps). Where the new is valued, the wish is that a performance will, to some degree, amaze and/or delight with either a unique talent or a unique perspective on a familiar work. I know few Americans willing to display their talents in public and even fewer prepared to do so at short notice. Because getting up in front of an audience in America is essentially saying that you have something special to give – you are accomplished. Even schools (talent shows, anyone?) can seem mini professional realms instead of forums for student self-expression. In contrast, Ukrainian singers (let’s use singers for the present) are not better singers than the rest of the audience. They’re not. They have simply prepared a song – for the joy of singing it. A song that people might like to hear. And if they like it, people in Ukraine will sing along. No one would sing along at a talent show in the States. Not to the point of drowning out the singer, at any rate. Performance in America is about appreciating – and, yes, enjoying – the skills of the performer. You can’t appreciate what you can’t hear. In Ukraine, rousing participation is a mark of success. The performer has chosen well, and performed it well enough to inspire people to sing. The two countries seem to me to have different goals, different expectations. Enjoyment is found in different things – familiarity vs. accomplishment, community vs. individuality. Personally, I do not find Ukrainian concerts more interesting or more impressive than their American counterparts, but they are certainly more supportive. I love to listen to a great singer, I do. Most of the time, I would rather be at an American performance. That being said, I also love to watch a shy little girl find the confidence to belt out a pop song, not altogether well, while her friends cheer her on and the rest of the audience sings along. There is good to be gotten from mediocrity.

After the big concert, my host-mother and I sat to watch Katya perform as a bad mushroom in the New Year’s pageant. I have seen a number of New Year’s pageants/concerts over the past two years, and the general conceit is that there is some storyline that functions to frame the various performances and competitions. This story, as far as my poor Ukrainian leads me to believe, usually involves some evil-doer attempting to steal Christmas, and then Did Moroz (Grandfather Frost – aka Santa Claus) and his niece – leave it to Ukraine to pair Santa with a young girl – arrive to foil the plot and light the New Year (Christmas) tree, signaling the arrival of the holiday. Like the concert I described above, the framing story is often drawn from pop culture. The Addams family sketch falls neatly into this tradition – threat to New Year, attempt to save it. My school saw a “The Little Mermaid” themed pageant, where Ariel, Sebastian and King Trident tried to save New Year from Ursula. My host-sister’s pageant was about the bad mushroom and her compatriot who decided to steal the New Year’s presents… I think because they thought Did Moroz had forgotten about them. But, again, my Ukrainian is shaky. Despite my limited understanding, it was interesting to see, and fun to watch my host-sister and, later, my students play. I am afraid I sometimes lose track of what their lives outside of my classroom include.

New Year was laid back, an hour or so with my host-family, and then the rest of the evening with my counterpart and her family, watching Ukrainian New Year’s concerts on TV and eating salad. I have not had many of the overwhelming, ‘Eat more! Drink more!’ parties that most Americans experience. Once in the village, host-Tato’s birthday ended in lots of champagne and cake and a splitting samahon headache, but, otherwise, my Ukraine experience has been rather low-key. Labeling watching Ukrainian New Year’s TV concerts as “low-key” may be a misnomer, however. They are grand spectacles, involving very scantily-clad pop stars, energetic dance numbers, lots of champagne flutes held aloft, and glitter galore. To give you a taste of the pop music/entertainment culture, an opera singer – complete with theater-appropriate emotion (think: the audience is VERY far away), hair tossing, and expansive hand gestures – made the opera-pop transition with no problem. Add some backup dancers, and you’ve got a star! The entire industry is gaudy and spectacular. Go big or go home.

Fascinating as it all was, I turned into a pumpkin at about 2 AM, wanting very much to go home. A nice neighbor of my counterpart came in to visit her just as we were about to leave and tried to talk a bit to me, but it was futile; the language switch in my brain is most definitely thrown to “English” between the hours of 12 and 7. I feel as though I have a little secretary in the lexical storage department up there: “I’m sorry, but we stopped processing those requests two hours ago. Please try again in the morning, when we will be open and ready to assist you.” After the hours of continuous Ukrainian input from the TV and the failed conversation, I was reduced to staring at the wall clock, fervently hoping that the very nice man would go home so I could go home.

I went home. I slept. And that was my holiday season. Orthodox Christmas and Old New Year were celebrated, but I was not invited to do anything in particular. So I studied for the GREs (I got my official scores the other day. I don’t want to talk about it.) and prepared for classes. A quiet, albeit stressful, coda to a very noisy month.

There is more on its way. Maybe even this weekend. I'm not making any promises. It is the first weekend I've had free since school started, however, and I have grand plans. ...Most of which involve me holed up in my apartment at my computer. Is it bad that the previous sentence does not depress, but excites me? Am I hopeless? Being a hermit is ok as long as I get some work done, right? Right?

Yes, I did, in fact, have a birthday. Only seven weeks ago, actually.

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:58:28 GMT

I only post about holidays – preferably when the next big-ish celebration is practically upon us. I don’t think I’ll have anything to say about Valentine’s Day, so you don’t have to hold your breaths waiting for an update. I’m sorry. I know you were all so looking forward to the Early 2009 Romantic Report from Ukraine.

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.)

I told you Alice would be back

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:19:16 GMT

Ok. So this isn't exactly what I promised last post. But then, since when do I deliver what I promise? At least it's something. More on its way once I get caught up on correspondence.

Upside Down Inside the Ukrainian Rabbit-hole

‘I can’t explain MYSELF, I’m afraid, sir,’ said Alice, ‘because I’m not myself, you see.’

‘I don’t see,’ said the Caterpillar.

‘I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,’ Alice replied very politely, ‘for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.’

I am beginning to suspect that I inhabit Wonderland. However, I can’t quite decide if I am Alice or, if having spent one too many months lost in the rabbit-hole, I have relinquished my aboveground citizenship. My very own Cheshire cat, quirky and confusing, is still the most logical person I talk to every day. At the same time, I realize that I am, therefore, talking to my cat. Hopping around with roll of wallpaper, pretending to cut off a monster’s head, attempting to get a bored and unruly 10b excited about Jabberwocky, I have the occasional desire to shout “Off with their heads!” The queen of hearts may not have ever seen her executions carried out, the king secretly reversing the sentences almost as soon as the words flew from her lips, but the words nevertheless instilled the desired terror and, shall we say, encouraged her subjects’ cooperation. I would be very happy to be overruled by Ukrainians in the teacher’s lounge, effectively leaving me to wield an empty threat, if the sword’s dulled edge could at least prod the students into feigned enthusiasm and scare them into maintaining the appearance of discipline. As I gleefully contemplate the possible effects of whimsically ordering executions left and right, Anya to Tanya to Vadim, the strangeness of my daydreams hits me: What is this place and this job and what has it done to me? Who am I?

At the very beginning of Lewis Carroll’s tale, long before she meets the condescending Caterpillar, Alice tumbles down the rabbit-hole into Wonderland, keenly aware that something very strange is happening and that whatever she will encounter at the end of her fall is quite out of her daily experience. But even as she rightly recognizes this fact, poor Alice is mistaken as far as the kind of change she will face: “How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward,” she exclaims before imagining a conversation with one of Australia’s indigenous Antipathies, and attempting a curtsey in mid-air. Physical topsy-turviness she is prepared for, but a place where the very forms of her daily life – polite curtsies and how-do-you-dos – are turned upside down is beyond her ken. Understandably so – who could possibly anticipate facing a gryphon dancing the Lobster Quadrille or a singularly ugly Duchess and her morphing pig-child?

Similarly, disembarking from a plane in Kyiv, what sensible American would ever conceive that a simple game of Bingo could take a full class period to accomplish? Or that the first question new students would think to ask the 20-something teacher thousands of miles from home would be “Do you have your own kids?” I certainly came expecting change, but not necessarily prepared to undergo the 180 degree shift in perspective required of me by a world flipped on its head.

Alice, very much like a Peace Corps Volunteer, is faced with two major problems of perception throughout her stay in Wonderland: the problem of language and the problem of size.

Her troubles with language begin when, swimming in a pool of her own tears, she offends a fellow swimmer, a mouse, by energetically launching into a description of her cat’s superior hunting abilities. Still focused on the “there” where she was, she neglects to think of what is actually in front of her (an example of Dinah’s unfortunate prey) and finds her normally well-mannered self looked upon as an insensitive boor. The social discomfort that leads her to make this blunder and her ill-considered words herald a book’s worth of linguistic frustration.

The work as a whole is very concerned with language; puns, morals, nonsense, and poetry all make finding meaning into a game – a puzzle without a definite solution. Wonderland’s nonsensical playing is absolutely foreign to Alice, who is forced to take language seriously. The aboveground world uses language as a means of instilling order and making the world understandable, and, to that end, Alice possesses an un-ignorable decorous upbringing that not only teaches the linguistic forms to be used in society, but also instills expectations about what she is to hear in response. She is thus afflicted by confusion as well as the uncomfortable feeling that everyone around her is very rude indeed. More, Alice trusts words – obeying “Eat me!” “Drink me!” without much hesitation, assuming a substance detrimental to her health will most certainly be marked, “Poison.” In her England words have import, and in Wonderland they are her only means of learning about, and maneuvering within, the strange new world. To Alice, language must be meaningful, and she sets to work making sense of what she hears, even when it means nothing – attempting to solve a nonsense riddle at the Mad Hatter’s tea-party, for example.

Not only does her aboveground perspective leave her unable to make out intended meaning, it renders her incapable of communicating. She confronts more than a simple language barrier; she faces an alien mindset. Her audience responds to her questions in incomprehensible ways and misinterprets her words. She may speak English, but she can’t effectively use their English to communicate. Suddenly, though she means what she says, she can’t adequately say what she means. Worse, as she moves through Wonderland, she begins to lose her own words; poems and songs she once knew by heart come out of her mouth changed. Mistake and miscommunication muddle her until she faces the disconcerting failure of that which seemed solidly hers: sensible English, the proof that her normal, understandable self still exists.

Adding to Alice’s confusion, and beginning earlier in her journey than most of the real linguistic difficulties she faces, are her constant shifts in size. The world she enters is not only different from any she has experienced because of the way it looks, but because of the way she looks at it. Alternately miles high and a meager three-inches tall, Alice endures a shifting perspective on Wonderland and a fluctuating relationship to everything within it – she is, for example, both a potential chew-toy to a puppy and a ruthless predator to a talking pigeon – that changes, not once or twice, but minute-to-minute. The changes in her physical self result in …well, a tremendous headache, I would imagine… but also an uncertain grasp of what she is and how she relates to the world. Who can she associate with? Is she so big that she poses a threat to those who see her? Or too small to be deserving of much consideration? More, Alice finds herself unable to do the most normal activities because of her size; whether too big to fit comfortably in a room or too small to take a desired key off a table, physical changes force her to act under unfamiliar limitations. And then, after enduring all of the literal ups and downs and frustrations of a few hours in Wonderland, she is asked – by, of all incomprehensible things, a hookah-smoking caterpillar – to explain herself. I’m surprised she didn’t sit down and cry.

All of which paints a rather distressing picture for me, one of Ukraine’s American Alices. My task, in confronting a new linguistic environment, is to get my head out of America – refrain, if possible, from speaking of cats to mice – and, following that, to not only know the words I hear and what they mean, but to hear and absorb what people in our new environment mean. I decode as well as translate – one cannot necessarily trust literal translation when “Ідй гуляти на вулиці” can mean “go sit in the yard.” To make myself understood, I find myself losing my old, comfortable English; I look towards the day when I will find that “Guys. Here’s what we’re going to do today” has incomprehensibly become “Pupils, on the lesson today, we shall study…”

As with Alice, linguistic troubles contribute to my problems of size. I am a giant in the classroom, both figuratively as the best English speaker for kilometers and, at least with the littlies, literally as a full-grown girl towering over boards set low for short arms and bending over desks built small for short legs. But the local militiaman at the door sends me scuttling for my cell phone and childishly begging my counterparts to “translate, please!” Poof – three inches tall. I bungle a purchase at the local store that even my poor 12 weeks of language training should have enabled me to handle with some facility and then am rather surprised to find that I can still see over the counter. The changes leave me reeling – big to little in record time, multiple times a day. I struggle to feel like the self I left in the States – who, despite my self-deprecation, I really did mostly like – while I am confronted with constantly shifting relationships to the wider world and seemingly impossible linguistic puzzles, both of which leave me wholly disoriented.

I take comfort in the fact that Alice had a whirlwind tour of Wonderland and I am in Ukraine for considerably longer. I find that, after a year of constant shifts in size, the vertigo has, for the most part, worn off. The jump from gargantuan in the 4th form to Thumbelina in the corner store still occasionally gives me pause, but the self-doubt goes away much more quickly.

I have always secretly held that Wonderland had its own logic unknowable to the aboveground reader, who is like Alice and thus sympathetic to her errors and her way of perceiving the world. To be honest, I can’t quite accept that it is unknowable, either, and every time I read the story, I find myself searching for the thread that ties it together, the clue to understanding the many forms of madness, the right height from which to view the events and interpret their significance. My search for a single answer is perhaps the problem, and Wonderland delightful and enraging because it is strange in so many divergent ways, each stop functioning according to its own logic instead of comprehensibly continuous with the larger whole. Maybe all that shape-shifting is an aide to understanding and not a problem: valuable practice for Alice, her trust of words – “Eat Me!” – leading her into situations where she is forced to see the world from a plurality of perspectives markedly different from her own.

A year of regularly changing size, then, has perhaps helped me get my head turned around to a Ukrainian mindset. And I have another advantage over Alice: Ukraine is at least aboveground and subject to some aboveground rules – no morphing pig-children here. I find that there is logic to that which at first seemed upside down. The bingo phenomenon no longer perplexes me; in a world where so much has to be written by hand, where official forms are very important, and where copybooks are proof of what has been learned, perfectly straight lines on a bingo board are important and a virtue. Even “Do you have kids,” still frightening, makes some sense: many of my students’ parents work abroad, and so a mother far from home for the foreseeable future is not foreign to their experience. Day by day, piece by piece, despite persistent upheaval, the world slowly turns right side up.

At the end of Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll introduces Alice’s older sister, the one who stays at home, to the plethora of perspectives his tale includes. Alice’s sister is the first to hear what is inside the rabbit-hole. Reflecting upon it, wishing to hold Wonderland in her memory, she keeps her eyes closed out of the knowledge that upon opening them “all would change to dull reality… the rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheepbells, and the Queen's shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd boy…while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle's heavy sobs.” Separate from the overwhelming anxieties consequent of immersion in Wonderland, she savors her sister’s exotic dream. The common scene she holds at arm’s length as undesirable, however, is beautiful. After the maddening tea party and the chaotic lobster quadrille, tinkling sheepbells and lowing cattle are reassuringly normal. Peaceful. Beautiful in their familiarity and beautiful in familiar ways. The world Alice's sister wishes to escape from is exactly the calm, idyllic way of life that those of us who have been through the confusion and self-doubt of Wonderland crave.

I wonder how my audience receives my stories, and if the Americans I left behind have any idea how much I long for the sights and sounds of a daily commute on MTA. We all – Alices and her older sisters – need something to romanticize, I suppose.

At the same time, Alice's sister is correct. Memory works to smooth and polish the rough edges of experience, and her distance from the events mirrors the work Alice’s memory will carry out in the future. Alice may one day delight in Wonderland where she once felt only confusion. Maybe her story will change with time. Maybe Alice will relate her strange experiences to others, amusing and enchanting rather than confounding. Even as the vibrancy fades and both teller and audience take pleasure in the tale's charm at the expense of the baffling reality, Alice's adventures in Wonderland contains un-guessed-at lessons for those of us who, like Alice, eventually travel on our own and look back on her stories from rapidly shifting heights. (because I like overly dramatic endings)

Happy New Year

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:03:59 GMT

I will post more about the holiday season as soon as it's officially over.

At the moment, I just want to say that I turned 24 on the 24th of December. Golden birthday! AND it's a multiple of 12, so I was born exactly 2 12-year cycles ago during the year of the rat.

I think this means I get the best year ever (So what the year of the rat ends in less than a month? I still get my year!). Princeton and Harvard, my grad applications are on their way.

Actually, I had a pretty good 2008, all things considered. So, with the exception of turning out at least one excellent grad school app, I would be very grateful if the fates would pass my year onto Amy or Clare or someone who deserves it much more than me.

SOMEONE I love had better have the best year ever.

That's all.

End of post.

And, coming in at only 2 weeks late...

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:29:49 GMT

Thanksgiving.

Ok. I am going to an only slightly belated Thanksgiving reflection. On the same day as my Halloween post! In my defense, I wrote the Halloween thing ages ago. I just kept forgetting to upload the photos because I got caught up with other writing, which I am currently debating about posting. My ideas may need a bit of refining. It’s that ever-problematic “So what?” that haunts my academic work, which tends to consist of good analysis peppered with interesting ideas… that I don’t quite gather together into anything conclusive. And thus my work strikes the reader as rather underwhelming in its insight. “It sounded really interesting throughout…but didn’t really lead anywhere.” “Great idea! …But what does that mean?” Anyway, if I get it figured out, I will share. If not, I guess you will all have to content yourselves with this vague paragraph. …I really am a tease.

Onto Thanksgiving. On the whole a delightful day – I hope all of yours were the same. I went to the oblast center to be with other PCVs and their family/friends. The meal was a very delicious, very traditional Thanksgiving, with turkey and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes and stuffing, etc. No pumpkin pie, though. I was unexpectedly and happily very busy throughout the day. Early in the afternoon, I got myself appointed Special Agent Y and ran errands throughout the city in the service of the grand Thanksgiving feast. I also helped serve dinner and plated our three chefs’ food for them. Thus I did not have to sit around, which is something I don’t do particularly well. For the hour or so when there was nothing to do, I ended up in the middle of a full dining room with The Once and Future King . Very social, I know. But when not otherwise employed, I can’t turn off the tendency to separate and do some thinking instead of awkwardly trying to talk to a roomful of people about something interesting but nothing in particular. Being busy keeps me present; I’m more cheerful and willing to talk when there’s a task to be completed. The conversational part of my brain moves forward instead of stalling. So, a busy Thanksgiving ended up being the best and most relaxing thing for me.

With Thanksgiving came winter, though no real snow yet – just a dusting a few weeks ago that stayed for a day and then disappeared. There has been rain, though, and I was reminded of exactly why, incomprehensible to me over the summer, winter sees me stripping down to my long underwear immediately upon entering the apartment. It’s rainy and muddy during the winter! Lugging all the sodden fabric around the apartment is messy and uncomfortable. This is the season that the little table in my hallway gets progressively more cluttered as I dump umbrellas and bags to free my hands for unzipping caked shoes and stained pants. Thank goodness for long underwear to keep me cozy indoors as well.

This holiday season, I suppose I am thankful for my experience with the Peace Corps because of all the things it is teaching me, which I am only now beginning to recognize. I am learning to think ahead in my relationships with people – to see and do things that will be pleasant or helpful before being asked. I should thank Ann and Joe for that as well; it was their kindness senior year that got me thinking about being thoughtful. The Peace Corps has helped me put that lesson into practice by taking away my ability to speak fluently. If I can’t say how happy/sorry/thankful I am, I will show it. Cue the deluge of baked goods currently rushing into the homes of kind neighbors and co-workers.

Peace Corps has helped me become more articulate, if only because I stand in front of people daily and try to explain myself. Not about particularly complex things, mind you, but I do have to be clear in word and gesture. Occasionally I am asked to explain more nuanced aspects of American culture. Doing this teaches me to be straightforward, but not oversimplify. To choose illustrative examples. To use language that is clear and appropriate. To keep my vocabulary and syntax at a learner’s level while defining, not omitting, important and apt words.

Part of attaining more clarity in speech has been learning to relax. Something I think my racing heart appreciates. Other Volunteers have noted that I seem less crazed and uncertain all the time. Someday I will wake up and look at myself and my many anxieties and my certainty that everything is so important , laugh and say “F*** it!” and will officially be grown up. Today is not that day. Tomorrow will not be that day. But someday. As regards speech, relaxing means that, to a greater extent, I trust that some word will eventually come… whether it’s exactly the word I want is questionable, but some workable word will come. (Magically, relaxing seems to help the exact word find its winding way more often.) Writing’s when I really have to worry about finding the right word. In front of a class or in conversation, the perfect word is of course desirable, but a suitable word will do. Teaching has forced me to realize that fact, to relax, and to trust that it will be ok. (I would be the one who has to be forced to relax.)

Also, I am thankful for my students. They are the reason that I’m here, after all, and they can destroy and re-build my confidence in minutes. I have been thinking a lot about teaching recently; these last five weeks have been the first time I’ve been really focused on my primary project since June. Summer was full of camps. September was a haze of scheduling craziness and plans for America. October was vacation after vacation. November has been a time to do my job.

Though I am mostly a failure as a teacher, in my good moments I do believe I am doing a little bit of good. Some of the students – the younger ones, especially – are improving. Some of them are trying to speak English to me outside of class. Some of them just think it is a novelty and funny to speak in English. But at least they’re speaking it. I remember the glee with which we peppered English sentences with Chinese words and phrases just because it was silly or because we didn’t want others to understand us. Play is an important part of learning and personalizing language, and I’m very willing to encourage my students to make jokes in half-Ukrainian and half-English, combining the two (“I am juice!” because the English “sick” sounds like the Ukrainian “cik,” “juice”), etc. I notice at least two students who are using English more just because they think it’s cool to talk to me, the American. I have two or three entire forms who, when they’re not driving me to distraction by their endless, unfocused energy or in-fighting or grand attempts to keep me off topic and away from writing assignments, readily use half-English to ask questions, express what they want, and make fun of one another. One of my 7th grade girls has suddenly started improving, in spoken English at least, by leaps and bounds. We were talking about food’s different flavors (spicy, salty, sour, sweet, etc), and had just learned cooking verbs (mix, add, chop, sprinkle, grate, etc). I was asking “What does salad taste like?” Someone said “Sweet!” I said, “Full sentence, please.” “Salad… sweet.” “Salad is sweet.” “Salad is sweet.” Out of nowhere, she pipes up: “But… if we…sprinkle…salt… on salad …it will be salty.” And then smiled HUGE, delighted with what she’d just managed to say. Creative and a full sentence. Not because I called on her, but just because she had something she wanted to say. I almost cried right there in the middle of class.

Last week, we reached the ends of units in many classes. So we did projects. This essentially means that I set them lose with crayons and scissors. Thank God, I have finally figured out how to make projects successful here. I assign the English portion of the assignment as homework. When they get to class, I correct the English for the ones who did the homework (all 2 of them) and make the others do it NOW while the homework-doers fix mistakes and do the creative work. Once they have the work part done and I am certain they will all have SOME English in there somewhere, they work on the creative/fun parts of the project with the rest of the class period.

5a did “Why we study English” posters, which are now hanging up on the wall in the classroom. They study English so they can “watch TV in English” and “sing songs in English.” I’m ok with that.

6a did “about me” posters, which are also prominently displayed on the wall opposite the door. My favorite poster comes from a little boy who concluded his project with the sentences “i like animal and wheelbarrow. i Ukrainian boi.” I remember having a fondness for wheelbarrows when I was young, too.

7a and 7b did a recipe book. They have their individual recipes (lots of salads and fried potatoes). We wrote 2 class recipes (we agreed on a general dish and I wrote down ingredients and cooking instructions as they shouted them at me), so I have some really weird salads to add. They also wrote food haiku. I can’t provide you with any examples – they’re all in my kids’ notebooks.

7a and 7b also did Thanksgiving “I am thankful for…” books.

“I am thankful fo my family because my family friendly, kind, and she love me.”

“I am thankful for my family because they to give me life, knowledge, sence.”

“I am thank ful for my home beacose her very big and very beautifull.”

“I am thankful fo my shools because she give me knowlage.”

“I am thankful for my friend Kosta beacose he undersen me.”

“My friend, Olya, because we have many common interests.”

“I am thankful for my dook, ‘I am thankful for…’ because she give me possibility speak gratitude all.”

I am thankful for my students, because even though I am inexperienced and occasionally short-tempered and difficult to understand, they really try hard to do the weird things I tell them, blindly believing that it will help their English. I hope it does. I am asking them to create in English, which none of them have really done. Everything I ask of them is new and wholly different than what they’re used to, and it is inspiring the way they work to comprehend, overcoming not only a language barrier, but also putting aside many things they’ve learned about how to behave in school and what learning consists of. I am thankful for my students because they can be more creative and thoughtful and sincere than I could ever expect, and I have the privilege of being here to see it, and even occasionally help out.

And now that it's almost Christmas....

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:24:24 GMT

Halloween.

So now that the photos are up, here's the story:

Long before Halloween, the plan was to have a concert where students sang and danced and a scary story was performed, but the students who were supposed to help me plan never showed up for after-school meetings. It was going to be for the 8th and 9th forms, but I don’t know the 9th form very well and the 8th form seemed less-than enthused (with the exception of three students who were ready to help). So on Monday afternoon the party was changed to include only the 7th and 8th forms. When the kids never showed up to organize the concert, I decided to do the party more my way. We would play a few games and there would be candy. There would be a short dance afterwards. I quickly made posters for Tuesday and ran around the school, ascertaining when each of the 4 classes got out of school (every day every class gets out at different times; sometimes at 1:15, sometimes at 2:10, sometimes at 3:05, depending on how many lessons they have on any particular day) to schedule the party for a time when all the kids could make it.

The scheduling at school makes after-school activities difficult because few kids will stick around long after their classes have ended to attend parties/clubs/etc. My English club starts at 3:30 because students from other schools would like to get to our school to attend. But few of my 9th or 10th formers, who get out of school at 2:10, will hang out for an hour just to have an extra hour of English. Last year, I only got one or two students in any of my clubs at any one time. (Cross your fingers for me for better luck this year.) Part of this was lack of interest, and part of it was scheduling. Well, at least this year I can hope to draw a few students from other schools.

We decided to have all the Halloween activities this week at 2:20… hoping that the students who got out of class at 3:05 would come late. I did pumpkin carving on Wednesday. My co-worker stormed into a 7th form class to exhort them to bring pumpkins. She did the same with the 8th. Somehow, when she tells them to do things, they do them. I tell them, and nothing happens. She also did a lot of the advertising for me. I did posters and attempted to get to kids between classes. She walked in on other teachers’ lessons and commanded for five minutes. She knew when they had home economics and could spare five minutes. If it had been me, I would have stumbled into a history lesson and been glared at for interrupting a lesson in something the government aptitude tests will cover at the end of the year. This is why host country co-workers are important. I will do tons of work, but I need my co-workers to drum up support.

I went to talk with the woman who is in charge of school parties about getting the room and the sound system, and was sternly told to go to the principal. I assumed he knew. Everyone else knew. My co-workers knew. The kids knew. The kids’ class-teachers knew. Well… apparently the important people did not know. Some sort of “order” had to be written up by some person I had never met and the principal had to approve something or other and there are liability issues when stuff happens after school and I ended up in the office being scolded for not informing the proper people. Oops. My co-worker came with me and took my side – she said EVERYONE knew. How come he didn’t? And besides, she said, the two of us would be around for the next two days to answer any questions and do all the work. No one would have to do anything. We were taking care of it. And we did take care of it. (Update: I am in trouble again. I brought my electric oven into school to bake Christmas cookies with my 6th and 7th graders, and didn't ask the principal if that was ok. He got upset because of all the electricity the oven used -- apparently the day before he got an order from some government agency to conserve electricity. Oops. ...I suppose this should teach me to ask before I barrel ahead with my plans. On the upside, though, the kids had a great time.)

The grown-ups were also concerned because they understood Halloween as a holiday in which kids dressed up like evil things and went crazy. They thought we all egged cars and broke windows and scared littler kids. I had to explain that Halloween was just fun… that it was about candy and the freedom of being something different than what you are. I actually think that Halloween is a chance to show how kind people can be. When else would you be able to walk up to a complete stranger’s house and get a present? It makes our neighbors people…people who are nice. And yes, people abuse the evening, but unfortunately that happens when there is freedom. I only ever had good experiences. Halloween always made me think that I could go to a neighbor for help if I needed… that the people who lived around me were probably good people like my family. If they would let me in as a witch, they would definitely let me in as a normal kid who needed an adult.

So… having gotten the official conferences out of the way, I went out to buy candy. I bought two kilos of candy. Two kilos! Then balloons. Shopping for things in Ukraine is not exactly like shopping for things in the States. There are no party stores. When you find a store that sells balloons, you don’t buy them by the bag, but by the individual balloon. And the store probably has no stock other than what’s in the one bag they sell individual balloons out of… so you’re stuck with what’s in the shopkeeper’s hands. There were only six orange balloons and no black ones to be found in town. So we made do. Also, I forgot the word for balloon, so I stood in the store and said, “I need… when holiday…,” and mimed blowing up a balloon. Then the four people standing around in the small store guessed things until I heard the one word I recognized. …Being in a foreign country makes you so grateful for the small things. I said “thank you” a million times just because they understood me and gave me what I wanted. And because the people were all kind about it, laughing with me instead of being frustrated with me. Sometimes people get mad… And I’d rather be a clown than a bother any day.

After the balloon adventure, I went home to make decorations. I had my own private arts and crafts fair! I made ghosts out of white trash bags, bats out of black ones and soda bottles, gravestones out of cardboard from the boxes of old care packages (thank you, everyone), and streamers from toilet paper spray-painted black.

Thursday I bought and made prizes – lollipop ghosts (that was another adventure… walking in and telling the storekeeper I needed 45 lollipops… no one ever buys things in bulk here). I wrote the English script for our MC and gave it to him to practice. He’s a really good kid…he worked so hard on getting everything right.

The work was essentially done at this point, and I relaxed on Thursday night by cooking.

Friday we decorated… the woman who was in charge of the room and the music who I had talked to on Wednesday helped tremendously, and she made everything look better than I would have. She came up with a large black curtain with a spider web drawn on it that had been used in previous years. Though she did insist that the window stickies that I bought in New York should not be taken off of the backing. She just taped the sheets to the windows. To each his own, I suppose.

And then it was time for the party. I had my English script translated into Ukrainian and stumbled through it… the Ukrainian boy spoke in English and I translated into Ukrainian for him. We thought the kids would think it was funny. But I got out of translating whenever I thought I could show the meaning of what he said. (Thank God I had theater to teach me how to be ridiculous in front of people and not give a shit.) I explained the games and we played. I ended up director, MC, stage crew and stage manager for this particular production… and flubbed the stage-manager part. I was supposed to cue the music for each game, but only remembered to do it a few times. The kids got to hear “I Put a Spell on You,” “Monster Mash,” “Werewolves of London” and “Hell” (thank you, Charlie), but, due to miscommunication and the boys’ eagerness to start the dance, “Thriller” was overlooked. I played it earlier in the day and a few of my favorite 10th form girls, who were practicing a dance nearby, liked it and showed me that they knew how to moonwalk. So that’s something. How often does one get to moonwalk with one’s 15-year-old Ukrainian students?

The Halloween party was actually a lot like my English classes: there was a lot of English, a lot of demonstration, a bit of Ukrainian, and general disorder with a thin overlay of control barely maintained. The kids started the afternoon reluctant to participate. That lasted about 5 minutes, and I was suddenly rushed by 25 students in vampire costumes shouting to try their hand at bobbing for apples. It was perhaps the scariest moment of my life. …They weren’t ALL vampires. There was a bloody musketeer and a witch. There were also a lot of devils.

All in all, I think it went well. The kids decimated the candy. I gave away a liter-sized jar full of candy corn as a prize, and the girl who won it handed it off to a group of 8th grade boys who managed to down it all in half an hour. The chocolate and lollipops were eaten immediately. My co-worker was so pleased with the party that she is advocating an entire week of English-language activities after school sometime this year. Lots of other schools do English-language weeks, so it’ll be do-able.

I celebrated finishing the project by writing a letter and cleaning my apartment. A bit of mundane work to bring me off of holiday craziness… I’m so boring. No one’s even coming to see me! I just cleaned because. Because I couldn’t stand the filth anymore. I wandered around in my pjs and an amazing rainbow winter hat Mom sent me that I found in the back of a drawer and picked up and vacuumed and dusted and cleaned the kitchen and did laundry and febreezed all the fabric in the apartment. Today it’s mostly done. Tomorrow I tackle the bathroom.

Photos!

The party-planning team. The girls decided to be vampires. I went as a Ukrainian 1st grader. I thought they would find it funny to see me as one of them. Notice the pom-poms in my hair (as though you could miss them)… that’s what identifies me as a 1st former. Or an 11th former. Female students wear the pom-poms on the very first and very last day of school.

Pumpkin carving

See, all those years of looking at prop tables backstage paid off.

Bobbing for apples.

Mummy wrap.

Dancing. And decorations.

Caving

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:05:58 GMT

When I returned to Ukraine from the States, I’ll confess that I was skeptical about the stress-reducing benefits of the weekend caving expedition I had agreed to accompany my cluster-mates upon. I wasn’t scared (because I refuse to be scared of anything) so much as… doubtful that climbing about underground in the dark would be fun.

However, my initial assessment of the activity did not take three very important factors into consideration. Namely,

1) We got to wear headlamps.
2) We got to wear jumpsuits.
3) Our guide was the coolest Ukrainian woman EVER.

The day began with a long cab-ride through a tiny village to the caves, so out of the way and unmarked that the local cabbie had to stop to ask for directions. Once we had successfully made it (most of us, at least; one cab ended up in a different village of the same name forty minutes in the wrong direction), we were fitted for jumpsuits. This involved all 10 of us standing in a small room while a Ukrainian woman held suits up to our sides, and, after a favorable assessment, tugged at our clothes to indicate what was to come off prior to putting them on (no jackets, no sweaters, apparently). For one reason or another, the jumpsuits made us all feel like we were really doing something cool and exciting… as well as fun and just a bit ridiculous. Being young, loud, and cheerful Americans, we were all REALLY EXCITED. We therefore exited the room one by one, looking and acting very much like gas station attendants who’d been breathing the fumes for one too many consecutive hours. Pictures were taken. Many involving one or more of us throwing our jackets over one shoulder and donning an expression very much like Captain America…or a male fashion model. Take your pick.

Then we were marched over to a small home where a very strange Jodie Foster movie about a neurotic woman on a plane with her imaginary friend was playing above a table piled high with tools and a wall covered with a terrifyingly complex, hand-drawn map of the caves. It looked pretty easy to get lost in there. Not that I was scared. Because, you know, I don’t get scared.

Headlamps were issued to all, and we were off.

A short hike through the woods brought us to a little metal door, painted bright yellow, and set deep in the face of a rock – very much like you might imagine the entrance of a nuclear storage facility to look like. …Or just the entrance to the longest caves in Europe. Then we were lined up and a volunteer (Josef) was assigned to head up the rear…so our tour-guide could periodically shout out his name – just to make sure no one got lost in the caves. …Totally. Not. Scared.

Our tour began with a short lecture by our tour-guide, aka Anya, the coolest Ukrainian woman ever. The men and women who run the tours are members of a non-profit club that is devoted to the exploration and preservation of the caves. Just for the love of it, they spend their weekends leading groups of inexperienced, intrigued tourists about. I haven’t encountered anything like that in Ukraine – it sounds much more like the “Society for the Preservation of (fill in the blank here) that we have in the U.S. At the same time, I can’t think of anything in the States as “important” and touristy and potentially profitable as the longest cave in Europe left in the hands of a non-profit organization – who keep it unmarked and difficult to get to, so it remains un-touristy and un-trashed. Needless to say, none of the tour guides take a salary (Anya is sooo cool) and the entire amazing outing plus outfit cost me about six bucks, not including transportation, so… that’s the best use of six bucks I’ve gotten since China.

Anya dreams of caving in the States, which, when she said it, struck me as the most apt use of “dream” I’ve heard from anyone here: an ideal, an ambition, an experience she’d like to have that could possibly come true if she works hard and has luck on her side and the opportunity presents itself. Well done. Anya reminded me of a really awesome TD (technical director, for the non-theater readers out there): easygoing, down to earth, more likely to laugh at jokes than crack them, not extremely talkative or silly, but also able to tell a great story when s/he feels like it, solid in the way of a carpenter, who uses her/his hands to put things together. She had a practical quality which I imagine spending lots of time doing physical exploration – hand to rock, trying out passageways, etc. – can give to a person. She would strike poses, perched on rocks ahead of the group, after deftly stepping through a tricky spot, stretched out with her feet propped up, amusedly watching us flail our limbs wildly as we attempted to squeeze through an opening much more horizontal than vertical without getting a face full of rock at the end.

Anya did have plenty of opportunity to laugh at our inexperienced attempts – again, because we are Americans, loud and full of good-nature teasing and (at least on my part) self-ridicule – but the parts of the caves we toured were mostly full of tall, narrow passages that only occasionally required sidewise shuffling. They were generally roomy enough to dispel any claustrophobic fears: lots of headroom and lots of space to move limbs about. We did, however, attempt a section of the cave known as the “Devil’s Throat.” The Devil’s Throat required sliding down a narrow bit of cave and crawling on our bellies, squeezing over rocks in the way to, one at a time, twist upward into a tiny room with a hole in the ceiling just wide enough for a pair of shoulders and hips properly angled to wiggle through. I’d never been so glad to be skinny. Mid-Devil’s Throat, poor Garrard discovered he was claustrophobic. Tara coached him through, and we all made it through. Coming out into the hall-sized cave at the end was exhilarating – we’d done something hard and came out the other side whole and felt we could do anything.

Caving was really a chance to indulge a lot of latent childish behavior -- balancing on ledges, sliding, getting dirty, scrambling over obstacles just for the thrill of feeling the way your body can move and the triumph of making it up and/or through. Plus the caves were sparkly (crystals) and the rocks jutting out above our heads, at our hips, etc. created fantastic shapes that could trap any imagination in fantasy for hours – "What is it? What does it look like? How did it form? Maybe there was a witch involved...!"

Everyone that went into the caves made it out. Uninjured. And not only feeling like we’d done something unusual and cool, but that we’d accomplished something. Managed to do what, before we entered, we would never have expected ourselves to do. Maybe it was just me, but I didn’t think I’d ever slither through a close rock tunnel to peer into Anya’s expectant, amused face through an opening smaller than a manhole: “You want me to come up there?!” In the middle of Ukraine. Finding myself at the top of the Eiffel Tower and in the Uffizi were not wholly surprising experiences; growing up the way I did in America, I had formed versions of my future that included doing those things. Ever since sophomore year and China, my list of things that a million years of dreaming would never have led me to imagine myself doing just keeps getting longer. That’s sort of cool, right?

Western Ukraine, October, 2008 (...I know, I know, ridiculously late)

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT

If I had a Facebook profile, it would say:

Gretchen is… in a relationship.

His name is Vlad. It was the moustache that did me in. I saw it flowing over his shoulders, and I was a goner. And then the revolver! How’s a girl to resist? …I know what you’re all thinking. Hans is going to be heartbroken. And I’m sorry for that. I am. Our time together in Central Park was precious, and The Ugly Duckling will always be special to me. But there are so many monumental men in the world… And one is only young once.

So. As the photo perhaps indicates, Kamianets Podilsky was a lot of fun. The tourist attraction that drew us to Kamianets Podilsky (hereafter referred to as K-P), and I can only imagine inspired the creation of Vlad, is a fortress on a cliff that overlooks a river. Besides a beautiful view of the river and hills from the cliff, the fortress has a number of fun turrets capped with witch-hat roofs, a large courtyard, eerie stone passageways, and those wooden walkways around the inside perimeter where guards could walk and/or shoot arrows at attackers… I don’t know what they’re properly called. Possibly it’s a stupidly simple word that I might know but can’t recall at the moment. Anyway, even though my castle-defense vocabulary is not quite up to par (I’m currently reading The Once and Future King. That should remedy things… right?), Tara and I enjoyed ourselves, scampering all over and taking lots of artsy pictures out of the windows. Below, see artsy pictures of witch-hat towers (that you could climb up in!)!

Discovery: I like castles. Look at me squee-ing like a fan-girl. TWO exclamation points in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph. We’ll blame King Arthur. Next thing you know I’ll be pulling out my Tennyson and talking excitedly but incoherently about Merlin and Vivien and the Garden of Eden.

Actually, I think that the reason I got so excited about K-P has to do with Shakespeare. I stood in the courtyard and climbed the wooden lookout-thingies (really, guys, I need to know this word) and had this desire to do Hamlet. And play Hamlet and Laertes and Horatio and Gertrude and Ophelia. In the castle. All over the castle: in the yard, in the towers, along the narrow passages. I really can think of nothing more fun than running about a castle, pretending you live there, and speaking beautiful English. How much fun would it be to be Horatio IN A CASTLE? I never realized how much I wanted to do something like that until I was presented with the castle. Tara and I decided we should put on a production. (From here on out in the journal, cluster-mates will be referred to by their actual names…because I think we feel more like our regular selves than we did during the craziness of training.) We’ll run the audience around with us to different parts of the grounds for each scene. And the cast will watch with the audience and just jump in when it’s their turn. We’ll be sprinting around a castle, guys! Doing Shakespeare! I don’t know if I can properly convey how excited the thought of this makes me.

Better yet, we’ll form a company and do Hamlet and rotate the parts so everyone at some point can be every part. …I think Hamlet would work best with K-P. We thought about Macbeth because the monument just across the hill, a circle of stones around a central, crown-shaped memorial, which we called Ukr-henge, would be perfect draped in red fabric as the witches’ haunt, but… it was a very sunny day. And not that Hamlet is all giggles, but I always felt that it is important that it be set in a place of some openness and light. There are some very bright moments – Laertes and Ophelia spring to mind. Life goes on – the royal celebrations, the departure of Laertes, the play, and the games – and I think it is important that it all appear joyous, not only to set off Hamlet’s behavior, but because the court really does appear to continue as normal despite all the things that tear it apart from within and without. I think the story is all the more powerful if we realize how everything can fall to pieces without much of an outward ripple; if only the insiders see the corruption. And as royal life goes forward, all the kings die and Fortinbras creeps in from the outside (we almost forget about Fortinbras, don’t we, until he bursts into the last scene to proclaim the fall of everything from the outside as well as the inside?). In addition, it is very clear what Hamlet has to do from the start. It is Hamlet himself, because he is human and because he thinks about what he does, who makes everything convoluted. He sees the complications and the darkness. Some of the tragedy of the play stems from the decay of the court, and some of it Hamlet himself creates simply by thinking about the real complexities of life and murder and revenge. I think it is the juxtaposition – Claudius and Hamlet, pomp and decay, what seems and what is – that is powerful. So. Hamlet in the sun. Macbeth on a stormy night (and no one really wants to be outside, running around a castle in the rain).

Window pictures.

The stone circle in the background above is Ukr-henge. Tara and I took an expedition. We climbed the hill behind the fortress to try and see how to go, ended up carefully footing our way down a switchback path along a very steep hill only to end up back at the base of the fortress and then climb down some more along a narrow, rocky lane in another direction. We walked through a little village and onto a main road, off of which branched a footpath up a second, even steeper, hill across from the K-P fortress and, eventually, to Ukr-henge. There was mud and goats and goose droppings and exercise – all those hills – and it was quite a trek.

Success. Tara as a conquering Cossack hero.

Before we went to the fortress in K-P, we had lunch in a restaurant called London. I had a real salad with lettuce and tomatoes and peppers and a light oil dressing! We’d never seen such a salad in Ukraine. Tara took a picture. London also had business cards with Mr. Bean on them. And a most spectacular bathroom. It was tiled in fire-engine red with red counters and a red hand drier. There were raised white crosses jumping off of the stall doors. I walked in and went blind for a few seconds.

After London and castle adventures, Tara and I went to the bazaar and I bought a Ukrainian sweater. It’s bright green, oversized, and fuzzy. Every teacher in Ukraine over 40 has one of the same wool, varying in style and color. Mine has buttons and a thick collar and pockets. I can wear two sweaters underneath it. I gave up all attempts to be fashionable and was prepared to join the ranks of the middle-aged in an effort to stay warm at work. Because my room is the coldest in school. Well… it was the coldest in school. As soon as I bought the sweater, they fixed the heating. My room is now a very comfortable temperature. Which I am very thankful for. …But I would have liked to use the sweater at least once. I’ll put it on and send a picture someday. I look just like a real Ukrainian teacher in it.

I have decided to embrace my frumpy nature. For the past week at school, I have worn a straight, gray, knee-length, heavy wool skirt, a man’s gray sweater, thick tights, and duck boots to work. I expect this costume to become my standard work outfit for the remainder of winter. It is warm and it is comfortable. I’m done looking skinny. Skinny means cold. I have tried to look professional for the last year… and, funny enough, now that I have thrown my hands up in despair, my co-workers and my students have told me how nice I look in my duck boots and oversized man’s sweater. I don’t understand. I am wearing the exact opposite of what every other teacher my age wears. I have given up trying to dress to fit into the school community. And NOW they think I look good?

Umm… more western Ukrainian stories to come soon-ish. Next time I will tell you about caving. I went caving.

Wednesday morning

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:59:23 GMT

So… an eventful week, yes?

Not only was there an election to worry about, but I faced my first full week of teaching in a month and the implementation of a belated Halloween party for my students. Somehow it all came off all right.

The stress of the second and third items kept me from obsessing over the first, and Monday at least passed relatively quickly. Tuesday morning, my co-worker bustled into my classroom, declaring that I needed to go buy a bottle of wine to celebrate. “Celebrate what?” I inquired. “Your new president!” she exclaimed. “This morning I thought, ‘I wish I was American so I could vote for Obama.’” I told her that nothing was certain and that it would only be courting bad luck to celebrate before Wednesday morning, when the results would come in from America. Then the kids swarmed in… and Tuesday went the same way as Monday.

Wednesday morning I was up and frantically scouring my “Oh God, a cyclone just touched down here!” apartment for charged batteries to power up my shortwave radio. I had promised to wait until someone told me what had happened (at heart, I secretly believe that I am some sort of anti-four leaf clover; that my rapt attention will inevitably skew the outcome of an event towards the unfavorable)... but my willpower – never a strength – faltered, and I became in desperate need of batteries at about 6.15 AM (I got up at 6). Pulling them from the doorbell, I began surfing through the almost unbelievably large range of shortwave channels at random, hoping to find something…anything… in English. Or so I thought. The first words of English I happened upon were part of a program broadcast from China, and they were talking about Beijing opera. Interesting, but not quite what I was searching for. After innumerable Russian and French stations and a lot of static, I caught a bit of language I understood. Chinese. Through the static and among innumerable words I didn’t understand, I heard “…America.” Ok. “…president.” Yes. “…elect.” Almost there! “…Obama. …Obama.” And that saw me shouting at the Chinese man on the radio, “Slow down! I don’t know that I understood what I think I heard!”

He didn’t slow down. Neither did the static subside, so I continued my search and eventually stumbled upon Voice of America, where a commentator was opining, “…will see Republicans retiring to lick their wounds.” Confirmation! I stuck around and got to hear the live broadcast of Obama’s speech before running to work (to put a tiny photo of Obama from a magazine in the corner of my blackboard. Two students thus far have commented.).

Appropriate, is it not, that I should learn about the election results in Chinese? I can still pick out important information from a Chinese text! Excuse me while I proudly flex my linguistic muscles. Thank you, Middlebury, for that awfully ill-informed article on the American election system from the Renmin Ribao. My active vocabulary is diminished, but the passive still lingers in there somewhere. (Did I ever tell you all about the Christian radio program in Chinese I came across one Thursday last winter? They spoke wonderfully slowly and clearly.)

So… hard-hearted little me managed to make it to America and back, watch my dad get married, see most of my family and friends, and say good-bye to all of them without shedding a single tear. But on Wednesday I stood all alone in my kitchen and bawled through Obama’s speech.

I don’t quite know why. I cared about this election. I did. A lot. At the same time, I was also very removed from it. I saw an article here and there in a Newsweek. I read a bit online when I got the chance. But it was not something that was a part of my everyday life. So from whence came all that emotion?

Beyond all the talk of the historic import of this election in terms of race – which I do acknowledge and I am indeed proud to say that my country has elected a president who is not a white man – I realized that Obama is important to me because I so want to believe that we can fix what’s wrong; I want to believe that the world isn’t doomed to decay and that our government can use the extraordinary power it possesses to do good. I want to have faith in the political process, to believe that we have the ability to put the people in power who will do good, and to avoid the cynical belief that politicians are either self-interested or ineffective.

I am young and I have decades in front of me… I am just coming into adulthood, when I always thought I’d have the power to do good things. I work in my small way here; I teach; I do good in my little circle. But I don’t know how to fix the big things… And here comes this man, this young-ish politician who inspires my generation, the practical idealists who don’t think overhaul is possible but who nonetheless ardently hope for progress, because he seems like a revolution from within – a man who both challenges and confirms the system and looks like the change he says he can make. He says he can do something, not only about the small things, but about the world – health care and international relations and the environment and the economy. He is educated and has worked for years in politics and I think… maybe he can do what I can’t. Maybe he can see how. So now I’ve helped elect him. This person who is smarter and better educated and more experienced than I am. I exercised my little bit of influence and I’m praying that it makes a difference.

There is a picture of the president and vice-president on the first floor of the Peace Corps office. I always cringed a bit when I walked in to face Bush and Cheney. I am going to be so happy to see that photo changed. I rushed to put Obama’s picture on my board because I am proud to point to the photo and say, “ That’s our president. That’s the man we elected. We did it. And he’s going to help us be a better country.”

Obama, please be able to do what you say you can do. I want you to be right. I want to believe that you can inspire people not only to vote for you, but to work with you, to compromise with you, to come up with solutions. I want to continue to be proud of my country for electing you. You’ve run a race promising change. You’ve helped us believe we can make it happen. I’ve never been apathetic; I’ve just been immobilized by the weight of the world’s problems. And now you have millions of people behind you who believe in themselves because they helped elect you. Can you capitalize on that emotion and turn it to real work? Obama, if you and Biden and all the new senators and congressmen can’t do it, if the political system proves to be too much of a mess to do anything about limping healthcare and a gasping environment and worldwide food shortages and all the other problems that jump out at me every time I open a magazine… I don’t know what we’ll do. This feels like our chance. Of course I'm young and there will be a million more chances, but... try and tell that to the young and impatient. I’m scared by how hopeful I’ve become. I didn’t expect to be so worked up. I didn’t realize how desperate I was. I think I need to see something positive when I open up a newspaper. Can you do that? I’ll help you however I can. I’ll try to be better informed and I’ll sacrifice and I’ll change my lifestyle if it will just really help someone somewhere. It sometimes feels like despite all the changes nothing actually gets changed. And we lose heart all over again. But I’m with you now. Lots of us are with you now. Please, please be able to do what you say you can.

more about America

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 12:32:31 GMT

Ok... after a week in western Ukraine (which I will talk about sometime in the next month. Really.), I am back at a computer and can post America reflections -- approved by my RM for your edification.

The American vacation was really good. I didn’t experience any real “reverse culture-shock,” with the exception, perhaps, that I was a bit shocked at the amount of processed/packaged foods we eat without really thinking about it and the sugar added to our diet as a result. Don’t get me wrong, Ukrainians love their sugar, but here I am at least conscious of the sugar in my diet – chocolate, cookies, fruit preserves, tea with honey, etc. The rest of the time I mostly eat only what I can buy in the produce and dairy sections of the bazaar. When in America, I eat flavored oatmeal and yogurt, salads smothered in dressing, various pastries, and sweetened fruit cocktails, and, because I only occasionally indulge in a half-pint of ice cream, still consider myself a healthy eater.

I suppose I also balked for a moment at how effortlessly we use things – paperclips and printer paper and plastic bags, etc. If I have see-through plastic paper-holders (the three-holed punched kind), I probably have an entire box of them sitting around somewhere. And if I don’t, then I will go buy a box without too much thought. Here I buy those by the piece for a few kopecks and save and reuse it until I lose it or it is destroyed. It is highly unlikely that I will have extra paper, paperclips, files, folders, envelopes, etc. More plausibly, I will have too few and will find a way to make due with what I have. The abundance of these trifles in America strikes me as one major indication of the country’s prosperity. Not only is there enough food and work for the majority of us, there is an overwhelming supply of tiny conveniences. There are also enough personal resources to acquire them in profusion. I wonder how I will live after Ukraine – to what extent I will go back to “normal” and what I will find myself conserving.

Everything was so clean. I was clean (the stand-up shower and washing machine are two of history’s greatest inventions. You know, after the printing press). How does America keep everything so clean? How come other places have so much dust? People work very hard to clean things here. I wonder why it doesn’t always work to the same extent. My best guess is that we have people who will pay to have private buildings cleaned and machines (and taxes to pay for them in the public sphere) that do work more effectively and on a larger scale.

Also, every pen I picked up worked. I believe the likelihood that a random pen you pull out of the pen-jar of a given desk is usable is a measure of how developed the country is. In America, I feel fairly certain that the pen I grab will have, at a minimum, a good few words left in it. In China you could probably count on finding at least one in the jar that would write. In my experience of Ukraine – mainly the desks at my school – the desk jar is where pens go to die and have their decaying corpses buried. I find myself attempting to write with pens that eek out half a letter and then summarily dry up, with the empty shells of pens, with pens whose tips push into the tube when any slight pressure is applied, and, at best, with complete pens whose dried-out nibs can, upon application of due force and diligence, be made to gouge a brief note into a scrap of paper. Be it known to all who enter Ukraine that the real, working pens are in personal pencil cases. You will have to use Ukrainian to ask for one. Good language practice.

Aside from these minor things, I didn’t find being in America strange. At all. I sometimes wonder if this makes me a bit cold. I only mean that I somehow manage to keep from being particularly attached to any place. I jump around. I’ve spent my time since high-school hopping between states and countries at every opportunity, skipping from family to family to friends, mooching off of every connection in every place I can find. I’m even physically disconnected; I don’t really experience jet-lag. I have acquaintances in all parts of the world, but we fall out of contact and I let them go with a bit of regret but not much difficulty. Meant a lot to me once, but I move onto the next thing. I often describe myself as running – “I can’t, I’m sorry… I’m running off to the store, to Portland, (back) to college, to China, to Ukraine for a year.” I run from experience to experience and don’t even invest enough of myself to get a bit of jet-lag. Perhaps it is just youthful elasticity (emotionally as well as physically). I lunge from one point of contact to another and readjust in mid-air to arrive in fine form. There’s a world of time and experience in front of me, so connections to past places are of less import. They gunk up the adapting process. I’d get stretched out of shape if I was in the east and hooked to the west. Young, even if I am attached, the stretching is relatively easy, the strain less. I can make such arguments, but part of me thinks of my sister and her close friendships in Oregon, people who she leaves only reluctantly and who she talks to constantly while away. I just go. I think of her desire to form close relationships. I’m content to be on good terms with many and close to a few. She’s connected and I’m sort of self-contained. I’d like to be a bit more of the former. One tiny part of the reason I so value New York and my relationships there is that I do acutely feel the separation from them. In a conversation during my stay there, Charlie mentioned that there exists a particular connection to the place where one first became an independent person, and that is most certainly part of the pull. Whatever the full reason, there is a part of me invested in that place and with those people. Right now I hope to keep some of the other places I have been as well and grow up to be less of a willing vagrant. After all of this running, I like to think that soon it’ll be time to settle, at least for a few years.

I think what I most enjoyed about America, besides not working and being with people I love in beautiful places during beautiful weather and EATING, was relaxing in a way that is almost impossible here; even though I know the routines and the way of life here, it still takes effort on my part in order to do anything; often just being in Ukraine is tough. After a year, I notice marked improvement in this matter, but I don’t think the watchfulness and attentiveness and touch of nervousness that accompanies everything I do outside of my apartment will ever go away here. Even though I know what I’m facing, things sometimes go wrong in surprising ways and whole new (new to me), quick-response problem-solving skills must be employed to figure out a solution. I shouldn’t have botched the conversation with the ticket-seller at the train station yesterday, but somehow I did. (Lovely NJ transit and Metro-North ticket machines in English where nothing goes wrong and, if it does, you can cancel and do it again, how I missed thee.) I talked with everyone I know about shuttles to the airport but still ended up stranded at the train station in Kyiv at midnight. And, though I could fix the situation – I have the language to get a taxi – the momentary fright and readjustment and screwing up the courage to go and talk to some more people when I had counted on just sitting down and bearing out the long hours until the flight without disturbance was wearying. None of which happens to the same extent in the States. Stuff goes wrong and days can be stressful, but somehow I know how to handle it all. So vacation was a chance to take down all the shields I keep up to protect myself in a foreign environment. It was good to release. And it was good to not feel noticeably different. I think that’s a lot of the stress in Ukraine. I know I’ll never be normal. I’ll always stand out. Now, I’m an actor; I like to stand out. But, more, I like to choose when to take center stage. I like to step into the shadows sometimes – it’s exhausting in front of the curtain. America was a chance for a breather; I've decided I needed to take five.

On an unrelated note: Amy, I wish you were here. I just heard the Esmerelda trio from “Notre Dame de Paris” in French playing in the Ukrainian supermarket. I wish you could tell me whether the French is as ridiculous as the English translation. The song is evidently popular in Ukraine. During New Year, I saw it performed with elaborate lighting cues and flowy costumes on a television variety show. The same week also saw a talent competition featuring a bulky, biker-type gentleman (complete with shaved head, goatee, and earring) performing T.a.t.u. while accompanying himself on a balalaika. I have no television now. Think of the things I miss!

In other news: trying not to think (read: worry) about the election. Commencing attempt...

Back

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:44:15 GMT

Hi!

Charlotte’s cold has decided to hang on longer than expected. At least I got sick on the last days of vacation instead of the first. Once back, I taught on Monday, when I actually felt really bad, but I was sent home from school on Tuesday, when I felt almost healthy, to rest through Friday. I tried to get them to let me work. I did. I told them I was fine, that I felt better. Unfortunately, I sound worse – I’ve developed a cough and my voice is froggy… plus the stuffy nose. (PS, parents: No worries. This happens every year. I get a cold, which becomes a cough. I always feel fine; I just hack for a few days.) Add the illness to the America trip to school holidays next week, and I will have taught a total of 2 days during all of October. October is officially my favorite month of the year. …I would feel less awful about my absences if I had spent some of the time preparing for the mountains of work in November and December I will have on top of teaching.

I also have had no water for two days. "Welcome back!" Ukraine says.

I will have general 'being in America' reflections to post when my RM approves them. I may actually post more often than once a month, guys! But for now, to recap the trip, I am handing out -- with considerable liberality, since you are all so fantastic -- The America Awards 2008 (ooh, ahh)

Most unbelievable:

*Losing my suitcase TWICE – once on the way to California and once on the way to Ukraine – and having it brought back to me both times, breakables unbroken.

Best food:

There was a lot of really good food. I’ll have to divide this into sub-categories.

*Best meal: Lunch with the Lauingers. I’ve decided “Best meal” describes the entire experience of the meal, and the afternoon with the Lauingers was excellent as regards food and, especially, conversation.

*Best tofu: The Japanese/Mexican fusion restaurant Charlie took me to my last night in New York. Really good stir fry. Especially well done tofu.

*Best pizza: Whatever tomato and feta cheese concoction we had on the pizza in Santa Rosa. It was amazing. I ate four pieces. Four huge pieces. I could have eaten more, but… I am a lady, not a pig. And there were other people present who wanted to eat.

*Food I most missed but didn’t realize I missed until I had it again: Hummus. I ate it everywhere and at every opportunity. I practically threw a tantrum in the New York supermarket when I couldn’t find hummus for our picnic. Then we found it and I was instantly all better. I fooled you all; I’m not a grown-up, just an overgrown toddler.

*Warm and happy and fed in the company of friends award: Lunch in Central Park with the three Cs who accompanied me in New York: Charlie, Clare and Charlotte. Such a good, extempore idea. There was sun. There was live music wafting across the park. There were scones. There were lots of good pictures of Hans Christian Anderson.

*Best picnic: Sandwiches and chips with the wedding party at Benziger winery after a walk in Jack London State Park on my first full day in California. The day was a bit rainy, but the company and the food were both excellent. Dad showed up a few minutes in, carrying a bottle of red wine and nine glasses lent to him by the winery for the duration of our picnic. I ate voraciously, but between bites listened to everyone talk and joke and was exceedingly glad to be back. Life should be full of picnics.

Best Party:

*California was one long week of parties, but, wedding aside, I think the best was Poppy’s 81st birthday. Poppy wins a personal award for, on that occasion, being the happiest I’ve ever seen him. I think my east-coast family shines best in that sort of situation – chaos and conversation, food and wine, cake and singing. Mingling. With something to celebrate, but also celebrating just being together. The Indiana family does better with sit-down dinners and long after-dinner conversations together on a porch or in the living room. They do stories. One story-teller, an audience. The east-coast family does sprightly discussions and lots of background noise, small clusters of people and plenty of movement.

Best photo:

Tie.

Wedding photo. Everyone looks so good! Yes, I only own one dress. I have worn it at every fancy occasion in the last year and a half. Let’s hear no more about it, shall we?

Happy New York photo. AWWW.

Best phone call:

*Occurring the evening I commandeered Elizabeth’s cell phone for two hours in order to call Amy. I stayed out on the porch as long as it was light and warm, but eventually had to come inside and disturb Elizabeth’s studying with my dramatic outbursts and ear-splitting cackling. Amy and I talked about everything from George Eliot to Teach for America to food to having once been the awkward kid in kindergarten alone bouncing a ball against a wall (which over the course of the call became a metaphorical representation of the first weeks of college).

Moment of most personal satisfaction:

*Me lecturing in my mom’s community college classes in Oregon on China and Chinese. They spoke English. They were adults and listened to me. I got to pick the subject and construct a lesson that was informative and asked students to think a bit. Even if they couldn’t/didn’t care enough to understand the implications and subtleties of the point I was trying to make (even if someone didn’t want to think), they still walked away with some solid information. After the ups and downs of teaching elementary/middle/high school students in Ukraine, I was neither sure what kind of teacher I would be nor whether I would like teaching or not. But after I got through the second class in Oregon, got my points and my rhythm down, the lecture was a lot of fun. I think I will probably be more effective sitting around a table because I think better sitting down than I do on my feet – I can see my thoughts better – but it was really good to know that, if this is what I end up doing, I could really enjoy the teaching part of the work of a scholar.

Note: I originally wanted to use a semi-colon to re-structure the above sentence into “…more effective sitting around a table – for some reason I think better sitting down than I do on my feet; I can see my thoughts better – but it was really good …” , but it seems to me that a semi-colon probably overrides a dash. If so, I was right to change it because the sentence as above makes no sense. Does anyone know for sure? Does a semi-colon override a dash? Could you ever use a colon inside a clause created by a dash? Or should your clause, as an aside headed in a slightly different direction from the main thrust of the sentence, not be that complicated? Dash rules escape me. Punctuation in general is something I need a lot of help with. I just don’t have a feel for it.

“Like mother, like daughter” award:

*Mom and I, both exhausted – I just got off a plane, and she had to teach and then go get me from the airport – dumping a new purple scarf in the laundry with a white tank top and other assorted clothes. There were two of us staring at this washing machine. Both with a fair amount of experience with washing machines. Neither one managed to think that perhaps throwing all of the clothes together was a bad idea. Mom and I are good at leading ourselves into thoughtless mistakes. We know how to get out of them but often lack the ability (or presence of mind) to apply practical knowledge towards avoiding them.

Most talented:

*Bob and Judy. In addition to being able to do just about everything (she even makes jam), they always surprise me with how well-informed they are – about everything from books to Salem restaurants and new hot-spots (apparently Judy’s area) to politics (had a quick discussion with Bob) to ethics to Portland-based New York Times writers who write on human trafficking. How can you have such a broad base of knowledge and still find time to breathe? And be sociable and kind. And manage to invest conversation with such vitality while creating a calm and relaxing atmosphere in which to converse. I find that many of the people I most admire are able to do this – to have smart but casual conversation that includes thought and laughter and rejuvenates its participants. They win.

Most obviously worried about me:

*Joe. I don’t know why. I know others worry, but he looks worried and tells me he’s worried and asks all the requisite worrier questions about food and heat and safety. I’m fine. I’m doing well. I promise. At the same time, he did just send me an e-mail to tell me that he's proud of me, which is pretty much all I could ask for. So he should also win a "made me feel better now that I'm back" award.

Best bit of exposure to pop-culture:

Three-way tie

*Being personally witness to the reason why the words “maverick” and “drinking game” may now be used together in a discussion of modern politics.

*Being in a position to care, in real time, whether the Cubs would lose the 3rd game. I am ignorant enough of sports that, in Ukraine, I wouldn’t hear the news until long after, when it was too late to feel anything about it except minor disappointment for the team and their 100 years. And I would hear about it all in one burst of information, without any of the suspense that helps create interest. But they lost the second game while I was in America, so I could think about the third. I’m not a huge sports fan, but it was good to be in the loop.

*Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Lots of love to Neil Patrick Harris for doing this and Charlie for showing it to me. Love. There’s nothing more to say. Just love. Incidentally, Neil Patrick Harris’s performance reminded me of the recording of Evening Primrose , my first encounter with his singing voice. There’s something in the quality of his voice that just makes me happy, even if what he’s singing isn’t necessarily so.

“Quizilla” award:

*Charlotte’s “What kind of library would you be?” question. A discussion which began in Fordham and within hours had stretched into the SLC faculty dining room, to Queens, and all the way to Indiana. And thus the virtual world of memes and “What Harry Potter character are YOU?!!!” has worked its way into even my, willfully ignorant of pop culture reality.

Best joke:

*George, referring to Charlie’s destruction of his computer, “The electricity found a new and exciting path to the ground! …Through your motherboard.” Maybe not as funny in type, but it made me laugh an awful lot.

I do remember something Clare said that made me laugh hard enough to nearly choke on my Cheerios and spurt milk out my nose, but the actual joke is lost to me now. I don’t know if whatever it was actually was that funny or if I was just in a weird mood.

Most giddy:

*I think Charlotte, Meaghan, George, Charlie and I all win this award for the first few minutes after we met at the Bronxville train station, continuing in the car and through breakfast at Eileen’s. Hell, I even laughed at the gaming jokes I didn’t really get. I firmly believe that the energy expended in that hour and a half drained us all for the rest of the day. At least until naps rejuvenated at least three of us once at Meaghan’s.

Most unexpected:

*Talking about poetry during lunch with Ellen. A good talk; a really good visit, on the whole. But of the many topics I imagined we’d cover, poetry was not one.

Most frightening: (sorry to everyone who has heard this a hundred times already)

*Melissa Frasier coming screaming out of left field speaking Russian at me at 200 miles an hour at the very moment I was least expecting it. …I was just minding my own business, trying to say goodbye to Ellen with as little clumsiness as possible, and all of a sudden Melissa’s at my side bolting through a Russian sentence, managing a formidable forward velocity; after a semester of trying to take notes and keep up with her in English, funny I never considered how fast she might speak Russian. The expression on my face must have been priceless.

Best impression:

*Clare impersonating me. I spend a lot of time noting (and unconsciously accruing) others’ mannerisms, but I forget that I have my own that can be exploited for comedic effect at an opportune moment. Well done, Clare.

Most awkward:

A tie. Both are mine. Both are goodbyes. Surprise, surprise. …I’m awful.

*Ellen telling me to “be good” as we parted at the end of lunch. “Ummm… I’ll try?” I think may have been what I actually said instead of goodbye. I’m so awkward.

*Me literally running away from Clare and Charlie in Penn Station to get on the train to Newark airport. Sorry, guys. I just… couldn’t. Stay, I mean. Without being, you know, mawkish or the like.

Best goodbye:

*Ann wins this one. A kiss, a thank-you for my letters, an “I’ll write soon,” “It was good seeing you,” and I was off. All simple things to say… funny how I never think to say them or anything similarly kind and sincere when it comes to my own goodbyes. Add that to the list of things I should learn from Ann.

Most jam-tastic:

*The raspberry-lemon jamsplosion that occurred in Charlie’s apartment. The half-liter held out from Ukraine to California to Oregon to New Jersey to New York, but somehow being set on a couch was apparently too much for the thing to handle. Well, at least Charlie will always have the stained cushion to remember me by.

I intended to give an award for “Best Day,” but I had very many very, very good days. So I’ll end with the jam – go out with a crash, I suppose.

Any other suggestions for awards? Thank you all again for a wonderful trip.

similes and gardening

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:19:08 GMT

My host-mother at site has an uncommon affection for similes. I do not mean to imply that most people do not enjoy similes… many of us, to a greater or lesser degree, find pleasure in a phrase that is particularly fit or innovative – or, best, both! My host-mother simply is a member of the “greater degree” party. Like English, Ukrainian has its commonly used similes that I hear thrown about in the street as I pass strangers, most often “hungry as a wolf.” My host-mother, though, creates illustrative phrases and drops them into conversation with great gusto. This could very well be partly put on as an aide to my understanding. At the same time, the enthusiasm with which she says “I eat everything; like a pig!” cannot but be utterly genuine. “I am like a shark: I only eat fish!” she exclaims as I wander into the kitchen to find her, after a long day at work, ravenously tearing apart some creature, formerly of the pond. I sit on the bed with Beowulf and my pencil, prompting her to insist, “You are always writing. Like Tolstoy!” “No. Not like Tolstoy,” I reply. Not like Tolstoy at all.

More, my host mother is disproportionately delighted when others point out an apt correlation. I don’t think I have ever seen her prouder of me than the day I uttered, after watching her pickle cucumbers – stuffing as many as possible into a jar, taking some out, re-configuring them, attempting to get all of them in – “It’s like a puzzle.” “YES!” she exclaimed. “You’re right. Just like a puzzle. Exactly like a puzzle!”

At the beginning of the summer, she took me to her plot of land outside of town. Most Families here, if they live in an apartment (which equals no land of their own to have a garden on), have some place to plant vegetables in the countryside around town. People breathe agriculture here, the responsibility of growing food for themselves and family just one more part of private life. Even for so many farmers in the States, growing food is a business, professional. Acres of corn are grown for money, with which food is purchased. In Ukraine, even in this town, the largest in the region and the seat of the regional government, food is grown everywhere – at every private home, in the uniform commercial fields that surround the town and spread to the horizon, and in the patchy, irregularly planted single-family fields tucked away within sight of the town’s cluster of apartment buildings. The trees that line the streets grow apricots, apples, cherries, and berries that passing children (and adults) pick at. The same in America – planting fruit trees and harvesting their yield instead of buying it in stores – warrants a newspaper article (I have one here about lemon trees in California). Here, truly half a world away, my host-mother thinks nothing of reaching out her hand to grab a few berries off the tree standing in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the police station.

People keep telling me that, despite everything that this mid-sized town has – regional government, 4 general schools and 2 music schools, supermarkets, etc – it is really just a village in disguise. I am beginning to believe them. I have never been out with any Ukrainian in town without hearing the life story – or, at least, the juicy parts of the life story – of every person we pass. Everyone knows everyone. A few nights ago, my host-mother stood in her hallway deciding how to wear her hair to the supermarket. If she took the time to style it, she said, she wouldn’t see anyone she knew. If she quickly pulled it back in a scrunchie, she guaranteed she would be nodding her head in greeting at every other person she passed. She opted for the latter, and had been engaged in an animate conversation before we were out of the courtyard.

With some exceptions – hiking and sightseeing immediately come to mind – I tend to think of a road as a between-places place. If I’m out, I probably have an errand and want to get it done and get on with my day. I do love my journey as time to set my thoughts in motion (though, whatever Paula maintains and however much I try, the line I start out on never is the one I came home on. Thus, though I always began walking with the sincerest of intentions to plan that essay on 18th century mother-daughter poems, I inevitably returned with an insight into a bit of Classical translation), but I like to take my walk and finish as I started – either alone with my thoughts or with a particular companion. The post-office is the goal; unplanned meetings along the way secondary and to be kept short. Presumably the other party has his/her own errands to do. I’m very much a “this meeting reminded me that we should get together later to chat” person. I’ll call sometime and we’ll set up a meeting at a specific place. Here, however, the road itself is a destination (remember how the literal “walking on the road” means “being outside?”), and chance encounters prime social events. Impromptu chats are part of the journey, a time to catch up with everyone you don’t regularly come across. Where I plan who I want to see, my host-mother wants to see whoever she happens to run into.

I was talking about going out to my host-mother’s garden to pick strawberries a few paragraphs ago, wasn’t I? Back to that…

We walked past the pond at the edge of town, the street becoming narrower, the pavement more broken and pot-holed, the trees closing in over our heads as the apartment block receded behind us. By the time we were picking our way over a dirt road, the trees had fallen away and neat plots of vegetables lined the street, the occasional townsperson hoeing behind tall onion stalks. The road became a rutted cart path, and we passed young bulls chained to the sides of the path. My host-mother told a bull story. I told one (Joe’s, actually). She told a more impressive one. Her father had taunted a loose bull in a pasture and, once he realized what all that pawing the ground meant, had ended his adventure by leaping through a thistle hedge and splattering across a stream to avoid being trampled.

After a quick turn to the right onto an even more overgrown path where the plots were irregularly spaced and set farther back from the road, we hopped out to my host-mother’s garden on bricks placed over the muddiest areas and confronted the strawberry patch.

Going out to farm once is rather delightful. Yes, I was incompetent, wearing the wrong shoes, unable to deftly pluck strawberries with a half-full hand without crushing the ones still palmed, and unsure of what was safe to trample, crouched on the perimeter of the patch while my host-mother plunged into the center. At the same time, I was excused my ineptitude because of inexperience. Ineptitude due to inexperience ensured that I therefore worked less than my host-mother, and spent much of the time being handed white cherries from the tree in the corner by my host-brother when he came around on his new motorbike. At the end of the evening, I felt great. I had a walk, worked a bit (but not too much) for my kilo of home-grown strawberries, and talked to my host-mom. I think of some books I’ve read – Cecilia and Anna Karenina especially (two very similar books, I know (insert punctuation mark that indicates irony here)) – in which characters peripheral and central encounter farm-work. Physical labor done sporadically is fulfilling, the exhaustion satisfying, the sleep that follows refreshing. In the evening, muscles tired, the world is comfortable, painted in subdued colors. Thus restless heroes, caught up and lost in all the complexities of living, find comfort and meaning in life: happiness in companionship, weariness that precludes excessive thought, and useful work. It is work done every day (for too little pay) that reveals itself hard and unyielding, the resulting exhaustion desolate, the rest insufficient.

So I had my one day of being crouched in a field, was pleasantly sore the next day – just enough to remind me I’d done something – and went back to my leisurely summer. Summer has always meant pleasant idleness, whether or not I was actually idle. The work becomes less hurried, the due dates stretch into the almost impossibly distant September. Ukrainians rest in the winter – it’s too cold for anything else; the crops are in and there is nothing to be done until spring arrives. Summer is weeding, harvest, endless canning and preserving. My time passes in full, slow minutes. My host-mother finds even a day with 18 hours of sunshine is too short. This is farm life in general, I suppose. But despite the fact that my family tree has roots in the Indiana soil, I am city born and bred. So permit me my astonishment at a summer in which time, sponge-like, does not expand to absorb every experience, but races.

after an absence

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:16:59 GMT

Hello! …Hello?

Do I have any readers left? Have you all given up on me?

Well, if anyone is still visiting, I commend and thank you for your loyalty. I actually have some stories and reflections to reward your patience – if my hasty, careless stories can possibly be deemed rewarding. Well, unfortunately unworthy of my audience or happily otherwise, here they are. You’ve come with me for this long with such meager return; please read on.

First: general musings

I was reading a February Harper’s Weekly that my dad sent me ages ago, and, jeez, people have it out for online journals. In a footnote (which the author evidently takes as a form of parenthesis in which he can chuck the more formal constraints of his academic essay), to an interesting and thoughtful article on aphorisms, Arthur Krystal writes: “Of course, anyone can keep a commonplace book, and thousands of bloggers do, though one has to wonder whether it is knowledge that is being served or merely thousands of egos.” Made me cringe a bit self-consciously. Irony: As though the blog isn’t enough, the article has inspired me to attempt to keep my own commonplace book.

Also, in an acrimonious attack on everything that’s not a direct descendent of Gutenburg (and some things that are), extra points for ridiculing corporate publishing companies, that is disguised as an examination of reading and its past and present popularity, Ursula K. Le Guin (wow, that’s a name) on the Internet’s unsatisfactory aesthetic appeal: “Perhaps blogging is an effort to bring creativity to networking, and perhaps blogs will develop aesthetic form, but they certainly haven’t done it yet.” Well! I much prefer Arthur, even though (or perhaps because) he hits more squarely home.

“Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading” attempts to put worry over the (apparently dwindling) number of readers into broader perspective than usually admitted – essentially, that for most of history most people couldn’t read, that even during her so-called “century of the book” there were always many who didn’t read, and that, when huge numbers of people did read, it was because books were vital social currency and no one wants to live in a black hole (which I can relate to: I am sometimes very uncomfortable in social situations because I’ve kept myself ignorant of pop-music and TV culture). She blames corporate greed, in constant pursuit of expanding profit margins, for increasingly worthless literary production. Though it makes good points, the Ursula K. Le Guin – did you really need to keep the “K”, Ursula? – article becomes disgustingly self-congratulatory: “I’m a reader and you are all readers, and we should feel superior to all those people out there who aren’t because we have brains and are ‘up to’ the task of reading for pleasure” (I paraphrase). It is articles like hers that make many shy about discussing anything they read and enjoyed with anyone – much less someone educated in literature. It is these sentiments that keep people from reading at all, convinced that education and bookishness cultivate disdain. By all means, Ursula, face declining reading rates without concern for the book’s future, but please do not do so out of snobbery, which welcomes the shift in reading's popularity because books will be kept for the elite, the “best set,” as they long ago were. Your argument may only intend to communicate the former confidence, but your tone implies the latter judgment.

Further book notes… I added a translation of the Book of Psalms and Everyday Drinking by Kingsley Amis to my amazon.com wish list on the same day. Apparently, in my world, tipsiness is next to godliness. (Update: my dad bought Everyday Drinking for me and I am currently working my way through it, so, glory be, tipsiness is now half a world away from godliness. It would never have been brought so irreverently close if it weren’t for my infuriating, expansively curious mind.)

And speaking of wish lists…

Wish list addition:

* music
* newspapers/magazines
* thick, multi-colored markers and sharpies – the markers I find are thin, of poor quality, and run out absurdly quickly
* prizes for class competitions – stickers, pencils, those cheap plastic bracelets that were really popular in America for so long and are just becoming a fad here, bookmarks, etc. Anything American, cheap and fun
*Parmesan cheese. I know, I KNOW you just sent me some, Dad, but I’ve used half of it already.

Once again, livejournal at the internet cafe is being weird and I can't post things in separate entries and internet time is scarce, so I am going to post everything at once(sorry -- you should read this in bursts).

Second: In all of my running about this summer, I have even neglected to tell about end-of-school and graduation ceremonies. I’ve attempted to remedy this here.

The Ukrainian school year ends with a celebration called “Last Bell” held outside the front door. At the end, the school bell is rung for the final time. A tiny little girl in a frilly pink dress was lifted onto the shoulders of one of the 11th form boys and carried about the school-yard, pumping a metal bell half her size as she went. Hooray!

To some degree, this end-of-the-year assembly resembled what we went through every year at Blanchet: consisting of speeches, the handing out of awards for distinguished academic, athletic or artistic performance, performances, etc. And even though we were standing and outside, I’m sure that the feeling of deja-vu would have been much stronger had I understood most of it. Last Bell did, however, point out two appreciable differences between school ceremonies of my experience and the Ukrainian variety. The first has to do with conferring awards and seems rather superficial: the awards are organized for distribution in a way markedly different than in any American ceremony I have ever attended. Instead of grouped by subject (academics, sports, art) and given out by teachers associated with the particular field who have presumably worked with the student, the principal reads a list of awardees, alphabetical by class, as students run to grab their certificate and run away. This organization has the effect of disassociating the award with the individual while heightening its formal significance.

In my experience, Americans classify awards, thereby acknowledging each discipline as a distinct field. This separation marks each recipient as a distinguished individual with a particular, unique skill, allowing them a public moment of singular honor. Personal recognition is also emphasized by a visible connection between awarder and awardee as sports coach and athlete, teacher and student, etc. These area-specific authorities are first chosen because they, knowing their fields and the best judges of meritorious practice within it, are deemed most qualified to give the award – and because they probably nominated the recipient. Importantly, they are also there because we assume the award means more coming from someone who has interacted with the individual on display. Our ceremonies are calculated not only to recognize singular achievement, but to give personal satisfaction to the distinguished.

On the other hand, the structure of Ukrainian ceremonies diminishes personal recognition. Quickly read through and distributed, awards are dispensed with minimal fanfare. Instead of connected to a particular discipline or achievement, students are associated with their class. Their individual merit mingles with those of the rest of their classmates. Drawing attention away from the singularity of the particular skill of the student, the presentation presents a picture of, 1st, a successful and well-rounded class – made up of good students, good athletes, and good musicians – and, 2nd, a successful and well-rounded school community. Because the awards are given by the highest official present, administrative heft is set down upon every certificate, importance imposed and affirmed by the awarder’s consequence. Despite differences between disciplines, every award, given by the same man or woman, is equally weighty, every person’s contribution to their field a triumph for the community as a whole.

Also, the certificates themselves and the recognition they signify are extremely important. At the end of camp, the director was very concerned about whether or not she had given me my certificate of participation – she asked me at least three times, once during the closing ceremony itself. Maybe the official proof of participation is important for the future – Ukraine is an extremely paperwork-heavy country, with everything, EVERYTHING registered with the government and possessing a form and serial number (I discovered this while helping the camp director translate some documentation). Perhaps colleges/employers will want official (signed by the American and Ukrainian camp director) proof. Or perhaps the certificates themselves are meaningful to people. Perhaps Ukrainians have adapted to their bureaucratic surroundings and developed an affection for official documents. Whatever it is, Ukrainians love to give and receive certificates. I remember getting embarrassing numbers of certificates from Blanchet, but, honestly, the being recognized and clapped for (I am an actor at heart) gave me infinitely greater warm-and-fuzzy feelings. I don’t know where any of those certificates are anymore. Perhaps the kids’ awards are headed for the same circular-file destiny as my own were, and it is just politeness that governed the camp director’s concern, the village school where I trained, my 11th form students. But sheer copiousness makes me think there’s something to it all. I just don’t get it yet...

The second point of difference that I noticed between Ukrainian and American school assemblies/celebrations was the ceremonial nature of the Last Bell. Meaning that though there was a feeling of flexibility to the entire event – the exact sequence and nature of many events much more fluid than, say, a church service – there were a number of prescribed actions. The little girl on the 11th former’s shoulders, for one. American assemblies (graduation excepted) rarely have any set of traditional practices beyond an opening Pledge of Allegiance or some such “starter.” At Last Bell, the graduating seniors stood at the front of the audience, the speeches and performances made in large part to them. Many of these 11th form girls wore a short black dress with a little white apron (yes, like a French maid, though sometimes not quite as short) and frilly pom-poms in their hair (no, not like a French maid at all), which is, I am told, reminiscent of traditional school uniforms. Balloons were let fly at the end of the ceremony to symbolize the graduate’s success and their futures. Most touching, near the end, the seniors waltzed with their mother or father. This brought my counterpart to tears – “They were so little.” The parents were very obviously nearly overwhelmed by both pride and sadness. Teachers, themselves parents and recalling the past occasions when they were waltzing with their own children, looked on with similar feelings, having watched and educated the students for eleven years. I suppose it was the first time I had been on the “grown-up” side of things – watching people littler than me grow up and seeing clearly from a distance the emotion it caused (as opposed to being wrapped up in my own). If that is what we inspire in adults who have come to know us, I’m sort of sorry to have grown up to leave everyone thousands of miles away.

Moving on…

The graduating seniors are made much of – it is their real last bell, after all. On September 1st, we will have another celebration, “First Bell,” when I imagine that new 1st formers will be the center of attention. The entire school celebrates the exit of old students and entry of new. These kinds of event, these dates marked for community celebration, are notable to me in that I can’t imagine an American school getting together to recognize the departure of senior students or the addition of a new class. We do have graduations, but they are reserved for parents, teachers and the occasional friend (if you have an extra ticket). In terms of the school as a whole, Blanchet did little more than a quick speech and a round of applause for graduates at some assembly that was primarily for another purpose. The same can be said for welcoming new students. Business mostly proceeds as usual, with teachers left to explain the ropes to the newcomers. I suppose I will see how Ukraine commemorates the event soon enough.

To mark the end of Last Bell and the seniors’ departure from school, they paraded under Ukrainian embroidered towels (symbols of celebration, good fortune, honor and used at weddings, etc.) held by their parents and class teachers and back into the school. This was all meant to commemorate their last class, which, I imagine, was really just 10 minutes of picture-taking, etc. I spent the few minutes giving a frightfully awful congratulations speech in Ukrainian to 4th formers – who were moving from the primary school hall downstairs to the secondary one upstairs – as I handed over their calendar project (I had them draw pictures of the months and then label their birthdays and holidays on it in English after saying a sentence) woefully late, as I had intended to get it to them weeks earlier so we could actually use it in class. Then the English teachers and my Ukrainian tutor and I had a celebratory lunch and some wine in my classroom. End of school year. Hooray!

PS – our school has a “Queen of Knowledge,” an incoming 11th former who is distinguished at the end of the year for outstanding academic performance and, I guess, “rules” for the year. She doesn’t have any duties, from what I could tell; it’s just an honor. There could be a king, if a boy is ever at the top of his class, but he would be called the “King of Science.” Anyway, the queen gets a sash and a tiara. There was a transferal of sash and tiara as part of Last Bell. I wondered why Anya looked so particularly spiffy…

Third:

Graduation took place two weeks later. Apparently, students are required to be at school for 2 weeks after classes end for… Lord knows what. The teachers take them to the park, to the lake, and… I don’t really know more than that. I was not informed of the “camp” until after I had made travel plans. I didn’t attend, instead ending up in Kyiv, having my nose looked at (see previous entry). I know the 9th formers have testing. After 9th form, students can either go to a specialized “college” or vocational school for technical training, or continue with secondary school through 11th form to get a general degree and go on to university. One of the nationally required tests is in English. I hope they did ok…

Oh! Graduation, yes. Sorry. I remember. …Graduation morning began with an injunction from colleagues that I dress up and wear my hair down. Having been thus commanded, I met my counterpart in the evening wearing heels. My counterpart was not wearing heels or anything nearly as nice as I was wearing. I felt out of place, awkward, and uncomfortable, and fear I was a bit snippy at the beginning of everything because of it. Made worse by the fact that she asked me numerous times if I would be ok in heels. I couldn’t imagine why I wouldn’t be, and said as much. But before a few minutes were out, I could imagine. I had assumed we were going to the town theater to sit down and watch a ceremony. However (surprise, surprise), graduations are different in Ukraine than in America, a fact neither my counterpart nor I had considered. It soon became apparent we were going to the center of town to wait (45 minutes!) for a parade and then walk to the theater. Then stand outside the theater during the ceremony. Then go inside for the conferral of diplomas and a concert. Once I had an idea of what was coming, I was fine. Even when it started raining as we were watching the ceremony and it was cold. I just won’t wear heels or a short skirt to a graduation again.

Other than wardrobe woes, everything was fine. All four schools participate, and only the concerts and conferral of diplomas are held in different places for each school. So I got to be there for both my students and my host-brother, which was nice. The ceremony went on as most of these things do – speeches, letting doves fly free, giving out awards (one of my students scored really high on the 11th form English test! But not because of me; she works really hard on language. Another, the former Queen of Knowledge and a really cool girl, won a gold medal, which is the equivalent of recognition for all A’s and high SAT scores). The concert was long-ish because the graduates are responsible for putting on a show to thank all of their teachers, class teachers, parents, etc by name. There were also a few waltzes. Teachers complained that the concert did not reflect a lot of planning on the seniors’ part, but… they were seniors! I can’t imagine ANY American graduates getting ANY sort of program put together during the last week of school. Not even I would have done a damned thing. I especially can’t imagine finding six boys out of twenty willing and able to waltz in public. So… well done, Ukraine.

I was also impressed by the confidence of many of the more successful students in my classes. It seems so often at high school graduations (mine an exception, I hope), that the “smart” student chosen to speak is not necessarily the one most comfortable in front of a crowd. The awkward nerdy kid is our stereotype (and I will admit to being an awkward nerdy kid – only theater experience counteracts my retiring tendencies). Ukraine, encouraging boys and girls to perform in concerts (more on that in a later entry) – singing and dancing in front of peers – seems to develop students more poised when being watched by an audience. And though many of the students exhibited this (the boys waltzed, for goodness’s sake!), those with the highest GPAs – Queen of Knowledge and stellar English student – excelled. Perhaps because, as the successful students, they were most often asked to MC/perform in concerts… I don’t know. Interesting nonetheless.

The funny, we-have-an-American story of my town’s graduation is as follows: the premise of the seniors’ concert was that the graduates were handing out awards, the “Golden Diploma 2008,” to distinguished educators/personages. They would list a number of “nominees,” one or two of which was a teacher/administrator, the others being, I assumed, famous personages of one sort or another. The inevitable winner would be their teacher, who would receive flowers and a certificate. I received an award with their other English teacher – I think that being recognized at a graduation makes me an official teacher, how frightening – with my name printed in Cyrillic on the award. Now… it was not my real name that was transliterated, but instead “Miss Gretchen.” “Міс Гретчен.” I realize that they don’t understand that “Miss” is a title. My kids don’t know my name!

The problem is that Ukrainian teachers are not referred to by any sort of Mr. or Ms. –type title. They are addressed by their first name and patronymic. I would be Gretchen Jamesivna, if that worked in Ukrainian/Russian. But it doesn’t. So I, like most Peace Corps Volunteers here, have adopted a compromise – a title and my first name. I assumed the kids, after years of English, would be familiar with our titles and situations in which you use them. Never assume. I remember having this conversation with my friend Kolya – he asked me why I added “Mic” onto my name, and I tried to translate the title into Ukrainian. The equivalent is “Пані,” “Pani.” Apparently, however, “Пані” is from a time when there were elite landowners – like the occupying Poles, and it has a very high-class, snobbish connotation to it, especially considering Ukraine’s socialist history. It is sometimes translated as “Lady” (as in Ladies and Gentlemen…”) and used only for very formal situations. So much for that. I’ll have to clarify this whole “Mic Гретчен” deal in a few weeks. Well, one more thing to do during the first few classes.

Concert schmoncert, the real show at graduation is the attire. Caps and gowns are reserved for university graduations, and graduation is the opportunity for girls and boys to purchase formal attire. Think prom. Boys seem to favor white suits – often with a salmon-colored shirt and a complimentary tie. My host-brother was the ideal example of the above style – and, what’s better, before the big day he showed me his outfit, proudly asserting that he would be “гарненкий гарненкий.” “гарний” is the word for “beautiful,” here used in the masculine, repeated, AND made diminutive by the “ен” added to the middle. What I heard was “I’m going to be pretty pretty!” coming from a 16 year-old boy. Which is adorable (partly because of the translation and partly because it is reminiscent of his mother’s speech patterns, who also repeats “pretty” adjectives).

At graduation, most girls wear HUGE dresses (think Mario Bro’s Princess Peach-type) complete with gloves and tiaras in curled hair. The fashion in Ukraine is much more appreciative of ornament in dresses – sparkles, frills, and big flowers all incorporated into one frock. To give you an idea of the extent of this adornment, fellow PCVs have informed me that our American wedding dresses are dismissively called “nightgowns.” Except for their white color, wedding dresses in Ukraine follow the same general principle of graduation dresses. These were once called “cupcake dresses” by one of my friends. The term is appropriate in that it brings to mind the correct pastel color palate as well as light, fluffy frosted decoration, which many of the graduation dresses’ embellishment recalls. To me, it seems as though graduation is a time for fulfillment of many Ukrainian girls’ princess fantasies. Imagine when, as a little girl, you wanted to be a princess. Your Ukrainian graduation dress is the outfit you would have picked, with a few extra flowers and/or frills thrown in for good measure. It is not often that one gets to have a very formal dress, and Ukrainians make sure to get the most out of the opportunity.

Finally:

Following graduation in town, I made a trip back to my training village to watch my host-sister’s ceremony. In addition to a short parade through the village (the two steps from the church to the culture palace didn’t take too long) and the graduation ceremony and concert, there was also a church ritual for all of the students. Even though I had been away for six months, the entire graduation process in the village affected me more in that the students in the village were not just my students, but had been there to welcome us – the first five Americans in the village – as friends. I was mortified when two 11th form boys and three girls held a karaoke party in my bedroom late at night – “but I’m their teacher” – but I was also grateful to be included in everything from discos to sledding. Especially when new in Ukraine, much less linguistically competent, and generally much more self-conscious and in need of friends. In addition to laying claim to my personal affection, the students also exhibited such cheerful, playful and sincere affection for one another. In general, the village community was, predictably, I suppose, much more close-knit. The entire village (or so it seemed) turned out for the concert. As each graduate was called to center stage to receive diplomas and certificates, hordes of relatives and friends raced to the stage to give out flowers and congratulate the graduate with a kiss and a hug. Fellow seniors raced up to plant kisses on cheeks. The line for every single student stretched halfway down the aisle, and the student quickly became hidden behind stacks of bouquets piled over his/her head. Flowers were so numerous that two stagehands were required to carry the bouquets out when the graduate needed to sit down. Every audience member was a parent, an aunt, a friend of multiple graduates, and the celebration emphasized the community’s interconnectedness.

Particularly touching was the students’ tribute to their class teacher, a wonderfully spirited woman and possibly the most joyful, boisterous, and kind person I have met in Ukraine. Her thank-you was full of balloons falling from above, flowers, senior boys each taking a turn around the stage with her to sentimental pop, and, of course, lots of tears. The students went all-out for her. Also wonderful for me to see was the particular relationship my host-sister has with her teacher. On Teacher’s Day in October, it was my host-sister (and our family) who had a celebratory lunch with her family. At commencement, the two clung together for the end of the song. Obviously personalities just clicked, and their mutual affection was so sweet and so unconcerned with the rest of the world offstage that I almost cried right there in public.

The class teacher’s twin sons were two of my host-sister’s best friends and always involved in the Americans’ escapades – from the above-mentioned karaoke party to Halloween festivities. One studies at a collegium in Kyiv and the other graduated with the rest of the village kids. The latter is my secret schoolgirl crush; you know the kind – completely harmless affection, mingled tenderness and amusement, for some particularly loveable younger person you can’t wait to see in love with someone great. Both sons inherited the cheerfulness of their mother, and the graduate out-performed everyone around him during the dances and skits with infectious good-humor (yep, I’m a sucker for a theater boy) AND was the only one of the seniors to acknowledge my presence at graduation. He introduced me to two Ukrainian girls, as his “American friend” – note, not “American teacher.” In the village, the cluster was really just an assortment of really big, rather weird, kids. Other students present included Dima, the dancing-king, Dasha, the singer, and Halya, the gold-medalist.

(Warning, Amy: much of the below was in your last e-mail. It has been re-worked a bit, but it is basically the same. Peruse at your own peril. I take no responsibility for any boredom that might result from a second reading – though I do apologize for any that might have occurred during the first.)

The rest of the weekend saw me pretty much incompetent. There were all sorts of new people – relatives and such – about. Hooray! I got to re-use the few “getting to know you” topics that I actually speak about in competent Ukrainian and that were exhausted after a few days with the family. Ukrainian triumph aside, many new people tend to make me, however unconsciously, very nervous. I proceeded to spill three glasses of champagne in two days. Immediately following the third champagne episode, I somehow bit incorrectly into a strawberry varenyky. “Incorrect” munching on varenyky will result in juice spurted all over one’s clothing – in this instance my good white sweater. Everyone was very cheerful about it.

…I feel that being foreign and clutzy at least gets me points as someone who’s ‘cute,’ which is an acceptable, although not ideal, way to be liked. To think of me as a bit bumbling is better than thinking of me as simply the weird, silent stranger. Life is about a good anecdote, and people will remember you for the story if you can’t pull off a memorable impression without reverting to self-abasement. I’d rather be laughed at than forgotten. And, well, at least this way someone gets some fun out of my mistakes. Some good might as well come of them. Anyway…

The morning after the all-night graduation party, I came downstairs at about 11. Most of the house was still sleeping, but my host-mother and her nephew were awake. He was outside in the yard, and she was in the kitchen. I sat down with a book and a notebook in the kitchen, and was promptly told to go outside because it was pretty and no one would be up for a long time. The phrase “outside” is literally translated as “on the road.” I knew the translation, but I didn’t know that the verb “to walk” may also be used with it – not necessarily as “to walk,” but as a “to be” or “to do things” added to the “outside.” So… what I heard was “go take a walk on the road.” I thought the verb “walk” changed the meaning of “on the road,” generally “outside,” to really mean “on the road,” or, more generally, “around.” I figured she wanted to cook or something and didn’t want me in the way. So I went outside and began to walk around the village, reacquainting myself with its streets in warm weather, eventually making my way WAY out to a field and a bench on the far side of town. It was all very beautiful, and I spent a little time sitting there, looking at the sky curve above me and feeling very much like I was in a painting. Needless to say, I didn’t mind the walk. But, as I was returning home about two hours later, I get a phone call from my host-mom. “Where are you? We were looking all over for you. Why did you go so far away? We wanted to eat.” I told her I was coming, and when I got home, I was sat down with a plate of potatoes and scolded for leaving. Apparently, my host-mother just meant that I should go sit outside with her nephew. “Walk on the road” APPARENTLY means “sit in the yard.”

The next day, I was sent outside with host-mom’s nephew to gather vegetables and herbs for dinner. Nephew went to the far corner of the garden to pull carrots, but pointed at a patch of green as he went, telling me to pick the parsley host-mom wanted. I began working, and when he came back, asked him if what I had was enough. He (this is important) stood and watched me pull some more, and we then went inside. When I confidently handed my host-mother the clump of herbs, she just stared. Then laughed. I had pulled a bunch of carrot tops. I thought it looked funny! I did! But I mistakenly trusted the Ukrainian who was with me to know what he was doing… They’re the ones who grow up with kitchen-gardens, after all. (“Kitchen-gardens,” by the way, was a word that I thought was just an awkward Ukrainian-English-ism, but Trollope and Eliot use it, so… huh).

I do like going back to the village. At what other time do I end up with such stories? Going back is a bit like going home on vacations during college: you bring your laundry and don’t do much except sleep. I would sit down to do some reading and would end up passed out on the couch with the new kitten in my lap (new kitten! – she’s a 3-month old Siamese with really wide eyes that somehow make her look perpetually cross-eyed). However, I also feel a bit like a ghost haunting the house. Suddenly I’m this serious little silent thing who blankly does everything she’s told. The house has no real central room where people gather and talk – someone is always working in the kitchen and the other rooms are peripheral with doors that are shut – and every extra room was full because of the graduation. There were six guests in the house! So I sort of stayed in my room, sat in the garden, or wandered the village. I didn’t say much. Super-social weekends are hard; my brain goes numb after ½ an hour of trying to understand all the Ukrainian. I float in or out of rooms, sitting down unbidden and unable to really participate in any conversations, leaving without any sort of announcement because I don’t quite know how to handle the situation – extricating myself from conversations that have died is a problem I have even in English. There’s nothing like a bit of cross-cultural interaction to emphasize one’s general social ineptitude.

I met some really cool people in the village this time around, and am very glad I went despite the ensuing self-humiliation and self-doubt. I think that, given the state of my over-the-phone Ukrainian, I may start to write my host-family letters to keep in touch. A good idea in theory… Wish me luck with implementation.

Whew. You didn't think reading my journal would be like running a marathon, did you? (Which reminds me: a simile post is to come)

I'm off...

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:17:12 GMT

I leave for camp today. Back in three weeks. With stuff to post. Really. Promise.

revised

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:07:46 GMT

1. На переклад should read наприклад. I didn't even get it close. This is what comes of picking up words from conversation rather than study.

2. Vacation USA, 10/2008 HAS OFFICIALLY BEEN APPROVED!!! I'll be seeing many of YOU in October. E-mails to come regarding specific plans when we are not three months distant.

God, I'm a good person. I'm in the Peace Corps. I took in a stray cat. I even floss. Please don't take away THIS vacation.

when in Kyiv for medical...

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:22:30 GMT

So… I was supposed to be in Kyiv for one day. That turned into three days – for treatment and then observation. When treatment failed, three days became five. When more treatment failed, five became seven. When the nosebleeds miraculously stopped two days later, seven became nine… just to make sure they were really gone. And thus I arrived back in my town on the exact day I was supposed to return from Lviv , vacation-less and without having done anything that was medically effective.

Though my vacation time was, as Amy pointed out, absolutely futile, I did get to spend a bit of time in a Kyiv theater, which did me worlds of good. The Shevchenko Opera/Ballet Theater is not too distant from the Peace Corps office, and I took advantage of its proximity to get the theater fix I’ve been craving for nine months now. I saw:

*Strauss’s “Віденський Waltz” – Embarrassingly, I don’t know what this is. I can’t find the word Віденський anywhere, and the words “Strauss” and “waltz” are not enough to give it to me. It ends with the “Blue Danube” …because I needed more experiences to associate with that song. Anyway, it was an exuberant ballet, pretty boy putting intra-village conflict to rest and falling in love with a pretty blond girl in a white dress. And then the dark-haired, flirtatious beauty arrives in town with a fancy hat and a fancy car and turns the pretty boy’s head with a flick of her wrist and wave of her hips and OH THE AGONY (misery, woe…), for the pretty boy is now hopelessly devoted to an actress (of course she’s an actress) who struts around with some sort of vain general or count (of course he’s vain and a count). And after the pretty boy sleeps with her, he is rejected in favor of money or prestige or whatever the actress has with the count. Then his broken-hearted pretty blond wafts by, witnesses his sincere grief and contrition, and takes him back.

I was very impressed by the energetic performances and the choreography. The characters were strikingly well-drawn by both dancers and choreographer. There was one moment, late in the second act (I’m only guessing it was the second act because I didn’t have a program because they cost extra, but it was the scene that took place on the second set), that was one of the most beautiful moments of living beauty I have ever seen – a freeze in blue light, five or six pairs of dancers paused, about to begin a waltz. The pretty boy moved through them to get a glimpse of his new lady love, and though his presence and emotional upheaval provided the reason for the freeze, it was almost distracting. I was instead taken by the variety of dancers and their postures, which yet gave the impression of uniformity – a type of visual harmony (that’s some part of an Aristotelian (or someone else’s) theory about art, isn’t it? Variety contributing to, and resolving into, unity?). I was awed by their arrested grace, the sense of beauty captured for a moment for everyone to examine, a piece of crystal held in hand and turned to the light. Made all the more precious and astonishing because it is live beauty halted, bodies brimming with possibility, which any second will move to create new shapes perhaps more lovely, but incapable of being so fully examined. There is fascination inevitable with such a contrived moment – the unnaturalness of something alive both alert and motionless combined with the irresistible allure of the beautiful. Of course, my enjoyment of ballet is rooted in an enjoyment of, and fascination with, this kind of tension. Attraction felt because of dancers’ gorgeous physical feats, simultaneous revulsion because of the strain, the pain involved in doing it and making it look effortless (I cannot watch a ballerina balance on one toe without cringing). Tension between partners, the shapes they carve into space, clashes and consonance. Tension between music and dance – attempting to make the aural visual, resolving and exploiting the very different capabilities of bodies and notes – the held note and the ballerina’s outstretched arm. I don’t have anything more intelligent to say about that tension… except that it’s there and it’s enthralling. I know that the importance of tension is noted when discussing theater (and music and many art forms), so my thoughts are not particularly insightful. Perhaps it only strikes me because of the physicality of dance, or perhaps because I am less used to interpreting dance and so catch hold of a clear in to the performance.

There was a delightful duet later in the ballet, dramatizing the minutes before the pretty boy and dark-haired lady fell into bed together. The fun-loving and playful side of the woman was here evident and endearing, encouraged as it was by the supportive adoration of her youthful admirer, instead of stifled by the egoism of the general or count or whoever. The general and the actress use each other to show themselves off, the boy uses his strength to show her off and keep her from falling. The duet was so charming and the dancers had such chemistry that I almost wish the flirt and the pretty boy had made a go of it and left the lovely little blond free to find a gentleman who wouldn’t prance around with the first dark-haired beauty to pirouette by.

On another note, ballet is exceptionally public. There’s nearly always a group of dancers on stage watching the principles, which makes the private scenes all the more compelling. We watch, they watch. In Віденський Waltz, the initial courtship of the pretty boy and pretty girl was witnessed and affirmed by the company, social approbation of the relationship. The show-off-iness of the general was all the more effective because of the audience he always had. The actress was watched on her stage by the company, who we watched. The same type of observation happens in many ballets I have seen. Someone enlighten me: why is there so much watching in ballet?

*”Don Quixote,” music by Minkus (if I’ve Anglicized the name right). This is a weird ballet! The elderly and infirm Don Quixote can’t exactly perform the leaps, spins and lifts required of a principal male dancer, so the focus of the story shifts to the Dulcinea role and her lover, whom the innkeeper-father doesn’t like. And… that’s about all the story there is. The windmill scene is included, and, throughout, Don Quixote’s physical frailty is emphasized, so seeing him totter into the arms of Sancho with failure is quite touching. The rest of the ballet is really an excuse to show off the dancers’ abilities – with a Spanish twist. There is a dream sequence and random gypsies and a matador and his lady, and it’s all very fun (and very full of ballerinas stopping the show to take bows after their triumphs in mid-scene…which, with my theater background, was weird. There is a lot more clapping in ballet than in theater. I try to be respectful of the conventions of the art, but really. You can only clap so much before the strength in your arms gives out). “Don Quixote” was the bare bones of a story, with a lot of character parts (Don Quixote, Sancho, Innkeeper, rejected suitor) to occasionally move the plot forward and a lot of astounding technical virtuosity on the parts of the young couple and the nameless passers-through. It did feature the spunkiest little ballerina I have ever seen, a charismatic little pixie-like thing. She was a lot of fun.

*”A Masked Ball” by Verdi. The real story of this opera is that I ended up sitting next to an extremely talkative older woman who talked at me in Russian for a good few minutes while I nodded occasionally and pulled out a schedule when her monologue about upcoming performances deemed it appropriate. After a few more minutes of my attentive silence made it clear I was not fluent enough to answer back confidently, she asked IN ENGLISH “Where are you from?” Turns out she’s a translator for German tourists, a world traveler, and had studied English in college. She moved us all about the second balcony in search of better seats both before and after the lights dimmed, keeping up a steady stream of Russian intermixed with English the while.

As regards the opera, I loved the choral bits (but I always do), the soprano playing the page – a good dose of cheerfulness – the quartet and quintet in Act 4, and (rare for me!) the wife’s aria at the beginning of the fourth act. Mostly, I enjoyed the performance when I remembered to stop trying to decipher the Ukrainian super-titles and listen. I knew the story... and I really don’t read Ukrainian well enough to get more than a couple of words and a sentence every now and again … and the distraction was just not worth it. I am such a weirdo – absolutely unable to divide my attention between the written word and something else. One hundred percent here or one hundred percent there. На переклад (for example): I haven’t ever been able to really appreciate comics; I just read the words and don’t think to look at the pictures. I try, but I can’t do both. …Which is very much about the opera…

All in all, a good bit of theatrical exposure to tide me over until fall, when I return to the States and, afterwards, when theaters in Ukraine begin their seasons.

so much for vacation

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:21:02 GMT

I apologize for the length between posts. At the very beginning I warned you all this might happen. Besides traveling (sort of), I have an excuse! I lost my flashdrive and it is proving more difficult to find places that will let me use a CD. BUT, I finally offer you all a little story.

I had intended to post boisterous, rollicking narratives about my adventures over vacation,

Of course my body would do this. Of course. No sooner do I finish school, plan a trip and not only get excited about it, but actually take the first steps in executing it, then my health takes a nose-dive. And so here I am, flying through central Ukraine on an express train to Kyiv and the Peace Corps Medical Office instead of in a 2nd class berth to beautiful Lviv, my friends, and the Carpathians.

Background: (warning: medical minutiae) Since January, I have been experiencing periods of recurrent nosebleeds that are increasing in length, severity and frequency. The most recent bout began just as I left my town for a friend’s birthday party in another city, and, by the time I was to leave for Lviv two days later, I had experienced a startling number of nosebleeds. I knew that if I called medical in Kyiv, if I told them that this was a recurring problem, if I let them know I was bleeding for upwards of an hour two times a day, then I would probably be asked to come to Kyiv, set my vacation back, upsetting my carefully balanced schedule and keeping me from seeing some of my friends. Being my stubborn self and absolutely refusing to let physical concerns interrupt the trip I was looking forward to – and, I argued, was going to be good for my health (hiking and all) – I resisted calling. I still sort of vainly hoped it would go away like all the other times.

On a short train ride to Z— (a major transportation hub a few hours north, the first step in my trip), I got a particularly bad nosebleed and, re-evaluating my previous obstinacy, decided that spending an indefinite amount of time with a tissue to my nose and worrying everyone I came in contact with would perhaps be less fun, and less considerate, than setting my trip back a day. And best to make sure everything was ok while going towards Kyiv and not steadily moving away from it to the other side of the country, right? I swallowed my pride (but really, Doctor, I’m a really healthy person!) and made the call to Kyiv. I knew what the outcome of the call would be. It just took me a while to make myself willing to accept it. (Sort of like deciding to give up my theater-third. I was very aware that the second I told Joe I was thinking about it, it would be a done deal. It took me a week to decide and then present it to him as an option, knowing what would come after.)

It was thus that I forfeited my Lviv ticket. I was sent for by the medical powers, and I set out to buy a train ticket in unfamiliar territory. I thought I was being courageous: I asked an official-looking person which of the three windows sold tickets to Kyiv. But I suddenly turned chicken as I stared at the seller. The world never feels so full of unfriendly people likely to collectively yell at me as when I face a person in the service industry with a line of people at my back. Lord knows the last thing a tired person who’s been dealing with the often irked, troublesome public all day needs is a timid foreigner (and, God help me, I AM timid and probably always will be). And the last thing the hurried public wants is someone who doesn’t understand anything gumming up the process when there are trains leaving, tens of errands left on the list, and a lunch hour running short. I am painfully aware of the increasing tenseness of the people behind me and myself as the cause of their grievance. The fact that my overly-sensitive self most likely exaggerates, or else completely fabricates this hostility does not lessen its effect. The cashier looks expectantly at me; the man behind me rustles files in his briefcase. …It is in these moments that I would rather face the meanest secretary in New York City. It is in these moments I would do anything – I would climb Everest, sell my cat, enter myself as a contestant on The Bachelor – if it would somehow make the woman behind the glass speak one phrase in English (given the last case, probably “Well, I hope the champagne at least was worth the humiliation.”).

Thus uncomfortably occupying my place as a perceived object of public annoyance, I did as any meek person in my position would do: I got done as quickly as possible. Having heard the Medical Officer refer to the arrival time of the train from Z—, I assumed I only had to ask for a ticket for tonight to Kyiv and be done with it. Oops. The cashier didn’t ask any of the usual questions, quickly printed up a ticket, and I found myself with a seat on an express instead of a berth on a slow train, a mistake that landed me in Kyiv in the middle of the night with no place to go, the Peace Corps office closed until a decent hour.

I screwed up the courage to be a brave girl after the damage had been done and immediately returned to the ticket booth to see if it was possible to repair it. It was not, of course, and this time I did end up severely reprimanded – for not asserting myself and my desired time of arrival in the first place. The woman was, I think, partly expecting a fight and prickled prematurely. I recognized that I was in the wrong, however, and left immediately, conscious that I would either have to buy a new ticket or camp out in the Kyiv train station for 7 hours.

After a shaky phone call to my colleague, ascertaining that there were, in fact, places to sleep at the Kyiv station – locked halls with a guard and attendant, where for 12 hrn. a number of people each receive a padded bench and the luxury of sleeping without fear of being robbed – I decided to keep my ticket. Just before the train arrived, worried that I had not heard the announcement and nearly frantic after the misadventures of the day, I set out to find the track, and, brilliantly, was in an underground tunnel when the track announcement was made, precipitate action ensuring that I did not hear the pertinent information. Finally fed up with being incompetent, I chose a platform and asked a woman nearby “Which track to Kyiv?” After my embarrassing linguistic hesitancy landed me with no bed for the night, I found my language skills magically improved, and I competently handled this and all subsequent encounters.

I’d chosen the wrong track, she told me, but I turned around and surfaced onto the correct platform just as the train pulled up.

And then I entered the nicest train I have ever been on – excluding the quick, clean and technologically-advanced transport between the Amsterdam airport and the city proper. This train, though, featured wide individual seats with plenty of legroom; 2 TVs; large, overhead luggage racks; and a curving snack bar at one end fronted by tiny, elevated tables and matching stools. The car, seat backs and window sills all were done in bright white plastic. All modern, all new, all clean. The train was peopled by deferential conductors, business people with crossword puzzles, traveling in tailored suits even in the late evening, and women of high-fashion with sleek hair, skinny jeans and bulging sunglasses. I went from the afternoon electrichka, sitting on hard benches alongside railway workers in grimy neon vests hanging loose, to spending the evening with the modern elite in their gleaming, functional world of pristine luxury, ease without opulence.

It’s notable how much nicer the world outside seems when comfortable and looking at it through tinted windows. The last bits of daylight glowed, the hills gently rolled into small ravines lined with patches of bushes, and the same territory that I traveled through in the afternoon, so harsh in the glaring afternoon sun, became suddenly enchanting.

Now moving in the right direction and comfortably seated, I begin to think that, though I will have to spend tonight in the train station, my blunder has not been as large as previously assumed. Given the fact that Z— is 2 hours closer to Kyiv than my site, my usual 7-hour train trip would have been about 5 on a slow train, and I would have been stuck for 6 hours in Z— waiting for the train to sleep on. Either option would have left me with hours in a train station. At least in Kyiv I can spend it lying down. And now I know how the upper-class lives.

really quick

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:24:28 GMT

I'm leaving for a long trip around the western part of Ukraine tomorrow, and so you won't hear from me for a while. Sorry! I know you have already been languishing for a good couple of weeks with no updates, and I will give no excuses. Except, you know, that school just finished and the end of anything tends to be a bit crazy. So that one little excuse.

I promise an updated wish list and lots of entries chock-full of interesting information when I return. Really.

But, until then, I hope everyone is enjoying a glorious early summer (we are!).

Best,
me