Ten Things You Will Never Find in an American Grocery Store

#10: This much sausage.

Seriously, who eats this much sausage?!

#9: Things in bags that really should not be sold in bags.

Not just ice cream, but also sour cream, and even milk! This presents some logistical issues.

#8: Spices and baking goods in packets.

Spices, cocoa, baking powder-- all very hard to find in jars, and very expensive if you do.

#7: Unwashed produce.

That's how you know it's fresh, right?

#6: Kinder eggs.

Apparently these are now illegal in the States.

#5: "Mister Proper."

I guess Ukrainians prefer that things be "proper" more than "clean"?

#4: Kefir.

Looks like milk... feels like yogurt... is actually neither.

#3: Crab-flavored potato chips.

Yes, you read that correctly.

#2: Whole pigs.

Because sometimes, "every possible cut of pork" is just not enough pork.

And the #1 thing...

Colored... and yes, SCENTED... toilet paper.

Because I want my bum to smell like violets.

By the way, one other thing you won't find in American supermarkets... potatoes fresh from my department head's mother's garden. :)

ETA Training/Orientation in Kyiv

I have returned at last!

Not much was happening for a few weeks-- or well, things were, but there was not much interesting to report. The weekend after I lost my camera I traveled to Kyiv to attend the regional Fulbright ETA orientation. This was three days of meeting with other ETAs who were sent to Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Latvia, Georgia, etc.

While I had no camera, with the aid of Facebook I was able to gather some pictures that my fellow ETAs took from the trip.

St. Andrews' Church, at the top of the hill

Vanessa and I walking down St. Andrews' Descent. During the day this street is filled with vendors selling all kinds of crafts and souvenirs... but it was pretty awesome to be there at night when it was completely empty. I think this is my favorite part of Kyiv.

Words to live by. (Shashlyk, for the record, is grilled meat and/or veggie kebabs and is super tasty)

By the time I returned to Vinnytsia I was exhausted after my 2+ weeks of solid travel and very little sleep, so I didn't do much except rest for a week or so. Over the weekend, I went shopping with Karis, one of the Peace Corps volunteers, and we bought a new camera. She took me to the "Mega-Mall" on 600 Years Street.

"Vulnitsa Sheist-sot richya"

We also visited the Silpo in that mall, which we discovered to have a better selection and better prices. I've started going there when I can spare the time to take the longer tram ride.

On Thursday, I took a trip back to that mall and bought a wireless internet router for my apartment. This was really becoming necessary because my internet cable is broken and was continually falling out of my computer whenever I moved. It was a fulfilling venture, because the clerk at the store was perfectly nice to me, and he spoke Ukrainian and I spoke Russian and we understood one another perfectly, and he showed me the correct router for the internet service I have and the size of my apartment. Then I went home and set it up, which ended up being a somewhat complicated process since I have a service you have to sign into... and although all the menus and settings were in Ukrainian, I successfully set it up. I was really proud of myself after that!

Then, the Thanksgiving festivities began. I attended the local English Club's Thanksgiving meeting. It was a lot of fun, and it was nice to actually eat turkey on Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving at the English Club! As you can see, there was turkey, potatoes, cranberries (made by yours truly), and lots and lots of sweets!

You can view more pictures of the English Club's Thanksgiving party here, too. My favorite is the one of Mila posing with my cranberry sauce. Hahahaha...

I had attended the English Club once before but it was like no one had noticed me until this meeting. Several of the members introduced themselves to me, and were really nice people. I will have to go back this week.

On Saturday, Anna, one of the Peace Corps volunteers, was hosting a bigger Thanksgiving party at her home in Vinnytsia Khurota-- one of the villages surrounding Vinnytsia. Unfortunately I had to be late, since I was teaching the class that I teach on Saturdays. This group of students are in the 11th grade at a local high school, and the university offers them these classes to help them prepare for their college entrance exams in the hopes that when they need to choose a college, they will choose this one.

These students are really motivated and enthusiastic and they really work hard-- and apparently they love me too. Before class Oleg was telling me that one of the other teachers had overheard some of my students on a bus in the city talking about how I was the best English teacher around. :o) This week they asked for a picture with me, so here it is:

These students are fabulous!

After the class, I caught bus 176 to Vinnytsia Khurota to attend the party at Anna's. It was interesting because I only knew three or four people there and everyone else was a complete stranger. They were all really nice to me, but as the only non-Peace Corps person in attendance, I felt like a special guest to a group which already existed. Still, I had a really great time and made some new friends in the area.

The food was fabulous. There was a huge spread of American favorites, including macaroni and cheese, stuffing, pumpkin pie, etc. Notably missing, though, was the turkey. Plans for obtaining one had fallen through last-minute, so we ate pork and duck instead.

I should probably also mention that it was an "ugly sweater" party. We don't all have this questionable of a fashion sense on normal days. :P

After dinner we retired to the sauna (a surprisingly nice building with a pool and everything) to drink and play games and chat. After playing a game of Cards Against Humanity (a version of Apples to Apples that is utterly politically incorrect and offensive, and therefore often very hilarious), we settled into conversations.

Around 1:30 we (me and two girls who were planning to crash at my apartment) attempted to call a taxi back to my place... but there were a series of communication mishaps (first we didn't know the correct area code for the taxi service, then we got a number for one which didn't serve the area, except the person who made the call didn't understand that so we waited outside for 40 minutes, then tried to walk to a nearby hotel/bar to get a number and the people there either gave us a wrong number or the taxi service they referred us to didn't operate during those hours... it was a mess). Long story short, we ended up staying the night at Anna's (not that I really slept) and I didn't get back until late yesterday morning.

Now I'm very tired, but I got up to teach a class this morning (well, not really teach. It was a class I had never worked with before, so we just chatted and got to know one another). Then I took a trip out to the fancy Silpo and got ingredients for vegetable soup, which I made for dinner. Tomorrow I have a Russian lesson (only my third one since all this madness started-- I was gone, or my teacher was busy,  pretty much every day since) and I teach an evening class of high schoolers that I've never worked with before from 5-8 pm. It's going to be a long haul but I think it will be fun.

I also made plans for Christmas-- from December 22-28 I will be going to Istanbul with some of the other Fulbrighters, and when I return from that I will go to L'viv for a two-week intensive course in the Ukrainian language and to celebrate Orthodox Christmas at the home of one of my friends. :o) I'm really excited! Better things to come!

More History of L'viv

I don't have much exciting to post for now, since losing my camera means that I don't have any photos to show.

But in the meantime, you should look at this. I think it does the best job of beginning to capture what I would call the spirit of L'viv. I'm sure you've heard me say that to be there feels as though you have stepped back in time. Well, this photography project illustrates that feeling in the most beautiful and eloquent way I can imagine.

http://www.nickolaykravtsov.com/2012/10/blog-post.html

Observing the Ukrainian Elections: Part II

And now, Ukrainian Elections: The Thrilling Conclusion:

Peter and Darka informed me that there was a meeting for the L'viv election observers at Darka's apartment at 10 am Saturday morning. In attempting to find this apartment, I got a little lost. Took the bus to the city center with no problem, but got on the tram going the wrong direction and ended up who-knows-where. Fortunately I got off with no harm done and found the tram going the opposite direction. On the opera house square, I was met by David, a Canadian election observer. He helped me find my way back to Darka's. A lengthy meeting then commenced, during which we received our assignments and were paired into groups.

The generals, Stephan and Russell, plan strategy in the war room. Interesting tidbit: Stephan is a lawyer who actually helped to draft the Ukrainian constitution. Pretty cool huh?

By the time we'd been over all of this, it was near 2 pm. Then, Darka decided, it was time for us to go out to some polling places. There was general grumbling amongst the group at this, since many of us had other plans in the evening (Russell and I were both planning to go to a Halloween party hosted by Charitie). Nonetheless, we headed out to Horodok, one of the regions we were in charge of covering.

Before we could head out, though, we had to collect the missing members of our team, Peter and Talia. So the rest of us waited at a convenience store for over an hour while our driver went back to get them. Thus began a long and frustrating excursion to Horodok. For all the frustration, though, that driver *was* awesome. He kept buying us candy and cookies and he insisted on helping me out of the van every single time (to the point where I was forced to announce to everyone that I was not, in fact, made of glass).

Voting booths at the DEC

Ballot boxes at the DEC. This was the most patriotic room ever.

We went to the DEC, the regional polling office where all of us would ultimately be escorting our ballots at the end of election day. We also visited several other polling locations, filling out forms about whether all the protocol had been followed in terms of no campaign propaganda, ballot boxes being sealed properly, cameras placed properly, etc. etc.

For example, this "Svoboda" sign was against the rules.

Darka wanted each of us to have a turn filling out a form, which meant that this process took forever and we didn't actually get back to L'viv until after 8, by which point it was really too late to go to the Halloween party. Instead, Talia, Russell, Peter, and I went out for pizza and then returned home. We were all annoyed at the long day, knowing that tomorrow would be even longer.

David brought the car to pick me up around 5:40 the next morning. He had brought with him not only a driver, but also a translator and a friend of his. So, crammed into the back of this car with 4 strange guys, I rode to Mostyska, the town on the other side of Horodok. Now, L'viv is pretty far west in Ukraine, Horodok is west of L'viv, and Mostyska is even farther west than that. During some of our excursions we were even farther west than Mostyska, so far out we were very near the Polish border. In fact, once when we stopped to ask directions I heard David say "Gencouya" and "Dobje" instead of "Dyakuyu" and "Dobre"-- Polish instead of Ukrainian :)

Oh, that was the longest day of my life. Our driver was from the area, so he felt it was very important to take us to the smaller villages, despite the state of the roads-- they were really more pothole than road. It also began to snow, and everything was cold and wet and muddy. I was very glad that I had worn my snow boots. In all we visited 14 polling locations, opening at one, closing at another, and visiting 12 in between. We interviewed the committee leaders, observed voting, and examined the stations. At several places, the poll workers gave us coffee and tea and offered us food from their potluck meals they had brought from home. It was all delicious, and I was so full by the end. At our last polling location, we were supposed to stay after they closed and the doors were locked, and to stay until every vote was counted. At our poll this took a really long time... we didn't end until about 5 am!

We escorted the ballots back to the DEC and had to wait for them to be accepted-- a process which somehow was expedited when we showed our IDs and told the police that we were international observers and we were in a hurry. It was all like something out of a Soviet-era movie-- being ushered through a crowd of waiting people by a couple of police officers into a noisy, messy back room where votes were being read, numbers called, and ballots collected. I can't say I approved of it, but thank God it let us get out of there such that I could finally get back to the dorm by around 6 and to sleep by 7 or so.

I have never been more exhausted in my life. I had been not only awake, but working, for over 24 hours. Not to mention the 3 crappy nights of sleep before that and all the stress generated by the trip. Now, I didn't want to sleep too long because I didn't want to miss the following night of sleep. So I napped until a little after 1 pm, which gave me about 6 hours of sleep.

It was around the point that I got back to the dorm that I discovered my camera was missing. I had been using it during the elections. The memory card had been filled, so I'd put it back in my purse, and I never saw it again after that. I don't know if it was stolen or if it just fell out somewhere. Either way, I'm really mad about it. Not bad enough I'll have to replace a $100-plus camera-- but I also lost all my pictures that I took in the villages and driving through the beautifully snowy hills! Major bummer. But at this point, I was pretty much too exhausted to care.

That evening I went out with the L'viv Fulbrighters as well as a couple of the election observers and my Ukrainian friend Mariana. We went to (probably the only) Tex-Mex restaurant in L'viv, which is owned by an American guy. What an interesting time. The food wasn't all that great, though it's possible we just got the wrong dishes. In any case, the corn bread WAS really good, and I promised Mariana I'd teach her how to make it :)

I was really glad I had made the decision to stay that extra night in L'viv, because it would have been a million times more stressful if I had to leave on a train that very same day. Instead I was able to get a night's sleep before heading back to Vinnytsia.

The train ride back was the best one I've had so far. My coupé was shared by an older Ukrainian couple who were from Yalta. The woman especially was really nice, chatting with me despite my terrible Russian and offering me some of their homemade dinner-- it was so good, especially because I hadn't had time to stop and grab any food on my way out of L'viv and I wouldn't get back to Vinnytsia until after 4.

The next morning I got up to teach Tanya's class. It was Halloween, so I talked to them about this holiday and how we celebrate it in the U.S. They all know about it, of course, since they watch many of our television shows, but they really enjoyed the pictures I brought and my descriptions of carving Jack o' lanterns and so on. Then, fortuantely, I was able to relax for the rest of the day until I went over to Tanya's for dinner. She had picked some pumpkins from their garden for us to carve, and I brought The Nightmare Before Christmas to show to her and her husband. Of course I had to sing along :)

Tanya and her husband were so excited I was there to show them how to take part in this tradition :)

Yesterday Tanya and I went on a shopping trip, on which I finally bought some good boots of the kind that Ukrainians wear, and a nice gray wool coat. I am so happy with my purchases-- they were expensive, but worth every kopeck. I am sure I will get a picture sooner or later-- perhaps when I actually have a camera again.

So, tomorrow I teach the high school students again, and then Sunday I am back off to Kyiv AGAIN for the Fulbright ETA orientation. I am getting so sick of traveling!!!! It will be nice to stay in one place for a while once the orientation is over. I can't wait!