Village Life

I know, I've been terrible about updating. But since my trip to Kharkiv it's been pretty much nonstop traveling and teaching. Not that I'm complaining at all, but it does get to be pretty exhausting.

The weekend of March 21-24th, I went on a small excursion with a Fulbright friend and a couple of her friends to a nearby city called Uman, and from there to a village in Cherkas'ka Oblast called Lehedzyne.


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As you can see, it's sort of out in the middle of nowhere. A *real* Ukrainian Celo (village) of about 1,000 people.

The trip started out well enough, although I had to get up really early to meet my friends since the bus left at 7 AM. When I walked to the bus station, it was already snowing big heavy flakes, such that I was pretty much a snowman by the time I got there. We got the bus with no trouble, and rode to Uman. On the three-hour ride, the snow changed over to rain such that when we arrived in Uman it was pouring. That put a bit of a damper on our plan to wander around the city and see it, but we would not be deterred.

A beautiful orthodox church-- the priest here granted us brief shelter from the rain.

The art museum in Uman, actually in a former church where they still have Mass on Sundays.

Painting of a Hutsul girl

hardcore babushka :)

Uman also houses the tomb of a famous rabbi, and Jews come from all over the world to visit his tomb. This means there's an entire Jewish neighborhood in the middle of Uman, a whole series of apartment buildings which are empty but for the time of the year when the pilgrims come.

A map of Ukraine in Hebrew

Apartment buildings for pilgrims

It was a shame we didn't have our friend Talia, who is an expert in all things Jewish, with us to tell us all about it.

We also went to the famous Sofiyivska Park, which I planned to visit again at a later time when the weather is not so horrendous.

In the afternoon, we got a bus to Lehedzyne, where Charitie and Areta's friend Yura met us and escorted us to his house. Yura's an artist, so his house is quite colorful.

The door into the kitchen.

The door into the bedroom.

Charitie had the bed of honor, on the stove. :)

He served us dinner and we turned in, anticipating another long day on Saturday.

Overnight the rain turned to snow, and everything in the village froze. This was particularly unpleasant being that Yura didn't have running water, so if you needed to use the bathroom, you had to do it outside...

By Saturday everything was covered in snow, and the wind was blowing something fierce. Like crazy people, we decided to venture forth into the village anyway. Just from walking to the store (which to be fair, was a 20 minute walk), we were frozen solid. By the time we got back, it was time for dinner. The babushkas came from all over the village, bringing food. And oh, such food!

That's not a feast. THIS is a feast.

I was pretty excited about the food.

We enjoyed the delicious dinner, and after we had eaten, the babushkas sat around the table and sang for us.

The party broke up pretty early (they were, after all, babushkas). Naomi, a Fulbright alum who lives in the village, hung around with us for a few hours, then we all turned in.

On Sunday we got up to even colder temperatures than before. It was pretty awful because our stuff hadn't ever dried from all the rain on Friday. At this point my boots wouldn't even zip up, because mud had gotten into the teeth of the zipper and then frozen. We had planned to leave Sunday morning (and I had toyed with leaving myself even earlier, but that would have meant missing the party), but there were a few other things Areta wanted to do before we left.

So we headed out to the village cemetery. Thankfully, the sun was out, but the wind was unbelievable.

We went to the village cemetery.

Then we walked through the village to Naomi's house. I love Ukrainian villages-- they are always so peaceful, colorful, cheerful.

We went to Naomi's for lunch. She's an artist as well, and I just loved the way she had decorated her house.

Since the bus was supposed to come around 2:30, we left about 2:15 to go to the bus stop. Right as we approached, a bus came by, but it was not the one heading to Vinnytsia. We asked the driver, and he told us that our bus would be coming. But we waited in the freezing cold for hours, and it didn't. The wind was so strong it ripped one of the corrugated tin tiles off the roof of the cafe nearby. We went in to ask the men working there if they knew where the bus was. They told us it should have been there, but maybe it wasn't running because there was terrible weather in Vinnytsia. We really wanted to get home, so we tried calling a taxi to take us into Uman, and from there a bus into Vinnytsia. But the taxi would not come to the village to get us. We were frustrated, tired, and cold. But finally, after two hours or so, another bus to Uman came. We were so relieved.

When we got to Uman, Areta asked the woman at the ticket counter when the next bus to Vinnytsia was. She turned back, saying "She says there's one leaving now..." I looked out the window and saw the bus pulling out, with the sign in its window proclaiming its destination. Immediately I ran out of the bus station and up to the bus, banging on the door until the driver stopped and let us on.

I've never been so relieved to be sitting on a bus. Usually it would be an annoyance, but this time I was just relieved to be sitting down somewhere quiet and warm.

It turned out that everything that had been rain in Uman was snow in Vinnytsia. There were well over two feet on the ground. We had to wade through it to get from the bus to the tram, and then to the restaurant where we finally had dinner. By the time I got home it was after 10 pm. I hadn't showered in three days, so it was a huge relief to get home and take one, then sleep somewhere warm!