I Bought the Potatoes First...

Dec 23

Hello everyone! Greetings from Ukraine. I had hoped that this would be Danny and my first white Christmas but, alas, it looks like it's not to be. It's rather rainy and warm here, but this is a massive improvement on last week which was somewhere between freezing and melty. For a couple of days, the sidewalks were coated in ice AND running water which, if you've ever experienced this you'll understand, makes going anywhere a life and death experience. My first time at the Izium bazaar I very nearly took out a babushka when I slipped and did a ghoulish, arm-spinny dance to try to catch myself. Luckily, I did not fall and have not fallen....yet. Danny fell once in Chernigov (went down on a knee) and also slipped going up a hill and went down on his hands but I guess we're playing football rules so hands don't count but knees do which makes it 1-0 so far this winter. This doesn't mean that I haven't come close several times. In fact on Monday, on my way to school, (which happens to be 10 minutes downhill), I slipped 5 times in total. The forth time was an all-out arm flailing slip and the last was right in the last 2 steps into the building. By the time I was inside I was sweating just from the effort of keeping upright. Despite all of this, I still hope it snows tonight or tomorrow but this looks unlikely.
It's hard to believe that tomorrow is Christmas Eve and not just because of the weather. I think this is half that I can't believe we've been in Ukraine this long (it's gone by so quickly) and half that, technically, it's only Christmas Eve for Danny, David, and me. For everyone else in Izium, Saturday is just Saturday. Everyone else will be celebrating Christmas on January 7th. Regardless, after our girl's empowerment camp on Saturday, Danny, David, Megan, (two other PCVs) and I will have Christmas dinner. I'm making borscht, deruny (sort of like potato pancakes), coleslaw, and deviled eggs. I'm thinking about making eggnog but I don't know if Danny or I like it so it seems like an expensive risk to take. Danny and I have decided that instead of Christmas 'presents' we're just going to continue our ornament tradition and get each other a Christmas ornament this year. Economical yet fun.
This week has been full of fun and silliness. Last Friday I went with my tenth graders to play futbol at the sports complex (before this, I unexpectedly helped judge an English competition but that's a story for another time). I was not very surprised to see that I was the only woman there but it's always a little strange. I played with the guys for awhile until another, older, group came in and wanted to play, too. So, we played them 6 on 6. The funny thing was that before we started, one of the men on the other team looked at me and asked my team "devocthka?" which means "a woman?". My team said, "yep, she's on our team" and so we played and at the end, when the other team of men were leaving, they each gave me a nod and a "dasvidanya". It was alot of fun, and I hope to do it again soon even though for the next two days I couldn't move without a decent amount of pain! :-)
The next day, my seventh grade class took Danny and me on a tour of the city which was fun but painful. We trudged though the snow all the way up to the top of the mountain (Kreemenits) in Izium to see the WWII monument (it's beautiful). Then we crossed the highway and went up the back way to the memorial for the massive starvation in Ukraine that happened in 1933. This was a little scary mainly because it was icy and there was a highway (and a 40 foot drop) to my right and a snowy, steep drop to my left. To be fair, there was about a meter to walk so it only seemed sketchy, and my kids took care of me. It was awesome, beautiful, and humbling. If you haven't heard about this massive tragedy, you should look it up. We then went to the beach along the river, where you can swim in the summer, stopping at a beautiful church along the way. It was a lot of fun: the kids got to practice their English on the weekend, and I got to practice my Russian!
Finally, the last thing I'll tell about before I let Danny take over, is about our bedding. Last week, Danny and I bought awesome sheets that are zebra striped with big red roses on them, and after a couple of days I noticed that the lines on my knuckles had a bit of a purplish tinge to them. I thought that this was due to the borscht I had made (the beet juice tends to stain), so I didn't give it much thought. Then, a couple of nights ago, Danny and I were taking a bath (ECONOMY) and I noticed that the water running off his head was a purplish-black color. After having myself a good laugh and making fun of him for not washing his hair, we realized that this was from the sheets. Now, we bought the least expensive sheets we could find and didn't wash them first so this wasn't unreasonable, and I know, I know but if you've ever hand-washed a set of sheets you'll understand why we put this off. Regardless, they are currently soaking and I am hopeful that they will be back to non-bleeding awesomeness in no time and that our days of slightly purplish tinge are over.
Well kids, I have to go. I can't spend ALL of my time talking to you people. I have to go to school to help prep a young woman for English Olympiad. Goodbye for now. Remember that I love you all, am thinking of you, and I hope you guys have at least as wonderful a Christmas as I'm going to have!!!!

-Shannon

Hello folks...

Shannon pretty much covered everything this week. We are out of school until Jan 10 or so starting tomorrow. Shannon forgot to mention the 1000 year old sculptures and amazing WWII memorial we saw on Saturday. You can see pics on Facebook.
Meanwhile, our town is cold, wet and full of gunpowder smells since New Year's is close and all the kids are buying fireworks. When I got out of school today the kids were setting off one after the other and it sounded like a gun battle. I think we might go to Chernigov for New Year but I need to check the prices of trains.
I discovered that hiking boots plus running water on ice makes for an adventure when walking to the grocery store. I slipped and almost went down nearly every 5th step or so. The sidewalks froze then thawed a little and then refroze then it rained like crazy so there was a torrent of water running on top of the ice on the sidewalk. I found that Converse All-Star shoes have great traction but very little waterproof qualities. It's a catch 22. Do I want to break a hip or catch pneumonia? Sigh. There's definitely a learning curve in walking here that one cannot learn in Tennessee and I am getting better at choosing my paths and footsteps carefully.
Alright, I will end this novelette now by saying Happy Christmas and Merry New Year. We will be on Skype tomorrow at about 4PM our time (-7 hrs Eastern, -8 Central) so if you'd like to chat look us up. Sadly, video chat at the moment is not an option as it eats up our bandwidth and costs us a lot of money. So, talk to you tomorrow and if I don't have a good holiday and we'll be back in a week. We love you!

-Danny

Greetings from Izium (our new home!)

Hello from the East of Ukraine, town of Izium. We landed a very nice apartment right near the center of the town. My school is literally across the street and is 150+ years old and huge and beautiful. It is in the middle of the city park and there are trees everywhere. I'll get pictures soon. Shannon's school is only about a 7 minute walk away so it's nice for everyone. Our apartment has two rooms, central heating, and hot water so we're extremely lucky and grateful to all the people who set it up.

We arrived in Izium a couple of days ago after the swearing in retreat in Kiev, and before we even got here, people knew about us. Mainly because we were interviewed by two Ukrainian national news organizations in Russian and English. It was really interesting! Our host families saw it, and were very excited. They even played a clip of Danny playing and singing a Russian song!

Our town kind of reminds me of a large college town. But I'll post pics and more info later as we have more chances to explore it.

We are happy and healthy and excited to finally be in our permanent site here in Ukraine. We miss and love you guys and we'll talk to you soon. By the way, we have access to the internet now as it is on the bottom floor of our apartment building. It's an internet club but it is very cheap and fast. So if you want to Skype let us know.

The Beginning of the End of the Beginning.

So...that's it. We're done with training. We finished up today and we are in Chernigev briefly to buy gifts for our host families. The first snow came to Ukraine on Monday. We got just over a foot. Yesterday the temperature dropped to -20 Celsius which is around -3 Fahrenheit. Needless to say: It...was...cold. We did our Language Proficiency Interviews yesterday and they went well for Shannon and I. I'm certain that we passed but we'll find out for sure on Monday in Kiev. The interviews were a blur. The interview was only supposed to last 20 minutes, which it did, but it seemed like 2 minutes flat.

Funny side story (and so typically me): So during my interview I said that I liked vareneky which is a pastry filled with sour cherries and super delicious. So the interviewer asked me to tell him how to make it which luckily Alona told me the recipe the night before. Funny. So, I said (in Russian) "First, you need 1 kilogram of "MOOSA" and then..." The interviewer stops me and says (in Russian) "Wait, wait...MOOSA?" And I say, "Yeah, moosa. So, then..." He stops me again and says, "I don't understand...you said moosa? Did you mean miasa (meat)?" "No, not miasa. 1 kilogram of moosa." I said. "What does moosa look like?" he says. "It's white and comes in a big jar." I said. He says, "Oh, you mean MOOKA!" Then I realized my mistake: You see, MOOKA is Russian for flour which you need to make vareneky. MOOSA is Russian for trash. So, I said "To make vareneky I you need 1 kilogram of trash and then..." Classic.

Today we did our Self-Directed Learning project which, for me, meant that I had to learn and sing a song in Russian. So I sang "If You Don't Have an Aunt". It's a famous Russian folk song and it was fun to play and sing. I also learned to write in cursive in Cyrillic.

Shannon drew all the places she liked or frequented (her host family's house, LCF's house, school, post office, and a church in Chernigev. She talked about them all in Russian and she did a very good job. The drawings were beautiful. We'll get pics soon.

So, we go to Kiev on Monday and we should know where we will be living for two years on Monday too. We should be able to blog next week in Kiev and let everyone know where we're heading. Extra exciting. I have a few more pics so I'll post those soon too.

Til then. We love and miss you!

Danny and Shannon