Get Lost Kiddo!...

...but only so you know where you are.

So what a crazy couple of weeks it has been. I have been going no stop with all sorts of fun activities!

Soviet Bunker

I can say I think I am really getting in the zone now and with every week passing I add another thing to my schedule. I usually up early every morning, cook breakfast, iron my clothes and walk to work listening to “This American Life”. The obviously I teach a full day of classes, followed by English clubs 3 days a week, tutor students who are studying for theOlympiad competitions next month, or sometimes I am able to get a little basketball with the director in the schools gym. Then its home to change for the new gym I have joined, which by the way is something out of a Rocky movie. It’s a small gym in the basement of the technical college in town and its great! The 20 guys or so who are members are like a small sub-community. On arrival to the gym it is obligatory to make the rounds to each station and shake hands with every guy there, regardless of age or familiarity. Though it may seem a little dated, the gym has everything you need and because of its small core group, there is never a wait at any of the stations- something that can’t be said for many of the other newer gyms in town. It’s a cool place to hang out that’s for sure. After the gym its back home to cook dinner, shower, probably do some laundry, and plan lessons. It’s a pretty non stop schedule, but that’s what its all about right?

Memorial for soldiers who heroically held off the Nazi's until the last man.

I haven’t had a lot of time to being doing tourist-y things but when you are in a country you still know little about, who speaks a language you are pretty unfamiliar with everyday is like an adventure. It is funny having to plan your days around when the bazaar is open. If I know in the next few days I will need some food, or wall-paper (which I use to make giant dialogues for class) I have to wake up extra early. The bazaar, or “The Beast” as I affectionately call her is a maze of every product man can offer. There are hundreds of stands full of any kind of jackets, shoes, pants, shirts, sweaters and underwear on full display. Bags and bags of grains, fresh vegetables, jarred and preserved fruits, honey unlike any that I could have ever imagined. A huge fish section where you must tread carefully and look out for the splashes of live fish, which is pulled pout of the Dniper daily. One of my favorite sections is the meat department. When you enter youa re ment with the fresh smell of meat and the dominating color is obviously- red. Meat on the tables, hanging from hooks, rolls of salo (pig fat- a self described Ukrainian narcotic) pig heads, home made blood sausage, shanks, flanks, ribs, roasts, spines, livers, hooves, and any other cut of meat you can imagine. And this is no normal butcher shop, its an all out free for all with 50 or sixty vendors all pushing their products, but they are nothing compared to the vendors in the dairy department. Walking into the dairy department you all you see is white. Huge hunks of fresh cottage cheese called tvarog, and a cream cheese like substance called brensa and bottles and bottles of fresh milk, all homemade brought in from the surrounding villages. And the best thing about the bazaar is that you get to try everything before you buy it! A samplers dreamcome true.

The Meat Market

So I love walking around and do not even mind getting lost and since many of the stalls look identical and there are no landmarks visible, this happens pretty frequently. One thing I have started to appreciate over time while traveling is getting lost. For a moment you fell the stress, nervousness, maybe even hopeless, but if you can calm down and think to yourself about the fact that if you never got lost you would have never had the chance to see the things you are seeing at that moment. So getting lost is a good thing. It all works out in a few minuets anyway.

In other news, I finally had my first Ukrainian Sauna experience and it was awesome. Let me just say that on an unrelated note I took my first bath in probably 5 or 6 years Friday night- what else was I going to do?- and it was life changing. I plan on making it a weekly habit if I can help it. So adding to my relaxing a purified feeling from Friday night, on Sunday morning one of my neighbors downstairs took me to his friend’s sauna. The whole shabang, and of course with the traditional beating with oak branches. Now, to say that this experience was just a bunch of sweaty guys in a sauna whacking each other with sticks would be missing the point, and far off. The Ukrainians really know how to do it. We had 4 carefully planned and timed sections where we rotated between the hot sauna at 85 degrees Celsius, a room for sipping tea, a rinse area and of course spending some time outside in the freezing cold. During the last part we took turns hitting each other while lying down with oak branches and leaves that soak in water. This process is purifying to the skin and the senses. The smell is indescribable. Like Christmas cookies and raking leaves in the fall all in one. It was awesome. I went home cooked some spaghetti and went into repose for a few hours.

My Coat of Arms for the next two years.

So that is what I have been up to, sorry it has taken so long to get this last post out- but I am alive and well! Much love to my homies in the pen, see ya when I free ya, if not when they shut me in.

When bagels on a bagel, you can have bagels anytime

Happy New Year!

Well, it is the year of the “White Rabbit,” and if you were in Ukraine at the moment, you would have any trouble not knowing that. Everywhere you go and everyone you talk to lets you know about the year of the White Rabbit. Toys and cards with White Rabbits, text messages about the White Rabbit, and even toasts at dinner, “To the Year of the White Rabbit!” I have never paid much attention to the Chinese tradition of animal years, but there must be a reason why it is so popular here in Ukraine, and I am going to get to the bottom of it for sure! I’ll get at you.

In other news, I have been on and off break from school. Many times, when students get a few weeks off to relax, teachers still attend school to plan lessons and have meeting about stuff- but I have trouble following about 85% of what is being said since it is in Ukrainian, though I recognize a lot of words that are similar to Russian. Soon I will also be getting a Russian tutor here in town a few times every month to continue my studies. I have been working with some of the teachers to plan the whole semester, which is quite a feat- much respect yo.

Just before break I had an opportunity to meet the mayor for a quick introduction. He seems like a really nice guy and after talking about different informational and training sessions we could start working on, we wished each other good luck and planned to re-convene soon. Things have been working out really nicely and everyone I have come in contact with has been so hospitable and welcoming to myself and doing work here. Good stuff all around.

We also had a staff/faculty dinner ata localcafé, which was really an awesome time. I was pretty nervous since it was the first time I had been in an informal setting with most of the teachers, and many I had not even talked to yet. They say over and over again that in Ukraine, as to your colleagues, you are friends first and work together second. Even yesterday while eating with some of the male teachers from school they told me about the hierarchy in meetings and during the school day, but work is work, and everything else is everything else. Back to the fiesta. There was a long table we all sat around full of delicious food, where the teachers around me poured food ontomy plate anytime there was a vacant spot. After a round of toasts- not forgetting the White Rabbit of course- we headed to the dance floor to do some boogying. In the typical way we all danced in a circle rotating from one side to the other with people dancing in pairs in themiddle. From time to time everyone would old hands and we’d go in and out, making the circle smaller, coming together and then star bursting out. It was a lot of fun and the other teachers were really going for it, breaking out some pretty hot moves, and shouting with an occasional “Hey!” or “Opah!” But this was not the end; we were brought back to the table for more food- As if I could eat more. My full stomach did not concern the Ukrainian teachers, they filled me to the brim and then hauled me back out to the dance floor. At times while eating they would all just break out in old traditional folk songs. They were really cool. Since most males in their 40s had served at least a year in the soviet military they bellowed songs about soldiers missing their sweet hearts in deep deep voices. It was awesome and afteranother food break, another dancesession and a last little course, we were shown out with doggie bags of delicious dishes. It was one of the most fun nights I have had here so far and it was really cool to see how much they all enjoyed each others company.

Side note. I really really really love the food here. They make the best bread I have had- besides yours mom, but that goes without saying. But they take all these different baked and friend bread dishes and fill them with meat, fruit, potatoes, or cabbage and I cannot get enough of them. Get into it.

So, totally unrelated, but interesting nonetheless, I have installed myself a little electric oven- a man version of the easy bake that was in one of my cupboards- so I can start getting my bake on. I have never done much baking, but I figured this would be the place to start. So they other night I made my first pizza dough threw it in the oven and a few minuets later I had a perfect pizza! So easy right? You are saying Patrick, pizza dough, come on; I can do that in my sleep. Well the other day I was feeling a little more ambitious. I also had developed a large craving for bagels once I had tasted a local cheese called “brensa,” which must be a distant cousin of cream cheese. So I made bagels. Homemade, delicious, fresh poppy seed bagels! It was amazing and really made me feel at home, and it wasn’t too much work either so I think I am going to make it a Sunday ritual- baking day. Freezing pizza dough, making batches of poppy seed or sesame seed.

As you can guess it has been pretty cold here, and since I haven’t been able to give up my 30-minuet walk to school in the morning I have been developing pretty gnarly moustache icicles. Just the other day I even experienced something I had never even heard about before. I am about half way through my walk and I start to feel the corners of my eyes sticking. Just a moment later I was having trouble opening up my eyes after blinking. It was so cold on the walk to work; my eyelids had begun to freeze shut! About three quarters of the way to work I had started to notice that the condensation leaving my mouth was not only freezing my beard and moustache but also creating little white eyelash-sickles. It was really cool and I noticed while passing people that they too had begun to form frost on their jackets from their breath. No worries- at the time I actually felt pretty warm at the time. The jacket I bought not only has a massive fur collar, but there is a vest on the inside made of rabbit fur. When you get a good pace going you actually start to get a little hot!

Well that’s all for now- A Happy 2011 to all of you out there. To quote every Ukrainian who has wished me a Happy New Year. “I wish yousuccess, I wish you health andhappiness, I wish you love, and may all your dreams come true in the year of the White Rabbit!”

Wish me luck in my first week of official teaching- I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me!