Ice Cream; It comes in a tube.

And my flavor of choice you may ask?... “White”. Yes, the flavor is called “White” and its no GMOs apparently too! Anything flavor named after a color has got to be good for you… right? Have I mention already that it comes in a tube? Well if you can imagine having a hunkering for some of that cold creamy goodness, walking in to the store and picking up what looks like a giant sausage of “White,” you will know Ukrainian ice cream or moroshinaya. Scoop not needed my friends- because of its sausage shape you can treat it the same way, just slice right through the plastic and cut yourself a medallion of creamy “White.” It never gets old.

Well I have passed the 3-month mark for service and my 6-month mark for being here in Ukraine. It has flown by. I remember being in Ecuador, and though I loved every moment of being there and I miss the heck out of it, after 5 months I was ready to come home, I wanted out of there for a little, I wanted American style Chinese food- you know General Tsao’s, Sweet and Sour, super sweet MSG. All I wanted was to hear a little English, to drive a car, to not be forcibly converted to Evangelical Christianity every time I needed a haircut (long story.) It is different this time around, maybe Sheryl Crow was right? The first cut is the deepest. I feel that I have smoothly adjusted to this life abroad. Though I deeply miss all my friends, family, and habits in the US, the longing never crosses the threshold into “unbearable.” I hope it stays this way.

I do not know why, but the all the White Stripes albums on random have been more and more frequently pumping through my speakers as I experiment with new cooking techniques, hand washing sheets and towels, and boiling massive pots of water for my baths.

I finally got my first Ukrainian girlfriend. People have been telling me that I will fall in love here with a fair-haired Ukrainian, but I never thought it would come true. Her name is Juanita- but she isn’t your typical lady- for one, she’s a parrot. To be more specific, I believe she’s a parakeet, a very handsome looking white and blue singing machine. My first pet in my first apartment, jeez I feel like a real adult- what next? Gray hair? Too late- starting to find some of those too. But yea, I was graced with a wonderful little parakeet who will be keeping me company here in the old UA.

It is getting warmer here, meaning its time to take the fur inserts out of your boots, remove the fur collars from your jackets, and open your windows to the warm breeze and sun, discover the buds just starting to peak out from the end of the trees and start doing some serious walking. I haven’t been able to totally explore all of my town because it has been so cold and dark outside for the last three months, but Mohyliv-Podilskyy is a valley town surrounded by large rolling hills on each side, a couple rivers, and more confusing side streets than Boston. I am pretty excited to start doing some serious exploring and hopefully I can stumble upon some sweet honey holes for fishing.

Last week was quite and active and different one. As you know most of my weeks consist of teaching massive amounts of my mother tongue in class and clubs, but this past weekwe had kanikoola, aka, vaca. My time off started by going up to the oblast capital Vinniska, (side note, each place in Ukraine has like 5 ways of spelling it, so I am pretty sure this has got to be one of them- I have seen Vinniska, Vinistka, Vinnisia, Vinnystka, etc you get the point,) for a Peace Corps “Meet Your Neighbors” event. Since we are Jackson Pollock style, splattered all over the region, we typically hold meetings where we get together meet volunteers new and old, and share ideas/ events. It is a lot of fun. And of course, no volunteering group event of any kind wouldn’t be without some games. After the meeting most people stuck around to bask in the glory of common experiences, languages, problems, and longings. While trying to find an Italian restaurant we stumbled into a small basement restaurant. After inquiring if they served fine Italian cuisine, they waitresses looked at each other, then at the lederhosens, they were wearing then back at us, and said, “No,its Austrian.” A common light bulb went off leading to an “ah-ha” moment as we too saw their lederhosens, and said, “Ok, table please!” After a quick snack we decided that it was best that we find the Italian place we were looking for, to begin with since the other volunteers would be there.

Later on in the night I had my first fall. Being that we are in a country that can sometimes be pretty slippery you can imagine that people do a lot of falling, which makes for some great humor. If you took some goofy clown music and put it to a montage of volunteers, alone and in groups, busting ass you could do some serious fundraising for Peace Corps projects. So I had made it almost all the way through winter without falling, and on boat shoes even! Sure I’ve had plenty of slips, but have always managed to find my feet before landing in snow, ice, mud, puddles, or what have you, but old Ukraine finally caught up with me. I slipped on a small patch of snow with my right foot, tried catching myself with the left, then went down hahhhd! I got pulled up by a huge Ukrainian basketball player Micha, who is a fan of the Celts by the way, and continued walking laughing pretty hard.

Willem Defoe?

Vacation ended with a trip to visit my friend Theo in Smila, where which was super relaxing, and we visited a huge cemetery. Its funny how you can be so surprised such big differences in cultures when you least expect it, and this graveyard was an example of that. The cemetery had to be a kilometer long with graves quite close together. Most plots are sectioned off with small fences, many having little tables and chairs for people to visit, and I don’t know, have a little meal? Many of them were quite well taken care of, and others had not been visited in awhile, where people typically create large mounds of fresh dirt where the person is buried, giving the impression that the person had just been buried, a very new thing for me. Also many were duel, or tri plots, but what I want to know is if the people leave us at different times whenis the headstone made? Does the first person wait until the second joins them and is left without a headstone for a period? Or do the second people do some forward thinking and create their own headstone? What an existentially strange decision that would be.

Another major difference between cemeteries in the US and UA is that almost every grave has a picture of the deceased here, which can be a little morbid, but also very interesting since it gives you a chance to kind of build a nice story for each person. Most of the new ones are ghostly engraved, but it’s the older ones that really interest me as an amateur photographer. Real photos are used on the headstones, which seem to be their passport photos somehow graphed onto oval tiles, sometimes painted with color, sometimes black and white, but always super cool. It is kind of weird, but I kind of wish I could collect some of them for some sort of kitchen/ bathroom art project in tiling. The pictures of profiles were just so interesting and there had to be thousands of them. When I look at photographs of nature I find them wonderful, but after a certain time it does not do it for me, but I feel as if I could look at profile shots for hours and hours. The people hold basically the same pose, no background, no explicit imagery, lighting or special effects. But like snowflakes, or a more obvious simile, like people, no two portraits are ever alike, and the fact that these people had died just make them more interesting. Enough on graveyards.

Funny Ukrainian video about train traveling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI-FY0ub9pc&feature=player_embedded

After a few hours of train rides back I finally made it back. Home sweet home, and to tell you the truth I was homesick for Mohyliv-Podilskyy and my apartment. Interesting feeling. Anyway, I look forward to the couple people visiting this summer and seeing a whole new warm Ukraine. Solidarity yo.