Sorry for the blog silence. My head’s been all over the place lately, causing me to be unable to focus on one thing for more than a short while. Not sure if it’s the summer heat that’s finally made it to Kyiv, or what. Maybe it could just be a few too many days of general craziness. Take last Wednesday for example: I went from a Ukrainian dentist appointment to a burst pipe in the kitchen to having the cable guy come and wire up our apartment. All in a matter of 6 hours. It was a little overwhelming.
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Here I am all by my lonesome on the 4th of July again. Last year I requested that someone have a Dairy Queen ice cream cone in my honor, and this year I’m craving a bowl of Hard Times chili and an ice cold Blue Moon. So if there’s anyone in the DC area reading this, indulge for me, okay? Particularly since I’m currently eating what passes for microwave lasagna here in Ukraine. (I know it says “lasagna” on the box and has a picture of a piece of lasagna, but what is this?)
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This past weekend was a 4-day-long one for us. Monday was Ukrainian Constitution Day and the Ambassador went ahead and gave everyone Friday off since they will all be working an extra long day on the 4th of July. So as soon as we found out about this unanticipated long weekend, we started trying to plan something to do rather that sit at home and watch tv, which is what we normally do all weekend. However, planning is difficult for us since Laika can’t really be left by herself for more than 7 or 8 hours. Initially we wanted to take a day trip to a city in central Ukraine that has a nice park, but when we went to get bus tickets (a week in advance), they were all sold out. So we spent several disappointing days with absolutely no plans. On Thursday, Shawn’s boss sent out an e-mail begging people to join a tour to “the largest ostrich farm in Ukraine” on Saturday. Apparently they were short a few people and if more didn’t sign up, they were going to cancel it. And Shawn’s boss really wanted to see the ostriches. So we joined the tour.
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As I was initially forming the idea for this post on my bus ride home from the gym this morning, it was going to be about how insanely full the bus was. And about how I ended up forced to stand incredibly, uncomfortably close to (and facing) a Ukrainian man. Like so close I could feel his breath on my face. You’ll have to believe me when I say that it was going to be really funny. However, when I finally got to my building I realized that at some point my ride had become the WORST worst bus ride ever.
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So the one event I was looking forward to this summer happened on Saturday and I was not there. It’s probably wrong of me to be as disappointed as I am, but I really wanted to see Paul McCartney in concert. However, the concert coincided with the biggest thunderstorm of the summer (so far), turning the streets into rivers, and creating the feeling that it was actually raining from above and below at the same time. So we made the decision that it would not really be enjoyable to go and stand with tens of thousands of Ukrainians in those conditions. But two days later, I’m still disappointed.
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It’s finally here. The past several days have been in the upper 70s and low 80s. Yay! It’s time that I dig out my shorts, tank tops, and sandals, and put the sweaters to rest for the next couple months.
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We were at the pet market and Shawn was working hard, using a sleeping ball of black and brown fur, to convince me that we could handle dog-ownership. Unfortunately, as soon as we got said ball of fur into the taxi to go home, she started emitting a high-pitched shrieking sound that I knew I never wanted to hear again. I spent the next month or so being abruptly awoken in the middle of the night by that exact sound. The fact that Laika was smart enough to keep absolutely silent and still the entire time Shawn was convincing me to buy her was the first sign that this was going to be a challenging relationship.
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When Shawn first asked me if I wanted to go to Tallinn for my birthday, my first thought was: “Where’s Tallinn?” (I’m not so good at world geography.) When he told me it was in Estonia, my next thought was: “Where exactly is Estonia?” (Okay, I’m not good at all at world geography.) When his next statement was that he found flights for $200, my reaction was: “Whoo! We’re going to Tallinn!” (Most flights to Europe from Kyiv are hard to get for under $400.) Between the time we got the tickets and our actually departure, we talked to approximately 130 people who all said that they had never been to Tallinn themselves, but had heard that it was really nice. So I had hopes, but very few expectations - it was occupied by the Soviet Union at one point, so that throws any hope of it being too nice out the window for me.
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I have an on-going discussion with Shawn and other friends here as to how exactly devushky become babushky. For those of you not intimately familiar with post-Soviet life, a little explanation is in order. Directly translated, “devushka” means “girl” and “babushka” means “grandmother,” however, the everyday meanings of the words are much deeper than that. On the street, devushky are the young women wearing stiletto heels, unimaginably short skirts, and walking with an air of overconfidence. To the untrained American eye, they can appear to be “ladies of the night,” however this is not so – at least in the conventional sense. On the other end of the spectrum are babushky who usually appear to be older than time itself, dressed in the most awfully mismatched outfits, and can be found selling things on the street that they themselves have obtained for free (such as rotten apples or last week’s newspaper). Because of these extremes and the generalizations that go along with them, women in the middle of these groups age-wise tend to blend into the scenery until you find yourself pushing into one on the bus. And so it appears that women here must quickly fall from devushka-hood to babushka-hood.
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