I survived my first solo trip to the grocery store this morning! Besides the fact that I hate grocery shopping in general (regardless of what country I’m in), this is a big deal because it meant that I drove somewhere by myself for the first time since moving here.
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One month from today will be my last full day in Kyiv. Wow. There were some moments in there where I wasn’t sure I would survive long enough to make that statement. As challenging as the last two years have been, there is a list (albeit a short, weird one) of things that I will miss when I leave. Well, I’ll miss them in 5 or 6 years, when the memories of the daily struggles have faded and everything surrounding Kyiv has that glow of “our first overseas post.”
You know what’s crazy? I haven’t driven a car in almost two years. The minute we got to Kyiv and I took a look at how the people in this city drive, I swore that I would not, under any circumstance, get behind the wheel of a car here. I am smart enough to understand that I am a nervous driver in the US, therefore would be an absolute wreck here. Potentially causing an absolute wreck. I really think it’s been best for everyone. So I haven’t really taken a lot of time to learn what different street signs mean (not that the drivers here seem to pay any attention to them anyway…), but I did notice rather quickly that there are certain signs posted in cars that kind of look like warning labels. As I’ve learned more about these, I really feel like they give a helpful insight into the psyche of the average Ukrainian driver.
You will never believe what product I discovered today during my trip to the grocery store. I was in the pasta section, trying to determine if anything close to whole wheat pasta exists here, and right between the spaghetti and the penne I spotted it: multi-colored, penis-shaped pasta. I stared at it for a moment, just to make sure I was seeing things correctly. My thought process went something like this:
Somehow this morning I forgot that New Year’s is the BIGGEST HOLIDAY EVER in Ukraine. And I made a horrible mistake: I went to the grocery store. I cannot adequately put into words the scene that met me when I entered the store (after wading through the pack of street dogs that had taken residence just inside the entryway, of course). Being from the Midwest, I would liken it to what would happen if the biggest blizzard of the year was being predicted to hit the night before Thanksgiving. But add in the general pushiness factor of Ukraine, and subtract the general overly-polite factor of the Midwest. It was not a pretty picture. I think I even saw riots breaking out at the Kievsky Tort counter. How I managed to survive, I don’t know.
Today I had what is perhaps my most successful shopping trip in Kyiv to date. It probably helped that I had really low expectations going in. In fact my mom was on standby to purchase the needed items in the States and ship them to me if today had been a total bust. But I was triumphant in finding fabric and notions for my dress for the Marine Ball.
My parents have come, gone, and survived to tell the tale of their adventures in Ukraine. Well, technically, they are still en route to Indiana, but I told them that once their plane left the ground in Kyiv, they were back to being my brother’s responsibility as far as I was concerned. I think they fared pretty well: there was one twisted ankle and I think all four of us suffered from heat exhaustion one day, but no one got hit by a car or screamed at for being American, so I’m happy with that.
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.
So it’s been a while, I just realized. I guess not much has been happening…the usual day to day stuff. We did celebrate our one year anniversary in Kyiv last weekend. Well, not so much celebrate as look at each other over the dog sleeping on the couch between us and say, “Well, we’ve survived a year.” Then turned back to watch Bear on Man vs. Wild eat a scorpion. We’re not ones for fanfare.
Breaking news - Kyiv, Ukraine. Coffee lovers in the capitol city were stunned earlier this month as local chain “Coffee House” announced that they would begin allowing customers to take their coffee with them, rather than drinking it in the cafe. Coffee ordered “to go” will be placed in a small paper cup with a plastic lid so that customers can conveniently carry it with them to work or, more likely, a park bench. The introduction of the lid feature will allow Ukrainians to have their coffee while smoking and talking on their cell phone without the fear of spills, which has long been a problem with MacCoffee from kiosks (previously the only coffee available in this “to go” style). Local expats are thrilled that they will no longer be required to struggle with drinking hot beverages at “Coffee House” through a straw from an awkward glass without a handle.
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