I have a confession to make. A few days ago, I pushed a woman on the bus. Like the back of my forearm met the center of her back and I pushed. Hard. In my defense, pushing is a way of life here, particularly when it comes to public transportation. But I am ashamed at my overwhelming feeling that I have, in fact, gone native.
You are currently browsing articles tagged culture shock.
Last night we attended our first sporting event in Kyiv. BC Kyiv (BC stands for Basketball Club – everything’s a “club” here) took on Benetton at the soviet-style Palats Sportu arena. Unfortunately for us, it was not one of the Wolves better showings, as they lost 73 to 89. However, there was much amusement to be had by the crazy Americans in the 12th row.
No, not Barack, Rudy and Hillary. I’m talking about Viktor, Viktor, and Yulia. That’s right, this weekend is the highly anticiapated Ukrainian national elections. For those of you that don’t follow Ukrainian politics closely (like me), check out The Kyiv Post…or this. What I do know of the politics here is confusing, so if you don’t really get it, don’t worry. Bottom line: elections are this weekend.
So I’ve decided that maybe I haven’t done a very good job so far of describing what average Ukrainian life is like. Believe it or not, not every day is all George Michael concerts and buying puppies on the street. So I’m going to start a new series of posts here called “Realities of Ukrainian Life” (based on the title of a class I took at FSI called “Realities of Foreign Service Life”) and I want your input. Post a comment and let me know what you’d like to know more about Ukraine. For this week, I’m starting with Ukrainian Food.
Anyone that travels knows that every country has slightly different traffic laws. Well, except for countries that have a total lack of traffic laws. Even though Ukraine appears to fall into the category of countries without laws, they do actually exist. And one of the first laws we were warned about is that when an accident happens, no one involved is allowed to move their cars. At all. Even to the side of the road in order to allow traffic to pass. As you can imagine, this does nothing to help the already horrible traffic in Kyiv.
What is Ukraine? Is it more European or more Russian? This is a question I have been pondering since our arrival here. And I think I finally got my answer this week – it’s stuck somewhere in the middle.
We are at the end of week 1 of the struggle to obtain reliable internet access for our apartment. Last Saturday Shawn and one of our Russian-speaking friends went to the office of a company that supplies the internet to our building. According to Shawn, it went fairly well. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” we thought.
On Sunday, we went to the “pet market” with another couple. Our friends are currently looking for a golden retriever and Shawn and I have also been discussing getting a dog now that we’re in Kyiv. There were a couple of close calls, but the four of us left the market empty handed in the end.
I know that you all must be anxiously awaiting more details from our trip and first (almost) two weeks here in Kyiv. Unfortunately, we still don’t have consistent internet access at home, so I’m using a computer at the Embassy, which means no pictures for now. But we’ve taken quite a few, so I’ll add them as soon as I can.