My Day/Мой День

Here is my first attempt at "lengthy" Russian nonfiction, an account of my day today.  The English translation is right after it.

У меня был интересный день сегодня.  Сначала, я проснулся в 8 часов.  Я принял душ и побрился мое лицо--как я обычно делаю в понедельник.  Я позавтракал.  потом, я оделся (я носил пиджак, галстук, и брюки) и я приготовил урокы.  Потом я открыл дверь, но мой ключ слоиал!  Дверь еще закрыта...я выл заперт в моей квартире!  Я позвонил Елена Ивановна и сказал: я не могу ходить в школу, мой ключ сломал и я еще в квартире.  Далее Наташа Викторовна и Виктор Григорович пришли к моей дверь квартиры.  Они пытались, но нет мог открыть дверь.  Потом, Елена Ивановна пришла с другой й ключевой, и дверь открылась окончательно!  Елена Ивановна пошла в школу, и Виктор Григорович отремонтировал кран на кучне и дверь шкафа.  Все в моей квартире работает сейчас--или я так думаю.  Я не учил ни уроки сегодня, но я покушал обед в школе и у меня был Русский урок.  Когда директор школы, Виктор Николаeвич, слышал о моей ситуаций, он сказал: я надеюсь, что он заперся там с девушкой.  И так был мой день!  И Февраль окончательно закончился!!!!!!

I had an interesting day today.  First, I woke up at 8 o'clock.  I took a shower and shaved my face--as I usually do on Monday.  I ate breakfast.  Then, I got dressed (I wore a blazer, tie, and slacks) and I prepared the lessons.  Then I was opening the door, but my key broke!  The door was still locked...I was locked in my apartment!  I called Yelena Ivanovna and said, "I can't come to school, my key broke, and I'm still in my apartment."  Next, Natasha Viktorovna and Viktor Grigorovich came to my apartment door.  They tried but could not open the door.  Then Yelena Ivanovna came with another key, and the door was finally opened!  Yelena Ivanovna went back to school, and Viktor Grigorovich fixed the faucet in the kitchen and the door to my closet.  Everything in my apartment works now--or so I think.  I didn't teach any lessons today, but I ate lunch at the school and had a Russian lesson.  When the school principal, Viktor Nikolayevich, heard about my situation, he said, "Well, I hope that he's locked in there with a girl."  And that was my day.  February's finally over!

I'm not quite on Dostoyevsky's level, but I think I'm finally improving again.  I made spring break plans yesterday (tentatively) with Kurt and Anand--Lviv, probably by way of Vasylkiv/Kiev so we can visit our host families for a day or two.  Everything will probably still be cold in three weeks, so I figured it's not worth going to Crimea or Odessa. 


Enjoy the gorgeous Georgia weather.  I'll keep enjoying the weather that defeated Napoleon and Hitler.

Michael Jordan, #23

I went to the gym in Pavlograd today for the third time.  It's nothing special.  Basically, Antares Fitnes Klub is a girl gym, with a big room for dancing and aerobics, several elliptical machines, one treadmill, two benches, and two weight machines.  That's basically it.  But it's totally worth it, since I have been able to exercise about 4 times in Ukraine before joining Antares.  Winter here renders jogging outside impossible.  Not pretty much impossible or impractical, impossible.  The sidewalks either have 6 inches of snow or 3 inches of ice on them all winter, so that doesn't really conduce itself to running.  I played basketball twice in Vasylkiv, went to a gym once there, and jogged outside in the fall maybe 2 or 3 times.  The problem there was that I had no time for anything, as busy as training was.
Anyway, I had noticed last week that after essentially 4 months of physical inactivity, I was able to work out and lift weights that are basically equivalent to what I could do when I was 15 and started going to the gym semi-regularly.  So I had lost 7 years of muscle strength.  After my workout today, I decided to weigh myself on the scale in the gym.  66 kilograms.  Hm, I know I've lost weight, but I can't figure out exactly what that was in pounds.  So after using the unit converter on my phone, I realize, holy crap, I've lost about 23 pounds since I left America.  I now weight about 146 lbs.  Which, coincidentally, is about what I weighed when I was 14 or 15. 
So in strength and weight, I've gone back to freshman year of high school.  It's both bad and good.  It's probably mostly (60-70%) fat, since my 32 waist pants all have enough space around my waist now to stash a Nalgene bottle.  Also everyone comments upon seeing my passport photo, "Is that really you?"  Mostly because it looks similar to Nick Nolte's DUI mugshot, but I guess I've lost weight since August when that was taken.  But my muscles are also smaller than normal, so I suppose there's been some atrophy as well.  I'm just shocked that it was 23 lbs of loss.  As you know, I wasn't exactly fat in America.  Well, not fat at all.  Basically average, maybe even on the thin side of average.
I'm off to cook hashbrowns and smother them in ketchup, sour cream, and sausage.  And wash it down with baklava.

Water Day?

So, I've had school canceled for snow before.  I've gotten days off for ice on the roads.  I've had days canceled for what they thought was snow but turned out to be nothing, not even rain.  In 2005, school across Georgia was canceled because of a gasoline shortage stemming partly from Hurricane Katrina but mostly from people panicking.  Today, however, was a new one.  School was canceled because the town's water supply wasn't working.  So the cafeteria couldn't cook lunch, and the bathrooms wouldn't work, and so on.  No one told me, so I went to school at 11, ready to start my lesson, walking through weather colder than anything in Georgia, weather that would cause any county south of the Mason-Dixon line to cancel school, church, and even football.  Not to mention that the entire walk to school is snow packed so hard it's almost ice.
I woke up at 9, went to the bathroom to take a shower, and there was no water.  Great, I thought, I haven't taken a shower in a few days and now I can't.  Maybe it'll switch back on in a few minutes.  After all, the same thing happened yesterday around the same time when I tried to shave, and the water came back on about 20 minutes.  I waited around, but the water never came back on, so I ate cereal out of my only clean bowl, brushed my teeth with bottled water, and decided that my hair didn't look greasy at all, at least definitely not by European standards.  I got to school, and I greeted the lady at the front and the security guards as usual ("Zdrasvuyitye").  I went up to my classroom, and only when I was about to enter did I notice, Hey, there's no students in the hallways, am I late?  Nope...well, that's odd.  I got into the classroom, and Natasha, one of the teachers I work with, was sitting at her desk with the students' chairs all stacked neatly atop their desks.  No school because of the water, but teachers still have to come in.  Which doesn't really mean me, since the school doesn't pay me.  The U.S. government and money raised by the students' parents do.  If you can call what I get "getting paid." 
Anyway, the water seems to be working now.  I'll teach tomorrow.  Another interesting day in Ukraine...

Павлоград

Pavlograd.  The name of my new home looks a lot cooler in Russian than in English.
So, if you haven't heard already, my site is Pavlograd, Dnipropetrovska Oblast, Ukraine.  It's a smaller city of around 113,000 people.  I find it quite endearing.  The main street through town is called Karl Marx Street, and in the main square there is still an imposing statue of Vladimir Lenin.  My school, School No. 1, is less than a block away from my apartment, which is on the top floor of a 5-story building that lacks an elevator.  I like to think of it as the penthouse suite.  It has a living room, where I sleep on the pullout couch, a good-sized entrance hall, an office, a kitchen, and an enclosed balcony with a floor that I'm not convinced is entirely stable.  I just got high speed internet set up today.  It only costs the equivalent of $7.50 a month in American dollars, but you're required to put up for sharing at least 5 GB of files on the local network.  I put up some music.  Ukrainians have an interesting view of copyright infringement...
Apart from the Soviet street names, Pavlograd is a very modern town.  It has a Celetano pizza restaurant (Ukraine's most popular pizza chain), a small American-style shopping mall (well, a mall without department stores, if that makes sense), high-end electronics stores, and several parks that I imagine are beautiful in better weather.  It's not terribly cold, either, but unfortunately that just means there's slush and very slippery ice everywhere.
I can't believe Christmas is in 3 days!  On Friday evening, I'm going to Donetsk (one of the major eastern cities in Ukraine) with Catherine, another PCV in Pavlograd who just arrived like me.  There should be a large gathering of other Americans there.  I wish you all a very merry Christmas, or whichever holiday you prefer. 

Я закончил!

Fun fact: which country was the first in the [modern] world to attempt a total prohibition on alcohol sales?  Answer next entry, whenever that may be...
This week has been a series of endings, goodbyes, and last whatevers.  Monday was our last Russian language lesson.  Tuesday had our language proficiency interviews, to ensure we know enough Russian to, at the very least, survive on our own.  On Wednesday we visited the town administration again to thank them for allowing us to work in the schools in Vasilkov, and we also had a thank-you dinner for our host mothers.  On Thursday, we had a last meeting and dinner with the 2 teachers we've worked closely with, Ludmillia Nikolaivna and Irina Ivanonva.  Yesterday, I went to Kiev for part of the day, and I'm back there right now, at a McDonald's with my laptop.  Gotta love free wi-fi.  There's a basketball game on the TV nearby.  It looks like some kind of European professional league, so it's probably 2nd rate college players from the US who didn't want to find a real job.  There's too many black players for it to be a Russian league, but the game's definitely in Ukraine.
On Monday, I'll be going to Kiev again for the entire week--leaving Vasilkov for good.  I'll also finally find out where I'm going for the next 2 years, 3-4 days before I leave for there. 
My experience in Vasylkov has been almost entirely positive.  My host family was great.  The people I worked with every day, Americans and Ukrainians, were great.  The town itself was great.  Everyone I met was friendly, polite, and interested in me--why on earth would an American want to work in Ukraine?   I'm really thankful for everything so far--Спасибо за всё!
It's hard for me to comprehend how quickly time has moved.  Less than three months ago, I was packing to leave for 2 years or more, with almost everything I own crammed into 2 rooms in my parents' house in Atlanta.  Six months ago, I was in staff training at Camp Chief Ouray in the Rockies in Colorado for my job as Daily Program Director.  Twelve months ago, I was finishing my history thesis on Anglo-German relations before World War I  and preparing for my last semester in college.  Now, I'm preparing for 2 years or more of teaching English in some Russian-speaking part of Ukraine after an intensive 2.5 month training where I went from having no real idea how to teach and knowing 3 words of Russian (да, нет, и водка) to feeling comfortable planning lessons and teaching on my own to feeling comfortable enough to live on my own in a town where no one speaks English, только Русский, иногда Украиский.  I think we've had the equivalent to 4-5 semesters of university-level Russian in 70 days or so.  It's surprising how much of a language you can learn with 4 hours a day of lessons and a home that only speaks that language.  I can understand most of what Russian leaders Vladimir Putin or Dmitri Medvedev say when they're shown on TV here. 
I'm actually enjoying winter so far here.  It first snowed the last weekend of November, and December began with daily highs below 20 Farenheit, but it warmed up this week and everything melted, which was actually worse than the frigid weather.  It's below freezing again now and snows lightly off and on.  I actually kind of like it, as long as the wind isn't too bad.  
 I suppose I'm ready for what the next months bring, then.  I hope to be able to post some pictures here soon.  Talk to you all soon!

Tell us about your sport career in Georgia

A bad luck entry may seem like I'm miserable or something, which I'm not, so I figured I'd add a more upbeat journal-style entry for balance.

That titular request began my first birthday party in Ukraine.  It was for Vanya, one of my students in 10th grade.  His aunt, one of the teachers who we've been working with, invited me in class the day of his birthday, 2 weeks ago.  I thought it was kind of odd that they invited me and not the other Americans, but I thought it would be interesting and good to see, since my host mother's birthday was coming up that weekend.  And if Ludmilla (the teacher) was there, there shouldn't be any impropriety issues--after all, another American had told me she went to the discotech with her students (no drinking with them, of course). 
So, at any rate, I met Ludmilla near my apartment at about 6 PM that day, and walked across the street to a small neighborhood with small but well-kept houses.  She took me to a larger one next door to her own house and told me that Vanya's father was her brother.  We went inside and I joined the party in progress, which consisted of 3 girls and 6 or so boys, all about 15-17.  Most of them were my students, but there were a few that I didn't know.  They had a plate of pizza ready for me, and Alina, one of my students, translated the titular request from Vika, a girl I'd never seen before who was apparently too shy to speak English to me.  I laughed, with my mouth full of pizza, because it sounded like they thought I was a professional athlete. 
Following eating, they wanted pictures with me.  First group, then boys, then girls, then individual photos.  During the girls' photo with me, Valentin (another student, male), threw a cat across the room.  Then we played mafia, in 2 different ways--the way I played before in the US, and then a new way where there's only 1 mafia member, no narrator, and everyone in the group holds hands in a circle.  The mafioso then squeezes a person's hand x times, and he squeezes the next person's hand x-1 times, then they squeeze x-2, and so on.  When your hand is squeezed once, you die.  I went home after about 3 hours.  All in all, pretty fun.  But constant questions about you, your life, and your country do tend to get old. 
That was Thursday, 13 days ago.  That weekend was Olga's birthday party, which saw her with Luba and Natasha (Olieg's girlfriend and her daughter) make enough food to feed about 40 people, then invite about 16 people over Sunday afternoon, eat, and make frequent vodka toasts (not everyone drank, but Olga drank every toast).  She spent Monday at home from work, probably nursing her hangover while watching the Russian reality TV shows she loves, as well as what seems to be a Russian version of "The View."
I can't really remember too much about last week, except I got to sleep in one day because I didn't have any lessons and the girls in my group got really pissy about something at the end of it. 
The weekend, however, was excellent.  I did absolutely nothing on Friday but play video games and go to bed early, and then spent most of Saturday in Kiev with 5 friends.  The capital is only about a 30 minute bus ride away that costs the equivalent of $1.  We went to a few cool places, including a McFoxy restaurant (a Ukrainian competitor to McDonald's) and an Irish pub where half the patrons were Britons yelling at an England-Australia rugby game.  On Saturday night, we went to the disco in Vasylkov.  Very, uhm, interesting.  It's so far the only club or bar I've been to where the person at the door is a middle-aged lady, but knowing Ukraine, I doubt it will be the last.  The 2 other guys in our group and I made a "man-pact" to ask Ukrainians to dance, which proved challenging.  First, Ira, one of the Ukrainians (Courtney's host sister) with us, when we asked her how we should go about this, told us to just ask if they spoke English.  We tried this once or twice, then decided it was a bad idea...would you say yes if some foreigner in a small-town club asked you if you spoke his language?  It just seemed weird.  Anyway, we switched to broken Russian; the results of which were much more positive.  We asked, viy khatitye tansuit, which we thought was "Do you want to dance?" but "to dance" is actually "tansivat," an irregular verb.  So I'm not sure what we were really asking, but it was more effective and we achieved our goal after a while.  We made it home around 3 AM.
In less than a month, I'll finally be done with training.  I can't wait.  Pulling 60 hour weeks got old pretty quickly.

Everything Is Bad Luck

A sampling of what is bad luck in Ukrainian culture (many of these are shared with Russian culture or other EE nations)
Shaking hands across the threshold of a house
Bringing an even number of flowers
Giving yellow flowers to a sweetheart
Whistling indoors
Whistling in public (when can you whistle?  I still don't know)
Killing spiders or insects in the house
Drinking cold drinks (you'll get a cold)
Going outside when it's slightly cold while not wearing 40 layers (you'll also get a cold)
Opening windows on a bus, even when its 100 degrees outside and there's no A/C (you'll probably get a cold as well)
What's good luck in Ukraine
Brooms (because they sweep away bad luck)

There's a lot of bad luck superstitions here, and sometimes it's a little irritating, i.e. I whistle all the time, like cold drinks and a nice breeze, and I'm not going to bother to catch a spider to put it outside.  But it makes sense historically that there are so many bad luck customs.  Ukraine (and all of Eastern Europe) has not been the luckiest place on earth.  Unlucky to be so close to invasion-happy Germany and expansion-happy Russia rather than surrender-happy France, nap-happy Spain, and tea-happy Britain.  There's still craters in the nearby forests from Nazi bombs.  Unlucky to have no idea how to handle capitalism when Ukraine first became independent in 1991, and see the living standards decline for most of the population AFTER communism ended.  Yeah, that's something they don't tell you in American schools.  In most of the former Soviet republics, death rates have risen, birth rates and life expectancies have fallen, emigration rates have soared, organized crime (specializing in drugs, sex trade, and more) has gotten more powerful, education has, pardon my French, gone to shit, and corruption has become endemic.

Anyway.  I hope that was illuminative, informative, and maybe a little entertaining.

"Poor Mexico!  So far from God, and so close to the United States!"--Porfirio Díaz