Thursday, September 14th 2006

It’s Time to Go

A piece of plastic broke free in the inside of my shoe and poked my ankle this morning, so I put a piece of tape over it. I have 9 black socks left, misshapen, raw, covered in clumsy stitches, as if they’d been beaten to an inch of their miserable, unsatisfying lives and then patched up by an HMO doctor. The denim of my sole pair of hipster jeans (the only pair that I came with) is as thin and fragile as old lady skin. I take it into the sewing shop whenever it splits just above my knees or (more embarrassingly) just below my butt. I have to take them in approximately every 5 weeks. I’ve invested more money in my jeans than most people invest in their children’s education.
When I was urinating outside of Club Kino, my town’s night club, a car suddenly pulled up behind me. I knew—before I felt the night stick poking my side, before I heard the incomprehensible, gruff, commands in Russian—that it was the cops: It was a pee raid, and I was busted. A cop tried to pull me away from my bush, toward his car, but I was mid-stream and had to ask for a minute to finish up. I sat in the back seat while 4 or 5 cops fanned out, searching for other furtive urinators who skittered from behind bushes like antelopes. I had made the mistake of relieving myself right on the edge of the unofficially designated pee-zone. The cops ended up letting me go. Either they didn’t bag enough errant pissers to make it worth their while or my sad, puppy dog eyes saved the day again.
I have fewer than 100 days left to my service, and it’s getting tough. Classes are wearing on me, and it’s only the second week. At school, I find that my face is locked into a grimace that is usually associated with spinsters and civil servants.
I’m experimenting with different work attitudes in order to survive the last 3 months of school. Severe and Demanding is not working very well. It just makes me angry and scares the kids a little (which I perversely enjoy). Today, I tried Relaxed and Casual with a hint of Caring, and it seems to work better. The problem is that if I’m too nice, I get behavior problems. Since last semester, I seem to have forgotten the correct, magical proportions. In any case, all the signs—the state of my clothes, the end of my career in public urination, and my weariness with school—are saying that it’s time to go.

Wednesday, August 16th 2006

Having had arrived the last time
unaware of distance, landmarks,
Anxiety coupled with drunkenness
and stumbled down a road,
one closer, convenient.
Bothered by the lack of fidelity,
you stayed in,
watched the news,
went to bed at a reasonable hour.

53 years, 7 months, 11 days and nights later,
I made a list of the things I love.
I couldn’t get past watermelon—
the fruit that I eat to remember you.

Wednesday, August 16th 2006

*I briefly considered calling this entry “Sleepless in Lebedyn,” but then I realized that I’m better than that.

I can’t sleep tonight. Maybe the after-dinner (or postprandial—I’m studying for the GREs) tea, which I’ve assumed (for no reason at all except wishful convenience) to be decaffeinated, isn’t. Maybe I can’t sleep, demoralized by the moths and other assorted winged-insects that fatally singe themselves on the bare bulb that lights my living room. Some immediately drop to their deaths. Others flop around for a bit. The sturdier ones quickly bounce back up like superballs upon hitting the floor for another short, ill-fated meeting with the bulb. This spectacle makes me ask: Are moths just like us?

I went out to my balcony for a smoke, thinking fresh, night air (mixed with smoke, tar, and nicotine) would help me sleep. The dogs were sleeping, one curled up into a white donut, another standing watch. A few more dogs have moved into the neighborhood while I’ve been away. There’s a new white pup and an eager-looking, hay-colored guy. Inscrutably, the neighborhood dogs chase some dogs away while charitably welcoming others for a brief stay. I would like to know more about dog etiquette.

Feeling eyes on me, I turned to my neighbor’s balcony and thought I saw the top of her misshapen hair hanging out the window, like a hopeless Rapunzel. Before I could say hello, my eyes adjusted: it wasn’t my neighbor’s unappealing haircut I was staring at, but rather, an overfed cat or a small raccoon/unusually cute opossum. I stared at it hard for a few minutes without figuring out which. It was probably the former, but, just in case, I locked my balcony door. If I woke up with a raccoon/opossum in my apartment, I don’t know how I would reason with it.

So, to continue the Moldova story… I had a surprisingly good time in Moldova. The food was outstanding. We had piles of fresh fruit; mamaliga (the official Moldovan dish a.k.a. polenta) was pure goodness; and the other meals had spice! Flavor! Oh Lord, why have you hidden your face from me for so long! The $4 cognac I brought home was pretty solid as well.

The students that I worked with for the FLEX program were really great too (but note the order in which I discuss aspects of my Moldova trip). Their English was outstanding for the most part, which is something that is expected of FLEX participants. Some of the students had weird accents that only made sense when they told me that they went to special schools run by Turks. They were also enthusiastic and generally cheerful, very much like well-adjusted, American high school students. I had half-expected the country to be populated with some of the saddest children in the world (because something like 20% of the population work and live abroad, and therefore, many children are brought up by grandmothers, rarely seeing parents). However, when I was sitting on the bus, waiting for my trip home to begin, I saw what must be a typical scene. A family came to the bus station to see their mother off. The daughter, probably around 12 years old, stoically stood by as her mother got on my bus to Ukraine while her brother, maybe seven years old, unabashedly bawled his eyes out. The grandmother failed to quiet him. The mother came back out to console him before leaving. The children and their grandmother stood there quietly, not waving, as the bus pulled out.

I think the reason I’m having trouble sleeping is because I’m busy thinking about life after Peace Corps. I only have a little more than 100 days left, and the future is almost here. It looks like grad school for me. I’m not looking forward to all the pre-grad school hurdles, namely tests and applications. I’m taking the GRE next Tuesday, so I’ve been chipping away at test materials for the past month. I’m also dreading having to ask professors who won’t remember me (because they never knew me in the first place) to write up some stunning letters of recommendation. There’s also the pre-grad school living and working situation to work out. For the sake of my morale and overall mental health, I will not be staying in my old room at my parent’s house for long if I can help it. So there’s a lot to think about.

Wednesday, August 9th 2006

i'm overcome with laziness. i've been spending my days studying for the gre, eating watermelon, and reading at the beach. (I read the joke by milan kundera and the shipping news by the lady who wrote broke back mountain, both outstanding books, and i have one hell of a tan.) i travelled around far too much last month: i was gone for about 3.5 weeks. i don't like being away from home for so long. i haven't really touched the blog much. i don't have motivation to write unless i'm sitting around at home, bored, collecting dust. i have, however, updated the photo section with pics from the end of school and ireland.

Saturday, July 15th 2006

Dear Volunteers:

On July 6, at least 8 people died as a result of a bomb explosion in a "marshrutka" passenger shuttle in the city of Tiraspol, Transnistrian region of Moldova.

In the light of the recent events, all travel through Transnistria has been restricted. All volunteers, especially those living in the regions of Odeska Oblast that border on Transnistria, as well as those living in Vinnytska and Chernivetska oblasts that border on Moldova, should excersise caution.

Below is the U.S. Department of State information regarding Transnistria .

"A separatist regime controls a narrow strip of land in the Transnistria region of eastern Moldova. The United States and other countries do not recognize this regime. Since no formal diplomatic relations exist between the United States and local authorities there, the provision of consular assistance to American citizens cannot be ensured. Travelers should exercise caution in visiting or transiting the area. Travelers should be aware that there are numerous road checkpoints along the roads into and out of the Transnistria region."



i heard about the bombing the morning that i was scheduled to leave moldova and return to ukraine. a moldova pcv (there are over 100, which is bizzare because it's a tiny country) told me about it. the peace corps office in moldova wasn't aware of the bombing until headquarters in washington called them to find out what precautions they were taking. washington found out about the bombing from cnn. peace corps ukraine took action, restricting travel 4 days after the bombing.

even before the bombing, the moldova pcvs were forbidden to enter transnistria because it's so shady, and if something happens to you, there's no u.s. embassy to bail you out.
i probably should have called the peace corps office to find out if it was safe to travel, but since i already had my bus ticket and because i was feeling a little lazy/optimistic i decided to just go.

i traveled to moldova with carrie, a former pcv who now works for american councils. we both taught seminars there. the bus trip takes about 10 hours, which isn't bad. we were hoping for a new, air-conditioned, touring bus, which wasn't too much to expect since this was technically an international trip. Instead, we got a rickety, old school bus, the kind that you see all the time in ukraine, packed full of babas carrying sacks of vegetables, crawling from town to town like an itinerant gypsy.

The trip takes 10 hours, but 3 of those delightful hours are spent at the border--actually borders. although transniester is not recognized as a country, they have border control and customs (their currency is the russian ruble). so on the way in and out of moldova, you have to go through 2 sets of customs. we've heard a lot about bribery and other hassels at the borders, so carrie and i decided to play the part of dumb, "i-only-speak-english" americans, hoping that the border guards wouldn't make the effort to make us understand that they wanted a bribe...to be continued...

Thursday, June 29th 2006

Last night, at the graduation party, my principal and I made up over some vodka.

Wednesday, June 28th 2006

Piss and Vinegar

Tomorrow night, I leave for Kyiv. I’ll teach a FLEX pre-departure orientation (PDO) session for four days, and then I leave for Moldova, to teach another session. FLEX is an international student exchange program funded by the U.S. State Department and run by American Councils. A few hundred Ukrainian high school students will spend the following year in American schools, living with American families, and the idea is to prepare them for all this and more during the PDO sessions. Moldova is a small country directly to the west of Ukraine. Moldova is known for produce and wine, but not much else. Moldovans are often made fun of in Ukraine for being nice, but stupid. Moldovan jokes abound in Ukraine as Polish jokes do (or at least used to) in the U.S.

I’m relieved to be leaving my town. I spent the last 4 weeks working at my school’s summer camp, which unlike last year, was a waste of my time. Last year, I worked with these cute little first grade kids. They had a penchant for violence, which sickened me, but their little, happy smiles were contagious. And there was work for me to do; little kids need a lot of watching. This year, I worked with middle-school aged kids, the age group that I despise the most. I know for a fact, that when I was their age, I was an absolute dick. I antagonized girls, not knowing quite exactly what it was that I wanted from them. I was loud, and I said a lot of stupid shit. I know that I was this way, yet still, I can’t forgive these little animals for their subhuman behavior. And to top it off, there was nothing for me to do at camp, except roll my eyes and glare occasionally.

I show up at 9. Sit around with the kids for an hour or so. Eat breakfast. Sit around for another hour or more. Go on an “excursion” to the stadium or monument. Come back. Sit around for an hour. Eat lunch. And then I would flee. I would get as far from the school and the bratty kids as I could at the soonest possible time. I spent a lot of time at the beach soaking up sun and bleeding out bile. I also ran a lot. Both of these activities made me feel better, but the next day, I’d have to head back out to camp.

I started arriving later and later because, why not? After the second week, about half of the kids stopped showing up. They too realized that camp was dull and not worth attending.

I know that it was in my power to make camp better—fun, even. I could have taken charge of the day camp, taught them ultimate Frisbee and Chicago-style softball. The indifferent and moody teacher who was responsible for the kids would not have cared if I had usurped her role. I could have made camp into something that is fun not only for the kids, but also for me. But I didn’t want to. The kids didn’t deserve my efforts. The school didn’t deserve my efforts.

In the first week of camp, the principal offended me. I went away for a few days to Kyiv for a SPA committee meeting. The principal called me on Monday morning, demanding to know why I was not at camp. I explained what I was doing in Kyiv, but he continued yelling at me and then hung up. I called him back, explained again, and he hung up on me yet again. Principals in Ukraine tend to be megalomaniacs, but we hadn’t had any problems in the past, so this caught me by surprise. When I got back to school, he found me in the morning and chastised me again. This time, instead of explaining again, I just smirked at him, thinking, “Fuck off, you don’t own me.” I’m a volunteer. I’m here because I want to be here and not because I have to be here, not because you’re telling me to be here, and if you think you can force me to come, I will, but that—my physical presence—is all you get. I know, I know, this is not a good attitude to have, in fact, it’s poisonous.

So that was the last four weeks. Pretty shitty. This unpleasant situation could have been avoided if I had explained to the principal before leaving how important my committee meeting was, but I have never had to explain my absence to him before. Also, since classes are over, I am free to do what I please. Perhaps the principal doesn’t understand that point. Things have cooled off between the principal and me. By the time school starts in September, things should be fine, but I will never forgive him for being rude—not unless he apologizes, but, in this country, I don’t think principals apologize much.

Wednesday, June 14th 2006

Drunkie

Occasionally, in Ukraine, you run into phenomenally drunk men in the middle of the afternoon. Last week, the new volunteer in my town, Rebekah, got hit by a drunk guy on a bike. I think it night have been the same drunk guy on a bike that I saw passed out on the sidewalk a month ago. Not knowing what to do, but feeling somewhat responsible, I yelled into his ear and then poked him when I didn’t get a response. He made a noise, and it was a sunny day, so I left him there.

A drunk guy got on the bus today—just barely. His incrementally less drunk friend dragged him on the bus and deposited him onto a seat, where he oscillated erratically like one of those inflated clown punching bags. I thought he would yuke (college slang seems the most appropriate when describing vomiting), so I mapped out quick escape routes in case he vomited in my direction.

The other bus passengers collectively rolled their eyes when he got on, as if he was the dirty uncle that all Ukrainians have to tolerate at family functions. A young couple laughed at his condition. Drunkie yelled something unintelligible back at them. It sounded like a feeble, drunken threat. I felt nothing but disgust for this guy.

The bus picked up a lot of people on the way to Sumy, and very soon all the seats were taken except for the one next to drunk guy. We made another stop, and a frail, gray-haired grandmother got on. As in most cultures, old age is respected in Ukraine. I think the respect for age has a twist in Ukraine because on top of the whole age thing there’s the Holodomor, the Stalin-era, manufactured famine.

During Russia’s campaign to collectivize Ukrainian farms and quell rising nationalism, Soviet soldiers stole grain and livestock from farmers, causing a major famine in which 5-10 million Ukrainians slowly died. Whenever I see an old person, I estimate their age and guess how old they were during the famine, and my thoughts automatically touch on the suffering they might have endured. Most Ukrainians hold a reverential attitude in regard to the very old and do their best to see that they do not suffer even inconveniences.

Even though drunk guy was operating on only the reptilian part of his brain, he saw the old woman get on the bus and immediately made space for her on the seat. He also brought his weaving and bobbing under control as to not collide with her. After this, I couldn’t help feeling a little less disgust for drunkie.

Tuesday, June 13th 2006

Having a Party

2 PCV friends living in Sumy were going to have a blow-out, school’s out for the summer party in their apartment. Unlike nearly every other PCV in Ukraine, they share an apartment: a gigantic, 5-bedroom, newly furbished, dream apartment. Considering the size of the apartment, we invited everyone we knew and expected 20 or more guests. The week before the party, they told their landlord (who lives directly below them) about the party. Even though they lied about the size of the party (they said only 10 people would come) and the occasion (my fake birthday), the landlord said no. It was too late to cancel the party since our friends had already bought their train tickets to Sumy, so we moved the party to my place in Lebedyn.

Although I have a comfortable, 3-room apartment, it cannot sleep 20 people. Also, water comes (if I’m lucky) and goes during the day and completely cuts out after 10 PM. I always keep water in plastic containers to wash up and cook, but I was worried about what 20 people and no water would do to my toilet. I tried not to worry about what 20 crazy Americans would do to Lebedyn.

My PCV friend, Anton, arrived in the morning and helped me clean up the apartment. We even took the big rug from the living room outside and beat it. I don’t have a vacuum, and this was the first time in over a year and a half that the rug was cleaned. It was pretty disgusting. I think that the old ladies who were sitting outside were impressed by the clouds of crap that flew out of the rug as we pummeled it with our hands. I don’t have one of those rug beating wands because the only function it would serve would be to make me feel guilty and deliberately slovenly. I was hoping the grandmothers would come out with their beating stick and show us how it’s done, but I think they really enjoyed watching stupid Americans hitting a rug with their puny fists. I remembered the bat I had bought for my English/sports club, and we took turns swinging into the rug. We thought that we were particularly clever, but this display of creative idiocy probably confirmed the grandmothers’ views on the infeasibility of a bachelor existence.

It turned out that only 8 other people showed up. Volunteers, probably more than normal people, are terrible at showing up. I’ve bailed on my share of parties. Travel is a hassle, and we’re allowed a limited number of days away from site, so I understood. And I was relieved.

I cooked dinner for everyone. I made a mountain of chicken stir fry (with chicken on the side because Peace Corps is infested with vegetarians), and I also prepared about 3 liters of sangria, which is now my official drink for the summer of ’06. After dinner, I washed the dishes because we happened to have water while my guests drank and talked. We didn’t end up leaving my place because by the time people were ready to leave, the dance club was closed. Again, this was probably for the best. 10 Americans attract a lot of attention.

In the morning, I made a zucchini egg scramble for everyone. Later that day, the party moved back to Sumy because half of the people had to leave. We arrived around dinner time. I waited for the girls whose apartment it was to make some arrangement for dinner. They didn’t. I went to bed a little hungry.

In the morning, I waited for the girls to whip up some breakfast. They didn’t. I toasted up some bread that I had brought from my apartment and chewed on some cucumbers that I had also brought with me.

Dinner time came again. Anton and I took the matter into our own hands and cooked up some curry for everyone. One of the girls complained about the number of dishes we left for her to wash. I left for Kyiv that night for some committee meetings with a bitter taste in my mouth.

Hospitality is dead in the Peace Corps. Many volunteers’ definition of hospitality doesn’t go beyond providing a space on the floor to sleep. I’ve known this for a long time. I just didn’t care until now because the hospitality extended and then received has never been so one-sided. Some volunteers are great. You show up at their place to find something delicious cooking on the stove and a cold beer in the fridge. But too many people think that their jobs as Peace Corps Volunteers obviate the responsibilities hosts have for their guests. A lot of volunteers are young—fresh out of college—but this is no excuse. Hospitality, unlike wisdom, STDs, and Johnny Cash’s gravelly voice, is something that you grow up with—not something that you accrue with age. Incidentally, I’m joking about the STDs.

Saturday, May 27th 2006

There’s only 1 day of classes left, and the student’s are restless. They talk and joke during lessons, arrive late, and generally resist participating, even passively, by which I mean quietly sitting with their books open to the correct page and pretending to listen.

While I don’t blame them for being fidgety, I won’t take shit from them. I’ve come a long way from being Mr. Nice Guy Pushover Floor Mat Please Please Whatever You Do Like Me. After one really bad week of going home fuming and wanting to break/kill/pulverize, it suddenly struck me that I can make them just as miserable as they make me, that misery is a two-way street, and that in my position as teacher, I am in a unique position to visit misery upon them.

I don’t know why it had taken me so long to realize this. Maybe I’ve seen Dead Poets’ Society too many times. Maybe I’ve had too many shit-tastic, asshole teachers, and like an alcoholic’s son, didn’t want to become what I hated and feared. But in any case, I’ve put aside being the nurturing, long-suffering teacher and have learned to harness the power of the asshole. I am still obscenely patient and good-humored, but act up in class and I will not hesitate to shame and ridicule you. Some notable incidents:

My 7th grade class is talking, talking, talking. I tell them to be quiet. I make individual students stand. I make one particularly loud kid go to the corner with his nose no farther than an inch from the wall and then to the hall when he continues to talk. The class as a whole is still noisy. I tell them they’re all staying after class for 5 minutes. I gradually increase that to 15 minutes, the entire length of passing period. They still do not shut up. I make everyone stand for the rest of the class period. I also give them a long writing assignment, which they have to stoop over their desks to do. Everyone is uncomfortable, but everyone does their work quietly.

Two 11th grade boys are giggling during class. I tell them to be quiet and pay attention. They continue giggling, so I ask what’s so funny? They shrug and giggle some more. I ask them if they’re touching each other under the table and that’s what’s making them giggle. I tell them it’s ok and, in fact, quite normal, but that they should take care of that stuff outside of class. They shut up and do their work.

My 10th grade class is not listening. We’re doing an exercise on the Ukrainian constitution, and it’s boring as hell. Also, it’s the last class of the day so they’re especially unmotivated. I ask some easy questions about the constitution, but the students don’t care enough to reread the text for the answers. I call on 6 or 7 students, but no one knows anything. I make the class write out the entire abbreviated constitution from their book. I tell them they can’t go home until they finish it. Half the class finishes in time and leaves. The other half thought I was bluffing. I pull out a newspaper and smile because I’m not bluffing. I stay until the last student finishes some 10 minutes later.

One of the best-loved and respected teachers at my school is the one with the shortest fuse. She yells at students with animal ferocity, banging her hands on the table, and she has an angry expression that rivals the look the Maori wear into battle. Her verbal barrages made me cringe when I first came to school. However, whenever I meet her former students, they can’t stop raving about her, and she is the only teacher that students seem to remember with fondness. This makes me think that Ukrainian students want their teachers to rule their classes with an iron fist and do not respect those that do not. While American students prefer the cool teacher, the teacher-friend, the funny teacher, Ukrainians see all these traits as a form of weakness. Oddly enough, they see her explosive anger and tirades as a form of caring. The rationale for this is that the teacher considers what she has to teach so important and wants so much to impart this knowledge to her students that she will make them learn despite themselves, in the process expending an ungodly amount of energy yelling at them.

Some of my classes are very well-behaved, and I rarely raise my voice. But I do not hesitate to come down on a student or the whole class, and generally, during subsequent classes, my students behave better and heed verbal warnings. I don’t go home angry anymore. Sometimes, though, I find that I like the taste of the power and authority that comes from punishing my students, often humiliating them in the process, and this bothers me a little.

Thursday, May 18th 2006

I managed to go running today. I even wanted to do it: I had some regret and stupidity to run off. I had some left when I finished running, so I even did some pull-ups at the park and then some push-ups and sit-ups at home. A few more weeks of regrettable decisions and I’ll be back into beach shape.

Whenever I wear my velvet sport jacket, the one I bought at a badass vintage shop in Dublin, strangers come up to me and invite me to their homes. It’s happened twice now. I used to think that I looked like a bitch in that jacket, but I guess maybe I look more like a dandy, which is slightly better, although only by millimeters.

Two weeks ago, as I was walking home from the bazaar with a bag full of produce and a kilogram of some damn sexy pork, a Ukrainian guy on a bike pedaled by and asked me a bunch of questions. He was really friendly and needlessly self-deprecating. I’m sure he would have addressed me as gov’nor if we had lived in the correct time and place. He wanted me to come to his house for dinner right then and meet his daughter, Zhenya. (Zhenya can also be a name for guys, but considering that homophobia runs amok in Ukraine, I’m pretty sure he was talking about his daughter.) I turned him down. I told him that I was busy and that it’s a little weird that he would invite a stranger to his house. I said the last bit in a more polite way than I’m saying it now.

Today, as I was leaving the post office, the guy I had held the door open for called out to me. It was (of all things!) a fifty-something Asian guy. It was the other Korean guy of whom I had heard, but like Sasquatch and the Yeti never really thought existed. He was surprised that I had escaped his notice for over a year and a half and even more so when I told him I was Korean too. (He had guessed I was Japanese, which makes him the second person in one week to think so. I never thought I looked very Japanese. Maybe it’s the haircut or the viciousness I now carry in my eyes. Joking, of course. Is that racist or does being Asian allow you to say shit about all other Asians? It’s probably mildly racist.) He asked me if I wanted to get something to eat, and I was a little namby-pamby about it. I had some errands to run; I didn’t know this guy; and apparently, he lived in a village 10 kilometers away. But I got into his car anyway because I’ve learned to just generally go with things in Ukraine because even though I only vaguely know what’s going on, things usually turn out all right, and he was Korean after all.

He parked in front of a bank and told me he’d be a few minutes. 10 minutes passed. He came out and said he’d be just 10 more minutes. When he came out I told him that I’d rather get something to eat in town because it might be a pain to return. He asked me if I was afraid, and I protested.

My door swung open just then, and a heavy-set Ukrainian woman was staring at me, just as puzzled by my presence as I was by hers. I stared back for a few seconds before I realized that this was the guy’s wife, and she wanted to sit. I got out for her, and the Korean guy, who I later learned was named Stanislav, took me to the store to buy some drano. That was one of the errands I needed to run. I figured he was trying to clear my schedule so I had no reason to say no to his invitation. We couldn’t find any, so we returned to the car, where his daughter was waiting for us.

I’ve always felt that half Asian people are the best looking people in the world. It doesn’t matter what the other half is; just add a little Asian and you got one fine-looking kid. And she wasn’t an exception. She’s the first half-Korean, half-Ukrainian person I’ve met. I doubt there are many of them out there, which is a goddamn shame.

Her father assigned her the task of finding drano for me, with me, actually. After checking two stores we found it. During that time, I found out that her name is Nadia; she grew up in a nearby village; she is studying in Sumy to be a vet; and she has a dog and some chickens. We got back to the bank, and Nadia’s father gestured for me to sit in her car. I figured we were now headed to the village for some dinner, but instead, Nadia took me home. I was shocked and disappointed. Stanislav, in a very un-Ukrainian turn, had respected my wishes to not leave Lebedyn. I had complained my way out of spending time with this beautiful and interesting girl who likes animals for Christ’s sake. I was so appalled by what I had done that I staggered out of the car without getting her number or making plans to see her.

After my mind-clearing and self-punishing run, I saw today’s events for the half-sketchy situation it was. I’m fairly sure that Stanislav called his daughter from the bank and then stalled until she got there. And that alone is weird. He knows nothing about me except that I’m a Korean-born American and a prissy dresser. Yet, that was enough for him to call his daughter to drive out 10 kilometers to meet me. Relationships are tricky in Ukraine because most of the people you meet have far less money than you (although, technically, I have negative money due to college loans), and you have to consider what role you, as a ticket out, play in the relationship. I’d hate to get into something, with that being the reason for meeting. Regardless of where it goes from there, I would never really feel comfortable if it started like that.

Wednesday, May 17th 2006

The school year is almost over, and it’s getting harder and harder to drag myself out of bed in the morning and then to drag my ass a little further to school. I live only about 11 minutes from school, which is fortunate because otherwise I would be late all the time (either that or become a more responsible adult who wakes up in time to eat, shave, and dress well). I don’t have trouble getting to school during the rest of the year; it’s just the end that’s tough. The problem is that the teachers are having me work on some filler material because the students are about to start up their finals. A few days last week, they had me work with the students on the English translation of the Ukrainian Constitution, which is the crowd-pleaser you imagine it to be. You know school really sucks when you find yourself sympathizing with the students, when you can’t blame them for their disinterest.

Yesterday, I played Monopoly with my 11th grade students for two periods. I like my 11th graders. Their English is pretty good, and it’s a small class. Most of the time, the 2 boys in the class don’t show up, which makes it easier for me because girls in Ukraine tend to be the better students or at least quieter, which is just as good sometimes. Anyway, it was the best game of Monopoly I’ve played in Ukraine. I had played a few times with my host family when I used to live with them, but they didn’t really pick up on the strategy. It was kind of telling about their financial lives. They didn’t really buy much property. They kind of just enjoyed going around the board and saving up money, which I steadily and systematically took away. The 11th graders bought everything they landed on and made shrewd deals to prevent me from obtaining key pieces of property. I might have even lost had class not ended. I left for Sumy to run an English club at the library, and they ended up staying after school to finish the game. Capitalism has a future in Ukraine.

The funny thing about playing Monopoly with Ukrainians is that they’ll always give you exact change. In Ukraine, the onus is on the customer to have change, and even in large supermarkets you’ll earn an evil glare if you pay with a slightly large bill. Once I was almost denied the envelopes I wanted to buy because neither I nor the clerk had change. A lot of times you get a piece of candy in lieu of change. Once I got a box of matches, and I heard of someone getting a little bar of soap. It’s kind of fun actually, in the way that prizes in cereal boxes are fun. I’ve accepted this mentality of customer responsibility. I apologize immediately whenever I don’t have change, and when I was shopping in Ireland, I caught myself trying to give exact change all the time and feeling a little nervous when I couldn’t.

The weather is getting nice, and the price of cucumbers is going down—sure signs that summer is approaching. Soon I won’t be able to convince myself not to go jogging, which is something I’ve been able to do pretty well, using just about any reason. Today, I didn’t go jogging to see what it would feel like not to go jogging.

Sunday, April 30th 2006

Potatoes: The Prequel

Usually, Peace Corps deposits money into our local bank accounts a few days before the end of the month. This month, it’s late. It was a little embarrassing going to the bank on Friday to hear that I only had $5 in my account. If I hadn’t been surprised and somewhat ashamed, I would have taken out $4. I’m not penniless right now; I have 57 hriven ($10) and a handful of change, and besides that, my fridge and cupboards are well-stocked. I need money to see some PCV friends over the weekend. It can get expensive to go to a club, restaurant, or even to sit at the ubiquitous beer tents, and considering that we’re probably going to do all three, 57 hriven isn’t going to cut it.

I had 60 hriven, but I spent 3 last night at the store. I was out of toilet paper. Tp is very, very inexpensive. A roll costs something like 60 kopyky (<$.10), yet I debated buying it. I looked around my apartment for toilet paper substitutes, which I have discovered to be a pretty fun game. I’d wasted all my napkins on my runny nose, so there were no easy solutions. I broke down and went to the store because I didn’t think I could live with it if I had subjected myself to humiliation (and possibly paper cuts) over a matter of <$.10.

For reasons I don’t understand, I have trouble buying toilet paper. I feel like I’m doing something dirty, and I worry that the checkout girl is thinking something like, “Yeah, I know what you’ll be doing tonight, you sick fuck.” So I can’t just buy toilet paper. It’s like in sitcoms (and thus real life) where teenagers go to the pharmacy to buy condoms and end up buying 20 things they don’t need to camouflage the purchase. I always need to buy something else, be it ice cream, pantyhose, hemorrhoid cream…. So I bought some toothpaste. I had officially run out 2 days ago, but managed to scrape out several drops. (Toothpaste is exciting in Ukraine. You get all these crazy varieties. I used this really delicious, green apple flavor, until I realized that it was probably giving me cavities. This time I got the strong sea flavor. There are pictures of clams and starfish on the box. I was afraid/hopeful that it would taste like seafood, but it just tastes like clean.)

To keep costs down, I’ll probably bring some of my own beer to my friend’s place. I had liberated 3, one-liter bottles of beer from an American Councils training session I had attended two weeks ago. We’re worse than hobos…

Helped my host family plant potatoes yesterday. We were out at their field for about 8 hours. We left around 9 and planted onions and potatoes until around 2. Sasha (the host dad) plowed the field with the tractor, babusya went down the lines scattering this pink fertilizer stuff, and the rest of us dropped and covered potatoes. I was a dropper, but then I noticed that neither Sasha nor his brother Vova were dropping potatoes. Dudes seem to do the hoeing, so I started doing that because I didn’t want them to think I was a bitch. I am a hoeing fiend, I discovered. I must have peasants in my ancestry. I did a portion of the hoeing without gloves to toughen up my hands. Someone had recently commented that my hands were soft (“Like a girl’s?” I had demanded to know defensively, like Joe Pesci in Good Fellas).

We broke for lunch and had a picnic on the field. We ate homemade ham and smoked rabbit. I asked babusya to let me kill a rabbit next time, and she said she would call me. We drank several shots of camohon, and I wasn’t much good in the field after that. I understood why we finished with the potatoes before starting lunch. We spent the next few hours planting squash. Babusya and I planted a total of 110 meters of squash.

Later that evening, I took a bath at their house before heading for home. The water was a little sickening to look at, much less sit in. The surface resembled the protein scum that bubbles up when you boil meat for soup.

Friday, April 28th 2006

In hell, everyone is congested,
and their ears are filled with snot,
but they don’t recognize the blessings of inability
to smell the stench of roasting flesh through unobstructed nostrils,
to discern through clean ears, the nuance and variation of agony, or
to realize the screams that surround them come from equidistant points.

In hell, no one waits in queues,
and the cashier never turns away
and goes on break, as you, trembling with relief and veneration,
approach the glass that divides the divine from supplicants,
to order tickets home on the train that moves reluctantly
and where drunks passing in the night touch your feet like perverts.

Wednesday, April 26th 2006

I’ve been thinking that an Asian guy in Ukraine is like a Volks Wagon Beetle. Although nearly everyone has seen one before, everyone still has to stare and then comment on it. I won’t miss that. When we were younger, my sister and I used to hit each other whenever we saw a VW Beetle. The first one to spot a Beetle and say, “Punch bug (insert color of vehicle),” was entitled to a free hit. I’d like to bring that tradition to Ukraine, but with Asian people instead of cars. I haven’t asked, but I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to hit people, so I like the idea of someone slugging his friend on my behalf. It’s like having a surrogate puncher.

Ireland was fun, but the thing that I will always remember about Ireland, besides the unnatural, orange glow emanating from fake-baked lasses or having a pile of sausages for breakfast, is the role Asians seem to play in Irish life—or the lack of it…*abruptly cut to close up, cue dramatic music.

I saw Asians nearly everywhere I went. When I made the pilgrimage to Subway for a spicy Italian sub on the parmesan wheat bread, the first Asian guy sliced up the bread and lovingly laid down the cheese; an Asian girl loaded it up with all the fixings, including extra jalapenos, splashed it with vinegar and oil, patiently explained to me that the salt and pepper came mixed (I had forgotten!), and wrapped it up like a baby Jesus; and the second Asian guy rang me up. I had never been to an all-Asian Subway before. Perhaps only an all-German Subway could have been more efficient. When Sally’s friend’s mom took us out for a fancy lunch, 2 hard-working Asians behind the buffet dished out mutton and a side of garlic roasted potatoes. When Sally and I went to her canoe club friend’s table quiz night, the proceeds going to fund her trip to India for some misguided humanitarian thing (I’ve become a snob regarding volunteering), a pair of bar Asians provided me with a steady stream of Guinness.

I have no problem with Asians—or anyone, really—working in food service. I waited tables throughout college and even had a demoralizing stint at California Pizza Kitchen right before Peace Corps. Although I’ve wanted to bitch slap customers and coworkers, I found nothing intrinsically demeaning about food service (although I’ve vowed never to wait tables again. I’ll sooner work at a strip club—as a dancer, or course, and not the creepy bathroom attendant/monitor. I’d probably get better tips than I did at CPK. Those cheap bastards…).

I’m really dragging my feet getting to the point. I’m a little sick. I’ve been sneezing all day, and my ears are filled with snot. It’s a little hard to stay focused. I think I need to lie down. But, to continue…

The problem wasn’t that so many Asians were working food service. The problem was that that’s all they were doing. When I went out to pubs at night, I didn’t see any Asians out and about, drinking pints with their mates. Not a single Asian shook his or her respective ass at a Peach Pit-esque, (and thus) somewhat-lame night club. I was always the only Asian guy actually eating at restaurants. I kept careful track, and not counting bar staff, I was the only Asian person at every single place I went to at night. In Ukraine, I expect to be the only Asian guy in a 90 kilometer radius. It’s weird and even slightly uncomfortable when I see another Asian guy at a Ukrainian bar. I probably glare a little and bare my unusually sharp canines. But to be in a country that is just littered with Asians! And to not see any at night!

I’m not saying that the Irish are Asian-hating bastards. Without exception, people were very friendly to me wherever I went (that is except for the woman who didn’t thank me for holding the door open for her and her stupid baby at the Oxfam thrift store. I passive-aggressively muttered “Why, you’re welcome,” in her general direction, once she was out of earshot, but loudly enough so that others could hear). Asians are terrible at integration. We tend to cling to what is familiar, by which I mean other Asians. So what I will remember about Ireland is that Asians just don’t blend in. To bed! What a piss poor ending. I’m pretty sure I intended to say more, but fluid is starting to periodically drip out of my nostrils without warning.

Tuesday, April 4th 2006

Jesus Christ, I’m old. I know, in truth, that I’m far from old, but I can’t shake this feeling. By the time my father was my age, he was married to my mother and had 2 kids: and in my 27 years, I have yet to hold a serious job. I’ve covered all the preliminary steps (college degree, life experience, blah blah blah), but I haven’t quite made the plunge. I’d been thinking about going to grad school for an MPA (Master of Public Administration), but now that I’ve reached the ripe old age of 27, I don’t think I can bear to spend another 2 years in captivity. I would hate to be a 30-year old college student. Dating 19-year olds might make it bearable, but as with Velcro shoes and Saturday-morning cartoons, you gotta let the 19-year olds go.

Maybe I’m feeling my age because I just came back from Ireland, where I stayed with my friend, Sally, on the UCD (University College of Dublin) campus. Her apartment, which she shared with 3 other girls, was plastered with posters about the rules of drinking (apparently the rules in Ireland are the same in America and Ukraine), empties lined the shelves (because why would you need space for books?), and a stolen road sign leaned against the wall. I realize that graduate programs are different. Students probably spend less time obsessing about mingers, munters, or shifting. (The first 2 refer to ugly people, the third to open-mouth kisses, as in “Did’ya shift her?” The Irish have delightful slang.) But being around all of this unbridled, untrampled, untempered, and ultimately, uninspired youth made me feel like old man river. I think I would dissolve and disperse in college like a torn diaper at sea, if you will. (I think I’m losing control of similes.) I’ll get a job when I’m done here. But doing what?

Ireland was real. It wasn’t a vacation vacation, where you go to escape real life for a while. Rather, it was the kind of break where you go and live someone else’s life for a while. I spent the week hanging out with Sally, my Ameri-Corps friend, and for the most part, with exceptions like the trip to the Guinness Store House or always riding on the top level of double-decker busses (and yelling out “I’m the king of the world!”), did the things that she does in a typical week. We went shopping at Tesco, got haircuts at a beauty salon feeder school, played in an ultimate Frisbee tournament in Belfast, hiked along the shore between two small towns, ate fish and chips, and drank Guinness in a dank pub while a salty, half-drunk Irishman warbled a tune. It was a good week spent in good company. I’ll write more about specific things that stand out as I process them.

Tuesday, March 14th 2006

At the end of the month, during my school’s spring break, I’m going to Ireland to visit my friend Sally. She’s studying at the University of Dublin for a year. We were on the same AmeriCorps team about 3 years back. I hear they’re getting ready to axe the program Sal and I did. AmeriCorps is sticking around, but the NCCC (National Community Conservation Corps) program is on its way out. All the reports say that it’s inefficient and that it costs too much. I don’t know if I can argue with that.

I loved the program; I ended up doing two years of it after college, the second year as a team leader. It’s an amazing program—a life changing experience, really. Most people don’t know what it is, so a quick explanation. There are 5 or 6 regional AmeriCorps NCCC campuses in America. They’re in D.C., Sacramento, Charleston, Denver, and some other cities that I can’t recall. I was in Charleston for both years. About 300 corpsmembers, ages 18-24 were at our campus, which was located on an old navy base. We shared the base with the border patrol. They had this great bar where both pitchers of beer and carafes of long island ice teas (danger!) cost $5. Our living allowances went a long way there.

The 300 corpsmembers are split into teams of 10-11 led by a team leader. The teams are sent out on 3-8 week projects all over the southeast. Our team received forest fire fighting training in Florida, tutored high school students in Charleston, built houses in Hazard, KY, conducted a controlled burn in Francis Marion Park, joined Salvation Army disaster relief teams in Kansas City after the ice storm, built trails in Cleveland, SC, worked with The Nature Conservancy in Slidell, LA, and helped the park service in St. John, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands. We did all of this in a ten-month period.

It wasn’t always fun or exciting. Some days, there was a lot of sitting around, waiting for building supplies to arrive, waiting for something productive to do, shit like that. But all in all, an amazing experience. I went to cities in America that I would never have any reason to go to on my own. We made friends through our volunteer work that we would never have had an opportunity to meet in any other way, and I was blown away by their southern hospitality. The day we arrived in Slidell, they had a huge catfish fry and coolers full of icy beer waiting for us. And at the end of the project, we were sent off with a huge crawfish boil. Another volunteer supervisor we had helped by removing wisteria from an old plantation organized a blow-out oyster roast and gave us free run of his amazing house on the savanna for the night. The guy actually handed us the keys and left for the night.

I love the South and the people who live there. I felt very safe and comfortable there. The two years I spent down there changed my baseless northern misconceptions of southerners as being dumb, uncultured, violent rednecks.

The best part of AmeriCorps, however, is the team aspect. You spend 10 nearly-uninterrupted months working and living with the team, creating shared memories of all the good and shitty experiences. I have to admit, that it wears on you, being around the same people all the time, but the good outweighs the shit by far. AmeriCorps friendships are different than any others I’ve had. We have as many shared experiences and have logged as many hours of conversation in the ten months as I have with friends I have known for years. Some of my favorite people are from the team. Time will tell if these are lasting friendships.

So as I said, AmeriCorps is expensive. The gov’t spends a lot of money on each volunteer. There’s all the living and travel expenses, and then there’s the $5000 each volunteer gets at the end of their service to pay back school loans or to go to school. But should it get the boot just because it’s pricey? We do a lot of good. Plus, it does us a lot of good. I’m going to go into some aspect of public service when I’m done here in Ukraine, and that’s because AmeriCorps set me on this path. AmeriCorps creates compassionate, active citizens. Maybe find a way to make it less expensive, but don’t do away with it. It’s a good investment.

Wednesday, March 8th 2006

The 8th of March

Today is the 8th of March—just another humpday in America—but here in Ukraine, it’s International Women’s Day, a national holiday. And this means: no school. Ooh raah!—as Ukrainians like to say.

I went to my host family’s house for a Women’s Day lunchtime party. I ate so much that it hurt, and five hours later, I still continue to hurt. I find that I can keep up with most Ukrainians at a party. I’ll eat and drink as much as the burliest, but where they get me is that they’ll do it again the next day and, sometimes, the day after that. My first holiday season in Ukraine was like the movie Seven, but without the kicks to the gut and the other six sins.

I’ve been thinking more and more that it’s better to live in a small Ukrainian city than a large one. First off, you just don’t get the love in big cities. People know me in Lebedyn. I run into friends and students every day. Grandmothers and sunflower ladies say hello to me (although they haven’t gotten my name down yet. My grandma neighbor still calls me Dima). Little kids give me shy hellos before skittering off. The ice cream lady knows my flavor. And there’s usually some sort of festival every other month. You really feel a part of things in a small town. Of course, it’s crushingly boring half the time, but if you can deal with that, you’re better off in a place like this.

Second, small towns are safe. Last month, I was in Kyiv for a week and a half for meetings and the annual medical checkup. During that time, I was almost robbed in two separate incidents. A dude undid my zipper and almost made off with my passport on the metro. I kind of deserved to get robbed because, stupidly, I put my stuff in a big, front-jacket pocket. So I tucked everything into the inside pocket, and two days later, at a buffet-type restaurant, another dude tried to jimmy it out when my coat was on the rack. It was a little depressing to nearly get robbed twice. I mean, is the word “SUCKER” clearly visible on my forehead? Do people see me and think that I’m ripe for victimization?

I haven’t had any run-ins in the past, and that might partially be because I was more cautious. After a year and a half, I’ve probably grown too comfortable. Also, I don’t try too hard to blend in anymore. Being an Asian guy, I’ve never really blended in well, but lately, I’ve taken to wearing my hair long (haven’t cut it in 7 months) and wearing a green headband like the Hamas guys. I have two headband styles. I wear it high so it pushes all my hair back, and I wear it low and over my bangs (do guys have bangs too?) so that I look like a sushi chef. My “friends”—both Ukrainians and Americans—freely tell me that my hair looks like crap (although the woman at the currency exchange tells me that it looks beautiful, which makes me giggle girlishly), but this is the first time I’ve ever really grown my hair out—and who knows if I’ll have another opportunity—so I want to give it a chance.

The Peace Corps mid-service medical check-up was interesting. I’ve never been examined so rigorously in my life. The only good thing about it was talking afterwards about the humiliation and discomfort with friends who had been similarly manhandled.

Tuesday, February 28th 2006

i know i said i wouldn't write any more shitty poems, but just one more. i haven't really had time to sit down and write a real entry since i've been travelling around so much for language training, spa committee, mid-year medical, and mag.

I think of the way we are
as a large, still-born baby in a womb,
slowly revolving, like a cake in a display,
driven by inertia, which doesn’t know the living from the dead.

Have I told you about my sis’s jewelry box,
about the ballerina that spins on her toes
while tiny metal teeth play Swan Lake?

Have I told you about the stupid love poems
I used to write,
awash with a 15-year old’s sense of destiny?

The sharp music is over;
the ballerina, still:
I’m waiting in silence for the last note.

Sunday, February 5th 2006

When I came back from shopping, I dropped my bag near my boots, relieved to be in from the biting cold that had returned after a few days’ respite and went out to my balcony for a cigarette that I had retrieved from the bazaar. Outside a big, black dog had mounted a smaller, white one and was going on with its doggy life, as W. H. Auden probably wouldn’t say. I thought, Isn’t it a little cold for that? But then figured that if anything was going to keep you warm on a day like this… The pair of dogs that live in and around my building raced out and chased them off like vice cops. I felt a little bad for the dogs that were caught red-handed, locked in their namesake sexual position.

I went back in to put away the food. I had a kilogram each of carrots, mandarins, and pork, 2 tomatoes, 2 bunches of green onion, 2 kilograms of rice, a big package of egg noodles, and 8 eggs. I had 10 (eggs come in tens in Ukraine not dozens), but had broken 2 when I dropped my bag upon entering. At big supermarkets, you can get eggs packaged in Styrofoam, but anywhere else you get eggs carefully stacked in a plastic bag.

Produce is expensive in winter. Fruit stays more or less the same price (6.50 hriven for a kg of mandarins), but vegetables become prohibitively expensive. In the fall, tomatoes are about 2-4 hriven/kg, but now they’re 18 hriven. Most families pickle tomatoes and cucumbers in the fall, when they’re cheap. (I hated the vinegary taste of pickled tomatoes when I first got here, but now I just love it. I’m going to try to weasel a container from my host family.) However, some people just don’t eat vegetables in winter, besides potatoes and onions. Last year, while working on seasons with some of my younger students, I asked a kid what his favorite season is and why. He said autumn because that’s when he can eat vegetables. And that made me pause. I was expecting answers like summer—because I don’t have to come to school or winter—because snow’s pretty. I didn’t expect a real answer.

I saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the first time last night. That Audrey Hepburn is something. In the movie, she confirms what I’ve always thought: bi-polar, emotionally unavailable girls are hot! I realized that I had seen a clip of the movie in Dragon, the Bruce Lee Story. In Dragon, Bruce and the future Mrs. Bruce Lee go to see Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The audience and initially Bruce’s date erupt in laughter at the scenes with Mickey Rooney—who is definitely not Asian—playing the frustrated Chinese/Japanese/does-it-really-matter-which (because an Asian is an Asian) neighbor. His date sees that Bruce is upset, and they leave. Those scenes didn’t ruin the movie for me, but I wished that they had 1. used a real Asian guy and 2. made him a figure of ridicule for something other than simply being Asian. The movie might have permanently ruined Mickey Rooney for me, but who gives a fuck about Rooney anyway?

Sunday, January 22nd 2006

Swimming

A day before the big day, I received a text message plea from Boghdan: Deal was that I will do if u do. Nobody loses if u quit. I hope u have been outside. Freaking COLD. Not hard to jump in, but get out and not freeze and not be in hospital the next day. Think about it rationally.

Boghdan’s a guy from the English club that I help run at the Sumy library. About a month and a half ago, with the rest of the club as witnesses, we made a deal to go swimming in the Psel River on the 19th of January. When the day arrived, he had second thoughts and dropped out. On the cold, bumpy bus ride to Sumy, I received his text: I’m not going swimming. I am a flake, I know. Sorry for not telling beforehand but ive just decided after freezing fingers outside. Be careful.

So it was just going to be me. Well, me, Melissa (a brand spanking new volunteer with long, curly hair that radiates 2 feet from the center of her head in all directions, if you can imagine that), and a middle-aged teacher who works at her school.

It was the coldest day of the year, much colder than any day last winter. It was so cold that the liquid crystal display of my cell phone froze and lingered on the screen. It was so cold that they cancelled school the next day and then 3 days after. It was so cold that the sunflower seed and cigarette selling babusyas, perhaps the toughest of all babusyas, packed it up and went home.

I arrived at the river first. A large cross was cut into the ice near the shore, and a wooden cross on a pole was planted next to it. Next to that was a rectangular pool, the size of two coffee tables, with a ladder leading into it. There was a religious ceremony earlier. Now there was only a thin crowd of people stripping down to their underwear and dunking themselves in the water, which was beginning to refreeze at the edges.

The Ukrainians were celebrating Epiphany. No one could really give me a straight answer on what Epiphany was all about except to say that it’s the day priests bless water. I couldn’t comprehend why Ukrainians—people who take extraordinary safeguards against sickness (they refuse to sit on any cold surfaces, ride in hermetically sealed busses during sweltering summers for fear of the draft, berate me for forgetting my hat on nice autumn days, etc, etc, etc…)—willingly, fearlessly, and even somewhat joyfully enter frozen rivers? Well, according to Encarta, on Epiphany, the Eastern Church commemorates the baptism of Christ as well as the first miracle where Jesus turned water into wine. I saw a long line of water-toting babusyas at the church earlier that day, waiting to receive a blessing. I suppose people take a dip in homage to Christ, but really, wouldn’t it be easier to commemorate this day by just drinking a lot of wine? Anyway, this explains the holiday, but it doesn’t really explain their motivation. Because, damn, it was cold.

When she arrived, Melissa and I briefly reaffirmed our decision to jump into the river and proceeded to psych each other up unconvincingly, our faces wind-blistered and our gloved-fingers already numb. “We’re going to…um, do it.” “Yup. *sigh.”

Taking off my clothes was the fun part. It’s kind of fun walking around in slippers, mostly naked, in wintertime. I remember thinking, “Hey, this isn’t half-bad.” Then I climbed down the icy ladder and entered the water. My body hasn’t been this confused since puberty. My body was not happy, and it didn’t know what to do, not having any stock reactions for these new and horrible sensations simultaneously assailing my entire surface area. My brain, still warm in my thick skull, wanting to disassociate itself from an idiot, abdicated my body. I somehow remembered to dunk myself three times. Then I crawled out.

I swear my eyelids froze together when I first came out. I spent the next desperate moments drying myself with a towel that became useless when it froze stiff, pulling off my icy trunks and wiggling into my clothes, my wooden fingers being little help. By the time I was half-dressed, Melissa had gotten out of the water and was locked in her own frantic struggle with her jeans and sweater. More impressed by than concerned about my pale fingers, which wouldn’t bend, I joked about frostbite, gangrene, amputation, and the despair that would follow. Melissa mostly swore.

With our clothes more or less on, we ran to the public library, which was less than a block away, Melissa still in her slippers and my hat lop-sided on my head because my hair had frozen into a spiky, onion-shaped mass.

We warmed ourselves on 5 cups of tea and coffee in the library cafe. After forty-five anxious minutes, feeling returned to my fingers (although the tips are still dead), and, fairly confident that neither of us would have to go to the emergency room, we were able to laugh. We even high-fived, which is something I hate doing and suffer only on special occasions

Thursday, January 12th 2006

Bought some toliet paper and icecream today. I asked for some chocolate ice cream in a cone. No problems there. I get ice cream about 3 times a week, and the woman who sells it to me thinks it’s cute that I ask for it in Ukrainian. I asked for the tp, and the woman just looked at me blankly. I thought about pantomiming what I wanted, which is what I normally do when I get that blank look, but then thought better of it. She had an assistant who understood and repeated what I said to the woman exactly as I said it. I was like, “Yeah! Toilet paper. I said that!” gesticulating wildly, just like that guy from Thirtysomethings who went on to sell the now-defunct Boku fruit juice. Maybe it was the unexpected combination of tp and ice cream that threw the woman off.

Having weird, vivid dreams lately. Last night I dreamt (reminds me of a Morrissey song: I dreamt about you last night, and I fell out of bed twice…pin and mount me like a butterfly. Is that song homoerotic or what? Anyway…) that a girl was teaching me how to paint an egg. I asked her if we were making p’sanky, Ukrainian Easter eggs. She said no and continued to paint alternating layers of light blue and grey. It looked like a blue sky interlaced with layers of thin clouds. Am I dreaming about having babies? Do I feel like I’m losing time, getting old, accomplishing nothing permanent here? Or do I merely have a craving for hard boiled eggs?

The night before that I dreamt that I was back in America. It was actually a really good dream. I don’t remember any details, but I remember being very happy and saying to somebody, very casually, in the offhanded way that people say things that are preposterous, that this had better not be a dream. And then I promptly woke up. I think I chuckled a little before falling back into a dreamless sleep.

The night before that I watched the English Patient. I had dreamt about the movie the night before. Either that or I saw the commercial on the film channel when I was sleepy. Or maybe both. I saw it when it first came out, but didn’t enjoy it much. I went to the movie with Flo, a pious Catholic girl, with whom I stood a very good chance of establishing an unsatisfying, non-touching above or below the clothes make-out arrangement. She was the kind of girl that horny, adolescent quadriplegics dream of. (Was that mean-spirited?) I was preoccupied and probably too young to understand the movie, which I now recognize as being pretty damn good. I remember being annoyed by Ralph Fiennes’ voice. Not realizing he was playing a Hungarian count, I thought he made a terrible Englishman. I remember being floored by Kristen Scott Thomas, my refined British temptress. I was more so the second time around and shocked that she wasn’t exactly young, but possessed a mature beauty. And I was stirred by Fiennes’ anguish when he was thwarted from returning to her by small men. What I like best about the movie is how it suggests that beauty can exist even in immorality. No, maybe more accurate to say that the dictates of love surpass and override those of conventional morality. It’s ok to sleep with a married woman, drive a cuckolded Colin Firth to a murder-suicide, strangle a pimply British soldier, and sell maps to Nazis, if it’s for love.

Because of some grave crime I must have committed in a previous life, I have been scheduled for 0 period classes on Thursdays. About 10 minutes into class this morning, the sun rose. I think my fucked up, irregular sleep schedule is the cause of these dreams.

Sunday, December 18th 2005

The semester is nearly over. The students are busy with five English finals: for listening, reading, writing, speaking, and something else that I can’t recall now. I’ve had little to do in school for the past week, which has been nice. Sometimes I proctor and grade tests, sometimes teachers tell me to take the day off, and in other classes, I just keep the kids busy with fun activities of my choosing. I’ve been teaching my students how to play poker. I know this wouldn’t be appropriate in American schools, but no one seems to mind that I’m teaching the kids about the joys of gambling.

In my defense, I make the kids speak English. Students are now comfortable using words like “raise,” “bet,” “ante,” and “fold” and phrases like “too rich for my blood.” Actually, I haven’t taught them that last one yet, but I mean to. Plus, they get practice with numbers and now know for certain that 3 of a kind beats 2 pair. At first, we all kept a tally sheet with our balance and another for the pot, but I’ve been bringing Monopoly money lately, which is a lot more fun. I taught them how to play 5 card draw and Texas Hold’em, but the heathens don’t appreciate the deeper intricacies of Hold’em.

So I have a little under a year left. The past year flew by, especially once summer started. I suppose it’s all downhill from here, meaning that it’s going to be easier, now that I know how to get around (and not that things are going to suck hence forth). But the idea that I have another year just as long as the last is a little daunting. To make the coming year easier, I plan to start an English club at the local pedagogical college. I like working with older people who theoretically have a better command of English, but my hidden motive is to make more friends in my town. I just don’t meet many people approximately my age working at school, and sometimes I’m haunted by boredom and loneliness.

I went to return a mouse today. Now that it’s too cold to do anything outside, I’m grudgingly relying on computer games to help pass the time. The store was closed so I couldn’t exchange the mouse, which wasn’t compatible with my computer. So I walked to the bazaar to buy a cigarette. You can get cigarettes individually from grandmothers who also usually sell sunflower seeds. I don’t like buying a whole pack because then I end up smoking regularly. The ten minute walk to the bazaar is a good deterrent.

I ran into this guy who hangs out at the bazaar. He’s friendly and speaks English pretty well. I see him there frequently, playing chess or just sitting around. He doesn’t sell anything at the bazaar, and I see him there frequently so I guessed that he played chess for money. I can tell he has money by the fancy Columbia jacket he wears. I don’t think you can make a decent living playing chess, so he was something of a mystery. Today, he asked me if I had some dollars I wanted to change, and I realized what he did for a living. PCVs are told to be wary of street money changers, who work illegally. I told him that I didn’t have any dollars, and he gave me an avuncular lecture about how it’s a great thing to be a volunteer, but that at some point one needs to find a real job and start a family. I thought that was funny and told him that I’d do that later on. It’s funny getting lectured about responsibility and gainful employment by an illegal money changer.

I left the bazaar and walked towards the train station to buy a ticket for Kyiv, which is where I will spend Christmas. I walked by a little kid with his mom. He whispered something to her about the Korean guy, which made me happy. I’ve been on a one-man campaign to educate the denizens of Lebedyn that not all Asians are Chinese. Months ago, my Regional Manager told me that Peace Corps was considering putting another Asian volunteer in my town. The college that is in line to get a volunteer requested an Asian male, one that is just like me, they said. I was flattered that they thought well of me, but annoyed at the prospect of sharing my town with another Asian guy. People would confuse us all the time, and what if the dude was Chinese! All my work, for nothing! And what if he did something terrible, like get a girl pregnant? They might end up lynching the wrong Asian guy. (I’m joking about the lynching, of course. I’ve never been threatened or felt unsafe in my town.) The college ended up getting a white guy (who arrives in two weeks), so that worked out.

I’m going to spend 2 nights in Kyiv with 5 of my friends. We’ll rent an apartment, which is commonly done by PCVs because it’s inexpensive, about $40/night. Then I’ll be back in Lebedyn for New Year’s. Last New Year’s, I went to a party with some of my host family’s friends. It wasn’t bad. We played zany Ukrainian party games, one of which involved passing a ring using a match stick held between your teeth. But the crowd was a little old for me. Everyone was friendly and interested in me, but it’s not fun hanging out with moms and dads. This year, I’m going to invite some volunteer friends and have a little party. We’ll probably go to the center where they’ll have a concert and then to Club Kino, which is actually one of the better clubs I’ve been to in Ukraine. The music is mostly cheesy pop songs played from a computer, but it’s a fun and roomy place. As the name suggests, it was once a movie theatre. And then, in the second week of January, I’ll go back to school for round two.

Monday, December 12th 2005

Mondays with Dima

I tutor Dima, my ten year old host brother, on Mondays. I help the little guy with his homework, and the babusya gives me a nice three course Ukrainian dinner and some produce to take home, usually onions, potatoes, and carrots. Today dinner started with a hot bowl of borshch with some tender, mysterious meat, sides of pickles and sausages, buckwheat served with a piece of rabbit (the grandmother explained to me that the rabbit just wasn’t eating as earnestly as it should, so she knifed the little guy earlier that morning), and a berry tart-like pastry with tea for dessert. I also made off with a few kilos of onions and a bag of pickles. I would prefer to take nothing from them, but they would feel badly about receiving free tutoring, which has a pretty high retail value in Ukraine. Teachers often supplement their income by tutoring, getting around 15 hriven an hour, and I think it’s reasonable to suppose that a real life American fetches around 20 ($4). I like tutoring Dima. He’s a good kid, and besides dinner and produce, tutoring keeps me in touch with my host family.

He was lying on the divan in the dark when I arrived after classes ended. His grandmother explained to me that on the way home he had slipped on the ice and fallen on his knee and that he had cried and cried. She went on to say that Dima loves crying. This elicited an irritated and pleading “Babushka!” from the prone Dima, which made me chuckle.

The week before, Dima was also taking a recuperative nap when I showed up for tutoring. The grandmother told me that he had come home in tears that day. I asked what happened, and she told me that a girl had hit him. We laughed together really loudly, while between stomach spasms (because maybe I heard wrong) I tried to ascertain that it was a girl that had hit him. I heard his irritated, little voice from the other room, “Babushka!”

I felt bad about Dima hearing me laugh. He’s going to have a hard time becoming a man, and it didn’t help that I was laughing at his expense. His mother and grandmother tag-team smother him. His father is docile. He pretty much plays computer games, while Dima’s mother and grandmother do the parenting tasks, such as making sure he does homework, eats properly, dresses warmly, etc…. Their style of parenting is pretty much based on nagging, which is castrating. I remember breakfasts with my host family were odd and a bit stressful. The minute I sat down to eat, the mother, sitting at the table to monitor breakfast, would repeat “Kushe, Kushe” (“eat, eat”) over and over to both Dima and me. We’d be eating at top speed, but she relentless urged us on like a dogsled driver, an overzealous coxswain, like a like a frat boy chanting “chug, chug, chug…”

I think a boy needs space to grow up. He doesn’t need someone telling him how to do everything, especially something as basic as eating. He needs a chance to figure things out for himself, to make his own decisions and to suffer the consequences. Of course, Dima’s only nine or ten now. I suppose it’s a little early for throwing off the childhood yoke. But at some point he’s got to tell his grandmother and mother to back off.

Thursday, December 8th 2005

I went for an hour long bike ride yesterday. (I started this entry about a month ago when it was still warm enough to bike.) I didn’t mean to be gone for that long, but I got lost. I didn’t mind much though. I had one of those “look at me, I’m in Ukraine” moments. When I’m sitting in my apartment, eating the spicy Korean ramen my sister sent me and doing my little dance to Ice Cube while reading a Peace Corps issued Newsweek, I feel like I could be sitting in my living room in Franklin Park, Illinois, on a Sunday afternoon. When I was riding on dusty, dirt roads, across deep tire ruts, over utilitarian concrete bridges, around half-finished buildings long abandoned, past cemeteries with big red Soviet stars rising from tombstones, past girls carrying buckets of water back from wells, past tin-roof shacks and nervous flocks of chickens, I felt that I was in Ukraine. And even though, I’m the Asian guy on a bike, I felt like I was a part of things. I suppose it’s similar to the feelings of ownership or stewardship that moves through children when they’re riding their bikes through their neighborhoods.

Lebedyn is much larger than I had previously thought. It was embarrassing to realize that even after a year, I had seen so little of my town. My orbit includes the bazaar, bank, my school, bus station, train station, two parks, the lake, and a couple of bars. And that’s it. That’s my Lebedyn. On my ride today, I saw what looked like an orphanage, an old wooden church that I hadn’t known existed (and in which, according to my Ukrainian counterpart at the school, Peter the Great had worshipped or at least entered for one reason or another), and kilometers and kilometers of houses filled with people that I don’t know.

It started getting dark, and I asked a woman which way to the center. She pointed opposite the way I thought it was and told me it was far, very far.

The weather is noticeably colder and rainier, the days are shortening, and everything is dead. Another year is almost over, and I’ve officially been in Ukraine over a year. I’m beginning to evaluate my time spent here, and it’s not pretty. Even though some of the classes still piss me off, I feel good about the work that I do here. It’s the whole community integration aspect that bothers me. As much as my knowledge of Lebedyn is superficial, so are my relationships with those who live here. I know my colleagues and my neighbors. In the mornings, I say a hearty “Dobry Den” to teachers when I arrive and an equally hearty “Do Pobachenya” on my way out, but that’s about it. I give the grandmothers living in my building a respectful “Zdrastuyte” and sometimes I say something about how cold it’s getting when I run into them in the stairwell, but again, that’s about all. This could be the natural consequence of a limited vocabulary. But I’m afraid that I’ve maintained an unbridgeable aloofness typical of tourists or maybe suburban America a la American Beauty.

I suppose that I don’t want the responsibility that comes with relationships. Some grandmothers are lonely. They have each other, I suppose, but their husbands are long dead, their family rarely visits, and chronically lonely people scare me. As for my colleagues, I don’t know why I’ve been aloof. Maybe because they’re all much older women and we really don’t have much in common. It’s like me hanging out with a bunch of my aunts, which is something that I’ve actively avoided my whole life.

My aloofness even extends to the animals that live around my apartment. We have a regular menagerie on the lot just behind the apartment. Three gorgeous, white dogs used to nap under the trees. One of the dogs had twisted hind legs which it dragged like a broom. The kids who live here, god bless them, played with the dogs all the time, paying special attention to the gimpy one. I ignore the dogs. I don’t give them scraps of food and I don’t play with them. I try not to look at them. We also have a bunch of cats. A tiny black kitten jumped on my lap once when I was sitting outside smoking and scared the bejesus out of me. It sat on my knee, shivering like an electric razor, and I pretended it wasn’t there. On the way to the internet club today, an anemic kitten tripped me in the dark and followed me for about 20 feet, mewing pathetically.

The gimpy dog finally died a few months ago, and I doubt that the kittens will make off much better. I ignore the animals because the odds are stacked against them. I don’t want to get attached to animals that are essentially marked for death, but even worse I don’t want them to depend on me because I will inevitably let them down, as there are limits to what I will do for them. Perhaps I personify animals. Maybe dogs and cats, unlike soap opera stars, don’t feel betrayed. Thus, I should feel free to do what I can and not feel guilty when they die. But there’s no avoiding the guilt, despite what animals may or may not be capable of feeling.

I think that part of the reason I have, what can be called, a “professional” relationship with my neighbors is that the grandmothers are old, and you know what old people tend to do.

In my heart of hearts though, I think that laziness, more than anything, keeps me from truly befriending grandmothers and the aunt-like teachers.

I saw the final episode of the Russian Temptation Island a few days ago. I think that all of the couples fell apart. Maybe one couple made it, but it was hard to tell. It was disappointing how little both sides resisted temptation. The couples split off into their respective sides of the island, the hunks and babes were introduced, and Bam! Infidelity sprang forth like from a chemical reaction. I don’t think it was even Medoff vodka, which was ceaselessly promoted throughout the show (icy bottles of Medoff always sat prominently on tables, the pool bottom was inscribed with the logo, and the camera regularly gave loving close-ups to frosty glasses of vodka), that was responsible for the ease and speed with which the couples disintegrated. I think the show would have been much better if everyone had made at least an appearance of fighting temptation or at least of having a fleeting second thought before hopping into bed with their respective new lover.

Wednesday, November 23rd 2005

haven't updated this in a while. i was busy doing my mentoring thing for a week, and then i got wrapped up in (i really hate to admit this) sex in the city. my friend lent me seasons 1-6 on dvd, and that's what i've been doing in my free time. god, that's pathetic. someone, please take my penis. i clearly do not deserve mine any longer. but i finally finished watching it last night, so i think i can reclaim my life and perhaps what is left of my manhood. i really shouldn't keep talking about sex in the city, but my favourite episodes were when she was cheating on aidan (god, what am i doing?). everytime she and big got into a hotel room, i would yell "whore! whore!" at the screen (it's like i'm trapped in my head. i see exactly what i'm doing but i can't seem to stop myself.) i also like how charlotte ended up with baldy. that was perfect. he was the best character on the show until they got married, then they watered him down until he was charlotte's bitch, emasculated, just like me.

it snowed and i'm not happy about it. here's a poem. i promise no more poems.

I look out my kitchen window and obscenities senselessly spew
From my mouth as if I suffered from seasonal Tourette’s. Branches are frosted with snow, the yard is pockmarked
With little steps
Filled with pools
Of filth. Pocket-sized
Birds tilt their heads and like freshly-jaded lovers ask: How could this have happened,
again? Pomegranates,
The fruit of the dead, are in season.

Sunday, October 9th 2005

I was in Sumy with my PCV friend, Amanda. She’s blonde with blue eyes, by the way. We were on the main pedestrian plaza, heading towards the internet café, which was closed. And so we walked back down the plaza to Nyum Nyum, a Ukrainian buffet with a ridiculous name and a limited selection.

I’m used to being stared at by people. It doesn’t bother me much anymore, but the people in the plaza were giving me a different kind of look. And I noticed this because they were all giving me the same exact look. The look in question being, the knowing, “oh you filthy sex-pat” smirk. They mistook Amanda as a Ukrainian and me as, well, a filthy sex-pat. It didn’t help that I was carrying a large package, which was probably misconstrued as a part of my insidious gift-giving campaign to defile a nice Ukrainian girl.

After the third or fourth passerby laid this look on me, I wanted to shout after them, “She’s American! She’s an American, goddamnit! And I’m not even having sex with her!” I get irritated when sober people speak English loudly in public, but I was pleased that Amanda obliviously did so. “See! She’s an American!” I would have yelled, had I been the type to yell out to strangers. “Look how she uncouthly draws attention to herself with her inability to speak within acceptable volumes!”

I don’t know how Ukrainians feel about sex-pats, losers who come to Ukraine seeking wives or just an Eastern European lay. Women may have mixed feelings because sleazy sex-pats can be a ticket out. Guys probably feel threatened by their purchasing power. I have no sympathy for sex-pats. To me, it’s like the rape of the Sabines conducted incrementally by horny losers from countries that have no shortage of women—that is, women who have universally rejected them.

Monday, October 3rd 2005

Too many of these entries run like episodes of Doogie Howser. Remember how at the end of each show, Doogie sits in front of his computer, typing out a diary entry, with a stupid, contemplative/constipated look on his face? He recounts the day’s events, the loutish things that Vinnie did or…I don’t know…about his hopes of balling Wanda one day. And then he ties those disparate events together and draws a lesson from it. It was annoying and preachy when Doogie did it, and I feel like I’m doing it too. I’m going to try writing more entries where no lessons are learned and one event doesn’t tie into an unrelated one to complete it. I’ll be fucked if I fall into Doogie’s web of lameness. Still, I fear that if you wait long enough and have a decent memory and maybe even think occasionally, everything reveals itself as being somehow related, but we’ll see.

The Russian version of Temptation Island started the other day. It has the same format as the American version, but with at least 30% more chutzpah, by which I mean cleavage.

Sunday, October 2nd 2005

A Little Ditty About Olga and Cerhiy…(that was lame. sorry.)

I spent all of Saturday in Kyiv with a young Ukrainian couple, Olga and Cerghiy, and one of their friends, Valeria, I think. We had a late lunch, which was somehow the only meal I had that day, watched The Bourne Identity, and chewed the fat.

They had just moved into their apartment two months ago, and they are only halfway done with repairs. Rolls of linoleum lay in the hallway, cabinets sat on the ground, and generations of flies lived together under one roof.

This was the first time I had visited anyone’s apartment in Kyiv. I don’t know many city-dwelling Ukrainians. Before this, the lifestyle of young, ambitious, post-college Ukrainians was a mystery to me, and I was even starting to doubt their existence. Maybe after college, they disappear in a puff of disillusionment.

Olga and I met during Camp Excite. We taught a leadership seminar together. She and her boyfriend lived in Sumy (the oblast center, population > 300,000) for most of their lives before heading out to Kyiv earlier this year. After working and traveling in America, England, and Holland, Sumy was too small, too provincial. They saved money from working abroad, in YMCA style camps, restaurants, and as an au pair, to buy their new apartment for about $35,000. Cerghiy told me that he started saving when he was 18.

Cerghiy is an office manager for an American company near the center of Kyiv, and Olga just started working in human resources for a pr firm. They don’t make much money. As a PCV, I actually pull in about the same amount as the two combined, which is a little fucked up. Maybe the Peace Corps gives me more money than I need, but the real issue is that they do not get paid nearly enough to live in Kyiv. Cergihy explained that if all goes well, in two or three years he’ll be able to earn close to $1000 a month, which will be enough to live comfortably in Kyiv.

We made chicken soup, a salad, and a tasty chicken and tomato dish served with rice. We washed it all down with mimosas, which was my cultural contribution. Most Ukrainians aren’t keen on mixed drinks. It’s a disgrace to dilute vodka. The mimosas, however, were a hit.

When I went to school today, I told my 10th form students about Olga and Cerghiy. I had been struggling to demonstrate to my students that learning English was a good investment, that it could be your ticket out. I would ramble on about how English speakers can find well-paying jobs, but I had no evidence or even details to back this up. It’s practically dogma that English leads to economic opportunity, but this concept remains fairly abstract because the intermediary steps are generally unknown. Using the example of Olga and Cerghiy, I was finally able to show my students how one actually goes from studying English in grade school to being on the road to the good life.

Another thing about English that I wanted to impart on my students is how it drives your ambitions. English gives you the capability to travel and work in other countries, to see what life is like outside of towns like Lebedyn, but more importantly, to see what possibilities exist for you. There is nothing wrong with my town; it’s just that there’s so much more out there.

Sunday, September 18th 2005

Classroom Management and Teeth

I was in Sumy, the oblast center, about 45 kilometers from Lebedyn, buying some pomade when I ran into a teacher from my school. Her son is in my 7th form class, which I love…and hate, more and more. They have a great deal of enthusiasm, but there’s too many of them. And they just won’t shut up. I tell a kid to be quiet and listen. He nods and apologizes and to my amazement, starts talking to his buddy literally the second I finish warning him. This is the only class where I have to actually have rules and consequences. I’ve had several students stay after class for being late, and the class as a whole got to the second “strike”—one away from everyone staying after class. I’ll probably have to assign seats soon to curtail the talking, and if things don’t get better I’ll write semi-literate notes to parents in their daily grade books. I hate rules—I hate appealing to threats, but I don’t know why I thought that I could do without them for a big class of 12 year old kids.

Part of the reason I’m having a lot of trouble with this class is because their regular teacher, a frightening woman who apparently doesn’t need to be loved by anyone, no longer sits in on my classes. I used to sit back (and cringe) while she took care of the discipline problems, and now that she’s gone, the punk-ass kids I once pitied are taking advantage.

I’m still figuring out the right tone to use with them. I don’t have a convincing angry voice. I would sputter out pathetically if I tried to deliver an entire angry diatribe (which they wouldn’t understand anyway), so I only use my angry voice for brief angry warnings. I do exasperation very well, but since it would be rightfully interpreted as a sign of weakness and fatigue and thus fuel misbehavior, I only use it to express incredulity to myself and anyone within earshot with rhetorical questions like, “Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with that kid?” When speaking directly to trouble students, I usually use a calm tone of detached disappointment and mild betrayal. I think I sound a little like HAL from 2001 Space Odyssey, but it seems to work. Last Thursday, I almost made a kid cry during class using that voice. I was like, “Pasha, why? [dramatic pause] Why didn’t you do your homework? Didn’t you know I assigned it? Then, I don’t understand why you didn’t do it.” I stopped when tears started welling up. I didn’t want to crush his spirit, nor did I want my bike pissed on later that afternoon. I manage to keep profanity and threats internalized.

The teacher I ran into explained that at her son’s request, she came into the oblast center to get some whitening toothpaste. Earlier that week, working on the present perfect tense, I asked the class how many times they had brushed their teeth that week. I got replies like, “I has brushed tooth two times this week” and “I’s five times this week.” The substance of their answers appalled me more than their grammar. The average student brushed once a day while some kids brushed only twice a week. I stopped the class to give them a quick talk—actually more like a plea—on dental hygiene. I asked how many gold teeth their parents and grandparents have (When I first met my host family in Pereyaslav, I was shocked at the amount of gold teeth in my host mother’s mouth. She greeted me with a huge smile, and I froze for a second with disbelief and fear.) and explained that they’re headed that way. I beseeched them to brush twice a day. I even made the class repeat in unison “I will brush my teeth twice a day,” but all the time, I doubted any of them would change their habits.

Maybe regular brushing will end up being just a fad for that kid, but maybe I just changed his dental destiny. This gives me a little hope for this whole teaching English thing. Despite appearances, some of the little bastards are listening. Some of the time at least.

Thursday, September 15th 2005

I've decided to be a mentor for the next group of peace corps trainees who are coming to the country at the end of the month. All mentors have to write little letters to their future mentorees. Here's mine.

Hi Group 29ers,

My name is Dae Woo Son, and I’m a group 27, TEFL volunteer out in Lebedyn, Sumska Oblast. The oblast borders Russia. Lebedyn, which essentially means “swan town,” has a population of 30,000, and it’s about 8-9 hours north-east of Kyiv. In America, I lived in Franklin Park, which is a part of the Chicagoland area. Franklin Park essentially means “crappy suburb of Chicago.”

Before coming to the Peace Corps, I volunteered for two years in AmeriCorps. I did the AmeriCorps NCCC program based in Charleston, SC. If you care to know more about the program, I can bore you with the details when I meet you. Before that I was in college, where I graduated with a degree in Government. I decided to join the Peace Corps because I like volunteering more than anything else I have done and because I think my future is in public service.

Presently, I teach 7th-11th form students at a secondary school. I love some of my classes. The students are happy and love learning English or at least think that it’s not a terrible way to pass time. We laugh a lot and have a good time. Some of my classes are just painful. The students stopped caring or fell behind years ago. I have to be an enforcer, prodding them along every step. By the end of the day, I’m pissed off and really tired from carrying them.

I remember that working in school during training was pretty tough. You see most classes something like once a week, so it’s hard to build any sort of relationship with the students or to have any real authority, which in actuality is only an extension of compassion or commiseration on their part. You’re kind of like a traveling sideshow. Also, you have those 4 or 5 long hours of language classes every day, and your clustermates, regardless of how cool or attractive they are, will probably wear on your nerves. Training is not always fun. However, all of my best PCV friends are former clustermates, and I feel that the language classes and school practicum aspect of training gave me a solid base on which to build.

So, I look forward to meeting you guys. I enjoyed having a mentor when I was in training. It was nice to hear about what life is like away from the training site bubble and to get some insight into the administrative aspects of Peace Corps such as site placement and how the Draconian rules work in practice. If you guys have any questions ahead of time or want me to bring or prepare something, you can reach me at --- or daewooson@hotmail.com. Ok, see you soon.

Thursday, September 15th 2005

I, Hall Monitor

I began my career as a hall monitor today. There are many things I like about the job, besides the awesome responsibility, of course. I enjoy strolling through the halls as if I own the school, my hands behind my back and a wry expression on my face like a hard-to-impress French inspector. It’s nice to leave my classroom during passing periods and get some fresh air, get some blood flowing in my legs again. It’s better than the non-existent cup of coffee. However, I think the best thing about being a hall monitor is the red armband. I have to admit that it makes me feel a little bit like a fascist, but the thing cracks my shit up. A red towel worn around my upper arm shouldn’t endow me with added authority. It shouldn’t make students more willing to obey me, but, oddly enough, it does. I had to borrow a girl’s armband today, but I hope to have my own one day.

Every day, a different homeroom teacher and his/her class are on duty as hall monitors. I’m not a homeroom teacher and there seems to be more than enough manpower, but for some reason the school wants me to do this. Either they want me to feel more integrated into the school or some homeroom teacher is passing work off on me. In any case, I enjoy this work. None of the schools I’ve attended trusted students enough to have hall monitors, so I’m making up for lost time.

The students and the teacher spread throughout the school, and they have their own areas to monitor. Kids man different floors, the cafeteria, the lobby. A pair of kids stands near the school entrance and make sure that the door doesn’t slam shut, which is kind of ridiculous because a fifty cent rubber doorstop does the same thing. Maybe the kind of mindset responsible for this silliness is a holdover from the communist era, which sought full employment regardless of the redundancy of the task, or maybe the door’s trickier than I suspect.

I was assigned to the front of the school. Although the school has a serviceable, indoor bathroom, most of the students seem to prefer the outdoor one behind the school. I haven’t ventured out there because, considering the amount of traffic the bathroom sees, it’s got to be pretty unpleasant. Anyway, my job was to watch out for the students going back and forth from the bathroom.

Not much happened on my first day as a hall monitor. I chatted with some of the kiddies from the summer camp. By request, I explained to a nine year old punk blaring “In the Club” by 50 Cents from his cell phone (which was approximately 600 times more expensive than mine. My phone plays the monotone version of the Mexican hat dance when people call.) what the song is about minus the whole drug dealing aspect. I also saw my principal pat down one of my older students and rifle through his girlfriend’s purse looking for cigarettes, I think...I hope. I’m sure my next tour as a hall monitor will be more exciting. Maybe I’ll get to tell a speeding kid to slow down before he kills somebody or at least shake my fist at him like an old man.

Wednesday, August 31st 2005

The Way to Yalta

My 3 weeks in L’viv ended with a free Okean Elzy concert in the park put on by UMC, one of the major Ukrainian mobile phone companies, to celebrate their 10 millionth customer. It was a good concert. The crowd was really into it, and I recognized the songs enough to fake singing along. I wanted to get an Okean Elzy concert t-shirt (because what could be more badass?), but I don’t think such things exist in this country yet. No, actually, that’s not true. A guy I know saw Ruslana (last year’s winner of EuroVision and Ukraine’s biggest pop star) at the airport, and she and her entire entourage, in an inexplicable display of lameness, were wearing her own concert t-shirts. The only unpleasant part of the concert was when a drunk dude, dripping sweat from dancing, hugged me, pressing his slimy cheek against mine, leaving an oily slick that wouldn’t rub off. Random, drunk Ukrainian dudes like hugging me for some reason. It’s happened about 3 or 4 times. It’s bizarre really, but I suppose hugs are better than beat downs.

The day after the concert, I was on an early bus to Yalta. My PCV friend, Heron, had rented a dacha on the cheap from one of her student’s mother’s friends or something. (Only 20 hriven ($4) a night per person.) It was a fancy, air-conditioned touring bus with reclining seats, and to my delight, the seat next to me was empty. It was unoccupied for half an hour, until we arrived at another pick-up point. One of the largest women that I have seen during my whole time in Ukraine got on and, naturally, sat down next to me.

It was a long 24 hours.

It was maddening, really. I was trapped between the window and her fleshy form. There wasn’t a way to sit so that her warm body wasn’t pressing against mine, and there was no way to get past her if I needed to get to the bathroom or to hypothetically escape the burning wreckage of the bus. She tried—I could tell—to give me as much room as she could, but she wasn’t apologetic about spilling into nearly a quarter of my seat.

It got worse at night when she fell asleep. I retreated closer to the window, but her body, hating a vacuum, followed. I turned on my side, but the seat didn’t recline far enough to make that position comfortable. I brought my seat to the full upright position, hoping the difference in elevation would contain her to her own seat like the walls of a dam. It sort of worked, but I was practically falling forward and couldn’t sleep. I tried to accept that her body would be pressed against mine all night and that since I couldn’t do anything about it, I should try to, perhaps, learn to enjoy it. That lasted all of two seconds. I ended up using my elbows all night to defend my space whenever she drifted too close.

In this entry, I seem to be saying that human contact disgusts me, but really, doesn’t unwanted human contact disgust everybody? Isn’t that one of the common ties that unites humanity, like poetry, religion, and smiling?

School starts tomorrow. Damn.

Monday, August 29th 2005

I thought that after spending three weeks in L’viv, living in relative luxury, I would have a hard time getting readjusted to life in Lebedyn. But that’s not the case. It’s actually something of a relief to be back home after being away for nearly a month.

In L’viv, the kitchen at the dorm of the Ukrainian Catholic University had all the frills: a microwave, a coffee machine, a gleaming white fridge with a separate freezer area, food processors galore, two stoves, and even a fucking toaster. However, this didn’t really matter because we had a nice Ukrainian lady, Pane Nadia, cook our dinners, and that woman could cook—not just the usual Ukrainian fare, by which I mean borsch and borsch. She made these crazy veggie wraps, fried chicken tenders, ribs (ribs?!), this absurdly good, creamy mushroom soup, oh lord…I would marry that soup, if it would have me, and if she didn’t feel like cooking, she would order out for pizza—the kind without pickles, ketchup, or mayo. And this woman was a peach. I came home late because I had been jogging or something to find that she had saved a piece of chicken for me. She plated it and kept everyone away, which was no easy task because these motherfuckers could eat.

The language school in L’viv was an in-country vacation from Ukraine. We had a washing machine (Pane Nadia did our wash, although not necessarily out of kindness. She feared someone would break her machine, which ended up happening anyway.), showers with hot water, exfoliating body wash and some crazy 3 in 1 shampoo (that another student brought from America and mistakenly stored in the shower, unaware that PCVs are worse than hobos), a well-stocked fridge that was ceaselessly restocked, western style toilet paper (although I almost prefer the stuff you get here. It’s tough, like Ukrainians. I have the theory that the way one feels about Ukrainian tp reveals a lot about how one feels about Ukrainians themselves. Some PCVs disdainfully describe the tp as abrasive and coarse. Others say that it makes their ass bleed. I’m kidding, of course.), and all the juice and bottled water we could drink. The best thing, however, is that we had other English speakers to talk to, to somewhat impress (“Yeah, babycakes, I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer. You want some of this?”), to go out with, and we had places to go because we were in L’viv baby, L’viv.

Most of the students were cool. There were about 25, I think, and almost everyone was Ukrainian diaspora. Growing up, most of the students had a lot of exposure to Ukrainian culture. They spoke Ukrainian fluently and visited Ukraine frequently, but there was one girl, Anna, who was here for the first time to discover her heritage. She learned the language from scratch and even stayed for a long weekend with some relatives in a nearby village, and at the talent show, she sang this Ukrainian song that just killed me. I overheard her on the phone speaking to her father in Ukrainian near the end of language school, and it was a beautiful thing.

I probably should have spent more time studying while I was in L’viv. My normally mild-mannered teacher, Pane Oxana, started writing sarcastic comments on my tests towards the end of the three weeks, and I would bet dollars to donuts that she didn’t even look at my finals. I hit the books pretty hard the first week, and then I realized I was being stupid neglecting L’viv. The nerd in me needs to be beaten down occasionally.

So now that I’ve been out west, I can say with certainty that L’viv is indeed the city of my dreams. It’s exactly what I thought Peace Corps Ukraine would be. Old, beautiful buildings, winding, cobblestone streets to get lost on, coffee shops on every other street, operas to gently lull me to sleep, mobs of old people singing hymns in plazas at dusk, old men playing chess in the park, somewhat hidden hipster hangouts, and enough restaurants to bankrupt me. L’viv is my Eastern European fantasy, but I don’t want it. It would be a bad place to spend my Peace Corps years. There are too many conveniences—too many distractions. After two years, I would know nothing about life in Ukraine. That’s an exaggeration, but I would know nothing about how most Ukrainians live, nor would I live in the manner that they do. I would never have met my babusya. I wouldn’t have spent nine delightful (really) hours on Wednesday harvesting potatoes with my host family. I wouldn’t have had the experiences that mean the most to me. I also wouldn’t be home alone on a Saturday night working on this blog entry, but that’s the tradeoff.

Thursday, July 28th 2005

I drank a little bit too much last night, and my head is hazy. Voices and the lips from which they emerge are out of synch, and the only thing that brings me pleasure is closing my eyes.

I'm out in L'viv, the "capital" of western Ukraine, studying Ukrainian at the Ukrainian Catholic University. L'viv is beautiful. It's the Eastern European fantasy I had in my head when I signed up for the Peace Corps. Fuck this, i'll write more when I feel better.

Saturday, July 9th 2005

Day Camp in Brief

After classes ended, I worked at the school’s 4-week day camp. I worked with the younger children, ages 9-12. I thought it would be a nice change from the older kids. Here are some highlights.

Week 1

The food is good, better than the stuff we get during the school year. The soup is darker than water, and it is endowed with flavor, something it had previously lacked. There is plenty of meat and fish patties, bread and cheese, baloney-esque sausages, and once we even have this tasty fried fish. The great thing about camp is that they feed me breakfast and lunch, which means that I have to fend for myself only at dinnertime. Also, the teachers press me to eat 2 or more servings at every meal because there’s always extra as children are always absent. I used to me annoyed by the amount of food Ukrainians expect/demand that I eat, but now that I’m on my own, I welcome it. I need to take in all the calories I can to resist looking as emaciated as Iggy Pop. Every other day, they also buy us ice cream. I haven’t found any fancy Ben and Jerry, Hagen Daaz type ice cream, but what they have is good.

The kids take to me right away. They’ve seen me roaming around school during the past semester so they’re not shy. They sit around me when I sit and stand around me when I stand. They surround me like an electron cloud and follow me like satellites. I answer questions about my hobbies, family, marital status, and pets. Some kids impress me with their command of English. Other kids know just enough English to annoy me. “Mr. Dae, what is your name?”

The kids insist on escorting me home. I’m a little embarrassed walking home with an honor guard of fidgety kids. One wide-eyed girl asks me if I like Ukrainian girls. I think I know where this is going, so I clear my throat uneasily and answer evasively that I like all sorts of girls. Then, she asks me, “Mr. Dae, do you like girls with big…” and she pauses, trying to remember the correct word. I panic. I say aloud in English, “Don’t say it. Dear God, don’t say it.” And I prepare to run, because I don’t think I can take that question from a little girl. But she finishes, “…with big eyes.” I’m so relieved that I tell her that I don’t care if she has big eyes, small eyes, or one and a half eyes as long as she has big tits. I’m joking, of course, and what a terrible joke…

It’s children’s day, and we take the kids to a festival at the park. Singers perform on stage. Dance troupes do their thing in front of the stage. They hold a beauty contest for pets. There are a couple of dogs, a kitty, mice, and a fat guinea pig. I think one of the dogs won. A filthy puppy, maybe a few days old, limps by and collapses in the gutter close to the stage. I think that the dog is dead. Some kids pet the limp dog tenderly. A boy pours water on the pup, hoping to revive it like a wilting flower. Not quite dead, the pup comes to and limps off to die somewhere else, away from well-meaning kids.

Week 2

We go on little excursions to the town center, forest, local villages, and the mountain. The last is actually a medium-sized hill, but the kids insist it’s a mountain. About one hundred and thirty kids and teachers pile into a bus. Kids sit four to six to a row. Kids sit on kids who are sitting on other kids. A teacher throws a runty kid on my lap, and it warms my cold, sarcastic heart, when she looks up and lays a toothy smile on me.

The kids pair up and hold hands when we go on trips. When there’s an odd number, the kid without a partner visibly suffers until the teacher gets hold of him or he finds a place. The kids like holding my hands on trips. I usually have a kid in each hand and another lurking nearby, waiting for a vacancy. Sometimes, however, I’m not holding anyone’s hand, and it makes me look around uneasily.

One afternoon some of the older kids put on a concert for us. There’s singing and dancing. At the end, a teacher asks me to recite a poem in English. I tell her that unlike Ukrainians, who can spout off entire Taras Shevschenko poems on demand, Americans generally don’t memorize poems at school. So instead, I tell the kids that we’re going to continue having fun at camp, and I wish them all a safe and happy summer. Then the teachers lead the kids in saying, actually screaming, “We love you, Mr. Dae!” in English. It’s very embarrassing. To top it off, the teachers present me with a florescent yellow neckerchief, which they tie around my neck as I cringe. I look like Fred from Scooby Doo, and I feel like a bitch.

After camp one day, the eight girls from the local pedagogical college who work at the camp as part of their coursework, one of the younger, male teachers (married), and I go to the lake for lunch and drinks. After a little vodka, the teacher admits that he had thought that I was an American spy, and I think that’s cool. Despite the numbers clearly being in my favor, nothing interesting happens.

Week 3

My tutor teaches me a popular Ukrainian song called “Chervonu Rutu,” which is some sort of red flower. The kids and I sing it when we’re walking home from excursions. This especially runty girl, who looks like an old man when she scrunches up her face to smile, takes it as her duty to teach me the song and drills me over the course of several days. I’m grateful that my tutor taught me the song because I’m running out of things to say to the kids.

While we’re waiting outside the music school for our mini-concert, a dog crossing the street gets hit by a car. There’s a sickening thump as tire makes contact with dog. The kids’ faces crumble, and anxiety sits on their foreheads and brows. I’ve never seen so many sad kids in one place. The dog survives the hit and crawls off on three legs, dragging a twisted limb. The dog goes someplace quiet to finish dieing, and the teachers and I proclaim weakly that clearly the dog is okay and that it’s racing off to play with friends. Dogs in this town seem to exist solely to die in the presence of little kids.

We’re at the lake. Kids are playing in shallow water, and an oldish guy in a Speedo comes by. He asks me what I’m doing in Ukraine. I give him my spiel. He asks annoying questions, as if he doesn’t believe my answers or doubts my intentions. He starts hitting on Marina, one of the college girls. He tells her that she has a pretty name and lamely informs her that it means sailor. He jokes that she should marry me and go to America. I help a kid with a sandcastle, and I hear a slap, the unmistakable slap of an old man’s hand against a college girl’s ass. The old guy says something about a mosquito. Marina is annoyed, but still very polite. I stand there, wondering if I should pummel the guy. My back had been turned, and I’m not completely sure if it was her ass that he hit. I stand there with my eyes narrowed, looking through the old guy, but I don’t say anything. The rest of the day, I feel very small.

Week 4

I am tired of excursions. In addition to the places I have already mentioned, we have been to a factory, lumber mill, museums, soccer stadium, an arts and crafts center, and a sanitarium. The teachers and kids seem to be weary of trips also. We spend several days just hanging out at the school playground.

The kids are exceptionally violent. I suppose that I knew that from the first day of camp, but the extent to which they relish punching and kicking each other hadn’t really sunken into me until this week. It’s not just the bullies, it’s everyone. The cutie who looks like an old man when she grins betrays me with a string of violent acts. A boy annoys her, so she kicks him squarely in the ass with all the force she can muster. He lingers so she does it again and again. Later, another boy pisses her off so she chases him down, squats on his chest, removes her shoe and repeatedly whacks him in the face. The whole time, her face is twisted with rapture. Afterwards, I don’t feel like holding her hand anymore.

Mercifully, camp ends. I’m tired of watching the kids beat each other. The teachers want to have a little party in the cafeteria to celebrate. I’m tired and try to slip away, but on the way out, one of the older teachers corners me and tells me that I will stay and have a few drinks with them or she will break my legs, she seems to imply. Three shots later, I’m on my way out the door, to enjoy the rest of my summer, kid-free.

Tuesday, July 5th 2005

The Cat Knew

A neighborhood cat stared me down yesterday. The cat locked eyes with me when I was on the balcony smoking my morning cigarette and, as if it had something to prove, would not look away. I turned away first, and the cat slinked off. I would probably still be there if I hadn’t conceded victory to the cat.

My landlady’s husband came by yesterday afternoon. I smelled alcohol on his breath—actually, I didn’t need to get so close since he usually travels in a cloud of alcohol fumes. From what I could understand, he wanted to take a nap. Obeying the logic of Wes Anderson movies, I should have shrugged and let him in and continued what I was doing sure that some casual yet life-altering adventure would soon follow, but I don’t have the kind of forbearance characters in his movies have. I like my privacy. And my apartment isn’t a hideaway for drunkards, despite what my neighbors think.

Actually, they don’t think that. The grandma downstairs recently commented to my landlady that I was a better neighbor than the Ukrainians. My apartment flooded while I was in Cherkasy (a city in central Ukraine) for Peace Corps language and in-service training. Water started dripping down into the apartment owned by the grandmother below me, and she thought that I had left water running and called my landlady. It turned out that the family living above me had forgotten to turn off a faucet before heading out to a nearby village. My landlady told me there was water up to her ankles in my foyer/shoe and pickle storage area. My shoes were filled with water, but fortunately, I had left shoes trees in my leather shoes so they kept their general shape. Yeah, I know. What kind of self-respecting volunteer brings shoe trees to his Peace Corps service?

In the evening, my next door neighbor knocked on my door. He, too, was drunk, and he wanted five hriven ($1) with which to probably buy more alcohol. I usually don’t have so many visitors, especially drunken ones in one day. He’s a decent guy and had lent me half a dozen chairs for my birthday party months ago, so I scrounged around for some money for him. I only had big bills and a 1 hriven bill, so I gave him that. He was visibly disappointed or perhaps disgusted that he had traded a bit of pride for just a measly single. He accepted the bill as he would a dead pigeon and mumbled that he would get me back tomorrow.

As I was writing this, a dirty, little gypsy girl seeking succor came by to break my heart.

I don’t like being hit up for money. I don’t care that much about handing over money: it’s wondering afterwards if I’m a chump that bothers me. I don’t want people to think I’m a mark, a doormat, especially in this country. When three people show up at my door in a 24-hour period asking for favors they haven’t earned, I feel that I need to be more careful. I haven’t been living extravagantly. I’m not sporting gold chains or even watches without Velcro, but maybe I’m still projecting the image of a frivolous American with money to throw away.

Maybe they mistake my mild temperament for weakness.

Or maybe, as I suspect, the cat had talked.

Wednesday, June 1st 2005

I told my first joke at kickboxing today. One of the guys asked me how I got my arms to be so big. I paused a second and looked him in the eye to make sure he wasn't being sarcastic. Then I said in my best Ukrainian, "First, I find a girl. Then I..." while making lewd humping gestures and flexing my biceps. The class really seemed to enjoy it. They didn't expect this from the straight-laced Korean guy.

I've been going to the boxing gym about twice a week for three months now. I began going near the end of winter because I was starting to resemble a potato, which I'd been eating in great quantities. Also, the lack of physical activity and the desperate need for friends was making me crazy. I needed to find a place besides school where people expected me.

The other guys didn't really know what to make of me at first. No one was hostile--they just didn't know how to treat me, and I understand the difficulty. I'm a teacher, but I look young. So, do you treat me with the reserve that you would a teacher or do you consider me a peer? Also, I'm the first American and Asian dude that most of them have ever met, so what do you do with that?

Since then, I've picked up the gym etiquette, which includes giving every single person a firm handshake on your way in and out, and we're starting to get along pretty well. I really like the guys at the gym. For the most part, they treat me like a normal person. They're curious about me (they ask about America, Thai-boxing, Chuck Norris, what the hell I'm doing here), but they're not nosey. Other people--fellow teachers, my host family's friends, stangers I meet at bars, and even the sunflower lady--ask me ridiculously embarassing questions or about money or about the girl they saw me walking with the other day. The only time I felt ill-at-ease with they guys was when we took staged photos in fighting poses one day in class. The first few photos were fun, but each and every guy wanted to get a photo with me. I started to feel like Sitting Bull in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

After my crude joke, the class warmed up to me a bit. Max said that he spotted me reading at the lake that weekend, and he asked if I had noticed the beautiful rainbow over the lake after it rained yesterday. This got the class discussing rainbows and then arguing about the correct Ukrainian word for "rainbow." The class gets into many impromtu debates about topics that I had thought were not generally discussed in a boxing gym, especially a filthy-good Ukrainian one located in a dusty, Soviet-era plant that has out front a statue of a burly worker raising his fist in proletariat glory. Last week, there was a five minute intermission between exercises while they hashed out the rising price of butter like a group of squabbling grandmothers. I stood to the side thinking, "C'mon guys, none of that. We hit each other here."

Saturday, May 21st 2005

School's out for the summer...at last

This will be the last full week of school, and I suspect that my pleasure outweighs that of all my combined students. I need to regroup and recharge. I need to rethink my role at the school. Some classes were excellent. Beneficial for the students and fun as hell for me, but I fear that some were a waste of time. They got very little out of me other than the novelty of having an Asian dude teach them English, and all I got from them was seething anger and a semester-long feeling of impotence. I think that part of my failure to reach some students is my limited control over them. I don't know if it's possible, but I will try to obtain my very own class. For unmotivated classes, it's difficult to impose any discipline or reward the students for good work when I'm essentially the visiting teacher. I also hate the way teachers grade in Ukraine. Students get daily grades based on participation during class and the whim of the teacher. Every mistake counts against them, and as a result, students don't want to open their mouths. Ukrainians don't seem to believe that making mistakes is an essential part of learning. If I had my own class, I would run it in the style that I am used to, where students aren't punished for making mistakes and grades depend more on tests, homework, and participation/effort.

I despaired a bit when I first visited Lebedyn in December because it was bare, muddy, and ugly. Late spring, by comparison is absurdly beautiful. The main streets are shaded by tall trees with droopy leaves like giant, deflated butterfly wings. Public areas have been spruced up with tulips, shrubby plants, and these, little, yellow flowery guys (clearly, I am no botanist). Irises also seem to grow wild along the sidewalks. Despite my vigilance, I always miss the short interval of time when an iris is the most beautiful: the time between when it's tightly wrapped and when it explodes, as if the flower vomited itself. Lilac bushes and trees are as omnipresent as crowded marshrutkas, and needless to say, smell much better.

Lebedyn is bursting with life, and nowhere is it more evident than at my host family's home. They have a new pig, which to my amazement, used to parade out of its little pig