Day 76 - Beauty through Tired Eyes

The night before Wednesday (Day 76), I stayed up till 1 in the morning. I thought then that I'd just take a short nap and wake up on time (to watch my Mom's wedding over Skype at 4am). As you might guess, my nap didn't end up being all that short. I ended up waking up late (5:30ish). But I made some phone calls and at least got to talk to my Mom for a moment, and that was good. Anyways, everyone in the house started waking up within the hour, so I gave up on getting back to sleep at least until Lena, Sasha and George-o headed out for the beauty-exhibition (explained later). Eventually I ended up giving up on the idea of sleep all together and decided I would probably be able to function all right on the nearly five hours of sleep. I had already set up for a teaching sub at school that day, so I had a full day ahead of me completely free, though it was to be a very exhausting day.

At around noon, I decided to head out to the beauty exhibition that Lena and George-o were working at. It was a GORgeous day; warm, sunny, bright and ultimately absolutely spectacular. I really wished I had had a camera with me so I could capture some of the moments there, but I thoroughly enjoyed it anyways.Going across the river was probably my favorite of the moments. The last time I rode the metro across the Dnipro River, it had all been frozen and cold and I could see little dots of people walking across it on the ice. This time, the sun was shining on the water and I could see the Lavra's gold domes and "Big Mama" (the big statue by the Lavra) looking over the river. It was really an amazing sight.

After getting off the metro and walking some more, I finally made it to the exhibition site. Lena's assistant came and met me outside so I could get a pass to go into the exhibition for free. The whole thing was pretty mind-blowing; It was kind of like the fair back home, except instead of rides and other things, there were just booths and booths of businesses and people selling products and services; anything from hair supplies to nails to cosmetics (it was a beauty exhibition). It was fun being able to see my host-mom at her work, she demonstrated facial-cleansing products on a volunteer's face, and talked about stuff (though I'm exactly sure what) with the people who sat to watch and listen. It was nice talking to George-o there too. I found out (well actually just finally connected the dots) that he's the guy who created/ designed a lot of the products (or maybe all of them?) that Lena's business uses. He told me he would give me a 1% discount if I wanted to buy something there :) I said I would think about it. Lena's Italian tutor, Olea, was there too. She was there to translate for George-o when someone wanted to talk to him (George-o speaks Italian and English pretty well, but not so much Russian or Ukrainian). Olea knows 4 or 5 different languages, and she says she finds all sorts of jobs where they need her as a translator. Definitely something to look into; I just need to become a pro at this Russian-speaking or some other language first ;P

Anyways after a long while at the exhibition, I decided to make my way home. I was starting to feel extremely tired. In fact, on the way home I stopped paying attention to where I was going and ended up getting a little lost. Which stunk, because at that point I was having a hard time even putting one foot in front of the other. I had gotten off at a red-line metro stop, and instead of transferring to the green line below ground, I took the escalator up. I knew how to get to the station from there though, so I just had to walk a little extra ways to get there. Again, the sights and scenery were beautiful; I passed this big statue/ waterfall, and a huge dome coming out of the ground and I'm sure some other awesome stuff, but can't really recall any details like that, because, as you know, I was pooped. I did eventually make it home safe and well though :)

Day 37 - Gargle and Spit :P

So last Wednesday, I started feeling kind of sickly. I've just been sniffly, sneezy and super drowsy (I'm thinking could just be allergies). But my host-mom has been worried about me like I'm on my death-bed or something. I came home, and she let me nap for a while, which was good for me because I was really tired then. Then when I woke up she gave me some lemon/ honey tea, which was amazing. But then  (after much confusion and trying to figure out what she was saying) she told me that I should gargle this mixture of salt, baking soda, some sort of orange liquid, and water. She filled an entire teacup full of the stuff, and I didn't really have any choice from there. I was so scared to swallow the stuff, it seemed (and tasted) like some sort of floor-cleaning liquid; I was pretty sure it would burn my insides. I took a bit of it, gargled it, and spit it out as soon as I could. She wanted me to take longer gargles, so I took more (so I could get rid of it faster) and gargled it longer. That stuff was SO disgusting, but I eventually finished it off. (Okay honestly, I'm sure the gargling is doing some good, but it really is awful.) Lena said something to the effect that ideally, I should schedule my time right now to sleeping, eating, resting, and ultimately not leaving the house until I'm well again. I've tried to respect that (I missed FHE last night for the first time), but I really don't want to miss out on things just because I'm a bit under-the-weather. It is kind of nice to have an excuse to take it slow, but I think I'm failing at taking it that today (so far, I've been home for just over an hour and in about an hour, I should be leaving for the Page's house for a game night.) Anyways, I hope I get over whatever this is soon; I don't want my host-mom to worry, I want to be more wide-awake-alert, and I am really not looking forward to gargling more of that stuff.

Day 35 - Ballet at the Kyiv Opera House

Picture taken from someone else's blog :)
Turns out they're actually couple
missionaries from Moscow!

My host-family's car is finally able to drive (it was completely covered in snow for the past few weeks), so I got a ride from them to this Opera House where I waited around for a few of the other ILPs (Cami, Kaitlyn, Madeline, and Maddy). As usual, there were a lot of complications for everyone in getting there (they weren't sure which metro stop to get off at, or weren't able to find the metro), but eventually we all made it there. We had gotten tickets for the Ballet of "Sleeping Beauty" last Saturday while we were on our Tour of Kyiv with Tania, our coordinator. The inside of this building is gorgeous; I felt like I was in a castle (or a real legitimate opera house:) ) with all the marble flooring and beautiful architecture. We were directed first down-stairs, where gave our coats to this lady who hung them up and gave us a tag to get them back later (that's how it goes in most any public building here - ballets, museums, operas, cinemas, etc). The Ballet was amazing too. We paid about 30 grivna (just over 3 dollars), but I would have paid upwards to 10 dollars for how amazing it was. The ballet-dancers were so talented, and the music was absolutely amazing. One negative though, we were on the very top balcony, and the seats there were not the most comfortable there. Other than that, I have no complaints, it was definitely worth my time and money :) When the "Sleeping Beauty" Ballet was over, we went back all the way down-stairs to get our coats. The lady was trying to explain something to us, but it was really hard to really understand her. Another lady who spoke some English translated for us. She explained that the coat lady was trying to tell us, which was that there was a'NOTHER performance in 15 minutes that we were supposed to go to. We were all so tired at that point though, and we felt like we had already gotten our days worth of adventures (with everyone else getting lost and such), so we asked to take our coats anyways so we could go. The coat-lady took our tags, and gave us our coats. We thanked her and the lady who had translated for us, then headed out.

Day 29 - My Birthday!

I feel like I should write some spectacular episode about this oh so important day of my life. But really, it was just about like any other day I've had here in Ukraine. I woke up and hadn't even remembered it was my birthday until I went to my wardrobe sort of thing in the hallway. My host-parents, Sasha and Lena, had made a big card for me saying, "Happy Birthday!" on it with a big present of a picture. It made me smile, and I was determined that I would allow myself to have a pretty good day for the rest of the day. Maddy was still sick, so I had to improvise a lot, but on the way to school, I had this genious idea to do "kitchen" early that week (we usually have it on Fridays), because the kids LOVE kitchen, and they tend to be more well behaved when they know it makes a difference between cookie and no cookie at the end of the day :) Adrienne and Denae came and subbed for the 30 minute cross-over where we have the kids that overlap. The kids were pretty great though that day, and the activities I had prepped seemed to all work out, so things flowed pretty well through the school day.

Oh! And Nelya (my coordinator) gave me a box of chocolates that were SO tasty. The closest thing I could compare them to would be "3 Musketeer's", but they were fluffier and fruitier than what I know. After school, I stayed around a while to hang out with the others/ wait for my daily lunch to come to the school. We got the crepe-sort-of-things that have chicken and other tasty things all inside. I came back home and my host-family (and Julia's Tutor and the cleaner lady) all congratulated me on my birthday (I was thinking about it, it's kind of funny that we congratulate each other on getting a year older, or maybe it's just a Ukrainian thing, I've never really noticed before). I got some art-work from Julia and a really nice dress from Lena. The art work is something like a spider web drawing  with a ribbon to hang it from the middle, it sort of reminds me of a dream catcher. My dress is a gold color and would look really cute with a belt and leggings. But I'm not exactly sure how to wear it at the moment yet, because it's pretty short, and I don't really feel comfortable just wearing leggings with it. Maybe with some dark jeans or slacks? Anyways, its a wonderful gift, and I hope I can find a way to make it work with my standards AND find an opportunity to wear and show it off while I'm still here in Ukraine with my host-family.

At about 7:30, I met up with some people to go to TGI Fridays. As you may or may not know already, my phone is currently lost, and I didn't have any telephone communication devices in which to call people and invite them to come. I don't think the others will be offended though. We had a fun group though In the picture to the right, you can see from left to right Adrienne, Christina, Igor, Madeline, and Igor. The food there was great; truly American stuff, hardly a tint even that reminded me I was still eating food in Ukraine.

The whole time I really wanted to be sung to by the restaurant people. I asked Igor to ask if they do anything for birthdays. When he did, the waitress only asked for an ID to prove it was my birthday, then said, "Happy Birthday!" I felt gypped. I thought maybe they just needed proof to be able to tell me "Happy Birthday" or something. But later there was this whole group of waiters and waitresses that came out from the back. They were all so smiley, and at first I thought they were even singing in Russian. But it was an English song I think (Du Wah Diddy). At the end of the song, Adrienne got the perfect picture of me blowing out the candle on the ice cream they gave to me. We ate SO much dessert, but it was so tasty, and it was my birthday, so I thought it was a good enough excuse to just indulge :)

Day 12 - Lena's Birthday!

Monday was Lena's Birthday! I had no idea what to get her, but on the way home, I decided to get a couple flowers at a flower stand in the market. I had to ask around a bit to find someone that would help me, but eventually I found someone that spoke English that was willing to help. She pointed me in the right direction of the flower stand (which humurously enough was just around the corner from where I was at at the time, and then I went. The people working there seemed really busy, but they let me pick out the flowers I wanted, I payed them to their price (which was cheap, but still I think I could have gotten the price down if I had time and wasn't so hungry), then went back on my way with a trio of flowers in my hand. Lena really seemed to enjoy the flowers, she gave me a hug and thanked me. We even got some pictures of Julia, Lena and me with the flowers.

Later on, we all started getting ready for going to a restaurant. I had no idea what kind of restaurant, but everyone was dressing in their best clothes. We got a ride there in Lena and Sasha's friend's car, and the whole time there I was joking around and playing with Julia. We got there and the table was set full of plates on stands with this really fancy food on them, I wasn't sure what everything was, but there were salads, meat, cheese, bread, fish, vegetables, and so much more I can't even remember. We ate sort of "family style" passing around the plates of food around, I was actually quite full at that point, so I tried to just take a little bit of most everything. It felt just like thanksgiving, except for instead of turkey and cranberry sauce on the table, the food was exotic. Anyways, enough about the food; I had a sort of "aha" moment on Monday. The adults were all sort of on their side of the table, and I was sitting down at the other end with Julia and a few others. I realized that when adults are talking to adults (in Russian) they are very hard to understand. When adults are talking to children, they use hand motions and facial expressions. I often feel like a child trying to learn this new language. I only know basic words, and I read very slowly. But I'm wandering if the reason children learn languages so quickly is in part because of the way people talk with them. They repeat themselves over and over and they make most all of their words into sort of actions. It was especially easy when they were talking to the little two year old. The little toddler could probably still speak way better Russian than me, but I actually understood what they were trying to say when someone was talking to her, which was pretty exciting for me.

One more thought; when Lena told me we were going to the restaurant, I was thinking "Great! We're leaving around 6:30, so if we eat even for an hour, we'll be back home by 8:30." But this meal was not a just-one-sitting event. People came and went (probably to take a smoke or bathroom break) and then came back again, but all in all, we were at the restaurant for around 3 or 4 hours. It was really quite an experience; people toasting every now and then to something (probably Lena, because it was her birthday and all), the kids entertaining themselves with dancing and running, everyone talking in Russian or Ukrainian (at this point, I'm still not sure of the major differences), and an overall very friendly atmosphere. We got home really late, but I was really glad to still be a part of the event.

Day 10 - Host-Family Time!

After the borsht party, I headed home. I was amazed not to have a single issue the entire time I was traveling. My host family and I went to the Cinema. We got there about a half an hour early, so we talked and joked around while waiting. I showed Yulia and Lena the "Crab Walk" which is the one where you shuffle your feet so they point in then out and in again while moving sideways. And some other fun things I learned from back home (Like how to make a dragon/ alligator face out of your hands.) They had a big Christmas tree still set up there (Ukrainian Christmas is in the first or second week of January) and me and Julia got our pictures taken in front of it. The movie was pretty good; they started it in English, so I thought it might be that everyone there just wanted to go see an English film, or that it was just the beginning portion or something. But then a speaker came on and explained something in Russian. Everyone in the old theater yelled and laughed while the now Russian voice-over's started playing over the video for them. The title of the movie was "Melancholy", well the Russian variation of the word, so maybe that gives you an idea of the feel of the movie; pretty much sad and depressing with the occasional touch of humor :) But we actually didn't finish the film, we headed out about halfway through, but that was okay with me. I really hadn't understood most of what was going on except that this lady that was getting married was having a ton of issues with her life. I'm sure it would make more sense if I understood the language, but I could only understand the real simple words like "Harasho" or "Da" (those mean "Okay" and "Yes").

Later that day, I had the opportunity to make some bread with Lena and Julia. We put all the ingredients (flour, salt, sugar, yeast, and some other stuff) into the bread maker  then set the bread maker to the right setting so it would mix and cook. I got to see the finished product the next day; it turned out a little off and kind of looked like a car if you turned your head the right way, but it was bread, and I had made it, so I thought it was pretty good :)

Day 5 - "Concert" Party

Last night, Lena (my host mom) invited me and Julia to a concert that started at 7. We got picked up by a cab and driven down the street called Kreschatik. There were SO many sights on the way there! We drove past all these big buildings with lights. We drove past the Square with a huge column with an angel (or something of the sort) on top. All of the buildings were so old, and the one we went to was also pretty neat. We went in through this side gate and then through some double doors. Walking in felt like walking into an old movie with people all dressed up and chatting to each other, servers replacing food and picking up old plates and glasses. There was a table full of wine glasses, water, and juice. At first, I really felt out of place, like I had been placed in the wrong setting. But it felt like a truly classic night, we checked in our coats at the corner where we got this plastic oval looking thing with our coat-rack-number on it. We then sort of stood around and talked among ourselves while snacking on the appetizers. There were drinks there too, mostly wine, but me and Julia took Orange Juice and water instead. It was quite the experience, but "Fancy" is the best word I can think of to describe it. There was even this amazing pianist playing on a grand piano. And you have to know that here, real good quality piano's come very sparingly. Even at church last Sunday, all the piano's were electric; even the chapel organ! Anyways, the party was fun; I mostly talked with Lena and Julia, but it was fun getting to know them a little better. Julia was so goofy the whole time, she made up a song about my name, "Gracie not Crazy", except in her slight Russian accent, both words rhyme almost perfectly. Eventually, we went up these grand stairs to the concert hall to listen to this singer. He had an amazing voice, and he even sang some songs that I recognized. I started falling asleep part way through though (it was about 22:00, or 10:00pm, then) so we called a taxi and went home.

Day 2 - Host Family

Again, my "Day 2" has already come and passed, but I'd still like to write about how my yesterday went. First of all, I want to tell you a little bit about my host family! There's Lena, my host mom, and Sasha, my host dad, and little Julia (pronounced "Yulia"), my host sister. They all speak English pretty well, and the whole time I've been here, I can tell they've worked extra hard to speak English around me. I think they find it fun to be speaking English to each other sometimes rather than Russian, which is what they would usually speak at home. Julia is always singing rhymes and songs that she's learned in English, I can tell Lena loves it when I talk with the family, because it helps them to really be able to explain and understand my language. I've decided that Sasha is probably the best at English of the family. Whenever I can't quite explain something to the others, Sasha will try to figure it out, and then explain it to them. Like yesterday when I was trying to explain what a "schedule" is, it took a few minutes, and some repeating the same idea in a few different ways, but they figured it out after a little while.

Lena is works as a cosmetologist, and Sasha's Dad is currently in the hospital, so yesterday I got a ride with their friend, Tania, who's another teacher's host mom. Oh, but first breakfast! For breakfast, we had this thick "cheesecake" which didn't taste very much like cheesecake at all, it had the same texture sort of though. It surprised me that putting the cheesecake with plain sour yogurt would taste good, but Lena had me try it, and I actually liked it pretty well. Lena and Julia only took one or two pieces of it, so I thought it best to only take one or two, but I was still kind of hungry afterward.