Day 11 - Church Coat Closet

Here's some pics of our front entry closet at church :)

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 10 - Taxi's and Borsht

 Whoops! Haven't written in quite the while! I've started getting to the point that I wake up with just enough time to get ready for school. It's Sunday now, so I finally have some free time to catch you up a bit on the goings on in Ukraine. These last few days have been extremely cold, but I have found some relief in the transportation systems as of late. On Saturday, I had to go clean the church, so me and the others that signed up (Kasen, Clint, and Cierra) decided to take a taxi instead of walking, taking the metro, taking a bus, then walking some more. It saved SO much time, and so much effort too! It ended up costing us about 71 grivnas, which turns out to be less than 7 dollars total; less than 2 dollars per person. The ride was totally worth the 20 grivna though, I think I wrote some last week about the long trek to church; this time, it was much much easier. Cleaning the church was easy, it's a small building and there were four of us plus a family there cleaning just one hallway. We finished in about half an hour, then stood in the hallway and talked for a while. One of the couple missionaries there invited us over to their place where they would give us some good numbers that we can use for getting taxis from the church (right next to the temple too!) and our homes. We stayed their for about an hour or so talking about this and that.

We got a taxi ride back home, then me and one of the others decided to go over to Marie's apartment where we were going to learn how to make Borsht (the traditional Ukrainian way). I really feel like I'm learning a LOT about public transportation here. We took the bus to Marie's, and didn't get lost even ONCE. It was so fun to visit with everyone there. Anyways, about the Borsht; I'll post the recipe eventually, but it was SO tasty! Tania, our coordinator (the one to the right of the wall-rug in the picture above), told us all about it. We also got to talk about vacations there too, but I'll talk about that another time.
Borcsh Recipe!! (*Directly from Tania's e-mail to us)

Cook broth from any kind of meat: one hour simmering.

Put beet root (peeled) and let it simmer for another half an hour.

Take this beet root out of broth and let it cool.

Put shredded carrot in the broth,

Peel and cut into small cubicles potato – in the broth,

Slice cabbage, press with salt  - in the broth,

Take one chopped onion+ a little bit of garlic+ salt --- press until juicy and put in the broth,

Shred the beet root – in the broth,

One tomato (shredded) or one table spoon of tomato catch-up – in the broth,

Now salt and pepper to your taste, put one bay leave and let it simmer for 5-7 minutes.

You may also add sweet paprika – it makes the taste richer.

Vareniky Recipe (Another Ukrainian Classic)

 Dough

  3 c. Flour

  ½ tsp. Salt

  1 egg

  1 c. water or sour milk (if you use water, add a spoon full of sour cream)

            Mix the ingredients all together until dough forms a ball. Turn out onto a generously floured table. Kneed the dough for about five minutes, or until dough is firm.

Filling-1 - Mashed potato without milk

Filling-2 - Cottage cheese – a little bit of salt, sugar + 1 egg (if not too watery)

Filling-3 - Wild cherries – add some sugar to each varenik, eat cool

Filling-4 - Meat – boil meat till cooked and then grind it, add chopped and fried onion, salt, pepper.

Day 7 - Candy Cane Tape = Danger

There's this red and white striped tape everywhere throughout Kiev blocking off sidewalks, sometimes even forcing me to have to find another route to my destinations. I didn't really know why it was there for the longest time (okay for maybe two or three days), but I definitely found out yesterday. We were walking down central Kiev when we saw these icicles randomly falling from this building on the sidewalk ahead of us. If you look really close you can see someone with an ax hanging from the roof-top knocking them down. Heh, they're not in the picture, but there's a couple guys smoking to the left that're watching this and laughing every time an icicle shatters to the ground. What an awesome pass-time :)

Day 7 - Don't take Pictures with the Birds!

I was walking out of the Metro yesterday, going to just tour around Central Kiev for a little while. This girl with two white pigeons on her arm came up to me and asked if I wanted to take pictures with the birds. I remembered Maddy telling me a story about the other day when she had someone dressed up in a big costume came up to take a photo with her and then asked her to pay up something like 20 grivna. With that in mind, I asked the girl if it was free. She nodded her head, and just to clarify I said, "no Grivna?" She then shook her head and sheepishly said, "10 grivna for picture with bird". I smiled and said, "Nyet spaciba, baka!" which is about the extent of my knowledge of any Russian at them moment. Later I was talking with my host-dad and he said that that sort of thing is a big trick. They really mean 10 grivna per bird taken in the picture, and a lot of times when you have one bird on your arm, a swarm of birds will come. You take the picture, then you end up having to pay 10 grivna for every bird that comes and lands on your arms, and that really could add up quick.

Day 6 - Going to the "Magazin"

Yesterday I went to school (I was SO tired!), then went to the mall by the Metro on the way home. There's a grocery store (store is "magazin" in Russian) on the lower floor, and that's where I got my shampoo and conditioner. Shampoo has the almost the same name here (sounds like "shampoon"), except the word looks something like "wamnyhb"  in Russian, so it was helpful to be able to sound it out and know that I was buying at least one shampoo. I have no idea what "conditioner" is in Russian, but I figure it's whatever the opposite of the shampoo is. I think my favorite part about the grocery store was that all the cash register people were sitting in chairs, and the belts where you put your food and stuff was down at their sitting level. Maybe it's no good for health, but I know that working the register, you could work a LOT longer if you don't have to stand the whole time. I remember when I worked at Kiwi Loco, it killed me to have to pull a double shift just standing there. Why do cashiers have to stand there? Is it just more professional? Or have we Americans just not figured out yet that sitting at the cashier could be so much easier on these workers feet and overall stamina? Anyways, sorry this post has such little structure to it, I just got home about a half an hour ago from walking around Central Kiev for two hours, and that was right after teaching at school for four hours. Anyways, my host family's all home now, so I should probably get going.