Peace Corps: Wendy Lu in the Ukraine
19 March 2004
Tonight as I slowly walked up the escalator at Arsenalna metro at 20:30, returning home from tutoring and working, I realized that I wasn’t exhausted as I so often am by this time of night. I tried to remember the last time I thought to myself, I’m sooo tired, and felt it deep in my body and spirit and couldn’t remember!
I thought back through the winter, back to the previous spring when we’d just arrived and how tired I was during training, then a slight reprieve during the summer. I feel as if a fog has lifted. The weather has been warmer and the sun shines longer each day. I think maybe that in addition to having reached another level of acceptance and acculturation, just having the winter waning helps me. I have exercised through out the winter and tried to get the prescribed hour of natural light each day, but I think I may have been affected nonetheless by the season. And everyone says this was a mild winter!
Today as I walked outside in the 50F air, in the sunlight at 18:00, I remembered back to training in Brovary and how it seemed that every day I looked up another foot, literally looking up from watching the ground for the ubiquitous holes and mud puddles. How each time I looked up more, I saw something new, something I could read and understand, or a smiling child or even just a patch of blue sky. I remembered how much hope and comfort those small sights gave me. I thought of this because today in the light and warmth I felt myself looking up again.
I thought about how I’ve been wearing a brimmed hat all winter, a wonderful black velvet hat that Christopher’s Mom, Donna, sent me. It is a stylish and warm hat and keeps snow off my face. Now that the weather has freed me from that hat, and I’m no longer concentrating on the ice, I begin to see new things again. Today I noticed for the first time that the building where I meet my Russian tutor has a wonderful Soviet mural depicting people dancing, doing “labor” and sports. I saw new flowers in the underground passages where people set up tables selling goods. The babushkas have new produce. Even though the growing season hasn’t really started yet, there’s a hint of verdant things to come. It’s joyous, it’s the beginning of spring.
Sure, we may not yet be done with winter, but spring has shown itself and the end is in sight. We have made it! My first Ukrainian winter is writing its finale. Oh, thoughts of the market to come – berry season, the smell of strawberries hitting my nose as soon as I near the bazaar, then later watermelon. But I get ahead of myself. Today is just right. It’s this blessing I receive and I’m grateful.
love,
wendylu
posted by Wendy Lu at 8:22 AM
~ 06 March 2004
Here’s my day – I hope I it is interesting for you.
7:00 mobile phone alarm goes off, reset for 20 min. later. Think about my strange dream that involved the plane I was flying on being hit by a missile. Hawk was in it, which was nice.
7:20 get up, shuffle around
7:45 Christopher and I make it out the door to the cold, snowy morning, walk 4 blocks to the track at the Design and Technology University. Run for about 20 min. and decide we get extra points b/c of wind chill factor. Bird Man is there and it seems like he spends less time than usual in his speedos, pouring water over himself.
Return home, do stretches, pilates, drink coffee, shower, etc. Make it to the bus stop by 9:45, run to catch a trolley bus, then get off at Arsenalna metro stop, run to catch a marshrutka. Make it to IOM (http://www.iom.int) by 10:10, miraculously.
Since I’ve only been working there a little while, the guards at the door don’t know me yet, so I explain again that I work there. Upon arriving at the third floor (no lift), where I work, I see male co-workers running around with flowers – Monday is perhaps the second biggest holiday (first is New Years), “International” Woman’s Day (mainly celebrated in CIS). Since Monday is a national holiday and therefore a day off, the men are doing their duty on Friday. I’ve no sooner set down and said “hi” to my coworker Lisa-Jo, than Sergey, an attorney, presents me with three beautiful tulips. Flowers are presented in odd numbers on happy occasions, even numbers for funerals. Women’s day is observed by giving all women and girls in your life flowers, presents and chocolates. We also had an email from the “IOM Men” wishing us a happy woman’s day.
I worked from 10:00 until 14:00 at IOM, finishing up a proposal for ad agencies to bid on a big counter-trafficking information campaign on buses, trams, billboards as well as TV and radio PSA’s (public service announcements). Lisa-Jo, who is from South Africa, had a DVD that her brother produced from Christmas home movies and after watching that, I went to the bathroom for a cry, because I felt so homesick afterwards, even though it was someone else’s family in Africa.
After leaving IOM, I walked down Chreshiatik, the main street in Kyiv. IOM is located at one end of Chreshiatik, at Independence Square (Maidan Nezoleznoshti), and I walk to nearly the other end, to get to my other job, my original organization, CEUME. Not 15 seconds at my desk, and there’s Volodiya, our tech guy, who presents me with a cream colored rose and makes a short speech, wishing me love and happiness and success. Did I mention that one has to kiss the flower giver? Luckily Volodiya is nice, doesn’t smoke and isn’t lecherous.
I work for a couple of hours, testing our new website (nothing’s working, what is that programmer doing??), then find resources for the business English training that I’m teaching this evening on writing resumes and doing interviews. At 16:30 we have a staff meeting and after about 30 minutes of people reporting on work and upcoming events, our directors tell us that we’ll continue the meeting in the café downstairs. We go down to the restaurant which is in the next building and which has a black, pot-bellied pig as a mascot. It sleeps in the restaurant. This café is in a style very much in vogue in Kyiv, which I call “Early Village Fantasy.” It’s a kitschy rendition of what a “village” home would look like if a gay designer came in, cleaned up the 40 years of grime normally associated with rural life and put in little chachkies everywhere. There is more china on the wall than 5 families could use, lots of drawings of cows and robust women, gingham and lace adorn every edge. The salad bar is designed like a well – well, I could go on but I will spare you, gentle reader.
Anyway, Pavlito (of “vaginal American” fame) has a clipboard w/ a some writing scribbled on it and a big bucket of flowers waiting by our long table. The whole staff sits down, we’re brought a really nice Georgian red (I’m wishing at this point that I didn’t have to teach and could have more than sips). There’s a nice spread on the table of salads, meats, bread. After we have wine, Pavlo begins calling the ladies up one by one, and presenting us with a flower, and a brief poem about why each one is like her flower. They gave me carnations dyed red white and blue. I’ll let you figure that one out.
Then we ate and drank, and every so often a man would make a toast to the ladies. These toasts are lovely and ornate and I understand barely half, especially when in Ukrainian and not Russian. There was a funny discussion in Russian about the two words for “hot” – one is for things and one is for people. My coworker, Sveta, says that sometimes men can be “hot” using the word for things and it has the same meaning as in English. I say that sometimes men can also be delicious and by my colleague’s reactions, I think this might be dirtier than it is in English. Pavlito asks me if I understood the conversation if I knew what I’d said. I’ll have to ask my tutor is that was a faux paus. Apparently it was funny, because it was repeated several times around our table. Eventually I steal away to finish my prep work for the class and to go to the school.
I arrive at the school, greeted my other friend, Sveta, who runs and owns the English school. We make copies, I meet a teacher there who studied in Charlotte, NC for high school. The class goes well, they’re lively and we have a fun discussion, then I had them split into pairs to practice interviewing. They knew more than I thought they would about resumes and interviewing and it was interesting to hear about their experiences.
Afterwards, at 21:00, Sveta and I chatted for a while, and she gave me an enormous box of chocolates as a thank you for teaching the class. I told her she doesn’t have to give me chocolates every time I teach a class, but she just blinked enigmatically. I really must make hanging out w/ her a priority, because she is so cool. She’s someone I would like anywhere in the world, if that makes sense.
Now 22:30, I’m home, eating popcorn (thank you, Julie and Frieda!) and Christopher is reading his “graphic novel.” I’m so happy to be home and wearing my slippers and sipping a beer. I’m also so happy to have had the fortune to land in this country, to have found the work and people that I have. I’m not trying to pretty it up, I get tired and sometimes negative about this place, and I will mention without comment that the government shut down the Radio Free Europe station, sometimes I wish for the ease of America, but I always come back to being grateful. I guess when I stop that, if it happens, it’s time to book passage home.
love,
wlu
posted by Wendy Lu at 12:15 AM
