Finally getting around to Celsius

One useful thing I've never quite picked up is the Celsius mindset.

For most of life it was never a problem. Fahrenheit could take me anywhere (as long as anywhere meant the U.S., Belize, Palau, the Cayman Islands, or the Bahamas). But then I moved in with a Celsius thinker. Depending on which one of us was speaking, "it's 30° today!" could mean it was either pretty cold or pretty hot.

Ukraine and the US, Part 1

The streets of Kharkiv, this spring.

Part 1 of a post months in the making... Do you remember when I was still getting used to things in Ukraine? This is our fourth month back in the U.S. and while we're all a bit more adjusted- D gets to speak his beloved English again, Кит likes to hang out on his new balcony and spend hours sniffing the leaves that fall onto the concrete floor- there are a few things that have taken some getting used to.

The streets of Portland, today.

Fairy tales and cartoons in Ukrainian parks

Out on a bit of a wild goose chase to find a vet clinic, we happened across this playground of fairy tales across the street from the Oleksiivska metro.

Fairytale Meadow

I did a little happy dance at seeing this place. Something new, something new! Oleksiivska is one area of town we haven't explored much and I've long been on a hunt to photograph the frequent сказка (skazka, fairytale) and мультик (multik, cartoon) themes in Ukrainian parks and playgrounds.

First up, these three lovely gentlemen, ready for some lunch:

In reference, perhaps, to the 1975 cartoon How The Cossacks Bought Salt (part of the entire "How the Cossacks..." series).

And then the quaint cast of курочка ряба (Speckled Hen): Ded, Baba, Mouse, and the Speckled Hen with her golden egg.

Click here for a YouTube animation of their tale.

Next, here's a guy that would probably look more familiar to you if someone hadn't broken off his most distinguishing feature-

Buratino! Known also as Pinocchio.

I'm not sure if there's a Jiminy Cricket in this Soviet version of the story, but there's something even better: a big turtle named Tortila : )

There's also a poodle involved, as seen in this fountain at the Kiev Zoo-

The entire cast of Buratino, including the evil puppeteer Karabas Barabas.

Speaking of evil, let's talk for a moment about the undisputed Queen of Slavic folklore- Baba Yaga.

Blue & yellow

source: vk.com

The blue, they say, represents a beautiful clear sky and the yellow stands in for ripe fields of wheat, but it's not hard to see the blue & yellow pattern in other places too:

A friend's photo: field of sunflowers in Sinne, Ukraine.

The trees of Sarzhin Ravine in the fall

Whatever the reasoning behind the design may be, people in Ukraine are proud to show off the colors of their flag

There are plenty of blue & yellow vehicles:

What is Ukraine?: an odd collection of quotes

Ukrainian FAQ: all the questions Ukrainians are undoubtedly sick of answering
image found on vk.com

There's one question that people always ask you more than any other when you're a foreigner living in Ukraine.

Not "Where are you from?"
Not "Why did you come here?"
Not even "Do you like our country?"

Before there was Lady Gaga, there was Mr. Gaga...rin

Crazy cool murals have been popping up around town. This one appeared on Sumskaya Street in August, featuring a lead character from the 1973 film В бой идут одни «старики» (Into This Battle Go Only Veterans).

Then work began on a mural of Yuri Gagarin on (where else?) Prospect Gagarina. Side note: is it just me or does this guy not get much publicity in the US? I didn't even know who he was until I saw his portrait on the wall of a Russian bakery/grocery store in Alaska. [cue gasp of horror] What do you mean, who is that? It's Gagarin, the first man in space!

That was only about 5 or 6 years ago, shamefully. Until then I'd heard of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and maybe a dog or monkey that had been sent to space... but seriously, nothing about Mr. Gagarin. Oh high school, where did you go wrong? Or did I fall asleep during that part of the lesson?

So if you're like me and somehow missed out on this rather monumental historical fact, here are the basics-

Yuri Gagarin was the first human to truly get off this rock. He orbited the Earth once, spending less than 2 hours in space, but it was enough to make him a mega-ultra-super celebrity in the Soviet Union and the rest of the world (except for my school district, apparently). Although he died in a plane crash at the tender age of 34, his name will never be forgotten. Just like every city here has its Lenin Avenue, there's bound to be a Prospect Gagarin or Gagarin metro station somewhere nearby. His face is instantly recognizable both for being quite cute (it's true! do a Google image search!) and for its smile. Let's face it; how many other famous Soviets have you ever seen smiling?

Downtime

Ugh, 3 weeks of being sick!

September's first Tuesday brought a charming visit to a public hospital on the outskirts of town. I briefly met a handsome surgeon with opened-necked scrubs, a hairy chest, and some major bling (Mr. T-worthy gold chain) and then got sent to an x-ray clinic in Холодна Гора where I did pretty well at pretending to be Ukrainian until the x-ray tech asked me what hospital I'd been at. Um, number 13? Number 17? Number 1?  (For a more detailed "I really shouldn't find this funny" hospital story, click over to Mark's blog.)

During classes on the following Tuesday, a violent cold made its appearance. Since it was only the second week of the new schedule, I medicated, tried not to breathe on students, and pushed on.

This weekend D came down with the cold, and then this Tuesday night- surprise, surprise- I went to bed fearing that I'd wake up as a brain-eating zombie. Seriously, what is going on?!

So I've been at home today, as has D. The cat seems slightly perturbed that all his daytime beauty naps have been interrupted but other than that, it's been a decent chance to program (D) and shamble about in a bathrobe and look over my growing notebook collection (yours truly).

Stationery has always been my thing. In university I would buy armfuls of Japanese and Chinese letter sets to read all the funny mistranslations. This obsession followed us to Ukraine where in 2007, we picked up this children's schoolbook at a Simferopol market.

What do you think? Is it just a simple question or is there a second meaning? :p

Summer's last hurrah

Happy Independence Day, Ukraine! (written in Russian)

There's always one last big hurrah here before the end of summer. Here's how it went down this year...

As you can see, the day started out gorgeous-

Park in front of the train station

The city was filled with these-

Billboards are dedicated to those who fought in World War II

Not sure about the red and green flags, but they were all over the city as well

"70 years of a free Kharkov,  Kharkov- city of war glory"

Happy Independence Day, Ukraine! (written in Ukrainian)

As the daylight vanished, more and more people filled the city streets.

Left: Freedom Square. Right: Shevchenko Park

Vendors showed up with balloons and glow-in-the-dark jewelry. Flimsy wooden tables topped with beer appeared in Shevchenko Park and on the fringes of Freedom Square. The alcohol sellers were young, probably university students. I assumed they were merely the enterprising type, trying to capitalize on the event and make some cash, but friends quickly pointed out how unlikely that was. To sell and not get hassled by police, they would need to have permits, and it was far more plausible that some rich politician or businessman hired the students to staff the tables while he raked in the cash.

Soviet Propoganda à la 2013

"Glory to work!"

As I'm headed to a place this week called пивбар союз (Beer-Bar Union), a place with a big communist sickle and hammer right on the sign and an ad for "26 uah Soviet business lunches" below that, there's no better time than now to share this collection I've been building.

Завод імені В.О. Малишева (that's Ukrainian for Factory "V.O. Malishev"), founded over 100 years ago. It's produced everything from tractors to tanks and even designed flame-thrower tanks! This year they landed a $50 million contract producing tank parts for Pakistan.

There are still bits and pieces of the USSR that decorate the city; an emblem here, a statue of Lenin there, an old yellow inspection notice in the elevator at D's work. Last year I shared some of the noble but fading murals that grace the city. One tiny niche I've been trying to track down is old Soviet propoganda, redone and being used to sell something.

A passion for fashion?

As a girl, it's intimidating to move to a country rumored to have some of the most beautiful women on the planet! I hoped that some of this legendary beauty know-how would rub off over time, but it's doubtful. Yesterday a student gifted me a gorgeous blue scarf, which I immediately hung around my neck. At the end of class she approached me- no, no, no. You should loop the scarf like this and pull the ends equal here. Oops!

Just to shock my English students, sometimes I'll lower my voice and whisper evil stories of American fashion. And on occasion, university students will actually wear their pajamas to class! Students here love Friends and Sex and the City, and they'd never imagine that this kind of crazy pajama absurdity can happen in the land that brings you Jennifer Aniston and Carrie Bradshaw. But I assure you, students, happen it does.

It's not that Ukrainians are totally obsessed with appearance. In a class last fall, one woman bragged about never having worn makeup, not even for her wedding. Others- male and female alike- eschew trends and prefer comfy clothes. Last night I saw a scruffy kid wearing a Cannibal Corpse backpack. But perhaps I have become obsessed with fashion, for I pay attention to it everywhere I go. I can name the big differences between Ukraine and the US off the top of my head:

Women here tend to wear bangs and high heels and dye their hair with wild abandon.

Men wear bangs too and pointy shoes and rather form-fitting jeans. Not gonna bring up the mullet. It also happens.

Overall, both genders put a lot of thought into their appearance. It's not rare to see people polishing their shoes with Kleenex before entering a building. Ukrainian friends routinely show off more extravagant manicures than friends back home do.

Here- see for yourself.

Two young women preparing to ride the rickety cable carts in Gorky Park. The man is wearing an outfit typical to the older Kharkov male: leather cap and jacket.

12 Words You Should Learn Before Coming To Ukraine

Yep, this one's important- the restroom!

Most of us do it- buy textbooks, enroll in classes, drop big bucks on the latest version of Rosetta Stone, all in hopes of learning a smattering of the local language before we arrive. Any one of those resources can teach you "Where's the bank?" or "Nice to meet you", but here are 12* useful Russian words that you probably won't learn from your class, book, or computer program.

 *erm, make that 12-ish words

Soviet art for children

Did you know that next week (Monday, January 21st, 2013, to be precise) marks the 89th anniversary of Lenin's death?

Last fall I stumbled across the book shown above as well as a Soviet art book for children. The art book was called изобразительное искусство 1-3 (Fine Art 1-3) and it had been published in the late 1970s. I thought it would be interesting to share these pictures with you!

Translation:

Drawing about The Glory of the Soviet Army!

Every February 23th the Soviet people celebrate the birthday of the Soviet Army.

Look carefully at the drawing on this page, which will help you create a composition about The Glory of the Soviet Army! Pay attention to the design of the military equipment. It's best to sketch the design while looking at a toy.

Holiday greetings towards our army or the dates 1918-1982 may be added to the images of tanks, rockets, and planes. Write the words in print.

Translation: 

Where are all the Ukrainian scientists?

This is metro station Наукова.

Наукова is Ukrainian for research and this station pays tribute to the best of the best.

6 Things You Probably Didn't Know about the Elections in Ukraine

Tomorrow Ukrainians will head to the polls to vote in the parliamentary elections. For news, check out Kyiv Post or Ukrainian Election 2012. For random, non-political observations from a foreigner, continue reading!

1) This elementary school is going to be used as a polling place here in Kharkov.

Hall lights are turned off at night (надо экономить! one must economize!) so please forgive me for the quality of these pictures. Posters for all candidates had been laid out on tables, perhaps to be hung on the walls in time for voting.

2) The three standard facial expressions for candidates:

Left: angry
Middle: threatening and/or sullen
Right: mellow

3) Many of the candidates are photographed wearing beautiful and traditional Ukrainian tops (see man in right picture).

The Ukrainian DENTIST!!! Ahhhh!!!!!

I just saw a Ukrainian dental surgeon. And it's only 10:30 AM!

Pharmacy booty: Catafast, Cifran, and Dr. Reddy's Cetrin

Although I much prefer to ignore problems like this and just hope they go away, last night's frantic midnight Googling of "pain in back teeth" (and that terrible scene in Castaway, you know what I'm talking about!) convinced me to wake up early today and see the dentist. D and I, like naive Americans, assumed that we'd see a receptionist this morning and at best be able to schedule an appointment for tomorrow.

Haha. Ha.

“Smoking had come to be an important punctuation mark...

...in the long sentence of a day on the road.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

If anything were to make me smoke, it'd be either a) this cool quote or b) living in Ukraine.

But a) no and b) close, but no cigar (haha).

Smoking is so present in everyday life here that it's impossible to miss. Office workers take smoke breaks, smokers light up in the "smoking section" of coffee shops (conveniently located right next to the non-smoking area, ahem, Coffee Life!), cigarettes are sold everywhere- kiosks, grocery stores, by shady men in trench coats on the street corner. If you go shopping at the central market you'll walk by these men- "cigarettes!" they whisper to you, "from Russia! from Poland!"
Yesterday I was waiting at the crosswalk when an ambulance slowly drove past, preparing to make a turn. Inside were two medics, one at the wheel, the other smoking a cigarette with the window rolled up.

Election propaganda in Ukraine

Eat pineapples!
Dine on grouse!
Your final day is close, bourgeois!
(poem by Vladimir Mayakovskiy, a Soviet poet)


Election time is drawing near here in Ukraine and the streets are filled with politics. Just like any red-blooded capitalist I'm especially fascinated by the Ukrainian Communist Party slogans.

The Perfect Ukrainian Toilet

Oh, black tea. Your caffeinated kick lures me over to the electric kettle every morning, but it's thanks to you that I found myself shelling out 2.50 grivna and peeing over an odoriferous pit in the train station this morning. It's not easy to do that while trying to hold the broken stall door closed with your other hand and at the same time clutch the little scrap of toilet paper that you've been given. In fact, the whole situation reminded me of this email I got last year...

Sept 2011.
My email to D.
"At 10 AM this morning Myroslava came from the airport with a new arrival, this neurotic east-coaster who hadn't slept in about 30 hours. Instead of getting sleepier as the day wore on, he got more and more wound up, until he was like a New Yorker on Crack (NYoC for short) by the end of the day. [For brevity, I've edited out a long story about NYoC's first encounter with the toilets in an elementary school. Suffice to say, he went in the men's room confidently, having studied abroad for a while near Moscow, and promptly ran out in shock.]"

Sept 2011.
D's response.
"I enjoyed your story about NYoC vs Ukrainian toilets. Send him my regards and tell him that one of those days he will encounter the "PUT" (Perfect Ukrainian Toilet).

Usually it is hard to encounter the PUT but sometimes the heavenly bodies align just right and an unfortunate person steps through the portal that leads to the "Perfect Ukrainian Toilet".

Happy Knowledge Day!

Halloween already? No, even scarier- school!

Independence!- for Kharkov, Ukraine, and Belgium

Kharkov's mirror stream fountain. Opera House in the background.

Vacation time has rolled around again. And more than that- it's three days until my one-year-in-Ukraine anniversary! Now that's a weird feeling. One year ago I showed up here with no idea what the future would hold, with no idea whether I'd still be here after my 8 month teaching contract or how D would re-adapt to living in his former homeland. Now twelve months have sped by and all those issues seem so long ago, replaced (of course) by new issues like cat ownership, expired visa, etc, etc. But issues will always be there no matter where one lives or what one does. I still maintain that this has been an amazing experience and led to some deep and hopefully lifelong friendships.

The whole family- to vacation!

Vacation! Doesn't that word just sound glorious? ... Well, that's not what I'm taking. Instead, I'm taking a staycation. Three leisurely weeks to catch up on the little things and enjoy summer's final days of triumph and light. The leaves are starting to curl up into crumbly little orange husks and while people say it's because they've gotten burned from the heat, I smell fall in the air, especially at night. In the mornings I like to get outside and accompany D as he walks to work, then meander back on my own. The days are beautiful. If the kitten gets too crazy I take him outside; I read a book in the sunshine while he expends his energy by cowering next to me on the bench :p If I'm inside I'm usually working on a project or organizing some long-neglected matter. I've began studying Russian a lot too. And thus the day passes. Sometimes clouds gather in the afternoon and by nightfall a storm will have broken. We eat dinner on the balcony, watching the lightning, or just open the windows and stick our hands out to catch the raindrops.

Let me rewind to a couple of past events. First, Happy Independence Day to Ukraine! What happened here in Kharkov on that day? Well... not much. In fact the streets downtown looked like this by 11 PM: