Where do we go from here?

Office poster

A memorable- and true!- story from D:

Last year, on the train to Odessa, D was approached by a coworker from the company's customer service team.

"So, uh, I heard that you speak pretty good English and I was wondering if I could ask you a question."

"Sure, what's up?"

"What does the phrase 'take a dump' mean in English?"

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

Snapshots of Ukrainian Life, Part 11

"A citizen of the USSR has the right to vacation": print from a postcard I picked up recently.

❶ It's already the middle of summer and everyone in Kharkov is sporting at least one of these two things: an insane tan and/or summer shoes. The tanning thing started off a little slowly but now practically each and every person has vacationed in Crimea and has turned an appropriate shade of "I spent 23.5 hours a day baking in the sun." Maybe it's just because last summer I was (like many a summer before) in Alaska that this shocks me so much. I even saw a tiny tanned baby earlier in the season! D and I have not been to Crimea and have failed to achieve maximum tanning potential. Translation: we're white. Last month we were berated for this by a talkative old man on the metro: "Why are you both so freakishly pale? You need to go to Bulgaria! Now! Go!"

And about the open-toed shoes... on the metro I noticed that many middle-aged / older women have deformed toes. Is this from all the years of wearing sexy high heels?

Hello, detour! Tis also the season for pipe repairs.

❷ One of the best things about summer? Watermelon mania!!! 16 cents a pound!

Ukraine grows a lot of watermelons and now they're flooding the streets. These guys let me take a picture as they were unloading by hand- guess how much?!- 35 tons of watermelon!! We calculated that out to be about 4,000 melons.

Snapshots of Ukrainian Life, Part 10

Free medicine and education for all! We will return the social guarantees that have been taken from the people. The Communist Party demands: return the country to the people! (For more explanation of this, keep reading...)

☼

Summer Picnic Supplies:

• tablecloth ✔
• cutlery ✔
• food ✔
• disposable plastic shot glasses ✔ (complete with a very serious picture of two men and one woman at a business meeting!) 

During a recent picnic I tried to explain why it would be weird to bring vodka to a picnic in America. Wine, maybe. But vodka? Although picnics would probably be a lot more fun that way...

☞Movie theaters in Ukraine sell tickets by seat. When you pay for the tickets you also pick out the seat you want to sit in. A little color-coded screen shows you the seats still available. Cool idea, huh?

☞Next to the tongues and hearts in the local butcher shop, there is a cow udder for sale. How exactly does one cook a cow udder? Or cow lungs? Please explain!

Summer's hottest toothpaste flavor

HR Peppers

This year is the first time that the peppers are fully staffed. The worker shortage has ended at last.

Engrish of Crimea

Some of the best....

Found on a photo album. So true... :p ....whatever it means, haha.

Absolutely no smocking allowed here at all! Found in a hotel room.

Enjoyed this? Take a trip to www.engrish.com for more.

Engrish

Seen on the back of a woman's t-shirt (accompanied, if I remember correctly, by a cartoon penguin):

Pen's favorite scary movie is "Orca, Orca!" He loves to play with the freezer door.

If I ever saw that t-shirt in a shop, I'd buy it in a minute! That's classic! :p

September 8th

It felt like fall blew into town today. Rain started rattling against the windows as I taught an evening class and later I walked home on wet streets. It was the first time I'd been out by myself in the night. I finished work around 7:30 and had dinner alone in the cafe/cafeteria. The food here is SO DELICIOUS and I recognize so much of it from meals with D's parents.

A typical meal at this restaurant

Instead of borsch, tonight I chose лагман as my soup and tried something called sasusage ragu (cabbage, potatoes, sausage, and carrots) and had a little bowl from the salad bar. (Don't get excited: salad doesn't necessarily involve lettuce here in Ukraine. Think more along the lines of beets, mayonnaise, cucumbers, and carrots.) It was neat to sit alone in the crowded dining area and let the conversations wash over me. I cannot believe how comfortable I feel here! I wonder if it's just Kiev's cosmopolitan vibe. Maybe I will feel more foreign once I move to my assigned city.

Oh, total for dinner (including a box of apple juice): 39 griven, or about $4.50.

The money here is called grivna. Or sometimes, hryvnia. Гривня.
This is a perfect example of why Russian is not as difficult as it looks. I see this all the time; you take a word in Russian and by the time you've sounded it out in English, you end up with 14 extra letters. Hryvnia....say what? Seriously? That looks impossible to say in English. Anything with the letters h,r,y,v,n in succession looks absolutely insane, don't you agree? Trust me, just learn the Russian alphabet. It's way easier than trying to understand the same sounds in the Latin alphabet. Don't believe me? Which looks easier: Крещатик or Khreshchatyk? Ah-ha, got you!

Anyways, I'm thrilled that training is over. It was a good experience....but it was a demanding experience. I can't help but think the actual teaching part will be somewhat easier? No more 11 AM - 10 PM days....instead it will be mostly evening work. And I'm slated to move to Kharkov via the Saturday night train, finally! Here's to having my own room again!

A rainy afternoon in Kiev

Minor success of the day: I was finally able to buy a pair of scissors. Don't ask how much time I've spent carefully tearing squares of paper for class activities.

Engrish phrases of the day (spotted on t-shirts): "Where is my special shoes?" and "haughty bearing girl". (Amused? More Engrish here: www.engrish.com)