Finall, It works

I remember the times when I used to get upset when the internet would take 10 seconds to load a page. Oh, for those days!! I wrote about 2 pages on my blog, and then the internet decided not to work, so now I am at home writing, and going to use my flashdrive to transfer it onto the internet tomorrow. Anyways, what I was originally writing (or as close as I can remember) Also, sorry this is so long, you can read as much as you would like.

You think you get into a groove here in Ukraine; wake up, eat breakfast, go teach, go to Russian class, come back home, eat, study, go to sleep. Much the same on the weekends with an occasional movie thrown in; and then something is thrown at you which completely throws you off. This weekend was pretty much that. I came home Friday night after a very long day of classes, cross-cultural sessions, etc. I walked into my house and the first thing my host-mother (Tanya) asked is if I wanted to go to a birthday part for her god-daughter, who was turning 2. I asked the usual questions; when, were, who, how long. I am very wary of these encounters because it usually ends up being a bunch of guys trying to get me to drink vodka, or people talking in extremely fast Russian (actually, usually not even in Russian, but Ukrainian or Sergik, a mix of both) and me understanding about 10 percent of whats going on. Anyways, so off I went. We got there at about 6:40 and already the table was packed (I mean packed, no room left on the talbe) with food and vodka. Right off the bat I explained that I only drank beer, and only brought one bottle, which was good cause every time I filled up my glass they would tell everyone to chug their glass. So we ate and talked (people talked at me, I would say STO, what? To my host mother, she would translate in Russian, Spanish and English) for 2 hours, then the dancing began. It was an eclectic mix of music, ranging from new Russian and Ukrainian rap to popular American music from the mid 1990s. They certainly do like their dancing here. After pretty much most people were fairly intoxicated, (I would like to point out that I was by far the youngest person there) the kissing began. They have an interesting tradition here (which I think I explained from the wedding) where one person dances around with a scarf, and when they point at someone from the ring of dancers they come over and kneel on the scarf and kiss (at the wedding I was able to get away with just a kiss on the cheek, I was not so lucky here) let me tell you it’s a little new for me to try to not have a married woman basically make out with me… not that it’s a bad tradition, just not quite used to it yet. So I tried to leave at least 3 times but they kept blocking the door, I finally got out at about 11:30, so much for my two hour stay. It was a very interesting Friday night. But the story does not end here.

The previous Tuesday at about 9pm the doorbell rang and in came our next door neighbor and her 18 year old daughter. I am also wary of these meetings because I never really know what the intentions of anyone involved are, and I am not looking to get married to a Ukrainian girl. So I talked to the girl and her mother for a while, and the subject of café’s and bars, and whether I liked them came up. About 10 minutes later I realized that I had agreed to go a bar with this girl and her friend the following Saturday. I invited my friend Zahar (another peace corps volunteer from California) to come, to back me up, and even more importantly, he speaks much better Russian then I do. So he came over at 7 on Saturday and we had a couple beers before the girls were supposed to show up at 8. So 9pm rolled around, and since my host mother was out of town for the night and my host father was asleep, we decided that they weren’t coming so Zahar and I decided to venture into downtown Rokyte alone and see what was up. We stopped at 3 different bars throughout the night, and each one we got the same reaction. Everyone pretty much stopped talking, and the looks on their faces were “who are these out of towners?” we got a bunch of stares as we were talking (I think quietly) in English and drinking our beer. We wanted to check out the discothèque and see what was up there, but when we opened the door and went oh… these are all our 9th, 10th and 11th graders, we quickly got out of there. Came home at 11 and went to sleep. (sorry, story still not over yet)

The next morning I was watching a movie in bed, still wearing my sweatpants, and I heard a knock on the door, but since my home mother was back home by that point I didn’t feel like getting up, but about 2 minutes later Tanya said Olya (my neighbor) was here and wanted to say hi. So she came in and just started talking in Russian/Ukrainian. What I understood of the conversation was that her bus from Kyiv (where she works) hadn’t showed up and she hadn’t gotten till 10:30pm Saturday night and had gone to my house but my host dad said I was asleep (I was still out walking around). Anyways, she asked if I wanted to try meeting again that night, and again, unbeknownst to me, I said yes. So Sunday night at about 7 I ended up going to a café and having ice cream with this girl. She speaks very little English (actually knows a lot, but is to embarrassed to speak it, like pretty much everyone else here) so I used my very faulty Russian to communicate for about an hour, after which we walked back home. It was interesting to talk with a native-speaker that doesn’t speak English. You have to be very inventive in your language. So my first ‘date’ in Ukraine was a success. I am going to learn this language purely so I stop getting into these situations.

I have less then a week in Rokytne, after which I head to Kyiv and have my Peace Corps swearing in on December 19th. My host mother and counterpart from my new school in Lugansk will be there, as well as the head of Peace Corps in Ukraine and American Ambassador to Ukraine. Should be cool. I will arrive in Lugansk on Dec. 21st. Hope to hear from you all soon, and if I don’t talk to you before then, MERRY CHRISTMAS. Miss you all,
With love,
Seth
p.s. i have my language practicum today, wish me luck!