RussIAN strikes again

Yes, another enthralling tale of how Seth’s attempts to understand the world around him is thwarted by his worst enemy… RUSSIAN.
The story starts off safely enough; 10 days ago I got on a bus to a city about 4 hours north of here for a 5 day English/Leadership camp that another Peace Corps Volunteer was leading. This was the 4th session of this camp that he had run, and he did a great job getting funding and getting kids to come. The past week it has been the hottest weather yet, so luckily there was a big, ‘clean’ river in the city, so Sunday I spent most of the day throwing a football around in the water with other volunteers. The camp started on Monday, and there were about 20 students ages 13-22. There were 12 volunteers, so I only had to teach 4 classes the entire week. (I taught American Tall Tales- Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed) the rest of the time was spent playing volleyball and singing songs with the kids.
Wednesday our group was lucky enough to go to a Russian “Banya” (banya means bathroom in Russian.) I had thought that a Sauna (which they also have here) and a banya were the same thing, but boy was I wrong. You go into a small room two at a time, and its HOT, much hotter than I have ever felt a sauna to be (when I first went in, it was 120degrees Celsius! You get in there and you lie down on a board, and then someone (a friend or the guys who run the place) proceed to ‘whip’ you with birch branches. This causes the air around you to get even hotter, and sweat even more! When you can’t take any more you go outside and jump in a very cold pool of water, which causes a person (well, me in particular) to get very dizzy. You only do this about two times, and then of course… the food comes out. Their was salad, potatoes, bread, AND samaghon (a special Ukrainian moonshine, that has quite a kick to it.) It was a wonderful way to spend time after the camp.
Well, as I told some of you, I was supposed to go straight from this camp to another camp where I would be working in a national park, helping clean it up. I found out last Monday that it was cancelled because the park director brought to the news evidence that the government was using it for unauthorized purposes, so it was a big scandal. It was switched to another location, but my friend who was going to come with and I didn’t find out till Thursday so we decided not to go.
This meant that I had some free time before I had to go home, so on Friday I jumped on another bus for Harkov (biggest city in the east of Ukraine) to meet my friend Zach, then took a bus to his village which is right on the Russian border. His place is much different than mine, so it was fun to hang out there for a day.
One sad piece of news, on the way to his site my phone seems to have slipped out of my pocket, with all of my numbers, so I had to buy a new one on Saturday.
My new number is
(380) this is the country code 938270978
Whole number 380938270978

So now the real tale begins…
One of our friends who used to be in Peace Corps had been working in Harkov as an English teacher but is heading back to the U.S. in two weeks, so I knew this would be the last time I would get to hang out with him. We decided to have a “malchichnik” (a boys night) so about 9pm we headed out to a club that our friend had been to. Now, I have to explain that because he doesn’t work for Peace Corps, our friend makes A LOT more money than Zach and I do, so whenever I hang out with him I know I will spend more than usual. So… the club had a cover charge of 40 griven (only 8$, but that will get me a good dinner in Lugansk) Once we got in, we decided to order some drinks and snacks. Because it was a club, things are of course over-priced, so the cheapest thing was a bottle of vodka. I normally don’t drink vodka, but I thought what the heck. So we ordered juice, bread, and an assorted cheese platter. It was very funny for the waitress to take our order because our friend knows some Ukrainian, Zach and I know some Russian, and there was another American there who knows neither.
We just talked, drank a little, and ate. So, we finished our cheese, and our friend Adam said, we should get the fruit platter. We were all like “okay, that sounds good,” since all of the afore-mentioned food had only been 100 griven together. So about 5 minutes later the waitress brings some more bread and a platter of lemon slices with sugar. We all kind of looked at it, and were like “this is it?”
We asked the waitress and she said, “oh, no, your platter will be out shortly.” She then preceded to clear off a large portion of the table, and I though to myself, “this is ominous.”
The waitress appeared again… with the largest platter of fruit I have ever seen. It had pineapple wedges, pear slices, grapes, bananas, apples, grapefruit, and of course, kiwi. We all just looked at each other, and went, “dang, she must have thought we were rich Americans or something,” and begin to curse our lack of truly understanding any conversation in Ukraine. The check came out, and the damage was done, 250griven for a fruit platter, luckily split 4 ways, but still… I normally spend 75 griven every 4 days on food in Lugansk.
It was a good night though, and as I fell asleep at 3 am last night, I went dang, maybe I shouldn’t have gotten a bus ticket for 6:30 the next morning. I woke up today at 5:30, cursing myself for eating so much citrus fruit, sat on the bus for 8 hours, and now am back in lovely Lugansk!
Always great to hear from you all!
Miss you,
Seth