Merry Christmas to all

T’was the night before the night before Christmas,
And all through Ukraine, not a creature was warm,
Not even a Seth.
Okay, while Eastern Ukraine has not hit the -20s,-30s that Minnesota has faced the last week or so, but I would assume that all those hearty mid-Westerners have living establishments that don’t level out at 48 degrees… (the temperature of the inside of my apartment last week) I really can’t complain too much. The school has had recent heating troubles (i.e. the heaters don’t work, and in an attempt to put in new ones the contractors succeeding in flooding 3 classrooms), but I have purchased another (yes Peace Corps, the one you gave me is NOT ENOUGH) heater, so life is good in my one little tv room. I don’t venture out of it too much except for class as the temp drops about 10 degrees every week we get closer to January.
Besides it being almost Christmas, which I will get to in a second, I have yet another thing to be thankful for this December the 23rd… IT’S GETTING LIGHTER!!!! Somehow the Winter Solstice escaped my notice last Sunday, but I woke up Monday somehow knowing that the day that every (I think) Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine, person who lives in Eastern Europe, and Minnesotans look forward to, when the days start just getting a little bit longer. As the sun has been setting at about 3:45 in the afternoon, this is a pretty big deal to me.
Well, now that the semantics of heating and light are out of the way, I will get down to what this letter is really all about….
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!! I can’t believe this is already my second Christmas here in Ukraine, yet I am pretty sure I will NOT be spending this one the way I did last year (sitting in my host-families apartment watching some dumb movie and wishing I was at home). While I won’t be able to be on some on glorious sunny beach (yeah, I’m talking to you Bjorn!!) this Christmas, I will be able to head over to the next oblast west of here to my girlfriend’s site, where she will be creating (I may attempt to help, but it probably won’t amount to much) a delicious Christmas feast (yes, I am expecting a lot of you Megan). We will be joined by at least one other Peace Corps Volunteer, so I am very excited for that.
The semester will be over (at least for me) tomorrow, and I am very excited about that. Some things have gone really well with teaching this year, but some are just as frustrating as ever. But, I really have nothing to be upset about, because after my wonderful Christmas celebration, I will be heading to Kiev next year for some Peace Corps stuff and… GULP, meeting Megan’s parents… I am not nervous at all. We will spend New Years in Kiev (which I am very excited about) and then heading to Krakow Poland for 3 days, and then heading to Budapest for around another 3 days, to visit my parents. Its going to be a whirlwind tour for all of us, but I am looking forward to traveling with Megan and her family and seeing my parents during the holidays.
After that it will be back to Lugansk where I will start the 2nd semester of the school year. I know this will fly by faster than I expect, and by this time next year I will be back in Minnesota (almost 100% for sure).
Love to hear from all of you! Have a safe and happy holidays!
With Love,
Seth

Second addition-Books I have read in Ukraine!

51.“Made in America” by Bill Bryson *** A little dry at times, but overall an interesting look at why Americans speak the way we do.
52.“ A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian” by Marina Lewycka **** Wonderful look at Ukrainian immigrants in England and what happens as your parents get older.
53.“Hot Six” by Janet Evanovich ****
54.“Seven Up” by Janet Evanovich ***
55.“Neither Here Nor There” by Bill Bryson **** great book about traveling through Europe by a very funny author.
56.“A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain” by Robert Butler*** interesting stories about post war Vietnam.
57.“A Season in Hell” by Jack Higgins *** mystery/action
58.“Dark Justice” by Jack Higgins *** mystery/action
59.“ ‘A’ is for Alibi” by Sue Grafton *** mystery
60.“Congo” by Michael Chrichton *** suspense thriller
61.“How to be Good” by Nick Hornby **
62.“Dark Light” by Randy Wayne White **** great thrillers
63.“Prey” by Michael Chrichton ***
64.“Key West Connection” by Randy Wayne White ***
65.“The Audacity of Hope” by Barack Obama **** a little thick at times, filled with interesting info. on the way Washington works.
66.“Three to get Deadly” by Janet Evanovich ***
67.“To the Nines” by Janet Evanovich ***
68.“Dead of Night” by Randy Wayne White ***
69.“Naughty Neighbor” by Janet Evanovich **
70.“The Overlook" by Michael Connelly **
71.“Blood work” by Michael Connelly ***
72.“The Talbot Odyssey” by Nelson Demille ***
73.“Nightfall” by Nelson Demille **
74.“The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini **** look at why
Afghanistan is the way it is today.
75.“Code to Zero” by Ken Follett ***
76.“Zlata’s Diary” by Zlata Filipovic **** young girl’s point of view of the Bosnian/Serbian war in the early 1990s
76 ½ “The Clue of the Hissing Serpent” by Franklin Nixon** Don’t ask…
77.“N is for Noose” by Sue Grafton ***
78.“R is for Revenge” by Sue Grafton ** 07/23/08
79.“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” by J.K. Rowling **** 07/26/08
80.“Lost Light” by Michael Connelly *** 07/29/08
81.“The Constant Gardener” by John Le Carre **** 08/03/08
82.“The Pardon” by James Grippando ** 08/04/08
83.“Wild Thoughts from Wild Places” by David Quammen *** 08/17/08 interesting look at how you can find wild things everywhere around you, and maybe why they are there.

84.“The Appeal” by John Grisham ** 08/20/08
85.“The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri **** 08/27/08 great story following an Indian family through their ups and downs in America, a look at how deeply our parent’s lives really impact us.
86.“McNally’s Dare” by Lawrence Sanders *** 09/03/08 another intriguing mystery novel.
87.“McNally’s Luck” by Lawrence Sanders ** 09/05/08
88.“Montana 1948” by Larry Watson **** 09/06/08
89.“While my Pretty one sleeps” by Mary Higgens Clark * 09/12/08
90.“Conviction” by Richard North Patterson *** 09/18/08
91.“Dancing at the Rascal Fair” by Ivan Doig **** 10/03/08 interesting story about trying to create a life in 1900 Montana
92.“The White Masai” by Corinne Hofmann *** 10/09/08 true story about a CRAZY Swiss woman who travels to Kenya, falls in love with a Masai warrior,and thinks she can live a normal life with him in the bush.
93.“Come Ride with me, Mariah Montana” by Ivan Doig *** 10/18/08 3rd of a series about Montana, good stories
94.“Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown” by Dan Brown *** 10/24/08 prequel to the Davinci Code
95.“Flight of the Old Dog” by Dale Brown ** 10/27/08 high-tech war between USSR and America
96.“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” by J.K. Rowling **** 11/04/08 as always, good book.
97.“Puerto Vallarta Squeeze” by Robert James Waller * 11/06/08
98.“Accordion Crimes” by Annie Proulx * 11/25/08 not one of her best
99.“Mad Cow Nightmare” by Nancy Mean Wright * 12/01/08
100. “Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer *** 12/08/08 story about Jewish-American man trying to follow his grand-father’s roots to Western-Ukraine, horrors of WWII.

Thanksgiving extravaganza

It started off as a simple invitation from my girlfriend Megan; “Why don’t you come spend Thanksgiving with some of my friends in Odessa?” and turned into one of the cooler things I have done while here in Ukraine.
The trip started off with a 2 ½ hour bus ride from Lugansk to Donetsk on Wednesday the 26th of November, through the pouring rain. This was an inauspicious start, seeing as I was headed to my first ever Champions League soccer game between Shakteur Donetsk (Ukraine) and FC Basil (Switzerland.) I rolled into Donetsk just as the rain was finishing… there I met up with Megan and we headed into the city to meet up with some other volunteers who live in or around Donetsk. We had some dinner, and at 9:45 were walking through the gates of the Donetsk soccer stadium. Probably most of you don’t know this, but going to a Champions League game has been on my top 10 list of things to do in my life for about 5 years, so this was a big deal for me… the stadium was only 1/3 full, due to both teams being towards the bottom of the rankings and the weather beings o miserable. But, over the 90 minute game, with the temperature hovering around 35 degrees, rain for only 10 minutes, and 5 goals scored… all by Donetsk Shakteur, the team I was supporting. It was a blowout, but even more fun because due to a misunderstanding by the person buying the tickets, we were supposed to sit in the first row but got to sit only 5 rows up, high enough to see everything but low enough to hear the players talking too.
Thursday morning was spent walking around Donetsk, as I had never been there before. Its about Ukraine’s 5th largest city, so even though the weather was a little chilly, it was fun to walk through the parks and eat some good, greasy burgers at a local fast food-chain. At 5pm Megan and I jumped on a train to begin our 16 hour journey down to Odessa, Ukraine’s largest port on the Black Sea. Again, I had never been there and I was very excited.
We entered the beautiful Odessa train station at around 9am and set out to try to find an apartment, because we were going to spend the night with one of Megan’s friends and her brother and dad. Finding an apartment in Ukraine is often much different than anywhere else I have ever been. There is the option of booking on-line in many cities, but the much more popular approach is to immediately be set upon by about 5 babushkas (older women/grandmothers) asking if you need an apartment, how big, how much you want to pay, etc. Now, I am definitely used to new experiences, but I was extremely thankful Megan was with me (as my sister so gracefully put it when on the phone with me, “She sounds smart…” and yes, she is, her Russian is excellent) to take over the entire negotiations. After the first failed attempt when we set out with a woman only to find 5 minutes later that the apartment wasn’t ready after all, we met up with some other volunteers who were waiting at a bus stop to head to the tiny village where Megan and I would head the next day for Thanksgiving dinner. We (as in Megan) eventually found an apartment that was big enough for a very good price, and after a quick shower we headed out to explore the sights, and to fix Megan’s Falafel needs. She suggested sharing one as we would eat lunch with her friend in about an hour, but seeing how good they looked I denied. 10 minutes later, after ingesting what seemed to be about 5 pounds of potatoes, falafel, tortilla, and mixed vegetables, I thought I might pass out and explode at the same time… it was excellent though. We headed to Potemkin’s steps, one of the most famous sites in Odessa (which is famed for its port, red-light district, and its nightlife) and then headed to meet Megan’s friend.
That night we were able to get tickets to another soccer game between Odessa and a different Donetsk team. The Donetsk team was supposedly much better, but Odessa played well, and with it also being the last game at the stadium before it was rebuilt, the fans got a little carried away and started ripping chairs off the benches and setting flares on fire (it felt like a real European soccer game at this point) and when Odessa won 2-1, almost the entire stadium flooded the field and started having a party! Very cool.
Saturday morning we jumped on a bus to go to a volunteer’s site who lives about 2 hours away from Odessa, but we had to take one bus, and then a taxi to get to her very, very isolated site. It was really cool pulling up in the taxi after driving through farmland and seeing a bunch of our friends chopping wood, cooking in the summer kitchen, and just hanging out. The rest of the afternoon we chopped wood for the girl’s two fireplaces, helped begin the Thanksgiving feast, and just catch up with people we hadn’t seen in a while. We eventually headed out to play some American football on the remains of a soccer field, and we took care to miss the cow pies and not hit the geese that were waddling nearby. As there were only 8 people playing, we were soon exhausted and ready to head back and get ready for dinner.
The feast was begun around 7 pm, and consisted of a turkey (donated by the next door neighbors and killed the day before) cranberries, mashed potatoes, amazing stuffing created from mixes sent from America, gravy, delicious pumpkin bread, and I’m sure a few more things I am currently forgetting. For having limited means to buy American goods, it was a truly amazing dinner. I think the highlight of it was when we all went around (including the host’s next door Ukrainian neighbors,) and said what we were thankful for. It showed me how important family traditions are, how proud we all were to be Americans, and how close you can become to your ‘Peace Corps family.’
The night was spent playing some hotly contested charades between the men and women… lots of fun!
Megan and I got up the next day and with a few others started to head back to Odessa to catch our train around 3pm. At about 10:45 Megan had called a cab, and after a while a old-looking car pulled up and said he was our taxi-driver. The guy was a little crazy and it was a little unnerving when he would turn around to talk to us in the back seat. We arrived at the town were we needed to catch a bus with no problems, but then sat there for an hour due to few buses on Sundays. We were a little worried that we might miss our train, but after our 2 hour ride back to Odessa (passing through Moldova for about 10 minutes) we arrived with an hour to spare, at the wrong bus station….
We had been told this might happen so weren’t too nervous, but jumped on a bus that got us to the train station with 20 minutes left. I headed to buy a bunch of waters and Megan went to get us some food for the 17 hour train ride back (why it slower on the way back, I don’t know…) We were able to play a lot of cribbage (a game Megan has excelled at and now beats me regularly) and gin rummy. Arrived in Donetsk this morning and hopped on yet another bus back to Lugansk.
With about 46 hours travel time to and from, it was still a wonderful Thanksgiving, and definitely won’t forget it! Hope your holiday weekends were as memorable! Miss you all.
With love,
Seth
p.s. will try to add photos soon