Live from Kiev

Hello all,

I've been in Kiev for a few days and have finally gotten some reliable internet. The city is gorgeous, and the people, for the most part are especially friendly. We've seen a little recreation of a traditional Ukrainian village that was interesting. Since my great-grandfather moved from a village probably not-unlike this one, I felt a sort of connection (maybe phony) to the area, and it was neat to imagine that it was somehow akin to my "rodina".

On the second night we made a picnic in this little park between two streets, bread, cheese, and beers. An ETA brought his banjo and, to our luck, we lured ourselves a real, live Ukrainian guy named Sasha. He ended up staying for about 4 hours, and we had some great conversation. I was glad to see that my conversation skills aren't as rusty as I had feared, and was, with a few exceptions, happy to find this Ukrainian to a friendly, enthusiastic, and pleasant person.

Fast forward through some classes and adventures with vicious mosquitoes, street noise, a broken AC, and late-insomnia, and I'll tell you about yesterday afternoon and evening. We took the metro to a tourist market (about ten cents a ride, wow), and walked up a pretty hill to inspect their collections of dolls, rusty rubbish, thimbles, and traditional wooden maces. I wanted to grab some Ukrainian memorabilia for my dad, but my luggage is exactly at the max of 20 kg for domestic flights, and so I cannot afford to accumulate anything. We saw some beautiful churches, a neat tram, and then stopped into the local MAKDONALDS for a shake. A beggar girl with cheeseburger in hand asked for some cash, and our friend hooked her up with an American dollar. She said "PHFLANKS" in English, cheeseburger flying forth from her mouth, and returned minutes later with a milkshake. Talk amongst yourselves.

I was luck enough to meet up with a friend who had been teaching English for a year, along with another American teacher and 3 of his Ukrainian students. It was a whole lot of fun, and I even got some good insight into what teaching English in Russia is probably going to be like. I hope to meet up with the friend again, and maybe even get a picture to show our mutual friend back home (Emily Whalen, if you happen to be reading this).

We had some homework for today and have been examining some fine ESL materials all day long, and now we're free to blog, facebook, and get some grub. Becca Dash, a Kenyon grad, is in charge of the orientation and is pencilling in a dinner with me (things are not going well with visa's and everyone's got a lot of stress to deal with). It turns out that the new officer in charge of Russian Fulbright's is another Kenyon grad from '95 or so. Small world.

Anyway, I'm going to check into putting some pictures up here. If not, there should be some on facebook. More to come.

L0ve,
Jason