Sunday, January 24, 2010

Nothing of Great Significance

I have to admit that this weekend I barely left my room, but that's exactly what I wanted to do. I've been catching up on my lesson plans, figuring out a few grant opportunities, working on my languages, and dare say read a chapter of a book. I've barely read anything more than a few paragraphs long at a time since I came to Ukraine. Reading a novel in English makes me feel selfish now, taking time on something that can't be passed on to anyone but myself. Along with that, it's really hard for me to concentrate while reading in English now because I spend so much time translating regularly. It's kind of like when you're on a sports team, and for practice you use a weighted ball. When you go back to the regulation weight, you wonder why it was so difficult before. Reading in English is so easy that I can't comprehend it.

Thankfully, all the holidays are over. I'm pretty much safe until Easter. The New Years tree is still up though, I don't know what that means. The last holiday of the season was a celebration of baptisms. The day that it happened, I dropped by a grocery store to get some nutmeg (which isn't available but someone has promised me to pick up a packet for me on his next trip to Odessa). My landlady's daughter was in the store, buying some ingredients for the dinner. She said that since we ran into each other, it would be okay if she told me what she was hoping to surprise me with. We went back to her apartment and cooked for much of the afternoon. The surprise was that she bought all sorts of vegetables, and we ended up making a glorious sauteed casserole. Those that I've spoken with are probably sick of me talking about how much I miss vegetables. In the winter, what is available is what has been canned in the previous summer. Vegetables and fruits that are out of season are sometimes available, but because they are expensive and come from non-organic multinational companies, their consumption is not appreciated in my family. Therefore, anything that isn't a shade of yellow, orange, or brown on the dinner table is a true gift. I can respect that, and I'm thankful that I'm finally learning to have a connection to my food and where it comes from. It's only that I've now become lustful for anything that's green.

Celebration of Baptisms meal: a lot of fish, cabbage pie, and jellied meat. You can see some cucumbers and tomatoes in the background!

School has been going well. The last two weeks, I've been only teaching about ten lessons a week and observing the rest of the time. Tomorrow will be the first day that I'll actually teach all of the classes that I've been assigned. With that, I'm starting up some English Clubs. By clubs, I've agreed to work with grades 6th through 11 individually once a week. The students have really wanted this, and because so many want to participate there's no way I can combine classes because the groups are already quite large. Can't wait to see how it works out.


I don't really know what's going on here, I just know that he said he wanted me to take a picture of us together where I was his Ukrainian bride.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Calling it Home

I remembered to bring my camera with me last week. The first picture is of the courtyard of the school, the second picture is the outside of the school, the third picture is of a main road/square in the village, and the forth is outside of my apartment.


Needed an Answer

So, I keep on being peer-pressured by my family into believing that I need to eat salo (lard) everyday in order to be healthy. I could understand how eating lard could be healthy, but not massive chunks of it, daily. Here's an article by Genius Cook:


The latest studies amazingly show that lard isn’t harmful, as it was thought, but healthy! The lard contains the arachidonic acid that relates to polyunsaturated fatty acids (Omega-6). Omega-6 is part of heart, brain and kidney tissues and essential for their proper functioning. The lard has anticancer effect as the most of carcinogens dissolve in fatty acids. As the arachidonic acid can improve metabolism and dissolve cholesterol, the lard helps remove toxins form our body and lowers blood cholesterol level. To achieve named health benefits, it is best to eat lard with garlic. Both garlic and lard are a good source of selenium, and selenium is what we need to strengthen the immune system. The lard also contains saturated acids that are vital to our health.

Lard Health Benefits

  • The lard is effective for the treatment of lung diseases.
  • Bile-expelling properties of the lard make it a good remedy for liver disorders.
  • The lard also prevents atherosclerosis.
  • The lard does not accumulate radionuclides and parasitic worms can’t live in it.
  • Even small amount of lard is very nourishing. So it can help you eat less and keep a slim figure. You can even find some lard-based diets out there.

How Ukrainians Eat Lard

The lard is a national Ukrainian food. Ukrainians eat the lard regularly, but they are not less healthy than people in other countries and they also don’t have nationwide obesity problem. As with other food, only rational consumption of lard is healthy.

  • 100 g lard supplies: 640 kcal, 6%proteins, 67%fat.
  • The lard contains vitamins A, E, the B vitamins, PP and selenium.

Note: Guideline amount of lard is about 100 g weekly.

Note: Guideline amount of lard is about 100 g weekly.

There- 100 g weekly, not 200 g daily, excluding all the lard used for cooking too.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Friday, January 8, 2010

Insert Arcade Fire Lyric Here

M. and A. my landlady's granddaughters


(written last night)

It's definitely still the holiday season here. Today is Christmas. I've lost count of how many times the family has gathered around the table since I last wrote. It's funny, during training I created a list of projects I wanted to do once I got to site; things to read, patterns to embroider, cookies to bake. I haven't gotten near the list until today. Though I've been on break for a week now, being part of a family takes up all my time.

Since this is my space to vent, I have to say that by the end of the day I'm exhausted because every waking moment I'm translating Ukrainian/Russian/Moldovian in my head. Training was a breeze in comparison to this. I'm going to need to find space in the day, and days for that matter, to rest from communicating. The past week or so I've been making so many grammatical mistakes that I'm aware of, not because I didn't care to correct myself, but because my mind doesn't want to communicate with my brain anymore. It's punishing me for making it work overtime by purposely stunting my improvement and making me sound like a fool.

Related tangent, like any other culture on the planet, Ukrainians love to watch TV. Stating the obvious, it's enjoyable and lacks little energy. I can't stand it. Furthermore, it's not a form of relaxation when you have to translate everything internally. I'm part of the HULU generation that only watches shows on the Internet and tries to limit my intake as much as possible mainly cause I can burn more calories sleeping (or prefer Entourage marathons). Here, the TV is on all the bloody time. In every house. For example, once my landlady came home after me. Instead of asking how I was or what I was doing (obviously reading at my desk), she asked me why the TV wasn't on. She couldn't understand how I could be home and not have the TV on.

I remember one episode of The Simpsons where Bart watches some sort of Japanese game show that causes the audience to go into seizure. That's how I feel about Ukrainian TV. Like Russian pop music, it's so overproduced and kitsch that it makes me feel nauseous. During the holiday season, there are a lot of variety shows that are beyond technicolor that make it even more unbearable. To compensate, this week when I'm in my room, I try to have my headphones on so I don't get headaches. Sometimes, I'm seriously just listening to white noise. I miss silence. It's one of the sacrifices I'm getting more used to living without. Ukrainians in general, and especially in my community, live communally. Meaning, they're always together when they can be and often generations share the same space. Closed doors seem uncommon, and since my door connects to my landlady's sleeping/living area, it would be rude to close it on most occasions.

Another TV related anecdote, I don't know if it was a one time thing, but once David Letterman did a segment called "Name that Meat" where he had a butcher show the audience different cuts of uncooked meat and the audience had to guess what it was. I'm thinking that by Easter I'll be a pro at this. Lately, I've been thankful that there are a lot of "posts" going on. "Post" is a religious fast, where typically all animal products aren't consumed. Last night, Christmas Eve, there was a post. But, I'm still confused because though at our house the only meat was fish, at another house we visited there were meatballs, fish, jellied chicken, liver, hare, rabbit (I guess there is a difference), straight up fat, ham, duck, and something I failed to memorize the name for. I'm hoping to start cooking for myself soon. It's been hard to figure out how to do this up to this point for a number of reasons. I'll write about food some other time.

Anyways, at the house with the rabbit and the hare, there was an 82 year-old man. I instantly fell in love with him, which is a problem lately. I have a thing for elderly Ukrainian men. Perhaps because they are so rare. He drew me in because he had a "homemade" tattoo of his wife's name on his hand that he did during the war. I got to interview him a bit while the meat was being arranged. His story only made it more concrete to me the importance of starting an oral history project in this country. I honestly don't know what I'm talking about, but a one hour Google search a couple of months ago didn't revel that there is any archive of oral histories in this country (though a few Ukrainian transcripts are at the Library of Congress in DC). It's just an idea. A time-consuming and expensive idea, but hopefully I'll follow through somehow. Suggestions on where to start?




Grandson making sure Father Frost doesn't have a flu worthy temperature on New Years