Lithuania--first impressions

There will probably be at least one more Ukraine post at some point in the next week or so, but I figured it was time to catch you all up on life in Klaipeda, Lithuania.

Klaipeda is a city on the Baltic Sea. For many years, it was the German port city of Mermel, but now it's Lithuanian and (as far as I can tell) few vestiges of its German past remain. I haven't seen the sea yet, but we're going there tonight for a worship service on the beach.

LCC International University, where I'm teaching this summer, is very nice. It's a Christian liberal arts college, and as far as I know, it's the only one of its kind in the former Soviet Union (Donetsk Christian University, where I taught several years ago, does more theological training, whereas LCC offers more degrees in humanities, social science, and business). They've got great facilities, very up-to-date looking, especially for Eastern Europe, and a wonderful selection of resources and technology.

There are around 40(?) teachers here for the Summer Language Institute from Canada and the United States, ranging from college students to retirees. My roommate, Linda, is a semi-retired nurse from Vancouver who has lived in Ethiopia and Egypt and travelled extensively. Several of the teachers are professors or high school teachers back home, and a few of us are ESL instructors by profession. The two people I've gotten to know the most so far are Monique, another MSU MA TESOL grad who I met last summer, and Miranda, a PhD student at Baylor University. Miranda and I are headed to Riga, Latvia tomorrow, and we're pretty excited.

General observations about Klaipeda/Lithuania:

~The biggest difference, outside of standard of living, that I've seen between Ukraine and Lithuania is their attitude towards the past. Ukraine, while they generally don't want to go back to being part of the Soviet Union, doesn't look at Communism as something that was done to them, but rather was something that they were part of. Lithuania, on the other hand, has monuments commemorating the people the Soviets deported to Siberia and plaques that mention the 50+year Soviet occupation from the 1940s until the early 1990s.

~I get around here pretty well with Russian (the most), English (occasionally), and about five words of Lithuania (in an attempt to be polite and culturally appropriate). When Monique and I got our SIM cards for our phones, the guy used English with us but fell back to Russian when he didn't know the word.

~There is a line of grocery stores here called Iki (pronounced icky, although the food is quite good). They're very nice and extensively stocked. I could get spoiled and am trying to resist the sweets. :)

~However, our dormitory is a good 25-minute walk from the university, so the occasional sweet probably won't do me in. My calves might.

~I have hot water and Internet here. Really, what more does a girl need?

Belated Ukraine Post #3--Random Kid Stories

[Note: This is a post I wrote a week or so ago and am just now getting around to posting now that I have Internet in my dorm room at LCC. It describes my first weekend in Ukraine.

1) Ruslan, age 13, ate 10 ice cream bars on Sunday (here, it’s very common to buy individually wrapped ice cream bars, much more so than buying a bucket—or in this case, a plastic bag of bulk ice cream). I don’t know whether to be impressed or horrified.

2) When I packed for the summer, I packed quite a few pairs of earrings (at my friend Lena’s insistence :)). However, I noticed that most of the young women connected to church here don’t have pierced ears, and I wasn’t sure of the church’s stance on the issue, so I hadn’t worn them. Valera, age 13, said to me one day, “You have pierced ears. Why don’t you wear earrings?” When I explained that I wasn’t sure if it would be looked on favorably, he assured me that Inna and Alina, his cousins who attend our church, wear earrings, so it would be fine if I did.

I wore earrings to church on Sunday. On Sunday afternoon, Yan (age 8/9) came up to me, clearly distraught. “Miss Sally, you’re wearing earrings! You’re not supposed to!” “I’m not?” I asked, bewildered. “No! God said we’re not supposed to.” Still not sure what the actual church belief here is, but I’ve decided, in the interest of not confusing small children with varying notions of what’s acceptable, to wait until Lithuania for my earrings. :)

[Update, courtesy of Olya, an older cousin: Apparently the church technically doesn’t believe in wearing earrings, but since Inna and Alina are the pastor’s beloved granddaughters, no one’s going to say anything. Still think I’ll save my earrings for Lithuania.]

3) Ihor (age 8/9) asked me, “How are you related to us?” I attempted to explain that I wasn’t technically a relation but that I considered them all part of my family.

“I think you’re like our sister,” he said, “or maybe a cousin. I feel like you’re part of our family.”

It’s nice to be loved.

4) Valera (age almost 14 and don’t you forget it) asked me and Melanie if we were going to get up early enough on Sunday morning to catch the early bus to church with him. I told him no, we were tired because we had stayed up until 2 a.m. the previous night catching up on a year’s worth of conversation.

“2 a.m.! What Egyptian strength!” he responded with fervor.

“Egyptian strength? What on earth is that?” I replied, confused.

“Haha, you just swore!”

“You said it first,” I pointed out.

“No, I didn’t. I don’t swear.” (Said very piously.)

Mel and I were utterly baffled by Egyptian strength (I realized partway through Mel’s visit that perhaps I have more patience with Valera than most people, as Mel got to the point where she would flee to the other room with a book when he would come in and start talking away in Ukrainian using his outdoor voice), so we decided to ask my friend Nataliya about it when we went to her house for tea.

“Egyptian strength? I have no idea,” she said. “Maybe it’s a Biblical reference about the Israelites as Egyptian slaves…?”

So we’re all baffled, but apparently it’s not anything profane.

Belated Ukraine Post #2--Weekend Recap

[Note: This is a post I wrote a week or so ago and am just now getting around to posting now that I have Internet in my dorm room at LCC. It describes my first weekend in Ukraine.]

Saturday afternoon the three middle schoolers (Liza, Ruslan, and Valera), Vlada, and I went to church for a “spivka”, which more or less literally translates into “singing thing” and means “choir practice”. Several other teens and preteens, including some of the Y’s cousins, were there as well. Inna, one of the cousins, is getting married in a month, and Stas, her fiancé, was being presented to the church on Sunday, so Inna wanted us to learn two Christian love songs in Russian. We spent the better part of two hours doing so. Hopefully I’ll be able to sing them again for some other occasion. It seems a waste to have spent so much time on them for only one rendition.

Saturday night, Vlada and I went to the young people’s meeting for one of the other churches in town. There was a lot of singing, which I liked, and then we all had to go around and say what we’d been reading in our daily devotions and what God had shown us through it, which I liked less. I’m not opposed to sharing (although I’d been reading in Jeremiah and it was pretty bleak)—it’s more that I dislike being the center of attention among people who I mostly don’t know while speaking a foreign language. Vlada reassured me afterwards that I did fine. We read a psalm, had a short discussion (I was a silent participant), and then we sang some more.

Vlada had us hightail it out of there as soon as it ended in order to meet up with Kolya, her boyfriend, when he got out of work (he works at one of the TWO, count them TWO supermarkets in town…I remember when there weren’t ANY). He walked us home (it was after 11 p.m. by this point) and then came in for sandwiches and tea and getting acquainted. He is 23, one of ten children, had to drop out of school to take care of his family after his father died but finished night school, loves sport, and is active in his church. So far I approve of him (he and Vlada are pretty serious), but I’m glad to see that they appear to be waiting a bit longer before they get married. (Young marriage here is very common. Prolonged singleness—past, say 24—is not. I’ve been bemused by how often I run into people I knew in my Peace Corps days and the first thing they ask me after “How are you?” is “So are you married yet?”)

Sunday morning we all got spiffed up and headed to church (via multiple taxis, since the Y van is sadly a thing of the past). Church is much how I remember it—full of babushki (old women, literally “grandmothers”), kids who are all taller than they used to be, and lots of music. It’s definitely a singing sort of church, which I dearly love. Valera and I sang a special (it’s a Ukrainian hymn entitled “How Blessed and Happy am I”, which I doubt any of you know), there was a lot of other special music, and we sang our songs for Inna and Stas without any major hiccups (and managed to hit our high notes, of which there were many).

[Note of Interest #1: While at the church on Friday for music practice (Valera had wanted an extra music practice for our special, or maybe just wanted to mess with the sound system), I had been looking through a list of church members from 2008. A third of the members were born before the end of the Great Patriotic War, as World War II is referred to here. I am amazed at the amount of history they’ve lived through. The oldest church member at this point, in 2011, is 90 years old, which means she was born in 1921, just after the Russian Revolution and the beginnings of the USSR. She prays aloud at every single church service for the youth of the church (and many other things as well), and ends each prayer with “Praise and glory, a hundred thousand times, a hundred thousand times!”.]

[Note of Interest #2: Inna and Stas knew each other two weeks before they were engaged. They met at a Christian camp and it was apparently love at first sight. All I can say is, “Wow.” [Later update after I gained more information: Apparently their families have known each other a long time and they actually met once four years ago. Still, wow.]]

After church, Vitaly and Katya invited Olya (their cousin, age 22), Valera (who shadows me perpetually and should get his own blog post soon), and me over for lunch. They live in the apartment building next to the one I lived in during my Peace Corps days. We had a nice time, looking at their wedding photo album and a DVD of pictures from a trip they took to Kyiv the winter after they were married. Katya, Olya, and I had a lovely time discussing various weddings we’ve attended, while Vitaly just looked tired (he works 24-hour shifts at his current job, but I didn’t catch what it is, irregular days each week, and had gotten off of work right before church) and Valera was baffled how we could find this such an interesting topic of conversation (as I said before, Valera, who is almost 14 and doesn’t let you forget that his birthday is in three weeks, will get his own post), as he doesn’t ever plan to get married. (I keep threatening to remind him of this in a few years.)

In the evening, I went to the evangelical church in Novoselivka, which is the neighborhood where the school I taught in was, in order to see a variety of friends and acquaintances whom otherwise it would be difficult to catch. (See my upcoming post on Balaklia churches for more explanation about the Novoselivka church.) Valera, Ruslan, and Liza decided to all go with me, of course, and I insisted we set out a bit early in order to find good places to sit and maybe be able to borrow a hymnal off of someone (in Ukraine, you take your own hymnal to church, and in the interest of saving space, I had packed my Ukrainian hymnal but not my Russian one). The kids thought we should take the shortcut, the name of which apparently translates as “the Onion” (for reasons I know not why), which is a dirt path that cuts back through the fields (onion fields? they didn’t appear to be). Almost all the way through the Onion, I managed to trip and fall, scraping my knee worse that I’ve done in years (perhaps since the time I rode the Y kids’ scooter five years ago and attempted to turn while going uphill on cement; both they and I still remember the experience, and the scar is still faintly visible).

Since we were most of the way through the Onion and I knew I wouldn’t have another chance to go to services in Novoselivka, I rejected Ruslan’s concerned suggestion that we turn back and instead, we stopped at the Ks’ house. The Ks attend the Novoselivka church, I taught several of their eight children in school, and the oldest daughter, Natasha, is a friend of mine. Also a point in their favor, Viktor, the father, is a doctor, and Guisella, the mother, was trained as a nurse. Viktor had already left for church, but Guisella patched me up and kids in tow, I continued on my way.

So much for getting there early—instead, we were about five minutes late. I joined Tanya and Lilia, a couple of the young married women about my age, who were sitting in the back. Each of them had a stroller with a baby girl inside, and both of them appeared to once again be pregnant. There were a lot of small children at church, most of whom sort of wandered in and out. The Y kids were in the pew in front of me, and despite the excessive heat (it was probably in the upper 80s, there were no fans or air conditioning, and very few windows were open), they did pretty well. Valera sat attentively and listened, while Ruslan and Liza only left a few times. However, the entire pew was full of kids, and I kept worrying that the wooden slats across the back of the pew were going to come loose and the entire pew was going to come apart. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.

Needless to say, between the heat, the small children, and my worries about the children’s pew, I didn’t get much out of the service. However, I did accomplish my goal of connecting with some old acquaintances. This post has now gotten ridiculously long, so herein ends the story of my weekend.

Belated Ukraine Post #1--Saint Nadia

[Note: This is a post I wrote a week and a half ago and am just now getting around to posting now that I have Internet in my dorm room at LCC.]

Since the Internet here is variable to non-existent, I’ve decided to start typing up blog posts on my laptop and will transfer them to Blogger via my flash drive at some later date. Sorry for the delay, everyone (Mom, I promise I’m not putting all the good stories on Facebook and not on Blogger…last time I just ran out of time to update my blog).

It was raining cats and dogs (possibly literally, there are enough of them around here) for the last half hour or so, but Nadia had given me a plate of fresh blinchiki (thin pancakes), a bowl of strawberries straight from the garden, and a small container of sour cream. Already having a sugar bowl on my table, I added sugar to the sour cream, sliced up the strawberries, and applied the mixture liberally to the blinchiki. It doesn’t get much better than that.

In other food news, Nadia gives me four times what I want and three times what I can eat comfortably, and I still manage to eat about half of the total. Sigh…just as well I’m only here until next Sunday.

Overfeeding aside, I am still convinced that Nadia is destined for some sort of Ukrainian Baptist sainthood. The family is currently without a washing machine, dishwasher, hot water, or car, all of which they had when I was here two years ago. Plus, the kitchen is being remodeled, so Nadia’s using a room in one of the sheds on the property as a “summer kitchen”. And yet everyone is fed, clothed, and transported as needed. All of this with 11 kids at home!

goodbye to Ukraine :(

In Kharkiv with Mel, waiting for our overnight train to Kyiv. Sadly, tomorrow we part ways, as I'm headed to Lithuania and Mel will stay in Kyiv for a few days before heading to L'viv and then to Switzerland.

Today Viktor Y. (the dad of my family in Balaklia) was installed as the pastor of the Baptist church there I attended for two years. Nadia's dad (his father-in-law) was the pastor for many years, but he's almost 80, so he decided to step down. It's a decision Viktor and Nadia have been contemplating for the last couple of years, and while it's going to add even more into their busy lives, I can't think of anyone better suited to pastor the church than Viktor. Melanie and I stayed a day longer than we planned in Balaklia just so I could be at the service.

Last night, Melanie and I visited my friend Nataliya, and we had a grand time. We drank tea, ate cookies, played with baby chickens, were not allowed to see the newborn ducks lest they imprint on us and think we were their mothers, cut wheat with a scythe, and laughed and joked like the three single, travel-loving language teachers we are.

Mel and Sal do Ukraine, Part 1

Mel is here! And by "here", I mean Balaklia. We are at the post office, which these days has THREE computers with public Internet, and we are using two. We have had lunch at the Ys' (the elementary schoolers are pulling out all the English they know, which isn't much), went to my school and had tea with the director, and are now in the center. Mel is a great person to be with in Ukraine, because she finds it all interesting.

Yesterday I had the chance to do some second-hand shopping in Kharkiv. I have a new pink skirt and oatmeal-colored tank top for about $3 total, plus a (new) wooden barrette from the art market for about $4. Not bad at all.

Kharkiv!

Am currently in Kharkiv at an Internet cafe on the main square with a somewhat sticky keyboard. I think I'll wait to post my "extra" posts that I've been writing once I'm somewhere that seems less likely to be infected with viruses, as I don't want to end up with an infected flashdrive (and hence an infected laptop).

Today (don't worry, there will be posts for the previous days later), I went to the college in Balaklia to say hi to my friend Nataliya. Nataliya teaches Ukrainian, and if you can imagine a tall (but still plump), blonde, Orthodox, Ukrainian version of me, you'd pretty much have Nataliya. She was in a staff meeting when I got there, so I had to wait a bit, but the look of delighted surprise on her face when she saw me standing there was totally worth it. We caught up on work and church news (she's the only young person I know in Ukraine who's active in the Orthodox Church), and I appreciated that she didn't start the conversation with "So are you married yet?" as most people seem to. I told her this, and she informed me that she hadn't felt the need to ask since a) logically, I would have told her, and b) she didn't see a ring. She then bought me cookies and a bottle of cold water and put me on the eletrichka to Kharkiv.

Got to Kharkiv around 2:30, bought tickets for Melanie (who appears to still be on her merry way but is at least now in Ukraine) and I to get back to Kyiv on Sunday night, got a couple of souvenirs from the art market, looked in one of the clothing stores and decided I'm better off going to the second-hand store my friend Lena recommended, and am now here for Internet. Tonight I'm spending the night at Lena's mom's apartment and in the morning picking up Melanie. The Y kids were quite perturbed that I was leaving for a day, but hopefully bringing Melanie back with me will assuage them.

I really hate this keyboard, so this post is over now. :)

quick update, more to come later

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten you all, dear readers. It's just that the Internet here is slow, erratic, and monopolized by a seventeen-year-old. I keep writing long (very long) blog posts on my laptop on various topics, but I haven't gotten them all finished yet. When I get a few done, I plan to transfer them via flash drive to a computer with Internet and upload them to the blog.

In other news, I'm having a great time. I haven't had this much free time in ages. Today Vlada, Ruslan, Valera, Kolya (Vlada's boyfriend), and I went swimming in the river. I don't think I'd gone swimming since the last time I was in Balaklia two years ago.

The worst thing I've done so far was manage to trip and fall and skin one knee Sunday night. It looks rather dreadful (and makes me feel like I'm about 10 years old, to fall and skin my knee like that ), but I keep it well peroxided and I think it's going to be fine.

My friend Melanie from grad school, who's been teaching in Poland, is on her way to visit me. Prayers for her safe arrival in Balaklia are appreciated, especially because the last I heard from her, her first train (out of 4, I believe) was running late and she wasn't sure if she'd be able to make her connection in Warsaw. If she misses it she probably won't be able to visit me after all, so I'm praying that all goes well.

Also: Does anyone have the piano music for the song "Yes, I Know," which was sung by the Gaithers (among other people)? I learned the Russian version last night and would like to sing it in church on Sunday, but I don't have the piano music. If anyone has it, could you please scan it and email it to me at behrenw3 at yahoo dot com? Thanks!

first impressions

Bulleted list, because Internet time is limited:

~I have my own little apartment! It's across the courtyard from the main house, and Nadia's parents used to live there before they moved in with her brother's family. It comes with its own stove, sink, and bathroom, but has no hot water. Of course, the hot water heater for the main house is broken as well, so it's not like I'm really missing out...

~The kids have all grown up so much. My particular buddies are the middle school set--Valera, Ruslan, and Liza. They come over to sit at my kitchen table and we all sing out of my Ukrainian hymnal. Valera in particular is my buddy (always has been), and is quite concerned about me going anywhere by myself. When I said that I was going to Kharkiv next week to pick up Melanie, he thought he should go with me to make sure I'm okay. Such devotion is deeply touching and only occasionally cloying. :)

~It is a little bittersweet, however, because I remember when the older kids were my buddies and tagged around with me like the middle kids do now, and now they're adults or almost-adults with their own lives. Oleh especially makes me sad...he was my favorite student (not best student, but favorite) when I taught here, and now he's going through a rebellious phase, is home for roughly 5 minutes a day during daytime hours, and then rides off on his moped to parts unknown.

~Strawberrries fresh from the garden. Need I say more?

~Viktor went to a funeral in Kyiv, so I've been doing extra kid duty. We play any and every game I can think of. My personal favorite is making up treasure hunts for them in English. Ruslan, who's pretty sharp, translates the clues with some help from his cell phone dictionary, and then they all work together to figure out where the next clue is and go off running. I shouldn't have started it on Day 2, however, as now they want daily updates.

~Game night crew, rejoice! I have started a Qwirkle fad among the Y kids. I think they played it 10 times yesterday. If this keeps up, I shall soon feel about Qwirkle the way I feel about Uno (i.e., will be happy if I never see it again). But I think it teaches good thinking skills. They also have a game called "Football Manager", which runs on roughly the same principles as Monopoly.

~Between Internet limitations and not being in charge of my own food, there's no way I can keep up with Weight Watcher points until I get to Lithuania. That said, I think I'm running around with the kids enough to cancel out the extra food.

going on 30 hours with nothing but catnaps

If this post doesn't make much sense, read the title and please understand. :) I dozed a little bit on the Minneapolis-Amsterdam flight and might have actually slept on the Amsterdam-Kyiv flight (not sure), but I'm tired nonetheless. And hot, and sticky, and grubby...

But I'm HERE! I made it safe and sound to Kyiv around 1 o'clock this afternoon and caught a marshrutka to the train station, where I got a ticket to go overnight to Kharkiv (from whence I will catch an elektrichka to Balaklia). Went to a phone store and got a new battery for my old phone (I had two non-working Ukrainian cell phones, but now I have a working one! Yay!), so I could call Nadia and tell her approximately what time I'm coming tomorrow. She said they'd be waiting for me.

Also got in touch with my friends Natasha K. and Andrey. Natasha was actually my student, ages and ages ago, but now she's in medical school. She's the oldest of 8 kids (last I knew), and I used to attend the church she goes to sometimes on Sunday nights. The last time I was in Ukraine, I spent the night at her house and we talked and giggled until the wee hours of the morning. I used to tutor Andrey in English, and the last time I was here, he and his wife Ira had just had a little girl, Yanna. I can't wait to see how much she's grown!

Cast of characters for the next couple of weeks, since I think this blog is getting some new readers via Facebook (and it may help Melanie sort them out before she gets here!):

The Y family--my closest friends in Ukraine, Baptists with the biggest hearts of anyone I know. Have spent their lives taking in children from orphanages, with all the joys and challenges that entails:

--Viktor: The dad.
--Nadia: The mom. My mom when I'm in Ukraine.
--Vitaly: Oldest boy, serious, ponders theology, is married to...
--Katya: I used to teach her, and she's supposed to have a baby boy any time now.
--Vlada: Just finished high school. If her VKontakte page is any indication, is interested in love and fashion. :)
--Oleh: Same age as Vlada, last I knew was studying at a technical school, may have finished that by now. Used to be good pals with me, but was too cool for that last time I was there.
--Yura: Joined the Y family when he was already a teenager, didn't talk to me last time except to mock me. Biological brother of...
--Ruslan: Just finished 7th grade.
--Valera: Also just finished 7th grade. Has been my special buddy for years. I'm worried he'll have grown too cool for that.
--Liza: Just finished 6th grade.
--Snizhanna, Ihor, Serozhia, and Yan: Have all just finished 3rd grade. Hopefully their individual personalities will show through now that they're older.
--Alosha: Just finished 1st grade. When I first knew them, he was in a crib most of the time.
--Babushka (Grandma): Nadia's mom, lives across the yard. Married to...
--Didushka (Grandpa): Nadia's dad and the pastor of the church I attended for two years.

if the shoes fit, pack them?

Inspired by a) reading about sensible packing on Academichic (one of my favorite blogs) and b) prior knowledge that hauling large suitcases around Eastern Europe is a royal pain, I'm attempting to limit my luggage to a small suitcase (slightly larger than a carry-on), a shoulder bag inherited from my mother (which holds more than you'd think possible), and a computer bag (recently purchased since my old one gave up the ghost in New Orleans this past March).

Deciding what clothes to take has been a somewhat complicated process, since I'm doing so many different types of activities during the 58 days I'll be gone. In Ukraine, I'll be hanging out with kids in a small town, being a bit of a tourist in Kyiv, and attending a wedding. In Lithuania, I'll be teaching, but on the weekends, I'll be traveling and possibly biking. Ukrainian summer weather is quite warm, but I'm told that Lithuania is cooler, and since we'll be on the seacoast, it may be a bit damp.

I've written and rewritten and rerewritten my packing list over the last few weeks while my students were taking quizzes, and I'm fairly happy with the results (of course, I haven't tried fitting it all in my bags yet). However, I am concerned by the amount of footwear I'm taking: everyday sandals (for Ukraine and warm days in Lithuania), dressy sandals (for the wedding), brown shoes and black shoes (for cooler teaching days), and tennis shoes (for being active). I think I'm taking more pairs of shoes for two months than I did when I left for two years in Peace Corps. Eastern Europe, you have won (except that I have no high heels or pointy toes planned).

packing, plotting, and planning

Greetings, readers! I'm once again headed overseas for the summer on Monday, and so I am once again planning to blog on a somewhat regular basis. For the benefit of people who check Facebook but not blogs, I'm planning to import my blog posts as Facebook notes. For the benefit of people who check blogs but not Facebook (hi, Mom!), I'm using Blogger. I haven't blogged regularly since the last time I went overseas in 2009, so hopefully I can get used to expressing myself in longer forms than status updates or tweets.

What are my summer plans? So glad you asked. For the first two weeks, I'll be in Balaklia, Kharkivska Oblast, Ukraine, visiting friends from my Peace Corps days. Partway through that time, my friend Melanie, who's been teaching in Poland, will make the journey from western Poland to eastern Ukraine, and then we'll head to Kyiv for a day or so. After that, I'm headed to Klaipėda, Lithuania for a month to teach at LCC International University's Summer Language Institute. I'll be there from June 27-July 24. At that point, I head back to Ukraine for my friend Natasha's wedding, and on August 3, I fly back to the US. At that point, if past history is any indication, I'll stop blogging on any sort of even quasi-regular basis.