Holla from Kiev

October 18, 2008 · Filed under Uncategorized

I am posting these following three entries from Kiev. Today, October 18, is the magic date on which PC trainees can begin to travel from their training sites, excluding their neighboring link sites.

 

10-17-08

 

Health Day

 

Today the village school had Health Day. If the weather is nice, the children (this includes all forms 2-11) head to the nearby woods to play competitive games, dance, sing songs, cook kasha, and generally have a good time. Unfortunately, it rained a lot last night and the weather was not great this morning so Health Day was confined to the school and its surrounding grounds. We trainees spent the morning in the back of the school with the students. It was terrific and I experienced a bit of nostalgia for Potomac’s Red-Blue Days. Each form competed against each other. Boys counted the number of push-ups they could do in a minute. Girls counted the number of sit-ups. Kids raced on an obstacle course and competed in relay races. There were also volley-ball and football games. We watched different forms perform prepared dances to traditional Ukrainian accordion music. The best part of the morning, however, was when the PC Trainees were invited to compete against the 10^th form boys in a tug of war. The four of us won twice very handily and it was a lot of fun to feel included in the games after spending the morning as somewhat awkward spectators. If there is not some kind of Health Day in place at the school in my permanent site, I am most certainly going to try to make it happen. 

 

10-13-08

 

Until the Cows Come Home

 

I had never really thought too long or too hard about the expression doing something “until the cows come home.” In my mind, I usually equated the expression with doing something all day or late into the night. Working or partying hard in some manner or form for a long time. I never stopped to consider where the cows were coming from, how they knew it was time to go home, and, most importantly, why this time should demarcate the end of a party?

 

I can now proudly say that I know exactly what time the cows come home, in Mryn at least. At 5:35 pm ish (insert appropriate 17:35 ish for euro time), the cows of Mryn journey from their daytime frolics (I am still trying to figure out this location to complete the cow puzzle) to their homes. At this time of the evening, every day, you can go for a walk around the town and play dodge the cows and the massive cow paddies. I am often out for a walk at this time. I usually turn the bend to find 15 to 20 cows coming down the road at me. Mooing low and trucking along. My initial reaction is often, wow, that’s a lot of cows and keep walking only to round the next bend and run into another onslaught. To me, the most surprising aspect of it all is the fact that I have not seen anyone responsible for herding these heifers back to their sheds for the night. They seem to be in fact rolling home of their own volition. I will be honest. I was unnerved during my first several walks in which I was engulfed by the cow exodus. Some of these suckers have some pretty gnarly looking horns, some are heavy droolers, some are loud mooers, and many are completely unconcerned by people walking towards them and will continue on their path despite your presence. I often find myself walking along with the masses and every once in a while, the cow in front in front of me will make a quick perpendicular turn and bust in through the gate of a fenced in cottage house (aka the cow’s home). Sometimes the fences are closed and cows are left waiting outside, mooing, asking for a good milking and some feed. Point of the story, the city slicker is slowly learning and in fact there is a fairly specific time when the cows come home.

 

10-10-08

 

Organic Like Woah

 

            When I left for school today, I was fairly sure that my host mother told me that she was going over to their dacha (their “country house” that is actually located in the same village) to kill some chickens. She made a fairly explicit show of cutting her own neck with a knife and I definitely understood the word chicken. Indeed, when I got home from observing an English class at school, there were four headless and pretty meaty chickens lying on our kitchen table. I mean right on the table. On the placemats on which we eat twice a day that do not tend to get scrubbed down too often. I suppressed my immediate fears of salmonella EVERYWHERE and as I looked at their bloodied limp necks and the remnants of the feathers on their skins, I realized that I have never been so close to my food source before. I know that this seems like a fairly obvious realization, but it made me chuckle at the thought of all of the “organic” foods that fill places like Whole Foods and even regular grocery stores now. They may be organic as in grown without chemicals, pesticides, hormone injections etc, but often they have still been picked, packaged, shipped, and displayed for purchase far from their original fields, coops, or pastures. On my kitchen table, however, is the real deal. And it tastes like chicken.