The Water Truck

My part of the country is full of gorgeous rolling hills, grassy fields, wild flowers, and the occasional tree, but we desperately lack rivers and lakes. When settlements were first being built in this region a little over a hundred years ago, numerous water reservoirs were dug. Unfortunately, we are also the heart of industry, complete with coal mines, slag heaps, factories, and smoke stacks: the Pennsylvania of Ukraine, if you will. Our tap water is absolutely not safe to drink. Even if boiled, if left to sit, a white cloud forms at the bottom of the glass. The only way to make the tap water safe is decant already boiled water off of this cloud of heavy metals, then boil again. That being a laborious process, I just use the water truck.

There is a truck which drives around town on a set route, following a set schedule, refilling five litre jugs with scrumptious, potable water. In fact, there are multiple trucks from competing companies. I used to buy from Water World, because I like dystopian Costner films, but now I purchase my water from Crucial, because they make a fair point.

At predisclosed times throughout the week,a loud horn carries across the yard and through my single-pane Soviet windows. Residents from surrounding apartments gather at the truck to fill their jugs with either fresh or carbonated water, depending on the day of the week. If your jug's handle breaks, they can cut it off and pop on a new one for just a few coins. If you don't have a jug, they can sell you a new one. Best of all, the water is exponentially cheaper than bottled water from a store. A typical 5 litre jug from the grocery would run me around 30 UAH; I can fill up at the water truck for 2.50.

The water truck: bringing you pasta, soup, and tea...without the heavy metals!

Not actually being there to take the picture myself, photo from fellow bloggers at Ukraine Confusion. Will replace with the Crucial truck when I go back.

ChasPik: The Greatest Hits

Yes, our winter concert was called "The Greatest Hits." No, we don't have any of those. That didn't stop us. Loaded with humour, choreographed dancing, costume changes, and Queen, it was indeed a concert to remember. Here are some of my favourite numbers. Check out my VK page for the full concert!

What happens in a choir practise when someone forgets the words? Obviously, the show must go on, but when four divas let their true feelings show, accusations start to fly.

ChasPik's arrangement of the classic Little Mermaid track "Kiss the Girl" has double the obnoxious seagull and all the...double bass harp playing...of the beloved children's classic.

I have no words. I can't. I just can't. Too damn funny.

The problem with speaking English is that sometimes my group assumes that I can sing all songs ever sung in English. As if the phonetics were the only thing keeping me from being Freddie Mercury. 

Community Encounters: "Oy, Amerikanitz! Get over here!"

Beware Russians asking for T-shirt translations.

A week ago, my neighbour across the hall came out of his apartment at the same moment I did. I had seen him around before: he can frequently be spotted on the building's front stoop, sucking down a cigarette and glowering out at the youths in the yard. This time he stopped me to ask what was written on his shirt.

This shirt would look good on your bedroom floor.

Andrei is a plump, buzz-bald married man in in his early thirties. Obviously he had purchased that particular article of clothing secondhand. Nevertheless, he found it entertaining and it served as an ice breaker between us. We struck up a conversation, but it wasn't an especially fabulous one. I could tell he was struggling to understand me, and I was on my way to buy groceries for dinner anyhow, so I wasn't particularly invested. When he found out my destination, he promptly invited me to dinner. “We're neighbours, we should get to know each other!” I agreed, though cautiously. Everything seemed pleasant enough, but he also did not strike me as the type of person with whom I wanted a close friendship.

How right my instincts were. After stepping foot in his house, I could no longer do anything correctly in his eyes.
“What are you doing? Take your shoes off. What the hell kind of socks are those?” (A: Black dress socks.)
“Would you sit down already, I know my house is nice. Stand up, we're going to move this table. Sit down, dammit!”
If I tried to talk to anyone else in the room, “What, you care more about them than the guy who invited you?”
If I asked about the toys around the house and what I assumed was his child, “What's it to you?”
If I ate, I was wrong. If not, he was insulted.
If I was serious, “You don't understand anything I say.” If I smiled, “What are you laughing at?”
Needless to say, the whole exchange was laced with some of the more choice cuss words of the rich Russian lexicon.

His affable door step nature had become irrationally confrontational. My biggest clue that this was his own problem and not anything I had done was the discomfort with which his wife and close friends sat around the table. I started to recognise other tell-tale signs of drunkeness. He was overly affectionate toward his guy friends, couldn't discern minor pronunciation mistakes, was more than a tad rosy in the cheeks, and repeated himself often. His mantra: “I don't love Americans.” When asked why, his answer was, “I don't like McDonald's.”

His wife Alla was such a trooper. If not for her, I would have felt so much more uncomfortable than I already did. She stayed on him throughout. “Leave him alone. You already said that, and it was rude the first time. We've already discussed this behaviour. You need to go to bed. Why in God's name did you invite him over here if you don't want him to get to know us at all? That's enough, go smoke a cigarette.” After thirty minutes of hen-pecking and “I don't love Americans,” Alla managed to shuffle him out the door for a smoke. When she returned to the kitchen, she flicked her jugular in the universal Soviet symbol which means That guy's wasted and told me, “You had better leave now before he comes back. Don't open the door for anyone.” I thanked her profusely for the invitation, food, defence, and hospitality, and scurried across the hall to the sanctuary of my own apartment, without further incident.

*          *          *          *          *

On my way to the market the next morning to gather supplies for cooking club, I hear someone bellow across the crowded street, “Oy, Amerikanitz! Get over here!” Naturally, the morning market throng is staring at me as I tip my cap in a 'Yep, that's me.' sort of gesture. There is Andrei, and I'm nervous. I left last night in secret, without saying goodbye or shaking hands. Russian men can be so weird about that, even if you're not specifically a guest in their home. All seems to be fine, to my relief. I get introduced around to another 5 people, all of whom are very kind. Andrei is apparently still drunk, and has no recollection of what took place last night. “Did I tell you how much I don't love Americans?” Yes. Yes you did.

*          *          *          *          *

Another day passes, and I pass Andrei in the stairwell. This must be the first time we've ever spoken and been sober, because he is extremely contrite. He tells me how much he hopes nothing offended me the other night, and apologises for his drunken behaviour. I sweep it all under the rug, wanting only to move on without incident.

It's nice to know that, when sober, he is a perfectly polite man. It's discouraging how rarely he seems to be that way, though. We've gone several days back at our customary nod and hello, and I take comfort in the fact that Alla is indeed an ally. The last thing I need is more neighbour problems, and all I wanted was to be nice and buy some groceries. That's the last T-shirt I translate.

Defence

Government funding here is not, as you might expect, doled out evenly regardless of merit and without incentive for improvement. Government employees, let's use teachers as an example, are asked to "defend" their skills every 5 years. If a teacher can prove that they are implementing modern methodological methods, improving students' abilities, and successfully imparting the required national curriculum, they receive a raise. If not, they are stuck at entry level pay for another 5 years. This process is called "defence," and it entails a lot of preparation, stress, and observation by important officials from the capital.

Just as teachers' pay is determined by these demonstrations of success and improvement, so is the House of Culture's funding. Any HoC receives a base budget from their local administration, in our case the Lutuginsky Region. However, if a HoC has dance, theatrical, or musical groups that are performing at a particularly high level, those groups can earn the status of "National." This means that the local administration's base budget is supplemented by a federal bump. This is rewarded since, aside from encouraging excellence, it is also assumed that excellent groups will need better costumes, transportation to festivals, and registration fees for competitions. The more National groups a HoC has, the more its overall funding.

Okolitsa (The Outskirts) defended its National status last Monday. Given that we are a "Cossack Folklore" group, we not only had to build a vocal repertoire, but also weave it into a skit that demonstrated traditions, told popular stories, and showed dance styles. We even prepared a spread of Cossack foods for the judges (which seemed ever so slightly like bribery).

Our local newspaper Glorious Labour, quoting the Director of the Lugansk Oblast Centre of National Arts, Honoured Employee of the Ukrainian Department of Culture, and Representative of the Certification Commission Vasily Yarovoy:

Today you have demonstrated the traditions of Ukrainian musical art, and what I've seen today has simply touched my soul. Yourperformance had wonderful voices, it had the beautiful spirit of giving, a high level of mastery and just a shocking atmosphere....It had soul, and that's all from you. Thank you for bringing our culture - Russian, Ukrainian, Don Basin Cossack - to the people. I'm proud that I myself have the opportunity to congratulate you. Such a young group, which means you are going to go places. Best of luck! Be creative!

 The result: we succeeded in defending our National title.

You can find more from the Okolitsa defence performance here.

Розкололось серце на дві половини.

In the past month I've taught at a seminar in the capital for teachers and volunteers, and I've also begun working on a section of a team-teaching manual for all teachers in Ukraine. However, most excitingly I've joined a group of Cossack singers. They sing songs native to the Zaporozhian region of the country (the most westerly river on this map), so everything we sing is in an archaic Ukrainian dialect (yuck), but the music is very beautiful and surprisingly eastern influenced. Here's one of the songs we're working on currently, and as soon as there's video of me in full Cossack garb belting bass and shaking tambourine, I'll be sure to post it.

Edit: As promised, here's a group shot of our folk group "The Outskirts." Let's play "Guess Who's American!"

New Music Video

These past few months, my friends and I have been helping a film student build her graduation portfolio. Last week, we were filming her latest work: a music video. Though I myself am not actually in the video, I was the cross-field bed schlepper, a synchronized candle extinguisher, and the curtain skirt undulator. Despite all that, I could not have predicted how eerie the final product would be. The song was so lyrical and I only worked on the sunshine scenes. What a surprise!

Kulesh

Kулеш (pronounced cool-YESH) is a camp fire soup. It originated as an army food of the Cossacks in Zaporozhye, but has since spread to camp sites everywhere. It's simple, cheap, and comforting, much like chicken noodle soup. Let's learn how to make it together. A Ukrainian will tell you that it is mandatory to make this soup over a fire, but honestly there's no reason why you can't make this on the range. Well, maybe there's one reason, but it's not a deal breaker. We'll come back to that in a minute.

Starting at the beginning, you'll need:

• 1.5 kg Russet potatoes
• 500 g cooked meat (Feel free to use any sort of leftovers you have around the kitchen. We used pulled pork, but chicken is also very popular.)
• 1 onion
• 1 carrot
• 200 g millet
• 3 bay leaves
• salt/pepper
• 1 cup greens (parsley, dill, green onion)

To hang the cauldron, Sergey cut some green branches, two with forks in them to be pounded into the ground and one a bit sturdier from which the pot could reliably hang. That metal wall was set up to protect the fire from the wind. We got the fire up, then started to boil the water. The onion goes in peeled but otherwise inatact. The bay leaves should be added as well.

Once the water is rolling, it's time for the potatoes. They should be peeled and cut into small cubes.

When the potatoes are done, It's time for carrots, cut julienne, and millet. If you are like me and have no clue what millet is, you could use a comparable grain like barley or even oatmeal. If you do know what millet is, good for you, but you're probably one of those gluten-free loonies, so bad for you. If you live in Ukraine and want to find millet, ask at your rinok for пшено (ударение на втором слог).

When the millet is soft, add the meat and greens. Boil for 5 more minutes and then serve. It's that simple. We actually used this seemingly disgusting boiled-pulled-pork-in-a-jar product. It's not as bad as it sounds. Or looks.

The only reason this must be done on an open flame, other than tradition of course, is the final step. Sergey took another green branch, peeled the bark off it, and then put the raw wood in the fire. Once the wood was blackened, He actually stirred the soup with the charred branch. It didn't make everything taste like cigarettes, as I expected it would. It just added the illusion that we had grilled the meat. Therefore, if you actually grilled the meat that you used, I think you could approximate the smokiness fairly well.

So, that's kulesh! Of course there are lots of variations. One of the more popular ones involves less water and a few beaten eggs at the end, yielding porridgy results similar to Korean juk. We, however, just stuck with the original, and it was both fun to make and filling to eat. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as we did!

2nd Cross-Ukrainian Open Competition

My collective and I were recently featured on the town culture blog for having come in second place in a major competition in Lugansk. Google translates the page pretty well, but that one sentence pretty much covers the gist of it. We sang not in Russian but in Ukrainian. It was a traditional a capella piece called "Hermit." Enjoy!

Fine Arts Camp

With my first week of summer, I conducted a day camp for kids in my town. Tired of the same old family tree project and discussion of sport, I planned a camp that used English to teach music, skits, and dance. With the help of a few other volunteers and community members, 30 kids learned step, Elmo's song, the gingerbread man, and others. Parents were happy with the performance, it was great to have some friends in town, and the students were happy to be part of something different. Here are some performance pictures.

 Step

 Hip-hop

 The Ants Go Marching

Gingerbread Man 

 Who Will Bell the Cat?

Last Bell

In my school, I teach the whole spectrum of students: 4th graders all the up to seniors (11th...). There are several groups, however, with whom I have a special relationship. My 5th graders and I meet 3 times a week, for instance, whereas most other groups will only see me once in that time. The seniors, however, have been my absolute favourites. I almost never see the 10th graders, and the 9th graders are obnoxious, but my upperclassmen are just the best. We meet regularly, including after class for advanced work. It was from this group of students that I snagged my cooking club boys. They are the most capable and motivated students in the school, which is what makes it particularly difficult to say goodbye to them.

Ukrainian schools bookend their academic calendar with First and Last Bell ceremonies. While the September event is a celebration of the new first graders and the promise of a new year of learning, the Last Bell is full of mixed feelings. All students officially go up a grade on this day, which is exciting. However, we say goodbye to the 11th graders. Draped in "Graduand" ribbons like at a beauty pageant, each school-leaver rings a golden hand bell, and the younger students shower them with flowers and best wishes.

Several of the young teaching staff gathered for lunch that day at the swanky (read: bechristmas-lighted) 999 Café in the centre of town, but I had the great honour to be invited to the private end of year stag party. In my school, there are 3 other male teachers. First, there's Boris Paulovich, the ancient and totally awesome chemistry teacher. He always makes conversation with me, usually about drone strikes or nuclear weapons history, which is so much more fun than small talk. The wood-shop teacher is named Andrey Boot, who helped me build and install my balcony shelves. Naturally, the PhysEd coach Constantine Nikolayevich is the third, a fellow kulinar but only in the most manly ways imaginable.

Together with these three gentlemen, I gathered at the no-girls-allowed club house: the weight training room in the gym. We enjoyed Constantine's home-made pickles, sausage, and vodka, while jamming to the radio station "America Hits Music." Then things got interesting. When the basketball came out it didn't seem like the best idea, but it was certainly more advisable than the BB gun. Well buzzed, we picked off ping pong balls and balloons on tables across the gym. Nobody shot their eye out.

The actual graduation ceremony didn't occur until almost a week later. The girls were decked out in prom dresses, the boys in suits. With a team of snare drum majorettes rented from Lugansk, all the graduands and their teachers and parents marched from the school to the town square, where other students and interested onlookers had gathered. The students did a choreographed catwalk while being introduced to the town as the freshest batch of adults. We then went inside the House of Culture for 3 hours of concert, diplomas, speeches, gifts, tears, and a personalized poem from the principal to each graduand. After night had fully descended, we stepped out onto the square once again for 15 straight minutes of fireworks and acrobatic dancing. The kids (who range in age from 17 to 18 years old) left the square for Korsar, a café their parents had rented for the evening, to enjoy dancing and champagne. These parents pulled out all the stops.

The downside of a school as small as this one is that while it's not hard to teach every student, it leaves no surprises for next year. I already know exactly who my kids will be, and these 11th formers have left them some big shoes to fill. They will be missed, but now I can pour my attention into a new group of children, who will hopefully prove to be just as special as the last.

Ouroboros

A few weeks ago, I and the rest of my cohort passed our one 1 year mark in country. This heralds a lot of good news, not the least of which is the end of winter. It wasn't the load of bricks we were led to believe it would be, but that may be due to the combination of it having been a relatively mild winter and my Michigan blood. Now the town is waking up again, shaking off its crusty hibernation. I feel a sympathy for the other half of volunteers, who arrive in winter. Whereas their first impression of their site was a cold, grey ghost-town, I have fond memories of a green and vibrant community. The end of a year means I finally get that back again.

Riding the dual high of sunlight and warm weather, my past week was very productive. I drew up some plans to put shelves on my piddly balcony. The labour training teacher has agreed to help me assemble and install them. In anticipation of the shelves, I got a summer herb garden started: basil, cilantro, watercress, and spinach. I've even got some cherry tomatoes and petunias going (The Russians call this sudden planting of a space озеленение or "greenification"). I completed both my taxes ($2,377.42 for the whole year, woohoo!) and the behemoth Volunteer Reporting document. I tried a new pizza dough / BBQ chicken pizza recipe. I knocked out a presentation with facts on all fifty states. Oh, and let's not forget that the notorious "not soon" sofas have returned, so at last my house has all its furniture.

The end of the first 12 months also concludes several other things. For starters, school is almost out. With the slew of orthodox holidays in the run-up to and aftermath of Slavic Easter (May 5th this year), classes won't even be in session for a full 2 weeks next month. What little school we do have left is a never-ending cycle of test prep and graduation dance rehearsals. The end of the '12-'13 school year means I will soon need to reboot my culinary club. Replacing these boys won't be an easy task, but I am excited about reaching out to a fresh audience.

Throughout Peace Corps orientation and training, the powers told us to be patient: spend the first year at site becoming a member of the community, then make waves during the second half of your service. I have faithfully stuck to this principle, integrating like a beast for the past year. [Status update: Russian now surpassing Korean at its peak; Expanding to direct communication with parents of students; Strong friendships in multiple social circles.] Now it's time to put this network to use, which demands a fundamental shift in my service priorities and my lifestyle. As of now, my school is floating the idea of overhauling one of the older, more dilapidated classrooms to transform it into a school newspaper. First, I have to make it through a very active summer, but I'm not opposed.

On the point of summer, if you're interested in supporting the camp in which I'm participating, you can donate online in a matter of minutes.*** Your donation will help fund the transportation and camp costs for needs-based scholarship recipients, as well as the materials we need for lessons and projects throughout the camp.

***Edit: The camp has been fully funded! Thanks to everyone who helped us get there! :)

Happy New Year

You have to skip forward a bit through the Russian, but this totally happened. This is what my life is like. Every day.

Молочные реки, кисельные берега

Mark Yankov learns to some
potato skillz at culinary club.

The Russian saying "rivers of milk, banks of kisel" is used when  everything in life is going great, which is true of my first month of working here at Lutugino's School #1. I have been granted classroom independence for 9 of my 18 classes, which gives me the freedom to teach as I see fit. Also, the classes I teach alone are comprised of a filtered group of only the most motivated students, so we really have a lot of potential for improvement over the course of this next year. I'm getting along well with teachers, staff, and neighbors, and I even have a regular cashier at the grocery store and egg lady at the bazaar with whom I routinely converse. I generally feel good about the Russian progress I've been making, and I feel that my tutor is effective. I've started a club for 11th grade boys who want to learn how to cook (a skill which this country seems to think men don't need) and I'm planning to attend a conference on methodology in two weeks with my counterpart. I feel generally that the school, personal, integration, and volunteer sectors of my life are successful and fulfilling.

7 awesome ladies and me, at the regional
performance for talented teachers

If that's not a wide enough milk river for your liking, yesterday the town itself celebrated its 115th birthday. "Day of the City" is a pretty big deal, including an all day concert, basketball tournament, horse rides, street food, flash mob, and fireworks. I spent the day supporting my performing students and spreading my circle of acquaintances and friends. Here are some of the highlight pictures from the festivities. C праздником!

Soviet dance number?

Kids were encouraged to decorate the pavement in the central square.

Inside the House of Culture was a singing competition that felt sort of like Tuesday night karaoke.

My 11th grader Natasha did very well!

Horse rides around the square

Several barbecue stands popped up around the edges.

Basketball tournament in the afternoon

The local militia performs.

The presentation of the city flag

Flash mob!

The ever-fabulous Shashlik

Our technology teacher demonstrates the proper de-skewering method.

This dude had no idea why I wanted to take a picture.

Lots of my students were in this one. It was really fun to watch!

Adaptation

So the other day, I wake up hungover from a night of Russian billiards and cards with my neighbors to the piercing toll of an 8:30 am doorbell. I totter over to the door and answer it in my boxers, despite my deeply ingrained and cultural body image problem. My neighbor leads in the employee of the electric company to check the meter for accuracy. I sign some form and lead them back out, but by this time I've had to think too hard about communication to hope for sleep.

Getting my rear in gear, I light the broiler and start to take a shower. Within 60 seconds I notice the bathroom floor is covered with water, dropping my soap into the litter box in my scramble to shut the water off. Apparently when the landlady came yesterday to paint over the rusty pipes she moved the tub, which disconnected the drain from the plumbing.

Now I'm on the floor, wading under the tub to reconnect pipes, and all I'm thinking to myself is, Well, I won't have to mop this floor for a while, and now my soap is exfoliating. Then I realize that any one of those incidents would be unacceptable to me just 6 months ago. Maybe it was the apathy of the morning after, but maybe just maybe I'm starting to adapt to the unpredictability the governs every aspect of life here.

Ukraine: it's no Africa, but it's no cakewalk either.

Interactions with the Remont-ing Community

With winters here grueling and hard on both the soul and the structures, most Ukrainians busy themselves in the summer with remont-ing, or repairing. Finally, labourers are not discouraged by the subzero temperatures, and neither ice nor frozen earth can prevent access to pipes or walls. In this summer, I've had the experience to work with 3 remonters to prepare my own apartment for winter. Here are their stories.

Andrei
Actually the shop teacher at school, Andrei came to install a light fixture in the hallway and a counter top around my sink in the kitchen. He did a very fine job and used materials from the school, so he didn't charge me anything. The most distressing thing about my new apartment, however, is the broken window on the balcony. Left as is, my home will be open to all the ravages of winter without even a single pane of glass to protect me. Andrei promised to return with glass. 8 weeks ago.

Boris
Having been left with mostly old furniture that was used by someone's grandmother for centuries and then left unattended with the rest of the apartment after her passing a year ago, the sofas and chairs here were in no condition to be used. Boris, the cousin of a teacher from school, offered to reupholster the furniture with old drapes or excess fabric in his spare time. He has done an excellent job so far, but when he came to pick up the last three sofas (right? why do I need so many?), he gave me the most honest Ukrainian answer ever.
   Me: When will you return with these sofas?
   Boris: Not soon.

Vitaly
The downstairs neighbours had been complaining about the pipes leaking water for longer than I've been here. Two years ago, they got on the waiting list for a public plumber to come remont. Finally, an appointment was scheduled for last week. Seeing as how the pipes are either in their ceiling or my floor, the landlady asked me if the plumber could work through my apartment. Of course! What could go wrong?

Vitaly arrived at nine in the morning to begin replacing the rusty old pipes with plastic ones. He stood my tub upright, removed my toilet, dug out large sections of wall and floor, and in the process covered everything in my house with a layer of concrete (and presumably asbestos) dust. Around three or four o'clock, I noticed the stillness in my apartment, but judging from the state of things, he must have been working downstairs. It was only after the landlady arrived to survey the completed work that I realized Vitaly had left.

Now, I've not had a lot of experience with American repairmen, either opting to fix things myself or ignore the problem altogether, but I have a feeling that if one's work involved creating such a mess, one would at least take the hunks of concrete and rusty pipe out to the garbage, not to say anything about the grey snow left everywhere. Worst of all, a hole the size of a strawberry rhubarb pie was left in the floor behind my toilet, not only providing an escape route for my cat but also laying bare all acts performed in one bathroom to anyone with auditory or olfactory senses in the other. My landlady's solution? To remove the rug from in front of my bathroom sink and spread it neatly over the hole.

My favourite part of this story is that all four times I have explained to a Ukrainian the previous paragraph and my expectations of a repairman, the result has been identical: uncontrollable fits of laughter.

Perhaps this is a country in which the squeaky wheel always gets the oil, or perhaps I'm just too softened by first world conditions, but at the very least this is all part of learning to operate within a new system with different standards and expectations. Who knows what life will be like once September comes and I enter this strange world of Ukrainian employment alongside other labourers!

Picnic

With my friend E visiting town, I wanted to do three things: cook, can, and relax. While we did all of those things, I also felt it necessary to show her a bit of Ukrainian culture, since she came all this way. So, Wednesday we took a break from our extravagant kitchen plans to take a bag full of meat, a watermelon, and our neighbors out to the lake behind the supermarket. The result was an excellent time, some delicious grilled шашлык (shish kebab), and some great memories.

The spread

Shashlik

Kimchi!

Ira's niece refused to even look at me. I'm gonna be a great teacher!

Beware of hop-ons. You're gonna get some hop-ons.

Totally found a hedgehog, but no one could get a  focused picture of it for unknown reasons.

Integration!

Pickles Got Made

About a week ago I made a request of all my neighbors: If you are canning something, just knock on my door and let me watch. You don't have to give me anything but the recipe. Three days ago, Paulina took me up on that. She gave me a list of products to hunt down for home-made pickles. With limited Russian ability, I was only just able to locate all the specific ingredients (it is so hard to say "liter jars with lids"!). While gathered around  the potable water refill truck, I mentioned to Paulina that I now had everything I needed and would like to know what to do next. She gave me some lose instructions (some of this, cut it, add that), but I guess she could tell that I still wasn't quite sure what to do. 15 minutes later my doorbell rings, and there's Paulina with every other married woman from the building. They marched into my kitchen and made pickles happen. Here's how it went down.

They started by "sterilizing" the jars with cold water and baking soda. Does anyone know if that's a real thing? Meanwhile, one of the women was chopping the dark green leaves from horseradish and plucking yellow flowers from dill weed. They threw that with whole peppercorns and some garlic cloves (halved lengthwise) into the jars.

Yet another lady was slicing horseradish root at an angle to be added in. At the same time, Paulina was cramming in as many cucumbers as could fit in the liter jars. Some got cut, but she says that doesn't matter.

The jars were topped off with cold water, not vinegar. A tablespoon of salt and a heap of ground mustard got added to each one. In two of the jars, I convinced the women to allow a dried chili pepper to be added for some extra heat.

We didn't actually can them per se. These plastic lids sat in boiling water until they became malleable then were crammed on the jars. Now they've hardened again, but next time I can I think I'm going to do it legit. The product is three murky jars of pickles-to-be, just waiting for winter. It was all over as quickly as it started, and the women filed out.