Cossacks

Map time! Here we have southern Russia, western Kazakhstan, the Caucus region, and eastern Ukraine, where I live. As you can see, my little green arrow is dead in the centre of the pale yellow shape. That shape indicates the territory most heavily populated by Cossack hordes.

These nomadic horsemen once thrived in the rich steppe and river basins of this region. The Cossack people have disputed origins, but they are likely a blend of Turkish, Mongol, and Slavic peoples and gained prominence around the 15th century. They were semi-autonomous and integral to the Russian border defence for hundreds of years. However, with the mechanization of the first and second World Wars, the Cossacks (and cavalries in general) became obsolete.

No longer instrumental to the protection of the Soviet Union, the Cossack subculture fell on hard times. During the Bolshevik period and the subsequent famine, the state redistributed many of the crops grown in this region among urban centres. As a result, the Cossack population dwindled.

In recent times, Ukraine, Georgia, and even Putin's government have taken measures to increase protection of what few Cossacks remain, now mostly poor farmers or peasants. In eastern Ukraine, however, people identify closely to the Cossack heritage and keep it alive as their own. Festivals celebrating the culture, conquests, and music of the Cossack people are frequent and spirited. More than half of the collectives performing in our House of Culture are dedicated entirely to maintaining and performing Cossack folk songs.

I often hear from volunteers in western Ukraine the misconceived notion that only in their regions can you find culture and history. While it may be true that Lugansk lacks synagogues, castles, or cities older than 200 years, ours was a nomadic and oral history and is not to be discredited. It may not be as photogenic as the West, but we do have loads of this: I give you Казачья молитва, the Cossack's Prayer.

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!

Kharkivshchyna: Constructivism and Cablecars

"Of Ukraine." It's a typical occurrence to hear someone describe a city, holiday, or custom as "the ________ of Ukraine." The intention, of course, is to convey that there are places worthy of fame here, that this country is just as high-quality as Western Europe. You should totally see the fountain in Vinnitsa! It's the Bellagio of Ukraine! Over time, however, this particular tagline more lowers expectations than raises them. Instead of picturing the Paris of Ukraine, you can't conjure up more than the Ukrainian Shadow of Paris.

This past week, I had the opportunity to return to the Boston of Ukraine, to a city with historical roots and a lot of universities, to Kharkov. I was last there during the 2012 Euro Cup, and the city was fine. The people are prettier, or at least not as beaten down by the world as the locals in my area of the country (the Rust Belt of Ukraine). The buildings aren't the same drab bloc apartments and factories as in Lugansk. Overall though, Kharkov didn't leave a deep and lasting impression, and I doubted I would return. When our regional safety and security meeting was relocated there, however, I found myself back on Freedom Square.

The seminal difference between this trip and the prior one was the decision to couchsurf. The decision was partly economical, but most important was the chance for a deeper understanding of the city. Zhenya Dudenko accepted my friend Andrew and I for a weekend of touring, history, home-made wine, and great stories. Zhenya showed us a series of ancient cable buckets, built as a way for factory workers to commute across the marsh (the Amtrak of Ukraine). He knew the names and stories of all the monuments, and the locations of the best pints. He took us to parks off the beaten path and knew the best places to get shish kebab or hummus-stuffed rolls. Thanks to Zhenya, we saw a remarkable version of the city that was unmemorable the first time around. Some of the highlights included the statue with a beating heart, the eerily abandoned megalith bazaar, the miniature water park where locals fill up on potable water and the obese bathe in Speedos, and the architectural style known as constructivism, exclusive to Kharkov.

As for the safety meeting, we got to meet the chief of transportation police, try on his Soviet hat collection, poke his tarantula, visit his jail cells, and tour the yard where people used to be executed by firing squad (the Lethal Injection of Ukraine). We later went to a meeting with the actual chief of police and several of the higher ups. It was a very formal and serious affair. We were being escorted by the PC director of safety and security Sergei Pashynsky, but while he was parking the car around the corner we got sucked into the meeting. 

As soon as we started climbing the stairs, fellow volunteer Dawn and I were already being photographed and videotaped. We reached the conference room on the 4th floor, where everyone was already seated and waiting impatiently. The aide continuously spoke to me in Russian about who else was coming, where we should sit, and how I would be translating. It was only after seeing the name tag on my chair that I realized he thought I was Sergei, the 50-some year old ex-SBU (the KGB of Ukraine) bruiser with the cop lingo of De Niro and the penetrating stare of Rip Torn. Needless to say, I did not want to fill those shoes. While we were waiting for him to park the car, we followed the lead of the people across the table by talking under our breath and making emphatic hand gestures.

In the end, it all turned out fine. I didn't have to translate between Dawn and the police. I didn't even have to translate between Zhenya and Andrew, who studied Ukrainian and should by rights have drowned amongst all the Russian. The food was good but not unaffordable, the trip was relaxing but not without a sense of adventure, and the company was tolerable even sober. I doubt a third trip to the Boston of Ukraine is in the cards for me, but a year is a long time and I know better than to say I'll never return somewhere. 

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.

Солянка (Solyanka)

It's the middle of winter, the heat in your car doesn't work, and you don't want to go to the grocery store. You have some left-over meat lying around in the fridge, some root vegetables, but no remnants of the summer harvest. A can of olives stands in the pantry next to some tomato paste. What do you cook to beat back the chill? For many Ukrainians, the answer is solyanka. Quite literally meaning "hodgepodge," solyanka is left-over stew for those times when nothing fresh is available. One Ukrainian told me that this soup is not correct without at least 4 types of meat, but other blogs claim as many as 7 types are required for flavourful solyanka. I submit to you the Solokhin Family Recipe for Solyanka Ukrainskaya.

5 or so kinds of pork
1/4 of a chicken
3-4 potatoes
2 finely grated beets
1 finely grated carrot
1 diced onion
4 dill pickles
4 tbs of tomato paste
2 tbs of vegetable oil
lemon, black olives, and sour cream to garnish

1) In the biggest pot you got, start boiling the chicken in about 2 litres of water (fill the pot halfway).

2) Start chopping meat! All your bacon, sausage, hotdogs, salami, smoked ham, and bratwurst need to be chunked into dice-sized bites. Set all that aside.

3) Peel and cube your potatoes. After the chicken has been boiling for about 20 minutes, pull it out and throw in the potatoes.

4) Throw your onion and carrot on the skillet with your oil. When the onions are translucent, add the beets. While all that's going, dice up the pickles and throw them in too. Add your tomato paste and mix it all around.

5) In the meantime, we're keeping an eye on the potatoes. Are they half done? Throw in your meat, including the chicken that you were boiling. Just strip it off the bone and chop it up first.

6) When the potatoes are completely cooked, dump the contents of the skillet into the pot. It should be just about topped off with ingredients, so dump gingerly. Salt it to your taste.

7) Serve it up, not being stingy with the meaty broth. Top it off with a quartered lemon slice, a few halved olives, and a big dollop of sour cream.

Woah, 200th post!

Fakesgiving and the End of Fall

With fall break at the end of October, several of us decided that it was necessary to take the time off we had and gather together for a Thanksgiving-style dinner. One dish per person: that was the goal. With twelve of us coming, that meant a lot of food and a lot of work. For both M and I, this was the first time we'd ever hosted a Thanksgiving event, so naturally we wanted everything to be perfect. We tapped a lot of generational knowledge built up from years of watching our own families pull off such a feat. Respect to anyone who's ever had to do this.

We hawked the meat market for a turkey, the vegetable section for celery, and the various magazines for a decent dark beer. We started cooking 2 days in advance. M busted out an impressive 3 pies, including apple, peanut butter, and a laborious pumpkin pie from scratch. The twelfth of twelve dishes came off the stove top at exactly the right time. It was an impressive spread, if I do say so myself. A delicious and moist turkey, sausage/apple cornbread stuffing, pumpkin soup, stewed veggies, broccoli casserole, mac'n'cheese, glazed carrots, mashed potatoes with gravy, stuffed zucchini, a raspberry-pomegranate sauce, buttery bread, and a big tossed salad.

My actual service is going wonderfully. They say that the first year is hard for Americans. We so eagerly want to do that we lack the patience to build the connections necessary in this country for any sort of progress. Well, I've certainly been doing a lot of integrating and relatively little doing. My neighbors have started including me in their weekly dinner parties with their other young-couple friends. I went fishing with my language tutor, where I met his father and cousin. I celebrated some staff birthdays and the pizza joint. Slowly, I meet more and more people. Slowly, my Russian is shifting from forcing myself to listen to the noises to actually understanding them (and perhaps soon to participate in group conversation). Slowly, I'm becoming a part of this community.

Perhaps the most exciting development of all happened days after the 115th birthday of the city. My school forced me to perform a song for the town's birthday, where the guy running the lights mentioned me to the director of the House of Culture, who then encouraged the leader of a small men's ensemble to invite me to join. Since that day, I have been singing with him and his ragtag group consisting of a welder, student, security guard, and chef. It has been a huge step for my language skills and my community integration, but mostly it's just really wonderful to have a hobby and a group of friend's outside of my school and apartment. Concert in December!

Lastly, I leave you pictures of my culinary club boys, who were thrilled today to cook Russian crêpes.

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!

Look at Me Now, Look at Me Now...

I'm makin' papers!

My first week in the town, it was my terrifying privilege to conduct an English Camp, one of the aspects of this job at which I have absolutely no experience. Not 3 days at my site, still crashing on the couch of my counterpart, and I'm expected to organize a 3 week, 6 hour per day English camp for kids I don't know starting tomorrow. Yeah, right.

Thanks to my killer negotiating skills, I managed to get the camp down to a more manageable duration and enlisted some help from my awesome site mate and the other English teachers in my school. Distilled down to a week of getting to know each other for an hour each day, the students and I had an excellent time introducing ourselves, playing charades and pictionary, scavenger hunting, and talking about everything from hobbies to family.

It was a nice first attempt, but nothing remarkable. What shocked me was being presented with this page of the local newspaper now, so many months later, which the physics teacher saved for the whole summer. Hopefully this is only the beginning of a long string of good news.

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!