Oracle and Odyssey

First of all I have to mention that the title is an homage to one of our favorite albums, “Oracle and Odyssey”, by the Zombies (which is actually misspelled on the album; we don‘t remember how). Anyhow, it’s one of the few CDs we downloaded before we left the States.

Before we moved here, I was under the impression that the “typical” Ukrainian was blond and fair, maybe blue-eyed. I thought I was going to stand out. But there are really a lot of dark-haired dark-eyed people. There are even a few Asian-looking people probably from other former-Soviet areas. Recently, I was told by a colleague that I have a classic Ukrainian look. Since then, or even before I had heard that, I was approached by 4-5 different people a day asking for directions, for me to take a photo, and whatever else they were asking me. I just say, “I only speak English” and they look disappointed and walk away. Hence, Joe addresses me as the “oracle” even though I never know nor understand anything. I did, however, end up helping the people who asked that I take their photo, and, I might add, I was able to help a woman who asked “Do you speak English? Where is the supermarket?” Thank YOU!

Joe doesn’t have traditional Ukrainian looks but blends in pretty well. We try to act fairly native by eating the local food, taking the metro, and learning a bit of the language. It’s curious that we still don’t know which is more practical to concentrate on, Russian or Ukrainian. I will pose that question to local teachers in an upcoming workshop and let you know the outcome. We do occasionally drink coffee at McDonald’s (even though we never go there in the States). Maybe it has something to do with the clean bathrooms or the view from the parking lot in our neighborhood (see the photo with drive-thru, alias “McDrive”). Although Ukrainians seem to be much more animated and open than many of their Eastern European neighbors, they are not too demonstrative toward strangers. While sipping a beer in a local cafй the other evening, Joe saw the Japanese tour bus passing by; in order to make them feel welcome, he waved energetically. They enthusiastically returned the wave so happy to see such a “friendly Ukrainian”. We also decided to go “walking” the other day for exercise and were the only ones, save for two bicyclists, one jogger, and two “strolling” couples that passed us on the river walk.

Although they don’t seem to be especially athletic, I wouldn’t say that Ukrainians were heavy or unselfconscious about their appearance. If fact, he women are typically quite slim and very eager to express their fashion ideas. There is truly a wide range of outfits on the streets - enough to merit a separate blog entry - I’ll work on that one. The men are much more conservative and hardly seem to notice the skimpy and often outrageous outfits their female counterparts wear.

I just finished my first week of work at the university and two days of orientation at the Embassy. We’ve come up with a variety of interesting project ideas which include:

• weekly teacher development workshops
• short-courses for teachers
• a conversation club
• videotaping seminars to increase outreach to rural areas
• training Peace Corps trainers
• observing teachers
• collaborating on testing issues with the British Council
• presenting at conferences
• meeting up with a local author to work on a textbook for the seventh form (like seventh grade)

I should be making a trip out to Odessa at the beginning of October. We met up with the other fellow who is based in Odessa; he’s in Kyiv right now for orientation. We ate out near Independence square (see second photo) in the center of town - very impressive tall historical buildings and always lots of activity; people are milling around taking the metro on weeknights until midnight! This square heads up a boulevard of sorts called “Khreshatyk“. It’s usually quite busy with traffic but gets closed down during the weekends and turned into a pedestrian area. Public drinking is common - it’s very typical to see people walking around, at all hours of the day, with a beer bottle in hand. It’s weird for us to see… still haven’t gotten used to that. This weekend we plan to see some art at some of the art museums near the center.

P.S. 10 of our boxes came! Yay! “Quilty” is very content is his new home. Who’da thunk anything could match the rainbow curtains and pistachio walls!!!