Saturday, December 24, 2005
I wanna pet the chinchilla!
There's an outdoor arts and crafts fair in the park down the street. A man stands out there holding a chinchilla. When females walk by, see the chinchilla, and beg to pet it, he gives it to them, snaps a photo of them, and charges them $10 for the picture. The thing is SO CUTE it's almost worth the $10.
Is it too late to ask for a chinchilla for Christmas?
Mrs. Freeland was doing some last-minute Christmas shopping yesterday, so we stopped by the World's Coolest Toy Store. This thing was AMAZING. There was a small carousel for the kids to ride, a kid-sized dollhouse, a place to have custom clothing made for your dolls, and more. In the basement was a video game arcade, with expert drawings of anime characters spray-painted onto the walls. I got pictures of the anime murals, but they wouldn't let me take pictures anywhere else. Too bad, because Casey 3 looked absolutely precious up on the carousel. She didn't want to leave.
As an escape from the third showing of Cinderella (Casey 3's current favorite) they let me watch My Fair Lady. I LOVE that movie. Isn't it the best in the entire world? We also watching The Incredibles, which is also great fun.
We've been eating a lot of fruitcake here. Mrs. Freeland asked Luda to cut up a cup apiece of dried cherries, pineapple and other fruits to make a cake. There was a language problem, and Luda ended up cutting up several cups apiece, so we had LOTS of fruitcake batter. It's actually fairly good cake, though, so I don't mind.
It is really $%&@# cold today. Maybe I should make myself a cup of tea.
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Is it too late to ask for a chinchilla for Christmas?
Mrs. Freeland was doing some last-minute Christmas shopping yesterday, so we stopped by the World's Coolest Toy Store. This thing was AMAZING. There was a small carousel for the kids to ride, a kid-sized dollhouse, a place to have custom clothing made for your dolls, and more. In the basement was a video game arcade, with expert drawings of anime characters spray-painted onto the walls. I got pictures of the anime murals, but they wouldn't let me take pictures anywhere else. Too bad, because Casey 3 looked absolutely precious up on the carousel. She didn't want to leave.
As an escape from the third showing of Cinderella (Casey 3's current favorite) they let me watch My Fair Lady. I LOVE that movie. Isn't it the best in the entire world? We also watching The Incredibles, which is also great fun.
We've been eating a lot of fruitcake here. Mrs. Freeland asked Luda to cut up a cup apiece of dried cherries, pineapple and other fruits to make a cake. There was a language problem, and Luda ended up cutting up several cups apiece, so we had LOTS of fruitcake batter. It's actually fairly good cake, though, so I don't mind.
It is really $%&@# cold today. Maybe I should make myself a cup of tea.
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Thursday, December 22, 2005
The Ukraine, Part II
Okay, I'm marginally less jet-lagged now, so I'll try to write a little more.
Yesterday Mrs. Freeland and her translator/assistant Luda and I went to the market. The market was... interesting. Let's just say that I'll be watching to make sure the meat is thoroughly cooked before I eat it. There were dogs and cats and pigeons all over the place, and the tables were not exactly up to hospital standards of cleanliness. On the plus side, the Freelands have been eating here for over a year and haven't died yet.
Mrs. Freeland and I were talking about the American approach to life, and how it doesn't really work here. Everything takes FOREVER to do--just buying and preparing dinner can take five hours, what with walking for 30 minutes to the market, then waiting for 10 minutes in line at the butcher's, then another wait for the cheesemonger's, and so on. Mrs. Freeland says everyone at home is always asking her what she DOES with herself--she doesn't work here, and she doesn't have many friends, and she can't even understand the television--and she can only reply that just LIVING here takes all her time.
I now know four words of Ukrainian: spacibo (thank you), internet, cafe, and telephone. It's a start, anyway. :P I have about half the Cyrillic alphabet memorized, too, so I can occasionally read street signs. Go me!
Today Luda's son Anatoli took Joe and I shopping. We browsed through an open-air market, where Joe bought hand-painted boxes and those little stacked Russian dolls as Christmas presents for some friends back home. After that, we stopped by a CD store--CDs cost the equivalent of about $4 here! Then lunch at 'Top Sandwich'. I had 'verlinki' which was kind of like sour cream and onion potato chips, only better: dumplings filled with potato and sauteed onions, dipped in sour cream. Why don't we eat verlinki in America?
After shopping we met everyone at the local art museum. The paintings were... okay. Only one or two I really enjoyed. The real attraction was the docent, this wonderful little old Jewish guy. Apparently Mr. Freeland goes to the museum every few weeks just to talk to him. There was a little language confusion and he ended up thinking I was British, not just studying abroad in England, so throughout the tour he kept directing remarks to me like, 'And when Gallaway came to Odessa he stopped by the museum just to see this painting. You know who Gallaway was, right? You don't? You need to study up on your history, then. He was one of your last Prime Ministers.' But a very nice guy, anyway, and he knew EVERYTHING about all of the paintings in the collection.
Jue and I just got back from a costume party held by the local Campus Crusade. Only a few people spoke English, and I don't speak Russian or Ukrainian, so I spent a lot of time sitting in the corner wondering what everyone was laughing at. Joe had a wonderful time, of course, because he doesn't need to speak the language to instantly become best friends with everyone in the world--probably a skill I need to work on cultivating. His mother made him a Christmas tree costume: green wrapping paper stapled to posterboard and decorated with tinsel, glitter, and a couple of ornaments. He won first prize in the costume competition. I didn't really have anything costume-like, so I just wore one of my Indian salawar suits. Didn't win anything, but I thought I looked pretty. I hate to be disloyal to Joe, but I think the girl that won second place should have gotten first--she was dressed as the squirrel from Ice Age. She had an orange shirt, skirt, tights and boots and a furry tail. She'd taken an orange beanbag pillow and put a brown hat on top to make a plushy acorn, and made herself a cardboard mask. She even did the little squirrelly noise! It was insanely cute!
The Guptas arrived this morning. They have a little girl named Casey, so of course there's been no end of confusion. We'd initially proposed to call her Casey 2, because she got here second, but she indignantly said, "But I'm not two, I'm three!" so now we have to call her Casey 3. She's really cute, anyway, and was apparently very excited to meet 'the other Kacie'. She condescended to allow me to use her crayons, but made sure I knew what an honor I'd been given.
There's a sign in the landlady's window that says 'Adam and Eva'. I voiced my suspicions to Mr. Freeland and it turns out that, yes, there is a Ukrainian mail-order bride service running out of the bottom floor of this apartment building. Any of you guys want a Ukrainian bride, let me know in the next couple of days and maybe I can get you a discount.
All the girls here wear miniskirts with thigh-high boots and fur coats. It looks rather fashionable, I'll admit, but I still wonder how they keep from freezing to death. Apparently I inevitably single myself out as American wherever I go by actually wearing clothing of a thickness appropriate to the weather.
Odessa was built in the 18th century by a French architect hoping to make it 'the Paris of the East'. The Freelands live in the city center, which is full of beautiful old buildings in the Baroque style. I took lots of pictures! Odessa must have been beautiful in the past. Unfortunately, the past 200 years have not been kind to it. Most of the buildings are in horrible condition, or have been replaced by ugly grey Soviet concrete monstrosities. The museum, which was in a building that Marie Antoinette would have proudly called home, was in a tragic state of disrepair. The roof leaked, the chandeliers had been replaced by flickering flourescent lighting, the plaster was cracked, and in places it looked like termites had chewed away at the walls. Everything in Odessa seems very grey and dirty; I imagine I'd find it very depressing to live here. There are signs of hope, though: they just got their first shopping mall last year, and business is booming. Every couple of blocks old buildings are being torn down and new, modern boutiques put in their place. The economy seems to be improving, and the museum docent said he was very optimistic about the city's future. Maybe I'll have to come back here in 50 years and see if its former glory has been restored.
Anyway, it's WAY too late at night, and I have to be up early to see Joe off at the airport. Love you guys, and good afternoon back in America!
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Yesterday Mrs. Freeland and her translator/assistant Luda and I went to the market. The market was... interesting. Let's just say that I'll be watching to make sure the meat is thoroughly cooked before I eat it. There were dogs and cats and pigeons all over the place, and the tables were not exactly up to hospital standards of cleanliness. On the plus side, the Freelands have been eating here for over a year and haven't died yet.
Mrs. Freeland and I were talking about the American approach to life, and how it doesn't really work here. Everything takes FOREVER to do--just buying and preparing dinner can take five hours, what with walking for 30 minutes to the market, then waiting for 10 minutes in line at the butcher's, then another wait for the cheesemonger's, and so on. Mrs. Freeland says everyone at home is always asking her what she DOES with herself--she doesn't work here, and she doesn't have many friends, and she can't even understand the television--and she can only reply that just LIVING here takes all her time.
I now know four words of Ukrainian: spacibo (thank you), internet, cafe, and telephone. It's a start, anyway. :P I have about half the Cyrillic alphabet memorized, too, so I can occasionally read street signs. Go me!
Today Luda's son Anatoli took Joe and I shopping. We browsed through an open-air market, where Joe bought hand-painted boxes and those little stacked Russian dolls as Christmas presents for some friends back home. After that, we stopped by a CD store--CDs cost the equivalent of about $4 here! Then lunch at 'Top Sandwich'. I had 'verlinki' which was kind of like sour cream and onion potato chips, only better: dumplings filled with potato and sauteed onions, dipped in sour cream. Why don't we eat verlinki in America?
After shopping we met everyone at the local art museum. The paintings were... okay. Only one or two I really enjoyed. The real attraction was the docent, this wonderful little old Jewish guy. Apparently Mr. Freeland goes to the museum every few weeks just to talk to him. There was a little language confusion and he ended up thinking I was British, not just studying abroad in England, so throughout the tour he kept directing remarks to me like, 'And when Gallaway came to Odessa he stopped by the museum just to see this painting. You know who Gallaway was, right? You don't? You need to study up on your history, then. He was one of your last Prime Ministers.' But a very nice guy, anyway, and he knew EVERYTHING about all of the paintings in the collection.
Jue and I just got back from a costume party held by the local Campus Crusade. Only a few people spoke English, and I don't speak Russian or Ukrainian, so I spent a lot of time sitting in the corner wondering what everyone was laughing at. Joe had a wonderful time, of course, because he doesn't need to speak the language to instantly become best friends with everyone in the world--probably a skill I need to work on cultivating. His mother made him a Christmas tree costume: green wrapping paper stapled to posterboard and decorated with tinsel, glitter, and a couple of ornaments. He won first prize in the costume competition. I didn't really have anything costume-like, so I just wore one of my Indian salawar suits. Didn't win anything, but I thought I looked pretty. I hate to be disloyal to Joe, but I think the girl that won second place should have gotten first--she was dressed as the squirrel from Ice Age. She had an orange shirt, skirt, tights and boots and a furry tail. She'd taken an orange beanbag pillow and put a brown hat on top to make a plushy acorn, and made herself a cardboard mask. She even did the little squirrelly noise! It was insanely cute!
The Guptas arrived this morning. They have a little girl named Casey, so of course there's been no end of confusion. We'd initially proposed to call her Casey 2, because she got here second, but she indignantly said, "But I'm not two, I'm three!" so now we have to call her Casey 3. She's really cute, anyway, and was apparently very excited to meet 'the other Kacie'. She condescended to allow me to use her crayons, but made sure I knew what an honor I'd been given.
There's a sign in the landlady's window that says 'Adam and Eva'. I voiced my suspicions to Mr. Freeland and it turns out that, yes, there is a Ukrainian mail-order bride service running out of the bottom floor of this apartment building. Any of you guys want a Ukrainian bride, let me know in the next couple of days and maybe I can get you a discount.
All the girls here wear miniskirts with thigh-high boots and fur coats. It looks rather fashionable, I'll admit, but I still wonder how they keep from freezing to death. Apparently I inevitably single myself out as American wherever I go by actually wearing clothing of a thickness appropriate to the weather.
Odessa was built in the 18th century by a French architect hoping to make it 'the Paris of the East'. The Freelands live in the city center, which is full of beautiful old buildings in the Baroque style. I took lots of pictures! Odessa must have been beautiful in the past. Unfortunately, the past 200 years have not been kind to it. Most of the buildings are in horrible condition, or have been replaced by ugly grey Soviet concrete monstrosities. The museum, which was in a building that Marie Antoinette would have proudly called home, was in a tragic state of disrepair. The roof leaked, the chandeliers had been replaced by flickering flourescent lighting, the plaster was cracked, and in places it looked like termites had chewed away at the walls. Everything in Odessa seems very grey and dirty; I imagine I'd find it very depressing to live here. There are signs of hope, though: they just got their first shopping mall last year, and business is booming. Every couple of blocks old buildings are being torn down and new, modern boutiques put in their place. The economy seems to be improving, and the museum docent said he was very optimistic about the city's future. Maybe I'll have to come back here in 50 years and see if its former glory has been restored.
Anyway, it's WAY too late at night, and I have to be up early to see Joe off at the airport. Love you guys, and good afternoon back in America!
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Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Odessa Part 1
So, I've arrived in the Ukraine. I've actually been here over 24 hours, but I arrived so wiped out from travelling and the drugs and my cold (I have a cold) to blog. Haven't done much in the way of sight-seeing, either, but here's my first impressions of Odessa:
* The Freelands, the family I'm staying with--absolute angels, the lot of them. Their son Joe, a good friend of mine, is visiting until Friday, so I'm looking forward to hanging out with him.
* Odessa itself is fairly run-down and poor-looking. The Freelands live in one of the nicer areas of town, and even there there's graffiti and feral cats and dogs and beggars. Everywhere you look you see Soviet-style apartment buildings, ugly old blocks of concrete. The Freeland's apartment is very nice on the inside, though. It's got kind of a New York modern loft look to it. The average American is pretty much filthy rich by Ukrainian standards, and everything's nice and cheap here.
* Even if you're filthy rich, there are still certain inconveniences to Ukrainian life. Since I've been here the electricity's gone out twice, the phone line once, and the water once. This sort of thing just happens. They've gotten used to filling big jugs with tap water and buying lots of candles and charging their cellphones regularly.
* You can find the coolest juices in the world here in the Ukraine. I had peach juice for lunch, and in a little bit I think I'm trying the pomegranate juice for dinner. My favorite so far is the black currant.
* When travelling to former Soviet countries, don't lock your baggage. They don't like it when you do that. Customs cut the lock off my suitcase, and damaged the zipper as well. I guess I'll need to sew a new zipper on my suitcase when I get home. Jerks. They could have just ASKED.
* The Freelands are good friends with the local American missionary group. Last night we had dinner with a British nurse; she's actually from Peterbourough, which is only about 30 minutes away from me in Leicester. A Canadian man dropped by for dessert as well. Joe's off right now playing video games with some of the misisonaries' children.
* Apparently the Guptas, my home church's missionaries to Kiev, are dropping down for a few days over Christmas, so this is going to be the NHBC Auxiliary Branch for the holidays.
* It's cold here. It's as cold at the middle of the day as England is in the middle of the night. I haven't been outside after dark, and don't really feel inclined to do so. We're just a block or so from the Black Sea, so we get lots of cutting ocean winds.
Anyway, it's about time for dinner. I'll update again in a few days if I can. Later!
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* The Freelands, the family I'm staying with--absolute angels, the lot of them. Their son Joe, a good friend of mine, is visiting until Friday, so I'm looking forward to hanging out with him.
* Odessa itself is fairly run-down and poor-looking. The Freelands live in one of the nicer areas of town, and even there there's graffiti and feral cats and dogs and beggars. Everywhere you look you see Soviet-style apartment buildings, ugly old blocks of concrete. The Freeland's apartment is very nice on the inside, though. It's got kind of a New York modern loft look to it. The average American is pretty much filthy rich by Ukrainian standards, and everything's nice and cheap here.
* Even if you're filthy rich, there are still certain inconveniences to Ukrainian life. Since I've been here the electricity's gone out twice, the phone line once, and the water once. This sort of thing just happens. They've gotten used to filling big jugs with tap water and buying lots of candles and charging their cellphones regularly.
* You can find the coolest juices in the world here in the Ukraine. I had peach juice for lunch, and in a little bit I think I'm trying the pomegranate juice for dinner. My favorite so far is the black currant.
* When travelling to former Soviet countries, don't lock your baggage. They don't like it when you do that. Customs cut the lock off my suitcase, and damaged the zipper as well. I guess I'll need to sew a new zipper on my suitcase when I get home. Jerks. They could have just ASKED.
* The Freelands are good friends with the local American missionary group. Last night we had dinner with a British nurse; she's actually from Peterbourough, which is only about 30 minutes away from me in Leicester. A Canadian man dropped by for dessert as well. Joe's off right now playing video games with some of the misisonaries' children.
* Apparently the Guptas, my home church's missionaries to Kiev, are dropping down for a few days over Christmas, so this is going to be the NHBC Auxiliary Branch for the holidays.
* It's cold here. It's as cold at the middle of the day as England is in the middle of the night. I haven't been outside after dark, and don't really feel inclined to do so. We're just a block or so from the Black Sea, so we get lots of cutting ocean winds.
Anyway, it's about time for dinner. I'll update again in a few days if I can. Later!
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