On a cold day

Today, like yesterday, there is no heat in Chernomorskoe. If I believe what I'm told (and I don't quite), there is no heat in all of Crimea. The day is cold, windy, and rainy. The streets and sidewalks are muddy, and I have to walk carefully or I'll be half mud myself before I make it to school. Teachers and pupils wear jackets to their classes, which have been shortened from 45 to 30 minutes. Kindergartens have been closed.

All of this is being blamed on Yushenko, who was inaugurated Sunday. (Most people in Crimea, if you recall, support Yanukovich. Yushenko is disreputable, and obviously does not have the best interests of the people at heart. Or so seems to be the general consensus.) One teacher says that next the electricity will be turned off.

I tell my coordinator that I don't think Yushenko is responsible for this. Turning the heat off, I think, would be a stupid move for him to make--and I don't think Yushenko is stupid. I say this noncommittally; I must be careful because I'm in the teachers' lounge, a public area. Being publicly political--especially if I favor the hated Yushenko--could jeopardize my position in the school. Also, Peace Corps is a apolitical, nonreligious, governmental organization, as we all learned to say in Russian during training. As a representative of this organization, I must also be apolitical. At least in public.

My coordinator tentatively agrees: maybe it is the local (Crimean) government. But she is definitely not fond of Yushenko. She thinks he will make life more difficult for teachers, by discontinuing things like gas and electric subsidies for teachers. (Since teachers make so little money, the loss of those subsidies would be an extreme hardship. I'm not sure exactly how the subsidies work, though: I only have my coordinator's slight description of them to go on.)

Wednesday is usually a long day: I teach 6 classes, beginning with the 1 period and finishing up with the 6th. Then I go home for about half an hour, and on to the Children's Center, where the debate club meets. All in all, my day starts at 8:00 and ends at 5:00. I guess that doesn't sound too bad, but it feels much longer! Today, with the shortened classes, I finish much earlier and am home for a good 3 hours before going to the Children's Center, and even that meeting is shortened.

Such is life.

On Sunday I watched a little of the presidential inauguration. My host family (unusually for the area) is more pro-Yushenko than most, so they were very interested and had the TV on most of the day. It was quite interesting, with huge crowds. I watched Yushenko's speech, although I didn't understand most of it. (One problem being that he speaks in Ukrainian, not Russian.)

It's funny how I feel so out of the loop here. I don't really know what's going on in Ukraine, much less the rest of the world. All Peace Corps Volunteers get subscriptions to Newsweek magazine, but I haven't yet received my mail forwarded from Kyiv, so I haven't seen one yet. Watching the news is more about looking at the pretty pictures--news broadcasters speak incredibly fast. (I do a lot better with the soaps that everyone watches.) I have a shortwave radio that can pick up broadcasts from the BBC, but to be honest I don't listen to it very often. It's a solitary activity, and generally in the evening I'm either planning for classes the next day or talking to my host family. I don't feel like I can go to my room and fiddle with my radio.

But I suppose everything is going on much as usual. Somehow I don't think I'm missing a whole lot.

But...enough for today.