Last Update from Ukraine

Yesterday I had my last haircut in Ukraine, and Sveta cut off the last remnants of red from when I dyed my hair two years ago, at the end of training. Somehow I'd forgotten that there was any of it left, and when she announced that it was gone I was surprised.

And now the red is gone, I guess it's time to go back to America.

I can't believe how quickly the last two months passed. One minute I was celebrating the opening of the Resource Center and scrambling to get materials together for meetings with the regional English teachers. Now here I am, Resource Center complete, meetings finished, and various piles of belongings (sorted into packed, to be packed, for new volunteer, for teachers, for anyone who will take it) scattered around my living room, waiting for me to deal with them.

Today was my last day of school; tomorrow is my last visit, when I'm going to say goodbye to the teachers. (I think they're planning something, although I really have no idea what. I just hope that whatever gifts they give me are small. One of my friends got 4 bottles of wine and a set of teacups--and her bags were full before that! I don't expect that much, though.) Two of my closest Peace Corps friends are now officially RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers).

When I first arrived, people here asked me if I missed home, and I always said No, which was the truth, though I felt a little guilty about it. I mean, sure, I missed home--but not in the aching, desperate way that they expected me to miss home. But now when people ask I say yes, I miss home. There's something about knowing that I'll be back soon that makes me miss home more than before.

But first I have to survive the goodbyes. They officially start tonight, when I have my goodbye dinner with my host family. I feel like this is my first real goodbye; saying goodbye to my classes hasn't felt real, because I've still been around school, and seen the kids in the halls. Even today, saying goodbye to my favorite class, I said, "But I'll be in school tomorrow, too, so maybe I'll see you!"

I hate goodbyes. I don't want to dwell on it.

On Sunday I leave Chernomorskoe. Overnight train to Kyiv, one day of paperwork in the office there, and I leave on Tuesday. Amazing how the time has gone. This is probably my last post from Ukraine, but I'll write a note or two when I get back to reflect on the experience as a whole. I don't feel that I have the perspective to do that now. Everything is a jumble, with too many conflicting emotions.

I'll leave you with a quote:

How did it get so late so soon?
It's night before it's afternoon.
December is here before it's June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?
  -- Dr. Seuss

Two Years

Today, amazingly enough, is not only Teachers' Day. It's also the two-year anniversary of my arrival in Ukraine. Time really flies.

Lately I've been noticing again things that have generally shifted to the background, no longer remarkable. On a bus to Simferopol last week (a purchasing try: I went with a friend to buy books for the new Resource Center), I found myself sitting in the dusty, rocking bus and watching the grey landscape roll by, the crows sweeping up in sheets from the harvested fields, the way I did a year and more ago. In my two more months here, how many more trips will I make to Simferopol? How many more times will I watch this landscape?

Walking from errand to errand in town, I remark again on the sidewalks. I'm going back to the land of smooth, even walkways, where I don't need to watch my every footstep. And I'm going back to the land of cars, of course. How much will I walk at all? I'd like to think that I'll still walk a lot, but am I fooling myself?

At school today I got flowers from classes that I don't even teach: classes I may have visited once, or taught in a previous year. My students know I'm leaving; they're sad when we talk about it, and everyone asks me--more often even than when I first arrived--Do you miss your homeland? Will you come back to visit?

The answer to the second question is easier: I'd like to, I say, but it's an expensive trip and I'm not sure when it will be possible.

The first question is more difficult. Yes, I miss America, but I'm also a little afraid of it. It will be so big and noisy and accessible. Funny to be intimidated by accessibility, but I am. I'm dazed and overwhelmed by my infrequent visits to Ukrainian grocery stores, and the biggest Ukrainian grocery store doesn't hold a candle to the average American one. I don't think I'll know what to do with myself.

At the same time, there are some things I want with a strange sort of craving, like a hunger. On that same trip to Simferopol last week, watching the sun come up, I suddenly really wished I were in a car, beginning a road trip, and that I could pull over at a gas station somewhere and buy a big coffee, and pour in some of that flavored creamer they sometimes have, and then get back on the road with a coffee at hand, and the steam from the coffee making the whole car smell good. And outside the sun would be coming up.

This was the first time since I got here that I've actually missed driving, and I pulled out my drivers' license (which I'd retrieved from a safe in Kyiv last time I was there, but not really looked at in two years) and realized that--contrary to what I'd thought--it did not expire in 2006, but in 2007. And I was so happy.

I haven't even mentioned family and friends, although of course I miss them, too. But there are people here that I'll miss when I'm gone. I've started thinking about gifts, and putting aside the things that I want to give to certain people when I leave. I'll give this book to Albina, and those two to Inna. What about all the children I work with? My debate kids especially. I need to do something for them, too.

I should probably throw myself a couple of goodbye parties, although that's a big expense and a fair amount of work to boot. I haven't decided about that yet.

So here I am, on my two year anniversary. I didn't even realize it until another volunteer sent me a message.

Time flies.

Teachers' Day

This week there is a significant school year holiday: Teachers' Day. The holiday is on Sunday, but we are celebrating on Friday. Actually, we started celebrating on Wednesday. At two o'clock there was a big concert at the Doma Kultura (House of Culture), which is the main concert and conference venue in town.

The concert (someone else I talked to called it a conference instead of a concert) started off with a big awards ceremony. Just about every school event I've been to has started that way: with awards being presented and certificates handed out. The First Bell starts this way, and so does the Last Bell. At the Teachers' Day concert, this took a long time, because there were a lot of speeches to accompany the awards. There were awards for teachers from all three schools in Chernomorskoe, plus the school in so-close-it's-practically-Chernomorskoe Novoselskoe. I also heard a few other schools mentioned, although from what I could tell no one from those schools was actually present.

I sat in the audience and zoned out while all this was going on. I was also feeling a little underdressed, since most of the teachers were very dressed up. When I mentioned this to the friend I was sitting with, and English teacher from a different school, she said she didn't think they were dressed up at all--they just liked to dress up every day. Which is true enough, but believe me when I say they were even more dressed up than usual. I was only wearing jeans and a sparkly knit shirt--even less dressy than my usual school clothes, due to an unfortunate lapse in judgment on my part that caused me to leave my balcony window open during a big wind and rain storm last weekend, resulting in a soaked balcony and a very unhappy downstairs neighbor. My balcony is still drying out, and I haven't wanted to hang any wet clothes out there. So I haven't done any laundry in a while.

Anyway, after the seemingly interminable awards ceremony was over, the talent show portion began. I call it a talent show because I really don't know what else to call it; I've never been able to think of a word in English that does a better job of explaining it. I have yet to meet a Ukrainian who doesn't love to perform, young and old alike, so most school events include--following the awards portion--a talent show. Every school presented at least one act; quite a few teachers sang, and some students sang or recited poems. One teacher presented a "comic" dance, and another a "gipsy" dance. My school had a skit, a variation of one they'd done for the first bell, and all the young teachers came out, dressed all in black, and danced. It was quite a success.

My friend asked me why I wasn't up there dancing too, and the honest answer is that no one asked me. (Though--again, honestly--I probably would have said no even if they had asked.) The fact that I was at this concert at all shows that I understand a lot more about what's going on around me than I did a year ago, because I'm pretty sure this concert is a yearly event, and I just didn't know about it when it happened last year. That tends to happen a lot to me: there will be some event that everyone goes to, and I won't hear about it until the next day, when someone asks me if I went. But people rarely think to tell me about it ahead of time.

I think part of it is that they don't understand that I don't understand or even bother to look at a lot of the notices that get put up in the school (most of them are administrative, and in Ukrainian, and irrelevant to me) that announce things, and that I just don't know the things that they take for granted that everyone knows. The only reason I found out about Wednesday's concert is when my coordinator said that she was preparing a dance for Teachers' Day, and I asked when I could go see her. I had no idea it was a city-wide event until about an hour before the concert.

Another example of this phenomena happened a couple of weeks ago, on Gas and Oil Workers Day, a holiday I learned about only because no one showed up for debate club. The woman I work with there then explained about the holiday, and told me that there would be a big concert that evening at a complex on the other end of town from where I live. Apparently they usually get pretty big singers to come, although this year it was a group and musical style that wasn't as popular, so this woman wasn't planning to go. "You should go, though," she said. And when I replied that I really didn't like to go by myself (not to mention that it wouldn't be safe to walk to this place and back by myself after dark, especially on a big drinking night), she volunteered her son to take me. Her son is 16. He has his own friends, and wasn't all that interested in the concert anyway. There wasn't a single thing about that "invitation" that was attractive, so I declined, and instead watched the fireworks that night from my balcony. Still, I was glad that--for once--I'd heard about the event before it actually occurred.

The next day I visited my best friend in town, who--of course--asked me if I'd gone to the concert. When I said that I hadn't had anyone to got with, she replied that I should have come with them; they'd been a big party, with lots of kids and grownups.

Sigh. If only I'd known.

But back to Teachers' Day. It's a fun holiday, and I wish we had something like it in the US. Here it carries the significance of a holiday like Mothers' Day or Fathers' Day. There are Teachers' Day cards sold at every card shop and the flower sellers do a brisk business. Classes give flowers to all their teachers, and bouquets and gifts to their "class teachers" (a class teacher is like a homeroom teacher). I should get flowers from all the classes I teach, although some of them will probably forget me because I'm not a "real" teacher. I'll still go home with a whole armful, however, since another teacher will probably give me some of hers. That's what usually happens, anyway.

There won't be real classes, although another volunteer tells me that at her school the students take of the role of teacher for the day. In my school the graduating class did this last year, preparing lessons for the younger forms. I'm not sure if that'll happen this year. In any case, after whatever token classes we have are over, there will be another small concert (this one at the school) for the teachers. Groups of pupils will sing and play musical instruments and dance for us. And then there's the party, open only to teachers. There will be some food, desserts, vodka, and wine, and most of the teachers will get drunk and start dancing. Eventually I'll slip away, and go back to my apartment to put my flowers in water before they die, and they will brighten my kitchen for the next week.

And that, my friends, is Teachers' Day in Ukraine.