A day in the life

Today was a perfect example of a typical day in Ukraine. I woke up this morning with no particular plan for the day other than to recuperate from my mini-illness and prepare for work tomorrow. I finally ventured out at around 2:30 to go to the pharmacy and buy some headache medicine and then went to the market to pick up a few groceries. After the groceries I was on my way out and decided, "oh, maybe I will pop upstairs to the 'mall' and see if my friend Lena is working in her store." So I turn the corner and who do I see? Sasha, my friend and Lena's husband as he is buying a computer game at a small shop, we chit chat for a bit and I head upstairs to check Lena's store. Sure enough, as I round the corner I see her face light up and hear "Saritchka! eedee syouda!" (Sarah, come here). She is on the phone and it surprises me that suddenly I am hearing her say my name and talk about me to the caller...then I hear her tell this person 'Sarah will come to your house at 6 o' clock' ummm....she will? Still worried she motions to me to take a seat on a nearby stool and proceeds to pour me a cup of coffee (without bothering to ask if I'd care for any ;) and push a plate of chocolates my way saying 'eat eat.' She then hangs up the phone smiles and me and tells me she has invited me to her mother-in-laws' house for dinner and we will go together after I stay and hang out with her at work until she closes :) Haha, so now all of a sudden I have plans for the rest of the day that I had no idea about at the beginning of the day. So now I am at home after spending a lovely afternoon helping out at the store and practicing my language skills will customers, then having a lovely family meal with my favorite Ukrainians complete with delicious Georgian wine, toasts and special chocolates.
What a lovely day!

Tissues piled like clouds... Sickness on a sunny day...Feeling low indoors

The kids' germs finally caught up with me today...I spent last night tossing and turning fighting a wicked sinus headache and woke up early this morning feeling anything but refreshed. Spent the day trying to re-energize with chicken noodle soup (homemade :), orange juice, and some life-giving conversations with friends and family via Skype. I am still blowing my nose every few minutes but I do feel considerable better after connecting with some loved-ones. It is always especially nice to be reminded of how loved one is when one is not feeling well.



P.S. How many of you caught that my title today was a haiku? Feel free to brag about your genius in the comments section ;)

more photos!

This is Sasha and Lena on their wedding day...if you don't know Sasha was my host brother when I came to Ukraine 4 years ago...he is all grown up now! ( I can say this because I am older than him ;)



This is Sasha and Lena's daughter Yeva, I have adopted her as my Ukrainian niece and spoil her rotten as is my right and privilege ;)



This is a pic from the special kindergarten/boarding school that I will start to work with in another few weeks. This was taken on the day of the school's recital for the 8th of March (National Women's Day and very big holiday here in Ukraine) Note the little guy in the middle with his classically ukrainian haircut of JUST long bangs...it is like the reverse mullet and is very popular here



Another picture of Sasha and Lena, this time taken during our own celebration of Women's day...Sasha took us to a fancy restaurant for dessert and dancing...we had such a blast and drank lots of delicious Ukrainian Champagne!

Spring is coming....maybe...hopefully....oh please, oh please come!!!!

So I thiiiiiiiink that spring might be on its way here to Ukraine...There are just the slightest signs of flower buds poking up through the ground and more and more now when I talk my daily strolls through the city I get to un-button my parka and let myself be cooled by the wind. It is all everyone can talk about here and I am more than willing to join the conversation :)

Yesterday I had a fun experience...I was invited by a private english teacher to join his class of 7th grade students as we discussed (in english of course) gift giving traditions in our respective countries. I learned so much from the children about what kinds of shops they can buy certain things in (apparently the post office here is more like a bookstore/magazine shop than it is just a vehicle for letters and packages). I also had fun watching their reactions to information about shops in the US...they were SHOCKED that our drugstores house things like film developing stations, makeup, toiletries, and -gasp- food! Their only idea of a drugstore here has strictly medication and nothing else. It was also hilarious when I described...wait for it.....a MALL to a room full of 7th grade ukrainian girls (only one boy in the class and I am pretty sure he was dozing off by that point). The excitement in the room as I described the glories of first, a mall and then....again wait for it....TARGET stores, was so thick you could almost taste it! haha! it was awesome...they all said they wanted to come to the US just to see a mall...I promised I would take pictures and send them...ha!
I was invited to return to the class in the future and I am really looking forward to it.

Work at the orphanage is still going well...I am in a room with little ones this week...the youngest is just 5 months and the oldest is just over 2 years. I am kind of surprised I am still healthy given that the kids I am working with this week are all fighting nasty chest colds and so far I have been peed on twice this week and puked on once (HA!) I love it though...there is one little boy that I am falling in love with right now....he is hard to describe but in a nutshell he is what you generally think of as autistic...over 2 years old, not talking, doesn't sit up by himsel (for those of you with medical knowledge this kid is the most hypotonic child I have ever held...no exaggeration here), makes strange motions with his head and hands, doesn't make eye contact very much..etc. They all kind of ignore him and let him "entertain himself" with his repetitive self-stimulatory behaviors. It is amazing (almost brings me to tears) what he will do if I actually try to engage him though...today I had him playing the most delightful game of catch. He had been "buried" in this little ball pit they have in the room by one of the caregivers and he was just spacing out and tossing ball after ball out of the pit and ignoring everyone's verbal commands to stop. So I went over and kind of caught a ball as he was tossing it out and sort of batted it back into his lap....he just stopped and started giggling in the most adorable way! This went on for about 10 min and progressed to the point of him actually trying to change the place he would throw so I would miss! He was making eye contact watching to see where I was going to block him next. All this cognition from a kid the caregivers all told me was mentally retarded...-sigh- I love my job.

I got internet...oh wait

Hello loyal readers...so the saga of my life here has become trying to get a reliable internet connection that I can have access to at the very early and late hours of the day so that I can speak to people in the US when it is actually daylight (and not working hours) for you all. I find I am constantly having and internal dialogue with myself in which I am chastized for my utter dependence on internet and then consoled by thoughts of how blessed my life has been that I even got to develop a dependence on the world wide web. It has also spurred an interesting self=reflection about my need to have my expectations met. I have gone without internet access before...I have even gone without the ability to speak to my friends and family before (Jeff and I once spent 6 weeks and only spoke to each other one time for the msot glorious 13 minute phone call of my life-he was living in a mountain village in the Dominian Republic) Now I remember that as being hard, but somehow the knowledge that we could not speak but would get to in 6 weeks was enough to let me push my woes to the backburner and focus on more productive worries. Yet, here I feel like everyday I am worried if I am going to get to research what I need for work the next day, or if I will be able to see what news is being reported about the US, or if I will get to connect with any friends or family. I hadn't been prepared for how much time it would take to get this detail of my life here arranged. I wish someone had just told me...Sarah you are not going to have internet access in your home for 6 weeks in Ukraine...then I would look upon these hours in the library here as exciting blessings instead of a poor man's excuse for my expectation being met...grrr Help please! Anyone have thoughts about how to let unmet expectations role off my back more easily so that I don't find myself wanting to dwell on them even more? I don't want my days to be poisoned with resentful thoughts that I can't have what I thought would be easy to have. Just not sure how to get from here to there in one piece.

I hope you can forgive the self-indulgence of this post...it was brought on because last tuesday I was finally given a USB style modem and it worked perfectly and easily for three glorious days and then all of a sudden decided to freeze my computer and nearly wipe out my entire harddrive...and now all I want it to do is display a few lovely blue bars that signify that I have a gateway to any knowledge I could care to read about and a connection with those people and experiences that fill me up and make me feel whole again.

Feeling Fulbrighty

Hello readers!
This week offered me an interesting opportunity to feel very much a part of the fulbright family. Quite often staff members from the Fulbright office in Kiev travel around Ukraine to speak at universities and press conferences about the Fulbright program for Ukrainians to study or teach in America. It is a sort of recruitment arrangement of sorts. Well this week they happened to have their conferences scheduled in towns near Artemivsk and so I was invited to join them and serve as a "real like example of Fulbright goodness" my words, not theirs ;)

Anyways, I left Artemivsk on tuesday to travel to Donetsk the nearest regional capital city where I participated in a press conference. I had to speak to the reporters in Russian primarily because the interpreter that was supposed to be there was not able to come...I was terrified but in the end it was a huge boost to my confidence because I actually did quite well. I was able to say nearly everything that I felt I really needed to say and got only a little help from one audience member who had studied quite a bit of english.

At the end a reporter approached me and told me she herself grew up in Artemivsk and she wants to write a story about me for the paper she works for in Donetsk and for the Artemivsk paper. She is planning to come into town this weekend so we can meet up. Kind of exciting to be "newsworthy"

After that we boarded a bus for 2 hours and headed north to Luhansk where I again participated in a press conference today and then tomorrow I will get to lecture to some medical students and faculty about my research project and what occupational therapy is in the states. I am pretty nervous about it but I'm sure in the end I will surprise myself.

It is very very cold here in Luhansk and it has me feeling very thankful that I am spending most of my time in Artemivsk where at least the sun has been shining a lot lately.

I met a lot of interesting people and made a lot of helpful contacts.

Pictures at last!

я втричаю (I've returned) at last!

Sorry for my long absence, as many of you have heard through the grapevine I have been having a lot of trouble getting consistent internet access for the past couple of weeks. Don't worry though, I have been keeping an exhaustive journal both in print and electronic text so I can fill you all in on what has been happening here. I believe the last time I wrote I was getting over being sick which was right around the time that I actually started my work in the orphanage here. After a week of touring the orphanage, a children's hospital and a special kindergarten that serves as a school/boarding school for children during the week (you’ll hear more about this later-some of the children have parents who are alcoholics and/or drug addicts and forget to pick them up each day or even each weekend and the children go home to live with some of the teachers for the weekend), I decided the best schedule to start out with would be to spend each morning at the orphanage. I planned to spend one week in each of the four classrooms and then expand my schedule to include time at the kindergarten and hospital. In this orphanage there are 4 'classrooms' and children are categorized by age and health status. I started the week with 7 children ages 1-2.5 years old. I spent the week arriving at about 8:30 when the children were up and dressed and ready for playtime and then stayed with them until after lunch and cleanup and they were put down for naps.

That first week I also set about getting settled into my own apartment. On Monday we went to look at a few options and by wed. I was moved in. It was quite different from any other apartment leasing situation I’ve ever encountered…for example…there simply was no lease, not even a simple handshake to ensure this landlord that I was going to live in her apartment and actually pay her each month. She handed me the only set of keys she had to the place (I know this because when she came by to get rent from me she had to call and ask me to let her in the building) and said good luck! There was no credit check, no background check, no reference check, not even a single question to find out if I was a crazy person or a drunk or if I even had enough money to pay her to live there one day, let alone a month. Like I said…very different.

I like my apartment very much, it is close to the center of town where the large supermarket is, as well as my friend's homes. It is also very close to the big park and the fitness center that is brand new in town (don’t be picturing Bally’s or anything, I saw one treadmill and a bunch of free weights in addition to the small walking track but still, it is something). I walk everywhere everyday but I really don't mind it. It makes me nostalgic about the summer I lived in Chicago when I never had to drive my car but just walked everywhere, for groceries, or to visit a friend. Those of us who spend most of our time in the vast expanse of land we call the Midwestern suburbs get so attached to our cars that it is nice to spend some time actually interacting with nature rather than letting it speed by my car windows. I have even begun to recognize some stray dogs that haunt the same streets I often use to get to work. I have named then all of course and I often bring scraps of hardened bread to toss to them during my morning walks. I'm sure my husband will find this deliciously funny ;) (Babe, can you guess the name I chose for my favorite little pup? It starts with G!)

I like to sit at my windows and watch the street below because there are always so many people coming and going...I hope don't mind my eavesdropping as I try to practice my language comprehension skills. Most of what is said is lost on me because people talk so fast but it is good to get more and more used to hearing the cadence of speech here. The way my building (and most soviet-era apartment buildings) is arranges is in the shape of a U so that each apartment has rooms that face the street and then on the other side rooms face a large courtyard where the entrances to each stairwell are. Most complexes I have seen like this each have their own little playground (all look like they were built 50 years ago) and colorful (read-- colorful 50 years ago) picnic benches where I can only assume people were meant to congregate with fellow building mates and have a joyous old time.
In the past years it is obvious that renovating one's apartment and own space has become a high priority for everyone here...as you walk the streets you will find more signs and stores advertising 'Euro Remont' then or any other type of shop. I giggle because it makes me think of Home Depot and Lowe's on every corner back home. Anyways, when you look at any given building you can immediately tell if people have renovated their own flat because they have new plastic weather-proof windows. Non-renovated ones are wooded and true glass and are often painted (50 year old) bright colors. For some unknown reason i find it immensely fascinating to study the construction and renovation trends and habits of any given culture (stranger still because I really have no interest in this in my own home...perhaps because I would actually have to do the work). For example, in the Caribbean and Mexico you will very often see construction occurring and it generally involves using a wrecking ball to smash down old concrete block buildings and then pouring new concrete walls and floors. In the US as well, buildings are often imploded or demolished and then rebuilt from scratch. Here in Ukraine however, this idea seems to be quite foreign. Instead, the trend is to remodel from the inside and to leave the outside looking quite shabby and aged indeed. In brief, a Ukrainian apartment building is like a box of chocolates, you never know which building may contain a delicious truffle all decorated and refined and which may contain an old, strangely colored marzipan which has become hardened and dulled from age. I haven't quite decided what to make of this, or why this has been the way of things...especially since most people here rent their flats rather than own them, so the more obvious motivator of home equity doesn't exactly factor in here for individual renters. But enough of that...I want to tell you all a bit more about my work...

So after spending a week with the young kids (1-2.5 years old) and taking a day to see a special recital at the kindergarten (again, more on this later) I moved to the older child group this past week. Here there are 7 children who are aged 2 years 8 months up to 5 years old. I found this room to be quite different mainly in the fact that the children were so much more independent. They didn’t seem to need as much direction in order to play nicely with their toys. The younger children upstairs seemed to be forever locked in vicious battles over toys (or anything one had possession of…one day I witnessed a battle over a scrap of fabric a child found at the edge of a bed…the two boys were smacking and scratching each other over the ruddy thing until I took it and put it in my pocket and suddenly they were both smiling again).
I will give you more details about my observations in both these rooms later but first I feel it is very important to let you know that I have felt humbled by the degree to which the administration and the caregivers at this orphanage have welcomed me and let me become a part of their daily routines. Many of them have readily given me jobs and allowed me to experience what their jobs are like. I have done a great deal of research and reading over the years about scholars and medical professionals getting to tour orphanages and even spend time documenting their observations as an outsider, but very few, if any, have been given the opportunity to share the job of a caregiver and actually feel what it is like to care for these children each day and try to help them grow and develop strongly while remaining acutely aware of all the barriers stacked against them.
I will forever treasure the conversations I have struck up with these caregivers (in very broken Russian but understandable just the same) in which they have told me about the times they used their own money to buy children new stockings to help keep their feet from catching cold, or when they brought their own leftovers from home to supplement the sometimes meagre offerings at mealtimes. It reminded me very much of conversations with teachers in inner-city schools or poor communities who say they would buy all their own classroom supplies when they could because they were not given enough money from the school to get each child a textbook.
What I want to convey here is that many of the problems I have witnessed here are problems that are not so far off from what many children in America are facing. As I continue to describe for you all the things I am seeing here I want you to pause and realize that these are not just problems in Ukraine, they are similar issues that many poor communities in our own country are dealing with. People tend to think that the US governmental system and social services system are so much better than what it could be in Ukraine but in many ways it is not. In many ways they are both as twisted as could be and the bureaucracy tangles truth in so many ways that those who need to understand are simply blinded and disconnected from the needs. I hope that my time here will not only help me better understand the Ukrainian system but will also give me insights about how our US system of foster care and education (public and private) is working (or not-working).

Don't worry about me!

Hello readers,
For those of you wondering why I haven't posted since reporting that I was sick, don't worry, I am okay, it is just that my access to internet this week has been non-existant. I am sorry to make many of you worry but I am realizing this may happen all too often. Hopefully it won't be long until I can get internet in my own (new) apartment...yes I am living on my own now....yeeps!

Then it is my hope that I will be able to write to you all more frequently. I have been journaling on my computer so when I have more time (and a more reliable internet connection...this one keeps cutting me off every other click, it has taken me an hour just to get access to this particular page, who knows how long it might take to actually get this post published-fingers crossed!) I will fill you in on everything that has happened this week.

Love to you all!

Don't worry about me!

Hello readers,
For those of you wondering why I haven't posted since reporting that I was sick, don't worry, I am okay, it is just that my access to internet this week has been non-existant. I am sorry to make many of you worry but I am realizing this may happen all too often. Hopefully it won't be long until I can get internet in my own (new) apartment...yes I am living on my own now....yeeps!

Then it is my hope that I will be able to write to you all more frequently. I have been journaling on my computer so when I have more time (and a more reliable internet connection...this one keeps cutting me off every other click, it has taken me an hour just to get access to this particular page, who knows how long it might take to actually get this post published-fingers crossed!) I will fill you in on everything that has happened this week.

Love to you all!