1st Big Weekend

We certainly hit the ground running. We have only been in town for 4 days and we had a birthday party on Saturday and a tour of Chernigov on Sunday.
Many of our work group gatherings take place at Dima’s Dosha which is a local gentlemen’s property that he has fixed up into an awesome place to entertain. He continues to add cultural artifacts as well as fun things for children to do. We went to celebrate one of the new families youngest boys birthday (he was turning one) and it gave many of the newcomers a chance to meet some of our fellow Americans. Everyone was so friendly and we all managed to visit and laugh and eat till time got away from us.
The kids had a blast catching little green crickets and meeting some local children from another party nearby. There was one small incident; the windmill (small and made for children to enjoy) and when I went to check on the kids Ellie informed me, “they won’t let us play in the windmill”, her arms crossed and huffy. Rylie continued with, “yeah, and they know Russian and we don’t!” I managed to help them resolve the problem. Pretty cute though. The food is fantastic and endless. We had appetizers, then a delicious meal, which was followed by a 3rd course of 3 meats that were seasoned/marinated and grilled or roasted. Over the 3 hours of eating we finished it off with a beautiful cake from the local grocery store and one of the American families made apple crisp (which is a special treat because they have no brown sugar in Ukraine).
On Sunday we took the train to chernigov (see I told you the train was coming). We were a little behind schedule so we nearly ran to the station and as we stood in the little shade pouring with sweat (truly dripping off us) we learned that the train was behind schedule. In fact, it was 25 minutes late which was just enough time for the sweat to begin to stick to us instead of drip off of us. Keep in mind, it’s usually too humid for any salt to crystallize on your body, it’s just sticky sticky sticky! As the train arrived we all gathered close to the doors nearly shoving our way on to the train, tripping over bikes and feet trying to get a seat. This seems to be about the only thing Ukrainian’s do in a hurry; get on and off public transportation. It’s almost a panic, mainly to be sure you get a seat, or as we saw, to be sure you don’t get closed in a bus door and have it start moving. We saw a guy get closed in the doors on a bus, he had to yell and others did too to get the driver to stop and he just got out, he was NOT happy (I don’t blame him)! Crazy.
As Alex (Tony’s Russian instructor and the principal of Perspective – a school in Slavutich that teaches in English, Russian and one other language) showed Tony and myself the historical sites of Chernigov the girls played with Vlada his 12 year old daughter (she speaks English) and his wife Galena cooked them a yummy lunch. The girls had a lot of fun; Vlada had many activities for them. Alex and his family are so very kind and he is so eager to teach us everything about Ukraine! First we visited the Reenach (open market/bazaar) and it was like nothing I have ever seen before. You can truly buy everything there, from farm fresh eggs to cell phone cards. You try on clothes in front of everyone or just behind a small privacy current for pants and dresses. Even when it is only 10 degrees Fahrenheit outside! I tasted some delicious honey and then we went in to the meat market, not a pleasant smell and I politely tried a small bite of the pork fat (very traditional Ukrainian food, they serve a slice on bread with salt and pepper and a bite of fresh garlic). Let’s just say that I do not like the pork fat – big surprise! Tony never even tried that at the market, no fair that I was the guinea pig! Thankfully Alex bought me some fresh hot donuts for being a good sport!
We then visited many historical places in Chernigov, St. Catherine’s church, the monastery, and the catacombs. One place I do not ever intend on visiting is the underground public restrooms. I can handle that they have the Asian style toilet (just a hole in the ground), but I can’t even get in them to see because of the horrid smell! Even Alex says the smell is bad enough to kill you sometimes, and even that is an understatement I think. Some places we visited were 900 years old. The catacombs were very interesting, the tunnels apparently go all the way to Kiev (which is 150 miles away), nobody knows for sure though. People hid in them from the enemies and monks lived in little cells in them as they passed through. Locals brought them food to their “cell” and if they did not touch the food they assumed they were dead. At that point they closed up the cell with the monk in it. Not a good place to go on a fast! This was also the only cool place in Chernigov that day since it is underground it is naturally cool and comfortable in the summer and warm in the winter compared to the frigid winter temperatures in Ukraine. As Tony put it earlier, our “dogs were barkin’” at the end of our personal tour!
We finished at Alex’s home with a delicious traditional Ukrainian meal; borscht, chicken with mushroom sauce, a tasty roasted chicken, and yummy tomato and cucumber salad fresh from the market. I think potatoes too; it was more food than we could possibly eat. Then of course there were 3 desserts! We had torte, bleencheekee (thin pancakes like crepes) and ice-cream with homemade apricot sauce. We topped this off with some hot tea and visited over photo albums of our family and his. How neat that our countries pasts could have made us natural enemies, but instead we are friends enjoying delicious food together and learning about each other’s culture!