I think it's winter now.

At least, it's getting there. Tomorrow, the sun will rise at 8:36 in the morning. The sun will set at 3:38pm. If today was any guide, it will be entirely dark by 4:10. The high will be 33F (.5C), the low will be 26F (-3C). Snow showers will occur on and off throughout the day. By the end of the week, the high will be 22F (-5.5C) and the low will be 10F (-12C). Did I mention it is still November?

No matter. On Friday I am jetting off to Israel, where the weather will be in the 70s (low 20s in Celsius) and there will be three more hours of daylight.

And since I like to confuse my body, two days after my return from Israel, I will head on a Tallinn University trip to Lapland (Arctic Circle, Finland), where there will be about four hours of daylight and the temperature is currently 12F (-11C). I keep reminding myself that it was colder in Oslo when I was there last January and I adjusted to the cold surprisingly well and quickly. I will survive Lapland and hopefully see the northern lights in the process. But I'm admittedly really nervous.

Currency Comparison

I am currently enrolled in a course called "Estonian Country Studies." It is, more or less, a weekly field trip for Erasmus students to various points of interest around Tallinn. Today, we headed to the Estonian Bank Museum, which housed currency specimens dating back to the Russian czarist era. (Less than 100 years, and they had five-soon to be six- currencies!)

I noticed something striking about their choice of national figures to grace their bills.

2 kroon- Karl Ernst von Baer: First president of the Russian Entomological Society and co-founder of the Russian Geographical Society. Von Baer was born in what is now Estonia, though it was Russian territory at the time.

5 kroon- Paul Keres: Estonian Chess Grandmaster.

10 kroon- Jakob Hurt: Linguist who compiled many Estonian songs and fairy tales into the first written volume. (Prior to this point, Estonian was primarily a spoken language.)

25 kroon- Anton Hansen Tammsaare: Author of "Truth and Justice," which is considered the great Estonian novel.

50 kroon- Rudolf Tobias: The first Estonian professional composer.

100 kroon- Lydia Koidula: Poet and dramatist, considered the founder of Estonian theatre.

500 kroon- Carl Robert Jakobson: Leader of the Estonian Awakening in the mid 19th century, which helped demand equal rights for the ethnic Estonians to the Baltic Germans who controlled the region.

All coins, meanwhile, have the national seal. When Estonia take the euro in January, the Estonian euro coins will feature an outline of Estonia.



Compare this to the American currency. With the exception of the $10 bill and the $100 bill, all of our paper money features the face of a former president. Alexander Hamilton, whose portrait graces the $10 bill, was the first Secretary of the Treasury. Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin... well, what didn't Benjamin Franklin do? The important bit is that he, too, is a major political figure even if he never held the presidency.

All of this got me thinking about what really comprises the American identity. I think it might be harder to really pin an American identity down- maybe "melting pot" really is the only description upon which most people could agree. If we were, for example, to pick ONE writer to honor with a place on our currency, whom would we choose? (I almost want to say Tocqueville, though I think many Americans would balk at the idea of having a Frenchman on our currency.) Which composer? Which poet? The leaders of which social movements?

This isn't to say that our choice in presidents aren't controversial. I'm sure half of Glenn Beck's viewers would take up the call to remove FDR from the dime should he ever bring the issue up on his show. (I hope I'm not giving anyone ideas, here.) Meanwhile, many people today might consider Andrew Jackson (of $20 bill fame) an odd choice for such a high level of commemoration. (Assuming, of course, that most people actually know anything about Jackson's presidency.) It's worth pointing out, however, that both figures were fairly popular during their rule. Meanwhile, some of the figures who are on our currency are loved now, but were NOT widely loved at the time of their presidency. Abraham Lincoln did, after all, hold the highest office while the country was in the midst of a civil war.

Since I'm curious, I do want to know if you had to pick a politician, two writers, a musician, an athlete, a social leader, and someone you think was just absolutely intrinsic in the formation of the American identity to honor on our bills, whom would you pick?

At the movies in Helsinki...

I saw the trailer for this movie:


Which is based on this short film:


I'm strangely fascinated...

Peace at what cost?

Last week, I attended a conference on women in Afghanistan hosted by the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Estonian Atlantic Treaty Association. One panelist was from a women's organization that seemed to be a better-organized European equivalent to Code Pink. She ruffled a few feathers when she claimed that nothing had improved for women in Afghanistan in the last few years (despite the statistics offered by other panelists that would say otherwise). Later in her speech, she claimed that war, that violence and guns, is never the answer, and that we needed UN peacekeepers, not NATO soldiers. At the very least, this took guts for her to say. A security conference is not likely to attract a crowd that is sympathetic to her argument. A faint murmur arose in the audience, many (myself included) scribbled furiously in their notebooks. The man next to me shook his head in disbelief and said to his colleague, "Absolutely from another planet, this one..."

First of all, kudos to the EMFA and EATA for including her on the panel. Honestly, I'm not sure it would have occurred to me to include someone with such strong anti-war views in a conference on security: when the goal is to discuss how to move forward on a particular UN resolution in Afghanistan, and someone doesn't think we have a right to be there in the first place, a part of me would think that this person may be counter-productive, and maybe the conference should ask someone else to speak. Having listened to the woman in the context of this conference, I still think what she had to say was a little counter-productive and distracting. However, I am glad she was there, and glad she spoke. We can all say we have considered what she told us, and our own arguments are better for having done so.

When she first told us that guns are never the answer, what I wrote down next to her name was, "Hitler, anyone?" That is one of the most clear-cut cases of when the guns must come out: madman is trying to take over a continent, trying to eliminate any undesirables in his path, and peaceful appeasement clearly had not worked. If the world stood by as this was going on because of this lofty idea that guns are never the answer, the result would have been far worse than the Srebrenica massacre- when over 8000 Bosnians were killed as UN peacekeepers watched- legally unable to do anything unless they had not been fired upon themselves. Clearly, guns are effective. But are they necessary?

Consider then the Cold War. The Soviet Empire eventually fell, and we never fought against the empire directly. (I would argue "directly" is the key word in that sentence.) However, Hitler was stopped much more quickly. Depending on when you start counting, it took anywhere from 24 years (starting the year he assumed leadership of the precursor to the Nazi party) to 6 years (starting with the invasion of Poland.) The Soviet Union lasted much longer, killed far more people within the Soviet Union- and that's before you start counting the people killed in the proxy wars. If we ignore the proxy wars for a moment, would anyone actually argue that the Cold War was morally superior to World War II? I suppose the argument would then boil down to whether more people would have died fighting the Soviets directly with guns in the short term than would have been killed by the Soviets in the long term. Of course, you'd never know the answer to this, but given that both parties involved were nuclear powers, it's plausible that a hot war would have killed more people. Of course, Afghanistan isn't nuclear (yet), so I'm not sure you can apply this argument so cleanly to the conflict in Afghanistan.

If bad people exist, and they come to power, at what point is it a moral imperative to stop them? Hitler and Stalin are extreme examples: Death tolls were in the millions, and they both had a way of making life miserable for neighboring countries. But what do you do when the death toll is in the hundred thousands? Thousands? Hundreds? Or if the injustice doesn't have a regional spillover effect? For practical reasons, a line must be drawn. For better or worse, I don't think the world wants to be in a constant state of war in order to try to maintain a perpetual peace. NATO and several partner countries have already committed themselves to Afghanistan, but NATO has had to struggle constantly against its own members placing strong caveats on the use of their troops. America is tired and overstretched. I think Europe is still traumatized from the 20th century wars, and perhaps really enjoys having the NATO safety net instead of forming stronger defenses of their own. I think many would be nervous having Russia or China police the worlds' human rights abuses. In such an era, how do you choose what is worth fighting for? It is often asked for what should we die. This question has a logical mate, but it's one we don't hear quite so often. For what should we kill? I can't pretend I have an answer, but I am quite grateful to Ms. Ebbe for bringing the question to the forefront of my mind.

Same same, but different

A few weeks ago, the Goethe Institute hosted a German film festival in Tallinn. I had a friend visiting from Germany, and one of my flatmates is Austrian, so we decided to check out a film called "Same Same but Different." In short, the film is about a young German tourist that falls in love with a Cambodian prostitute, finds out she is HIV-positive, and does all he can to ensure that she gets the proper medicine. The film ends with the recently-married couple discovering that she is pregnant. The real life couple on whom the film is based is still married, and the husband is still HIV-negative.

While much can be said about the film itself, what struck me most was the trailer.



The German phrase roughly translates to "In your early twenties, are you ready for the love of your life?" Ignore for the second that that phrase is a gross misrepresentation of the film... I'm not sure I would be ready to discover the love of my life is HIV-positive at ANY age. Aside from that, I can sort of see why this ad campaign might work in Europe. Several people I know seem to think that 28 might be an early age to get married. Meanwhile, it a lot of my American friends seem to think that 25 or 26 is the ideal age to get married. If I met the love of my life tomorrow, I wouldn't marry him next month, (after all, if he is the love of my life, he'll still be around in a few years, right?), but I wouldn't spend so much time trying to convince myself that he cannot possibly be "the one" because I'm only at the verge of my 23rd birthday. The film's protagonist seemed almost as concerned that he was 21 as he was concerned that this woman is in Cambodia and HIV-positive. So what do you think? If you were asked if you wanted to see a movie about meeting the love of your life in your early 20s and wondering if you were ready, would you actually want to see it? To me, it just seems too normal.

Autumn

Today is November 3. It is a fairly mild day, meaning we have a high of 48F/9C. I am wearing a long-sleeved shirt, a cardigan, a pea coat, scarf, gloves, wool cap, two pairs of stockings under my jeans, and boots. Most days, the cold doesn't bother me that much, but today I am especially put off by it. I've decided it has something to do with the fact that my dad texted me to tell me that it will be in the upper 80s back home.

It's ok. I will make hot chocolate with the mix my good friend Emily gave me as a "Thanks for letting me crash at your place for a week" gift, and all will be right in the world again.

The United States of Europe

One of my biggest pet peeves when discussing the United States with Europeans is the tendency some have to think we are all the same. I think if you know ONE thing about American politics, it would be how polarized it is. And despite this view some have of us being gun-toting, Republican-voting cowboys, they all want to go to New York, which is NOTHING like that. When I was studying in France at the height of the Bush administration, I learned quickly that people will be MUCH nicer to you if you identify yourself as being from California instead of saying you're from the United States.

Amidst the British budget cuts and the French protests-turned-riots, I've started to notice that Americans are just as guilty when it comes to Europe. I've read a lot of smug commentary about the "European system" is failing- and most of these articles have nothing to do with the EU. Look in American newspapers, and you'll find talk about entitled Europeans who would riot when the government tries to raise the low retirement age. Yes, this happened in France and Greece... but where are the riots in the rest of Europe? We talk about how the European social welfare system is a failure, and how the tax rates destroys their economy. This is a strange assessment considering that one of the few countries that can be smug during this recession is Germany. Real Clear Politics just published this article about how Americans have a stronger work ethic than Europeans, and I find myself wanting to ask the author if he has ever been to Estonia or Germany? (Just to single out two countries I've lived in where I've found the locals to be very hard-working.)

Lumping California and Texas together in terms of culture and governance because they are both American states is ridiculous. Los Angeles and New York are NOT the same city. Even Los Angeles and San Francisco have very different cultures. The United States and Mexico differ in several respects despite being neighbors. So why are Americans so comfortable thinking that France represents the whole of Europe?

Did they teach you that in medical school?

After a twenty minute tram ride, and another twenty minutes trying to find an office that's only three minutes from the tram stop, I arrived at my most recent medical appointment. The nurse calls me in, tells me where to put my coat and shoes, then asks me to "Go inside, lay down, and open your stomach. The doctor will come looking for it shortly."

I sort of wanted to just point to my belly and say, "Oh, don't worry, here it is."

Uks kohv, palun

"One coffee, please," may well be my most-used phrase in Estonian after "hello" and "thank you."

One aspect of Estonia that I've absolutely fallen in love with is the strong, lively cafe culture here. Not a Starbucks in sight, I have had to try the various cafes one by one in order to find the one to call my own. It's an on-going process- I'll probably still be trying out new cafes as I am packing my bags to leave next summer: but here are a few contenders for "favorite."

Kehr Wieder
One of my cardinal travel rules is to avoid the cafes with terraces on a big tourist location: it will normally be twice as expensive, not as good, and the locals won't go near it. Luckily, when my friends and I discovered this gem- located on the Town Hall Square- on a trip to Tallinn in 2008, we found the side entrance and didn't know we were about to break our own rule. It is one of the more expensive cafes I frequent, but it is just as good, and there are always several locals. To tell you the influence Kehr Wieder has on the local cafe scene: its website is www.kohvik.ee, which would be the equivalent of www.cafe.com in the US.

The cafe is slightly below ground, lit mostly by the candles on the tables, and is full of comfy chairs and sofas. I've found the melted chocolate reminiscent of Madrid's Chocolateria San Gines and Angelina's in Paris. Take a bar of very rich, expensive chocolate, melt it, and dip pastry in it, and you have an idea of how good this is. Heavenly. :) My favorite drink here is "meekohv," a latte made with lots of honey and cinnamon. A coffee or tea is 32 EEK, a meekohv is 55 EEK. (1 USD is about 11.25 EEK.)

Kohvik Kompott
This bright cafe is about 60 seconds away from my apartment, so I find myself here just about every time I don't want to cook. I've written several blog posts, including this one, here. My favorite part of the cafe is its unique decorations: I'm sitting at an old sewing table. The lightbulbs on the wall above me are covered by cheese graters, and the lights which hang from the ceiling are in jars full of colored lightbulbs. My favorite item on the (very inexpensive!) menu is the potato and smoked cheese soup, which they serve with rye bread and garlic butter. Before my student discount, the soup is 39 EEK.


Gourmet Coffee
As the name suggests, this is the coffee-lover's cafe in Tallinn: They must have at least twenty types of coffee beans to pick from. If you're not busy, the very helpful staff will help you pick the right blend. However, what's much more fun is to just get the "thermos coffee." Each day, they have one or two brews out, and you can get a mug for 25 EEK, and fill it as many times as you want. Sitting in this cafe feels rather like sipping coffee in the living room of your (very wealthy) grandmother. No wonder a local film crew showed up to shoot a movie scene here during my last visit.

Chocolaterie la Pierre
I took these two photos on my first visit. I don't think I need to say more. :)

Why I love the EU

For Christmas, I am flying home on Air France with a layover in Paris. As a result, I'm watching the French strikes carefully. I was particularly worried about the following headline: "France asks airlines to cut flights ahead of strikes." Do I need to buy travel insurance to come home? If my flight gets cancelled, what are my rights? As it turns out, the EU requires that flights cancelled due to strikes have to either be rebooked or fully refunded- customer's choice.

I must admit, I have issues with the French method of striking- it's impossible to NOT be affected as an innocent bystander, even if you entirely disagree with the strike to begin with. After my semester in France, I was often asked if I would ever live there. The frequency of strikes and protests that disrupted the entire city (and with which I happened to never agree) was not a small reason why my answer was always a quick "No."

Rudeness

I'm taking a course called "Intercultural Studies." It consist mainly of Estonians and Erasmus students comparing thoughts on whichever topic was given to us. Last week, we talked about what is rude. We were given a list of several things- smoking next to a person, talking loudly, eye contact, eating in public, now forming a proper line, being late. One amusing observation about lateness was that pretty much everyone could agree that it was rude, but no one could agree what constituted "late" to begin with.

So my homework this week was to conduct my own little social experiments. Do something I might consider to be rude and see what happens; alternately, go out of my way to be polite, and see if anybody says thank you.

I was deeply uncomfortable with the first half of the assignment and have put it off. I don't want to jump a line. I am NOT going to take up smoking just to see how people react. And I don't want to speak too loudly since I simply don't want to paint "foreigner" on my forehead in a public place- even though, as I have assured my mother several times, Tallinn is a perfectly safe place. I've tried leaving out "please" and "thank you," but I don't think anybody notices. I could leave out the pleasantries with the shopkeepers, but this isn't a place where you really make conversations with strangers anyways. How do you be rude in a society when you don't really know what constitutes rudeness? My only idea is to try speaking Russian to an ethnic Estonian...

The second one is a lot easier- if you continue to hold a door open, people will continue to walk through it, but no one will look at you, much less say anything. As it turns out, excessive eye contact is considered rude here, which explains why I've found so many shopkeepers to be rather shifty-eyed. Maybe my insistence on eye-contact with those with whom I was speaking... was I unwittingly completing the "be rude" portion of my assignment?

Have I Gone Native?

This last week, I think, was the first week of the permanently cold months. It's dropped ten degrees (again, Fahrenheit), and the highs hover between the high 30s and the mid 40s. We even had our first snow this weekend.

So yesterday, I was walking to the migrations bureau to pick up my residency permit (which they were kind enough to only give me for a single semester... but I digress). It was about 46°F out. I was wearing a long sleeve shirt, peacoat, and jeans tucked into boots.

"Hmm... This is actually a bit uncomfortable," I thought, as I took the jacket off.

What is happening to me??

On a side note, I also learned the word "sleet" this weekend. This is a word you never need to know when you grew up in an environment where the most common weather forecast is "mostly sunshine." I still maintain that "It's slushing" has a nicer ring to it.

Keila Falls

Keila Falls, close to Tallinn in northern Estonia, is where newlyweds go to bring luck to their marriage. They make a small ceremony of placing a lock representing their bond on the bridge and throwing the key into the water.





Check out more of my photos of Keila Falls here.

For Jillian (and Anyone Who Likes Mushrooms)

My lovely friend Jillian, after going through my photos of Estonia, told me Estonia looks "a heckuva lot like home in Washington... but with more mushrooms, it seems."

I can't really gauge the veracity of the Washington comparison, but Jills is absolutely right that if you get out of the city, there are a TON a mushrooms lying around. Since I don't really see them much in California, and those I do see all tend to look the same, I find them fascinating, and I've noticed I've taken a lot of photos of them. I was particularly excited by the red one with white spots- I honestly thought that was the sort of mushroom that the creators of Mario Brothers made up.

Tell me what YOU want to know.

I'm admittedly a self-conscious blogger. As I go about living my day-to-day life in another country, everything starts to seem normal (at least to me) pretty quickly, and normalcy doesn't always seem like something I'd want to bore my lovely readers with. So, tell me, do you have any burning questions? Something you want me to take pictures of? Write me a comment, and I'll try to get back to you. :)

Viljandi County, Estonia

The alternate title to this post is, "THIS is why I moved to Estonia."

Two weeks ago, fresh from another trip to the hospital but with doctor's permission to travel, I set off on an excursion to southwestern Estonia with several other international students. I didn't really know what was in store except that it was only about 50USD including lodging, transport, and some meals.

On Friday morning, I woke up, walked three minutes to the bus stop, climbed on the bus the Tallinn University International Club had chartered for us, and promptly fell asleep, just like everybody else. About two hours later, here we were:


This manor (MAYnor, if you ask an Estonian) is located... somewhere in Viljandi County. We spent about 45 minutes here, walking along the pond, trying to get the horses to play with us, and watching the tractor race going on with American country music playing in the background (no joke). Afterwards, we climbed onto a bus for another twenty minutes.









We disembarked at the site of an old military battle. This is all that remains in memory of the castle that was destroyed here.

We stopped for a rather late lunch in the city of Viljandi, where castle ruins overlook a gorgeous lake. We walked around the ruins, probably collectively took over 1000 pictures, and played on an awesome giant swing. I thought we were staying here for the night, but it turns out the city has little tourist infrastructure, so we got back onto the bus and headed for a farm about 20 kilometers out.


We stayed that night at the Kopra Talu (Beaver's Farm). That night, I was introduced to a very Estonian tradition: the sauna party. At Kopru Talu was an old, traditional smoke-style sauna. The sauna itself is in a chimney-less room. One of the Estonian "tutors" lit a fire shortly after our arrival. We let it burn while we made dinner, ate dinner, and had a few drinks. (Well, at least those who weren't on antibiotics had a few drinks.) Finally, the tutors put the fire out, and we went in. Stephanie and I were the brave first two to join Karolin and Martin, two of our Estonian tutors. Karolin tried to explain to Stephanie and I why Estonians tend not to wear swimsuits in this sort of sauna.

"You're a bit like grilled chicken in there," she told us.

There is ash everywhere, and you might not be able to get the smell of smoke out of your clothes. Stephanie and I were still a bit reticent, so we went in with swimsuits and slapped each others' back with wet birch branches to stimulate circulation. Eventually the sauna grew popular, so we went out to fulfill the other part of an Estonian sauna party: jumping in the nearest body of water. Martin of course enjoyed a nice swim, Karolin took a minute-long swim, Stephanie jumped in and jumped out, and I just dangled my legs in the water. The water was absolutely freezing. "Why do they do this to themselves," I wondered as I decided against going all the way in. The answer came as I got out of the water: for all the hell the cold puts you through, you feel amazing as soon as you get out of the water. I did one more round of sauna and lake before calling it a night. My favorite quote about the experience came the following day.

"I was a little bit scared to go in the sauna- it was coed, and I knew about half the people had taken off their clothes. But it wasn't at all naughty, not even a little bit!"

More pictures are available on my website.

No Speak Americano

Recently, one of my roommates was poking fun at me.

"Aww," I said playfully. "You hurt my feelings."

"What does zees mean, 'urt feelings?"

I searched for a moment to see if I could say it in French before Christophe finally dismissed the incident saying, "I don't know what eet mean, zees feelings. It must be somezing only women 'ave."

I posted this conversation as my facebook status, and Ian, who stayed with me briefly this summer, responded right away.

"It must be my fate in life to have smartass roommates," I told him.

"It is also your fate in life to be perpetually cursed by hilarities in foreign language faux-pas," he replied.

Yes. This is definitely true. I spent a good eight hours over the last couple days doing Russian homework, I take six hours of Estonian lessons a week, and I try to speak with Christophe in French when I can, so my head is constantly swimming, and it's pretty common to catch me saying something pretty stupid. (I'd like to think, at least, that it's more common than when I'm speaking English, but I'll let you be the judge on that.)

The rector at Tallinn University is supposedly conversational in almost 20 languages. I really have to hand it to the man. I consider myself to be good with languages- the fact that I've always been a little bit high-strung about grammar in English helps me out a lot, and I think I can pick up an understanding of the language fairly quickly. More and more, however, I find myself at the point where I think I'm being counterproductive. When people speak to me, I may be able to understand them just fine, but when I go to respond, I have no idea what to say. I speak English because I've grown up in America. I speak French because I've studied it since I was a little girl. I picked up some Spanish hearing it all around me in high school and always reading the Spanish version of official documents when I'd finished reading the English one. I picked up some German because my EU program required it. I've been beating my brains trying to learn Russian for a little over a year now, and now I'm trying to learn Estonian because, like any good Fulbrighter, I want to make a good impression on the locals, and that involves saying please and thank you in their language. When someone speaks to me, and it's time for me to respond, I have to run through six languages, and it comes out in some really awkward potpourri of nonsense. My mom told me when I came back from Germany that even my English was suffering- I started sentences with a long "Uhhhhhh...." without even realizing it. I oftentimes think I was more articulate in high school.

I've reached the conclusion that I need to pick a language or two and stick with it. The remaining question, then, is which ones?


This song, which is played without fail in EVERY club in Eastern Europe, was playing in the back of my mind as I wrote this post. I'm not sure what the lyrics actually say, but the title, "We No Speak Americano," is definitely something to which I can relate.

Rest in Peace, Baby Basset

One day when I was eight years old, my parents took me to the local animal shelter. "We're just looking," they emphasized. The famous last words: "We are NOT taking a dog home with us today."

My brother, Brett, had recently decided he wanted a basset hound, and he asked if they had any. It turns out they had no purebreds, but they had one skittish fellow that was half basset, half German shepherd. When he was lying down, he looked like a German shepherd with finer hair and a rounder body, but when he stood up you noticed his legs were probably no more than eight inches long. Brett fell in love with him, Mom fell in love with another handsome and equally stubborn dog, and before you knew it, we had two mutts and three kids in the back seat.

I think my parents thought they'd made the wrong decision, at first. The basset, whom Mason named "Batdog," was more than likely abused by his previous owner, and peed whenever you raised your voice (even if not at him). Eventually, however, he grew to love us, and we grew to love him.

I loved him when his ears perked up every time he heard whistling sounds emanating from the TV during our morning cartoons. I loved him whenever he'd sit under the table, lay his head on my chair, and gaze up at me with soulful and entirely pathetic-looking eyes... and then he would move on to everyone else at the table. I loved him when he would get SO excited at the prospect of a walk that he would jump around so much it was damn near impossible to get the leash on his neck, and then he would insist on holding his own leash until we left our property. I loved him when he seemed to think that if he acted excited enough after I returned from walking his brothers, that I would magically forget that I already walked him just 20 minutes prior.

He started getting older as I went to college, but he was always there jumping and wagging his tail every time I came home. It broke my heart a little bit the time I came home and realized his knee was so arthritic I couldn't take him on walks anymore. It broke my heart a little bit more the first time I came home, and he didn't rush to meet me at the door when I called out to announce my arrival. Our baby was no longer a baby, and his always-troubled hearing finally had left him entirely. Of course, being the smart beast that he is, he learned to wake up for breakfast when my Dad switched the lights on and off.

When he was young, he waited at the laundry room until someone (usually me) felt guilty enough to grab his leash and take him out. He'd do this several times a day. Old age proved to be no different: he sat in front of his food dish, angling himself directly between my mother and the kitchen sink when she was trying to do dishes, and would not move until he got a treat. In the very end, he was getting two or three "desserts" a day.

I'm gonna miss this pup when I come home for Christmas.

It's a small world after all.

The "Human Web" theory holds that there will be no more than six degrees of separation between you and every other person on earth. I was told this is probably BS in real life, but completely true in Estonia. If you REALLY need it, the Embassy told me, someone you know knows someone who can get you a sitting with the President.

On Thursday, I went to an Erasmus party. One of the "tutors," local students who are paired up with exchange students to help us settle in, recognized my accent as American, interrogated me (ok, not really, but Estonians can seem rather abrupt before you're used to them) to find out why I was in Estonia since I'm clearly not an Erasmus student (since Erasmus is a European program), and then reveals that he knew a Fulbrighter named Erin, and he would introduce me. He later did- popped up out of nowhere, said "Come with me," plopped me in front of her, and promptly disappeared again. Two degrees of separation.

On Friday, my roommates and I went to an apartment to have some wine and chat with new friends. Karin, my Austrian roommate, had met one of the guys, another Austrian, the night before. He invited her to this small gathering at his friend's apartment. His friend was a Korean man named Kiyoho (I think) who came to Estonia on study abroad and never left. He now owns a Korean restaurant here. It was a lovely evening, but nothing seemed too strange. My roommate met a compatriot who has a friend- seems typical enough, but wait.

On Saturday, I met Erin for coffee, and she invited me to dinner with some friends of hers. We ended up at Kiyoho's restaurant, which was one of our dinner-mate's favorite restaurants in Tallinn. As it turns out, one of the friends who met us was an Icelandic composer who knows Eugene, the other Fulbrighter in Tallinn, because Eugene went to Juilliard with one of the Icelandic fellow's (whose name was almost completely unpronounceable) friends from home. I was a little mind-boggled by how many connections I'd made simply by leaving my flat three days in a row, and that the people from all three evenings were connected. Erin just smiled and told me I'd better start getting used to it.

As an American, I'm a bit of an oddity at Tallinn University. A typical round of introductions goes something like this. "I'm John, and I'm from Latvia." "I'm Jane, and I'm from Poland." "I'm Tom, and I'm from Italy." "I'm Katie, and I'm from California." "Wow...." Many haven't really encountered Americans who aren't tourists, and I am frequently asked why on earth I would come here.

The short version- the one I give to most students- is that I've already graduated, but I'm here to study and do research with a grant from the government. This prompts one of two responses, usually. "Ahh, I get it, it's for your CV." Alternately, "Why does the US government care about Estonia?" At that point I explain that it's Cold War-era program designed to broaden American perspectives and to showcase American goodwill abroad. Normally, the subject changes afterwards.

So why did I pick Estonia? Even now, I have a bit of difficulty putting my finger on it. About a year and a half ago, I sat down with a pen and paper to brainstorm Fulbright ideas. I wrote down topics I was generally interested in on one side and places that I had liked from my travels on the other, and started drawing arrows to link entries on the two sides of my paper. Eventually, I put the paper down and thought about what really interested me most from my EU semester. I decided the subject I'd developed the most long-term curiosity for was Russian-Estonian drama and its repercussions. As fate would have it, there was no language requirement, and a former Fulbrighter to the US was writing a book in English on the exact same topic. From that, a proposal was born. Almost as important- I adored Tallinn when I visited.

I haven't yet settled into the core of my research; however, I've observed some things in the last two weeks that I never noticed during my first visit. The first is that, if you know what to listen for, you realize that Russian is all around you- even in the city center. This surprised me, as I had heard that much of the Russian population is confined to the massive Soviet-era apartment complexes along the edges of the city. In many of the tourist shops selling all sorts of authentic, hand-crafted goodies in the Old Town, you'll probably hear the shopkeepers speaking Russian to one another, and, if there's a radio on, it's probably in Russian too. If you speak Russian to them, you'll encounter a look of surprise, and then quite probably a smile. I met some lovely girls from Narva, a border city that is almost entirely ethnically Russian, who were absolutely delighted by the fact that I understood them and came here to research THEIR way of life. I'm happy to hear as much Russian as I do in the university- for a long time, ethnic Russians were barred from the university by default, as classes are only in Estonian, a language that-until recently- many never learned. Their presence shows that many young Russians are integrating more and more into Estonian society, and one of my goals for the year is to figure out what precisely that means for the future of Estonia.

For more information, check out this NPR story.

Eesti!

I've arrived! Wahoo! So much has happened in the last few days that I think it may be close to impossible to give a comprehensive update with the amount of time I have, so here are some quick tidbits to let you know about my new life here in Estonia!

-My apartment is amazing! Two minute walk from the university, rather large, our own sauna and jacuzzi bath, and a good kitchen. The only downside is that I have no chest of drawers, closet, or anything, so my clothes are folded up in piles on my sofa.

-Estonia is one of the few countries in Europe with no Ikea. Many will take the ferries to Finland, then pay one of the many companies conveniently located in house to deliver items to Estonia.

-Many Finns, meanwhile, come here for cheaper alcohol. It's cheaper to take a ferry to Tallinn, stay here all night, then take the first ferry back in the morning than it is to have a similar night out in Helsinki.

-Estonia is one of the most wired country in the world, with near universal wifi coverage. I have an easier time connecting to wifi in public places here than in the States.

-I have a new addiction to cloudberry-cheesecake yogurt. Cloudberries look a bit like yellow raspberries and are found in cold climates in northern Europe and parts of Canada. They're rather difficult to reach, which is why you tend to find them mostly in products (yogurts, etc) than sold directly.

-If you want to know anything about Estonian history, PLEASE find a copy of "The Singing Revolution." It's a beautiful film, and I think it's amazing that independence from the Soviets was won without a single casualty. It was really inspiring to watch people fight so hard for their independence without resorting to the ugliness or divisiveness that seems to characterize so many political interactions today.

-Singing, even prior to the revolution, was one of the most-practices activities among Estonian youth. American kids join AYSO, Estonians join the local choir. The university has tried to point us to various choir opportunities. After informing us that Spaniards believe bad singing brings rain, one of my colleagues announced that Estonian already rains enough, so they really shouldn't be encouraging him to sing.

-Estonian humor is quite dry, and here is my favorite example. Student: Do you need your own equipment for the sports courses, or is it provided? Athletic Director (in a perfect deadpan): It's all provided, except for the course on trampolines. Those you will have to acquire and transport yourself.

-On September 3, it was 45 degrees in the middle of the day. I thought I had a month or two before it got cold, so nearly ALL of my winter gear is still in California. I'm horrified to report that I need to go shopping as a result.

-Speaking of shopping, Fulbright students in Estonia get to go to the Marine Ball at the Embassy, so I have to find an evening gown as well. I'm also tearing myself up over that.

-This semester, I will mostly be taking language courses. Three Russian classes, a class for day-to-day Estonian, and an Estonian history class. Shortly, I should be able to set up a schedule for my work as a research assistant and have more details about my project.

-I've turned a corner and am feeling better.

The nightmare continues.

So, basically, I'm still not getting better. I had continued going to various doctors at the same clinic after my last posting, and my confidence was diminishing. I had spoken with some doctors back home, and I was not getting the tests in Ukraine that would have been ordered for me in the US. They were testing for other things that American doctors thought would be a stretch. (In short, if these tests came up positive, it would probably be because I had epic bad luck and was sick with two things at once, but what they were testing me for to begin with could not have put me in the hospital at all, and definitely not with the symptoms I had.) Dr. Google was backing up all my suspicions. With each appointment either came more bad news, or more "Hmm, you're very sick, but we don't know what's wrong with you." The last straw came when I was told I'd reached a point where they couldn't do any more tests because the antibiotics I was on could interfere with the results. THIS WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A PROBLEM IF YOU DID THE BACTERIA CULTURES TWO WEEKS AGO WHEN I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL AND WAS TELLING YOU I WANTED IT DONE JUST IN CASE I DIDN'T FULLY RESPOND TO TREATMENT. This isn't ever so much a "I told you so" sort of moment, but I'm not sure I can think of another situation that more deserved the phrase "You should have listened to me."

That day, I was ready to come home. I hated that my doctors wouldn't listen to me half the times, and the other half they didn't understand me. That wouldn't have been so bad if I thought they were ordering what was medically necessary. I was sick of being by myself. And, more than anything, I'm sick of being sick. Emotionally, I was completely spent, and I wanted out. I spent a long evening in an internet cafe pricing out tickets, trying to figure out if coming home was even feasible.

In between some frantic calls with my parents, another American doctor, and Wes, a very dear friend of mine who was traveling in Budapest at the time, I came up with one last plan. There is an American medical clinic in Kiev. I hadn't gone there yet because the first time I needed care was outside of normal business hours, and they don't have the specialist that I needed for immediate follow-up. However, all doctors at this clinic speak English and are certified in the US, so I figured this would be my very best chance. I developed a "wish list" of the tests I wanted, and if I couldn't get them (or couldn't get them in a timely manner- it often takes a week for a test you can get done overnight in the US), I was coming home that weekend.

The doctor at the American clinic was shocked by the corners that had been cut in my care. For the first time, I had confidence in the doctor I was seeing here. I had the first round of tests on Saturday, and those results come in Wednesday. I got more tests today (which come in Thursday), and I get more tests on Wednesday. I have one week left in Ukraine, and my hope at this point is that I leave with a diagnosis. I feel better about the situation, but I still wish I were home right now.

Bright side though: Today was the first day I took out my new camera. I can't wait to buy a new lens for it, but I'm so happy about it. :)

Drat

Today I went to the hospital to retake all my tests. They were supposed to pronounce me cured. They did not. I'm getting more and more distressed and would really like a glass of wine, which of course I'm not allowed to have because of the medicine I'm on. I go to another specialist on Monday, which happens to be the day my partners-in-crime leave.

And how is your day going?

The first sign Bakersfield has corrupted you

Last week, it reached 108 degrees in Kiev. While my teacher and everyone else was complaining about how hot it was, I was over the moon because it was DRY HEAT. The girl from Bakersfield and her friend from Arizona were in their element. :)

In which my worst nightmare comes true....

I spent Thursday afternoon preparing to spend the weekend in western Ukraine with my partners-in-crime: Brian and Ian, two CMCers interning for the Danish Refugee Council. I wasn’t really sure what the weekend would entail other than two 14-hour train rides in what Ian referred to as the “proletariat class,” loving on Afghan refugee children, and some sight-seeing here and there. I searched for an ATM that would accept my MasterCard, purchased water bottles and snacks, and began to pack. About an hour before we were going to leave for the train station, I start to feel funny. Really funny. At first I considered getting on the train anyways. The city we’d be in was close to the Slovakian border, and I figured if I needed medical care, I’d rather get it in the EU. The hotel we booked had AC and wifi, so if I just needed bed rest, I’d be more comfortable there. However, I knew that if I got on the train, I’d essentially be trapped there for fourteen hours, and that wasn’t a place I wanted to be sick.

I called my dad at work. He searched around for one of the emergency doctors, and I spoke with him for a few minutes about my symptoms. His message was clear: It could be a UTI, but it could be worse. Either way, you need medical attention, since without treatment the infection can hit your bloodstream and go septic. Go to the doctor. Don’t wait.

I called the number of the US Embassy listed on the website for emergencies, and couldn’t get through. (Umm...?) Luckily, I’d met some American Marines who work at the embassy the weekend before, and I got the embassy’s actual number, and was patched through to the nurse on duty. She directed me to a hospital that was considered the best in Ukraine, and told me the doctors should speak English. I get in the cab and go. The boys, gentlemen that they are, offered to go with me, but I wouldn’t hear of it. In my head, it still couldn’t be that big of a deal, and I didn’t want them to cancel their trip (which, for them, was work-related) over this.

I got to the hospital, and the reception staff doesn’t speak English. I try pointing, but that doesn’t work. The only relevant word I know in Russian is “emergency,” but I can’t describe any of my symptoms in Russian. Finally, they bring out a doctor, and his English isn’t great, but it’s better than my Russian, and it’s enough. I tell him I think I might have a urinary tract infection. He orders a blood and urine sample. The former he was going to take from my finger, but he had me do the latter first. He took one look at the sample and said, “You need an IV, so let’s not bother ruining your pretty fingers, we’ll take the test from your arm.”

Before I got the IV, we got into a bit of a spat because I had heard horror stories of hospitals re-using needles in Eastern Europe, and I didn’t want them to poke me with anything I didn’t see come out of the package. At first the doctor thinks I’m joking. “Oh, don’t worry, you see that sink right there? We just washed it [the needle]; it’s very clean.” I must have looked terrified, as he quickly added, “No, no, single-use needles, we haven’t re-used needles in a very long time in this country.” I insisted I wanted to see it come out of the package. “What kind of country do you think this is? We had single-use needles even in the Soviet times!” I’d clearly hit a sore spot, but this is one of the few instances where I’m not going to feel an ounce of guilt for being the ugly American. Finally, the doctor has the nurse get a new needle. She looked quite confused, and the doctor told me, pointedly, “You see? She is young enough that she doesn’t even KNOW there was a time when we re-used needles.” Each time I needed a new shot, he made the same joke about washing the needles in the kitchen sink, and, each time, I was not amused.

I was lying in the hospital bed being pumped full of saline solution and antibiotics when my urine test results came in. “Ploha,” the doctor says. “Ochen ochen ploha.” Very very bad. He tells me he is surprised I am only now coming in because, given how advanced this looks, I’ve probably had this for at least a couple months. This comes as quite the shock because I’d felt fine until about 9pm that evening. The blood test came in about an hour later, and those were also ochen ochen ploha. The infection had hit my bloodstream, just as the American doctor warned could happen. As the doctor upped the dose of antibiotics, frantically rechecked my vitals, and shot me full of painkillers, he told me that I was about to go septic, and if I had waited until morning to come in, I could have died. In my head, I noted that if I had gotten on the train with Brian and Ian, the train that wouldn’t have arrived in Mukachevo until 2pm, I almost certainly would have.

I asked the doctor what kind of bacteria I had, where I could have gotten this infection, if he knew where exactly this infection was. He told me they didn’t test for the type of bacteria, as it would take a week for results to come in. He explained that, “in our country,” they give broad treatments, and then order more tests if the patient doesn’t respond. It saves money, he said. The entire ER visit was about $100, so money isn’t my first concern, and I told him that I wanted him to order the extra tests. I didn’t want to still be sick in a week, but then need to wait another week for the test results to come in because he didn’t order them this week. He deferred, saying I would see a urologist the next day, and he would decide whether I needed them or not.

The next day, I asked the urologist where I had this infection. “Who knows? Maybe your bladder? Maybe your kidneys? It’s very advanced though, so I think it’s your kidneys.” I’m alarmed by the lack of curiosity. Shouldn’t he be testing to find out for certain? As if he read my mind, he added, “I’d give you the same medicines regardless.” He also doesn’t think I need a specific test to determine what kind of bacteria is causing this, as the antibiotics he’s prescribing should kill it anyways. Like the ER doctor the day before, he says that this is how they do things in Ukraine, and 95% of the time, it works. My mom would later explain to me that this is what many American doctors would do for patients with MediCal or other insurance programs for the poor.

I thought back to last summer, when it seemed as though the quality of American healthcare was at the forefront of everybody’s mind. One fact that came up constantly was that Americans spend more than most other countries for healthcare, and it was open for debate why that was. One explanation that was frequently offered is that American doctors will test more aggressively than doctors in other countries, and Americans are more likely to seek medical attention for minor issues. I’ll say in my defense that, less than 24 hours after the doctors told me I had been close to dying, this isn’t exactly a “minor issue.” But I wanted more testing. I wanted to know what kind of bacteria. I wanted to know where. I might not have been able to do anything with the information myself, but I wanted the doctors to want to know. But if they were going to prescribe me the same meds regardless of the bacteria, regardless of which organ was infected, does it really matter? To me, once the words, “You could have died,” escape the doctor’s lips, I deserved all the extra precautions of having a backup plan in case I didn’t respond to treatment. But what if it hadn’t been as serious? Would I have still insisted? I can’t help but think I probably would have.

***

I’m home from the hospital. They sent me with half the pharmacy, it seems. No fewer than six types of pills to take every day, an herbal tea with anti-bacterial properties concocted for those with kidney ailments, and a chamomile soak for my bath. The last item confused me greatly. “Is it tea,” I asked the pharmacist in Russian. “No, it’s for bath.” Knowing some languages have different words for tea made from the tea plant, and tea-like beverages made from something else, I decided to press further. “Do I drink it?” “No, it’s for bath.” “Bath?” “Yes. Not shower, but bath.” She made some scrubbing motions. “Clear?” “Umm…. Yes… I take a bath with it?” “Yes.” “Ok….”

I spent two days in bed. I napped, I sweated through 100+ degree heat, and I finished one novel, read all of another, and then read the Perry v. Schwarzenegger decision. I got up only to take my medicine, go to the bathroom, grab the occasional slice of bread and cheese, or brew myself another pot of my kidney-tea. On Sunday, I finally had the energy to stand up long enough to take a shower and to actually prepare myself a meal. Today, Monday, my boys came back from their trip, and I left my apartment for the first time to get lunch, groceries, and wifi. I’m taking baby steps getting there, but I AM getting better, and I am NOT going to die in Ukraine, if for no other reason but the fact that I refuse to.

Jet Lag = Death

Back in Ukraine, Day 1: Go to sleep at 11:00am, set alarm for 11:30am. Wake up at 1:30pm. Go back to sleep at 6:00pm, again for a 30-minute nap. Wake up at 9pm. Try to go to bed at midnight, toss and turn until 4am.

Day 2: Sleep through alarm set for 9:30am. Wake up around 12:45, which is 15 minutes before class starts. Go to bed at midnight.

Day 3: Wake up at 3:30 in the morning. Try to go back to sleep, admit it's a losing battle, read a book. Go back to sleep around 6am, wake up at 9:30. And now it's 11:15, and I want nothing more than to go back to sleep.... I hate jet lag.

Born in the USA, Back in the USSR

Ok, so that was super cheesy and not exactly politically correct, but I couldn't resist.

I went back to the United States for a week for Fulbright orientation. Though this involved being in DC in July (something that should be avoided when possible), I had a great time being back in the US. It was amazing, however, to see how used I had gotten to certain things in Ukraine. For example, I was BEYOND excited to be back in a city where most buildings are going to be air conditioned. Then I get to DC, and I freeze. Even the buildings that do have AC in Kiev are air-conditioned just to the point where it is not hot, but I'd be shocked to find a place with the AC turned down to 60 degrees. The AC I'd been looking forward to was, surprisingly, just as uncomfortable to me as not having it.

I also found myself really excited to come back to Ukrainian food and portion sizes. I was saddened by the amount of food I threw away in DC when I'd discovered that the item I'd ordered was simply too much for me to handle, especially now that I've grown accustomed to eating about half the amount of food as one normally does in the US (and lost several pounds between that and the mystery illness of my first few weeks). I was happy to have a Chipotle burrito (or, rather, a third of one), but I was just as happy to come back to a bowl of borsht (beet-root soup), cabbage salad, and buckwheat.

When I took a taxi back from the airport in Kiev, I had a full conversation in Russian with someone who was not my teacher. It was my first. Among other things, the driver told me I should find a Ukrainian boyfriend so that I could practice my Russian, of course. He stopped short of offering his services. It was exciting to be able to keep up, and I think it's a sign that things are looking up this summer.

Секс = Презерватив

My teacher at one point commented that my grasp of Russian grammar is fairly good, but that there are several bits of basic vocabulary that I know nothing about. As a result, she set out to teach me about food, since I'm useless when you hand me a restaurant menu.

In addition to making me hungry, all this talk of food unleashed a surprising degree of Soviet sentimentality from my thirty-something-year-old teacher. "When I was young," she'd tell me in Russklish, "Butter was BUTTER. It went bad very quickly, and it had this smell to it when it did. Now, you buy butter, and you can leave it out, and it won't spoil. It won't ever smell. It's very strange, I don't think it's real butter." (I think these "processed food" woes she and I both share are a productive of the modern times in general rather than a particular dedication of the Soviet Union to all things natural, but I digress.) So, I ask in Russian, "Are there many preservatives in food nowadays?" I was about to pat myself on the back for asking a relevant and intelligent question in grammatically correct Russian, but my teacher cracked up before I could do so. Apparently in Russian, as in French, the word pronounced "preservateev" is not a preservative, but a condom. "Do you put condoms in your food?" (And that's about the one innocent-question-turned-odd-sex-talk that I managed to avoid for the duration of my time in France.)

So I recount this story to Brian over lunch today, and suddenly a lightbulb goes off in his head. There's an advertisement all over the metros with a smiling woman asking, "Wanna go get coffee?" Underneath is the title of this blog post: "seks=preservateev." (Who says there are few English-Russian cognates?) An HIV/AIDS awareness organization sponsors the ad. Brian told me, "I wanted to ask what a preservateev was... I was thinking it had to do with the demographic problem you have in Eastern Europe [fairly rapid population loss], and maybe they were encouraging people to go out and procreate? But if they're doing that, why would they be talking about HIV? It seems like a mood-killer."

Na Metro

Taking public transportation is always a fun way to get to know a city. (Granted, it's a crowded, sweaty, hot sort of fun.) I think there is much to be gleaned from looking at the design of the stations, the choice of advertisements, and other little things. So what have I learned from the Kiev metro?

-The Soviets were into practicality. Many metro stations in the city center are pretty far underground because they doubled as bomb shelters. One, Arsenalna, is the deepest subway station in the world. I'm told that the metro routes in St. Petersberg were designed not for the needs of civillians making commutes, but to military transport. (Although, to be fair, the American interstate system was designed for much the same reason.)

-The early Soviets wanted to communicate a sense of grandeur. Many of the original stations from the metro's 1960 opening here are among the prettiest I've ever seen. I've seen beautiful mosaics and relief carvings, and soon I hope to start being able to post pictures or them. That said, newer stations (farther from the city center) are all pretty standardized. This seems to hold true for the city at large. The Stalin-era architecture, especially on Khreshatik, is truly something to behold, but what a friend of mine once referred to as the "commie-villes" in the outskirts of the city consist of block after block of grey dour depressing skyscrapers. My friend Natalia (whose Stalin-era apartment I'm currently living in) explained that Stalin-era buildings were built to last, and I think they were also built to inspire. When walking around the other day, Brian (my partner in crime for the summer) pondered what we would think if great architectural achievements came from Hitler. I can't help but think that people will eventually forget the origin of art as long as it is good art... how many European cathedrals were built under a corrupt papacy? How beautiful buildings were built by brutal imperialists? Sometimes good, beautiful things can come from bad people; just as you have to learn at some point as you reach adulthood that good people can still do bad things sometimes.

-Language is a very complicated issue indeed. The Kiev metro opened in a time when it was encouraged to use local languages, so all stations and announcements were exclusively Ukrainian. As time went on, the Soviet Union pursued policies of russification, Kiev became a more ethnically Russian city, and the stations became more Russian. Now, a trip on the metro is a sign that you are in Ukraine and not in Russia, and don't you forget it. All the lessons from back home about the vocabulary one would need to understand metro announcements went out the window. I expected the doors to "zakruivaetsa," but here "sashinaetsa." I don't watch out for the "sledushuyu" (next) station, but for the "nastupna" station. I ended up making a mistake in class because I was thinking the word for a city square was "plosha," since my metro stop for class is called "Poshtova plosha." It was only then that I learned the reason metro announcements confused me so much was because they were not in fact in Russian.

And finally my favorite thing to be gleaned about Ukrainian culture from a trip of the Kiev metro:

-Ukrainians like furry creatures. The metro cars are equipped with small televisions that will announce the current and next stansiya upon arrival at the station. While moving, however, it will show practical information such as the weather and current exchange rates and funny videos lifted from Animal Planet. I've watched a parrot climb its owners trousers with its beak, a puppy chase balloons until each one popped, a cat get its head caught in a fish bowl. I find it quite endearing. :)

New Apartment (Or: The Saga Continues)

I love the new place, and I'm so excited to be there. I finally feel safe to come home, which is something I can't say I'd ever felt at my old apartment. There've been many moments since Saturday where I've randomly broken out into a big grin- when I hear the sound of children playing outside the kitchen window, when I'm strolling home after dinner and see families walking home as well, when I drink water that comes from a special filtered tap, when the small market around the corner sells Kleenex (which I'd begun to think didn't exist here because of my inability to find it in ANY of the stores in my old neighborhood.)

I'm unpacking, settling in, and have never been so excited to bust out a mop and vacuum and get to cleaning.

But this hasn't come without its cost, unfortunately. I had been in the process of making arrangments to, in short, pay the bribe and move to a safer neighborhood when my friend offered to let me stay in her family's apartment. My host parents knew I was moving, but my host sister was out of town at the time all of these decisions were made. My host parents then left to go to the dacha for the weekend, so no one was around as I was packing up to move out. My host sister came back home literally as I was struggling to get my bags out the door, and she was pissed. "Why didn't you say anything?" I tried to explain that this had happened yesterday, that she wasn't home, I was sorry. She just said "Ok," went into the apartment, and slammed the door behind her. I still hope my host family doesn't think it was their fault... My Russian is limited, my host sister's English is better than my Russian but also quite limited, and so much gets lost in translation. In any case, despite my best intentions, I think I managed to burn that bridge rather thoroughly, and I understand that any action I take while abroad is something I do as "Katie," but as the "amerikanka."

Meanwhile, I asked my program director to refund me the housing fee for the rest of the summer. It seemed like a fairly straightforward request. You wanted 90 euros a week for me to live with a host family. I'm not living with a host family any more, so I should get the 630 euros (90 per week for the next 7 weeks) back. My director, of course, tells me this "isn't possible." (As an aside, it really irks me when people tell me "I can't" or "it's not possible," when the situation is in fact "I don't want to" or "I won't." Taking personal responsibility is hard sometimes, but it's the classy way to go.) So let me get this straight.... I get put into the slums, so I ask to move. I prepare to pay a bribe in order to do so. A better option comes along, and I decide to take it... and then the director wants to pocket nearly 800 dollars after playing fast and loose with my personal safety? Where is the Better Business Bureau when you need it? I am so angry that I hope the man never approaches me personally since it would take an incredible amount of effort not to scream at him. If you know me well at all, you know that is not my way of dealing with people. The only thing that is keeping me civil is the fact that everything was prepaid, and if I piss him off too much there's no way to get any of that money back. I hope this situation is somehow resolved quickly. Anger is such a toxic emotion, and to be consumed by it feels like having a bit of my positive-thinking smiling Californian soul eaten away.

Moving!!!

So, as I not so subtly hinted at a couple times, the housing situation here in Ukraine has been bad, but I felt incredibly guilty any time the thought crept into my head. The more often I thought, "I can't live here," the guiltier I felt. At first I tried to pass it off as, "Well, things aren't quite aesthetically pleasing, but don't be princess, that's not what matters." As I tiptoed around broken glass and rusted nails, I'd think, "The locals deal with this all the time, you just need to wear the right shoes. If they don't have tetanus, you won't either." All the while, I would here in one ear "Don't be a snob, this is just inconvenient, you're NOT going to be an ungrateful house guest," and in the other ear the kind Ukrainian cop saying, "Ah, I'm surprised they put a girl like you in Troeshina, it has the most crime in all of Kiev."

The final straw came a couple nights ago, around 11:30pm when I was trying to get home after the Germany-Spain game (which I don't want to talk about, thankyouverymuch). I tried to hail one cab, and when I told him my address he looked at me like I had the plague. So I find another cabbie, and he says that he won't go there, but this other cabbie might, and he walks me over there. He gives me a price that I find acceptable, and I get in the car. Once the door is shut and locked behind me, I remember my host sister's admonitions to not take random cabs, but to call a company, since some drivers operate independently and you never know where they'll take you. Then I remember my friend, who was roofied at a club here in Kiev (on a night I was supposed to be out with him, but stayed in since I wasn't feeling well), and the taxi driver who took him home followed him INTO HIS ROOM and stole about $300 that had been lying on his desk. I suddenly thought I was about to have a panic attack. The driver turned out to be fine, as you may have gathered from the fact that I'm here to blog about it. I rushed into my apartment, and cried. I needed to get the hell out of Troeshina.

I talked to my program director the next day, and he seemed reticent. "Ah, but your family is so nice, I give you our nicest family and I'm sad you cannot overlook a few inconveniences." Does he think I'm upset because it's far? I explain again that the neighborhood is not safe, and I want to live some place that is. "Oh, but everywhere is a little dangerous, you just have to be careful." Fair enough, but I wouldn't use that to say it doesn't matter if I put a young foreigner with limited English skills in South-Central LA instead of Westwood. As he realizes I'm not going to let this go, finally he tells me, "You know, it will be more expensive." When I had initially asked for quotes on housing, he never mentioned a pricing scale for host families. It would cost X amount, and I'd be in the downtown. Is this going to be yet ANOTHER person who is trying to rip me off because I'm foreign? I cried myself to sleep for the second night in a row.

At that point, I really wanted nothing more than to go home. I'll be going back to DC for Fulbright orientation in a week, and I was quite close to using a flight voucher I have to catch a flight to Los Angeles instead of back to Kiev. The only thing that stopped me from looking too far into this option was that I realized how much money it would cost to get me and my bags back to Europe at the end of the summer. I posted a brief message (in which I confess to breaking the "Quit bitching" mantra) to my friend Ben on Facebook throughout all this.

Yesterday, I checked my Facebook before heading off to dinner. I had a message from a Ukrainian-born friend of mine from college that shocked me, made me cry (again), and probably completely changed my summer here: "I just talked to my mom. She's going to call my grandma. We have friends who live close to our apartment in Kiev who should have the key to the apartment and who know some English. It's a very nice apartment, very well-furnished, washing machine and kitchen and flat-screen TV and 2 bedrooms. And it's in a VERY nice neighborhood. And you don't need to pay rent. Give me your number and tell the guy who put you in Troeshina to fuck off." She would later tell me, "I didn't think it was THAT bad... but Troeshina... man..."

I'm packing today. I move in tomorrow.

On Not Bitching

Some circumstances in life merit emotions we often consider negative. When you lose someone important to you, I would be worried if you didn't cry. Likewise, certain injustices should inspire great anger. I would never tell someone who is still job searching not to worry because everything will naturally turn up rosy in the end. When you are separated from your friends and family, it's ok to feel homesick. These emotions are all part of being human in tough times.

Other times are different. Unhappiness stems from a combination of suboptimal circumstances and a bad attitude. The situation would not truly be so bad if you didn't focus on the negative, or if you worked harder to change what you do not like. These are the times where I would like to say, "Quit bitching."

I've needed to repeat this mantra to myself more often than I'd care to admit these last few weeks. Some things I've dealt with are legitimate... I'm allowed to be cranky when I've spent several days violently sick to my stomach, and I tell myself it's understandable that it's tough to focus on the positive when you spend a lot of time cooped up because of said stomach illness. But these legitimately bad circumstances seemed to have opened the floodgates for me to fixate on the suboptimal circumstances with which I should be generally able to live.

"I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss being healthy, I miss being able to converse easily with those I meet" quickly turns into "I miss soft toilet paper, I miss Kleenex, I miss fresh fruit, I miss being able to drink tap water, and on that note I miss having running water every day, I miss air conditioning, hell, I miss ceiling fans, I miss American washing machines- even the dorm ones, I miss having a dryer, I miss fabric softener, I miss California's anti-smoking laws, I miss living in a building where the hallways are not constructed from exposed styrofoam, and I miss living in a building where you don't have to worry about stepping on glass from the broken windows or nails from God knows where, I miss not having people constantly trying to rip me off, I miss this, I miss that, I miss, I miss, I miss." Granted, it would be great not to need to miss these things. But that's besides the point. I'm in a situation where I have to do without, and some of it isn't even that big a deal. The "something needs to change" moment came when a friend of mine who is also here for the summer asked me, "So what's your favorite part of living in Ukraine," and I needed to stall a few minutes before thinking of things that I even liked about living here. That's not a good sign.

Moving to a better neighborhood might fix some of my woes, and I've given the director of my program a polite talking-to about sending a five-foot-tall, 22-year-old FEMALE foreigner with limited Russian-language skills to my particular neighborhood (especially once I found out where other students in my program were living). I've also figured out that it was my yogurt that's making me sick, so there's light at the end of that tunnel as well. I am working on changing my own circumstances, but the rest of my woes won't go away, so it's my attitude that must. And in the mean time, I'm going to keep reminding myself, "Quit bitching."

American Exports

I am proud to be an American. I believe we have a rich and interesting heritage, I really do. It is for that reason that I can be SO INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATED by what novels, films, and ideas get exported to the rest of the world.

To give you some comparison here: You go to Barnes and Noble, and you want to buy a popular Russian novel. What are you going to pick up? Contenders for the top spot would be War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina. Maybe Doctor Zhivago or One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I'm sure my brother would have some obscure philosophical piece he'd like to get his hands on. My point, generally speaking, is that they export LITERATURE.

I was in the English language section of a bookstore recently, since I'm always curious to see what they sell from America. Mark Twain? Nope. Steinbeck? No. Hemingway? F. Scott Fitzgerald? Vonnegut? I'm not even picky about the genre at this point, but can you give me a classic? No. BUT I can get every installment of Twilight in English or in Russian. (And of Harry Potter, but that is both more legitimate and not American.)

And then I realize why foreigners (or even, sadly enough, many young Americans I know) think we have neither brains nor culture.

Strange Russian Movies

Many Soviet movies were communist parables masquerading as normal life. No surprise there. From what I am told, Russian film underwent a "renaissance" after the fall of the Soviet Union. Also not particularly surprising.

I saw one of these "new Russian" films on television a few weeks ago. My Russian is stilly fuzzy at best, but I could gather that the disjointed images I saw were the result of the various characters being hypnotized. You see a overweight, balding, aging man rocking out to a full concert hall in one scene, which cuts to the same man dressed in a dignified business suit. In the next scene, it appears some sort of "Miss USSR" pageant is going on: many women in bikini bottoms and a sash with some Soviet republic's name on it standing on a stage with some announcer pointing to men in the front row who would stand and wave. It all seemed so typical, except for the whole uncensored nudity bit (on public television at breakfasttime with five-year-old Dima next to me). Miss "Rossiya" (Russian for "Russia") was introduced, so perhaps she's won? She says a little bit about herself, and then men in the audience start calling out numbers. Is this an auction? Is this her score? Who knows. Finally, the calling stops, and a masked man is called to the front. He approached Miss Rossiya and the announcer, and then he rips off his mask. Miss Rossiya gasps. "It's my father," she cries. "Nyet," he says, before grabbing her and violently suckling her. I just about choked on my cereal. Dima acts as though nothing is amiss. I never did figure out just quite what was going on, as I decided homework seemed to be a better option than watching tv at that moment.

Russian- yet another language for me to butcher

I've only had two rather amusing mistranslations here so far- most of my mishaps involve incorrectly declining my nouns and having a sentence with three subjects and an indirect object or something equally nonsensical.

слушать (slooshat)- to listen
слышать (sleeshat)- to hear

Through a very easy mistake, I accidentally told my host mother that I wasn't listening to her when I was trying to explain I couldn't hear her very well. She seemed rather taken aback before my host sister stepped in. (On a side note, I wish more languages had a progressive and affirmative tense. I do listen, I listen, and I am listening are all VERY distinct to me. I don't listen vs. I'm not listening- also very different.)

Much worse, however: Russian has at least two (often more) verbs for every English equivalent. There are, I think, four verbs that mean "to finish." One of them, I had been told, ends up meaning "to orgasm" if you don't use it with a direct object. So last night I'm taking a taxi home and am making conversation with the driver. He asked me if I was in the university, and I ended up replying, "Oh, no, I just orgasmed in May." Based on his reaction, and the fact that he very quickly said ZAKONCHILA (a different word meaning "to finish"), I realized I'd guessed the wrong one... Oops.

Why does it seem like half of my instances of language-botching results in me saying something sexual? I've told my French host father I was "aroused (excited) to meet him," my French host mother that I didn't want any more food because I was pregant (full), a German roommate that I was horny (hot), my French class that I wouldn't want to f*** (kiss) a smoker because I don't like smoker's breath. (There was a legitimate context to that last one, I swear.)

Sigh...

You think you know, but you have NO idea.

I've been thinking a lot about poverty and standard of living questions since my arrival. This city sometimes seems to be wrapped in gold- as I cross the river every day, I see many churches with golden domes glinting in the sunlight. But then I see some very real evidence that the church is perhaps the one of the very few things touched by gold here. This is especially the case since the cop I met last night (the Ukrainian cousin of an American who was in Kiev to visit family) tells me that my neighborhood- one of the poorest in Kiev, is also the most crime-ridden. Great.

One thing that was particularly striking to me was the woman selling cherries outside my apartment building. There was one basket of cherries that were yellow and red streaked on sale for 24 grivnas. The middle basket had solid red, but light colored cherries for 26 grivnas. The most expensive were a vivid shade of red: the type I'd expect to see in an American grocery store. Those were 28 grivnas.

How sad, I thought. I can't imagine the sort of poverty where you would buy unripe produce to save 4 grivnas (about 50 cents.) That image really stuck with me.

Fast forward a couple days. My host family had left to spend the day in the "dacha," which is like a little village retreat for urban-dwellers. They come back, and my host sister brings me a huge bowl of cherries- one vivid red, and one yellow with some pale red streaks. Pointing to the red ones, then the yellow ones, she explains "These are normal cherries, and these are sweet cherries. You have sweet cherries in the US?"

Oh.

I'm not a huge cherry fan, generally. I think they can be too sour, and this is one of the few flavors where I much prefer the artificial version to the natural one. The sweet cherries, however, were delicious and I promptly ate every one.

Which other assumptions, I wonder, do I need to start rethinking? I can think all I want, develop these plausible hypotheses, and they can be ENTIRELY wrong. Until I've walked a mile in their shoes (or several miles on cobblestone roads in high heels, as the locals tend to do), almost anything I "know" is questionable. Sooo... I have about two months left, and I'm going to be doing a TON of walking. :)

Babushka

When you go to a different country, it is so easy to notice what is different. Differences can excite you, frustrate you, intrigue you. I love that my commute costs 50 cents each direction, when you consider that my similarly-timed commute in DC was $4.50. I'm not so excited that I can't drink the tap water. I'm intrigued by the fact that my hair seems shinier and redder (something I noted the last time I was in Ukraine). It makes sense, really. My psych prof always talked about the "ways you mess with babies," and he always pointed out that a baby will fixate on things that are surprising, that are different.

What warms my heart most when I am abroad isn't so much what is different, but what is constant. I'm not talking about the omnipresence of American fast food (Full disclosure: I'm taking advantage of the smoke-free room and free wifi at McDonald's, the eatery my brother so fondly refers to as the "American embassy" when traveling), or the fact that people are, generally speaking, dressed in a manner most Americans would recognize. I'm talking about love, about families, about friends.

Last night, my host family's son came to visit with his wife and four-year-old son, Dima. My host mother fretted all day. She bought a huge bag of amazing fresh blueberries (MUST find out where she found those) and hand-made Dima's favorite dumplings (vareniki) from scratch. She beamed every time she talked about "our Dima." She couldn't wait for me to see him, and she babbled on for ages about Dima's every accomplishment. I couldn't understand every word, to be sure, but the look on her face needed no translation. She was a proud babushka, many of whom I've seen roaming around the United States. A babushka who would not rest until everyone had had their fill to eat and then some, who would be begging you to eat just ONE more vareniki as she spoons three onto your plate. You may only understand every fifth word, and your surroundings may be foreign in every sense of the word, but in moments like these, you are home.

On Competence

I'm not the best at everything I do. Sometimes I'm not very good at all (but I don't want to hear one word about my driving skills from any of you right now). Generally speaking, however, I think I can call myself competent at what I do, and I like that about myself.

The first few days in Ukraine took me away from that comfort zone faster than I expected. As I mentioned in my last post, I couldn't find my way home- it turned out the east-bound bus stop was a couple blocks away from the west-bound bus stop, and I couldn't understand the responses when I attempted to ask for directions. I couldn't get my key to open the door. My host family doesn't have a microwave or a freezer, and the produce looks iffy to me, and I found myself in a huge market full of food and unable to make myself a meal other than a cheese sandwich. I've realized I don't necessarily know how to handle not knowing what's going on around me.

Thankfully, things are looking up. I made my way home without giving up and taking a cab yesterday. I now know how to unlock my door. I was able to successfully locate and purchase a notebook. I'm still living mostly on yogurt, cheese sandwiches, and bottled water, but one day (hopefully soon) I'll figure something else out. Maybe when my Russian improves I can ask my host mother to teach me how to cook Ukrainian food. ;)

A Pleasant Surprise

Every time I go to Europe, without fail, I will not plan for the fact that markets are closed on Sundays, wake up one Sunday morning, realize I have no food, and starve. Last night I wasn't feeling well, and I finished off my supply of bottled water, and you can't drink the tap water here. I guzzled about eight cups of tea in the morning (not exaggerating), and was still parched. When my host sister finally wanders out of her room, I ask her if she knows of any grocery stores open on Sunday. I was hoping very much that I wouldn't need to go to one of the more touristy areas to find a street vendor just to get some water- it takes a good 40 minutes to get to the center from my part of town. She frowns as if I'm asking a trick question, and then asks me why they wouldn't be open on Sundays? Hallelujah. It seems mildly inappropriate to be thanking the health gods that I'm living in a country that had its religious identity stolen from it during the Soviet era and thus doesn't shut down on Sundays... But I'm too excited for this development to feel guilty.

Public Transit Frustration

I keep getting lost at my metro station. It's a huge station that serves a black market, and some 5 bus lines and countless "marshutkas" (route taxis... for all purposes a smaller and more comfortable bus- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka) serve it with drop-off and loading points around the market. I've no problems getting to the metro station, as there's only one bus stop outside my apartment. Getting home is another story because I can't for the life of me find my bus stop, and my Russian is fuzzy, and no one speaks English, and... sigh. I need to figure this out soon, as the cab ride to get home costs about $5, and I don't want to pay that much every time I leave the apartment. Especially since the marshutka costs approximately 25 cents.