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. :)