At present, the political situation seems to be calm. However, one thing that has remained seems to be strange phobias of certain colors affiliated with political parties. In the U.S. the Democratic and Republican parties are loosely affiliated blue and red respectively. Here, there are also political affiliations. The incumbent party is affiliated with blue and the opposition is affiliated with orange but here color affiliations take on a whole new meaning. It seems that the political colors here are more similar to gang colors at home.
Our university has Saturday English classes (I am teaching one of these classes). The advertising is done by hanging flyers with little tear-off strips all over town. When they were getting ready to print the flyers, an administrator went to purchase paper. The only ream that could be purchased was orange. They bought it and printed the advertisments, boasting of learning conversational English by speaking with native speakers. When the group went to hang these flyers around the city, they were repeatedly harrassed by passers-by. They asked if these classes sponsered by "The West" as a way to push its political agenda? Apparently orange was not the right color to use.
A visiting professor told a story of he, his wife, and teenage daughter going to the grocery store and wanting to buy some fish. The clerk only had the typical, Ukrainian, pickled whitefish but the family wanted Salmon. The thing is that their family has always referred to Salmon as "Orangefish." The teenage daughter asked, apparently in rather forceful Russian, "Don't you have any orange fish?" The rest of the store went silent and everyone turned their heads to look and frown in dismay. Apparently she should have used the word for Salmon.
We have heard that, in the west, everyone is wearing some piece of orange clothing. Here it is not a good idea to even have a pattern with small amounts of orange on your underwear. The worst thing is that for several years my favorite color has been orange. I have numerous orange shirts (Laura says that I am "a fall") and brought some along. I wore one a few weeks back and was informed by several friends/acquaintances that it would be best to put it (and others like it) in the back of the closet for a while. I did so reluctantly, but wish the opposition could choose some other color, like fuschia, to represent themselves.
-Dave
