Cold!

Dave and I have just finished a week of hunkering inside and leaving our house only for work or Russian lessons. The temperatures in eastern Ukraine stayed at –25 C for the majority of last week, with snow and winds. News reports say that at least 130 people died and more than 500 were hospitalized with cold-related conditions in Ukraine, mostly in the Donetsk area. Temps like this aren’t extraordinary at home in the Upper Midwest, but here they are. Heating systems couldn’t keep up, so schools closed, and we wore our coats, hats and scarves at work all day (inside the building). Many more people don’t have cars than in the States, so many walk or take public transport. It’s kind of a pain to get from here to there when you don’t have a car in the winter, but it’s possible. However, when it’s that cold out, walking or even standing outside to wait for public transport can be dangerous. We walk about a half-mile to the bus stop from DCU, and we forced ourselves to walk it once the wind had died down, to go to Russian lessons and get groceries. Other than that, we stayed inside.

Happily, there was some heat, even if it wasn’t enough. The natural gas dispute that Ukraine and Russia had at the beginning of the year is settled for the time being, and the gas is back on after Russia cut its supply to Ukraine and Western Europe for a few days. Ukraine gets only around 30% of its gas from Russia, and I didn’t hear of any major shortages in Ukraine – from what I read in the news, people in Western Europe suffered more. In the new contract, Ukraine has agreed to pay around $100 per cubic meter, up from $50. More expensive than before, but not as bad as others - the Baltics pay around $120 and in Western Europe prices are expected to be around $250.

Laura

Persimmons

The other day I was flipping through my trusty Good Housekeeping cookbook, as I tend to do more often during the winter months, and I learned something new. First of all, Good Housekeeping and Betty Crocker, two of my standby cookbooks here in Ukraine, have been indispensable in my quest to familiarize myself with the foreign foods and ingredients I encounter here. The single reason they have been so helpful is their color photos. Labeled picture charts of beans, grains, fruits, vegetables and herbs have been very handy. I don’t have a Russian-English food dictionary, so many times, even if I learn the Russian name of something, I don’t really know what it is or how it’s translated into English – until I look at my picture charts. Back to the other day – I discovered a new fruit without even trying. Persimmons. I opened up my cookbook and there was a picture of those mystery orange-ish fruits that I frequently see at the market. I always thought they might be half-ripened tomatoes, but somehow that didn’t seem very plausible. I was especially happy to make this discovery as temperatures here plummet into single digits (negative digits in Celsius) and the fresh fruits of summer and fall seem particularly distant. The day after my discovery, I bought three persimmons, which are now ripening on the counter and will soon be used in some new recipe. I have my eye on a couple in MCC’s new “Simply in Season” cookbook.

Laura

Andy and Sara photos

Our guests have gone and things are quiet around here, as we recover from colds, probably caught while tramping around Kiev in the freezing weather. Andy and Sara's visit was a great extension to our holidays and we don't really want to get back to work again. Such is life. The picture on the left is in front of the Christmas tree in Kiev's Independence Square, where so many people pitched their tents during the Orange Revolution last year. The second is St. Vladimir's church, where we mingled with the worshippers on Ukrainian Christmas Day.

Visitors!

Since last Thursday we've been enjoying our visitors from Minnesota - Andy and Sara, Dave's brother and sister-in-law. We met them in Kiev and spent a few days there touring the city - visiting the many beautiful Orthodox churches, riding the metro, and stopping in at cafes for coffee and tea when our hands and feet got too cold. Now we're back in Donestk and our visitors are getting a taste of our life here. Yesterday we went to a Russian banya - a great cultural tradition (hot sauna, then jumping into an ice-cold pool, then back to the sauna again). It cleared the sinuses, and was a good time. Dave and I decided we should do that more often - not just when guests come. Classes have started again and the holiday celebrations are pretty much over for the rest of the world, but we're still celebrating with Andy and Sara. We'll post some pictures later.

Laura

New Year's 2006

This year we wanted to do something special New Year’s Eve. Brian and Verena Enns (our new coworkers in Zaporozhye) were visiting us and we decided that it would be enjoyable to “bring in the New Year” in Lenin Square, in the center of Donetsk.

Neither Laura nor I had ever been anywhere resembling Times Square for such an event, and this may have been as close as we will ever come. While they did not have a large ball dropping to start the New Year, we knew when it came. There were fireworks everywhere. Some of the people celebrating in the square probably had a little too much to drink, and that probably hindered their ability to actually wait until midnight. That was good, because it served as a countdown of sorts. At midnight, we watched several large fireworks displays. It felt safe, even though debris was falling on us and inebriated people were dancing, singing, and shooting off their own moderate shows in our very close proximity.

Everyone seemed to be happy, as New Year’s is the big holiday every year for the majority of Ukrainians. It is the one time of the year when the markets seem to be overrun with fireworks and other nonessential products. And we know now that people are buying them.

Dave

Christmas

Christmas seems like a long time ago, and it’s been a fun holiday. Holiday festivities finally picked up at DCU during the last week before Western Christmas. Although we had to teach Saturday English classes on Christmas Eve morning, we spent the evening with Americans friends and enjoyed a typical holiday feast. We thought December 25 was just going to be an ordinary Sunday in church, since Ukrainians generally celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7. But we were happily surprised to hear a couple Christmas-themed sermons, and enjoyed singing Joy to the World and Silent Night.

Our guests for Christmas evening were the Konoplitsky’s, a couple from church. We made another traditional Christmas dinner, and had fun describing the different dishes to our guests, most of which were unfamiliar to them. At one point in the evening the conversation switched to peanut butter, and we produced our imported jar for them to sample this foreign food for the first time. (They said they had wanted to try it ever since they saw Brad Pitt eating it in “Meet Joe Black.” Such are the cultural influences American movies have in the rest of the world). It was a fun but tiring night as we concentrated as hard as we could to understand and be understood in Russian. By the end, a lot was going over our heads. But it didn’t seem to matter too much.

Laura