Bike Ride

Over the weekend I helped lead a bike ride for five boys (ages 12-16) from Good Shepherd. We also led devotional times with them with the theme of “Becoming the Person God Wants You to Be.” It was a great way to get to know a few of the kids on a more one-on-one level as well as have an excuse to talk of some deeper things we don’t usually get into in a game of basketball.

We rode 50 miles each of the first two days, arriving at the Sea of Azov where we could relax a bit. We set up tents on the beach and lived on the beach and in the sea. It was a great time, even if some of us weren’t as deliberate as others and got some serious sun burn.

It was a humbling experience, with me and another N. American heading up the rear for the majority of the ride. They had planned to make the trip back in one day (Saturday) but moved it back to Sunday because of lack of time at the beach. I had already planned a work-related trip so the two of us who were always in the back felt we had a good excuse to take a bus back instead of dragging the rest of the group down on the day they wanted to do 100 miles. They arrived at Good Shepherd at 10 Sunday night. I was saddened that circumstances “didn’t allow” me to make the trip with them, but I was glad to already be sound asleep at that time (I didn’t end up making my trip, I left Monday afternoon). I’m quite the leader!

Dave

Summer food

Summer is here and with it brings warm temperatures and thus a strong aversion to using the oven or stove. In the winter, I love baking granola or cooking a slow stew, not only because I like spending time cooking in the kitchen but it’s also a great way to warm up the apartment. These days we have all the warmth we need in our apartment, and “cooking” becomes the attempt to assemble meals using the stove as little as possible. I now truly see the value of a “summer kitchen” - that cooking area situated far enough from the rest of the living quarters that it doesn’t pollute them with its heat in summer.

One particular Ukrainian recipe is perfect for such weather – in the last two weeks we’ve made two big batches. It’s Okroshka, a cold soup of cucumbers, dill and ham with a milky base. It’s very refreshing and very Ukrainian – fresh dill is essential for this dish.

Okroshka

2 hard-boiled eggs
1 t. sugar
1 t. Dijon mustard
4 c. water
2 c. buttermilk or plain yogurt
1 ½ c. cucumbers, finely diced
½ c. green onions, chopped
1 bunch fresh dill, chopped
1-2 c. ham or hot dogs, chopped
2 t. salt

May also add a couple boiled, diced potatoes and/or radishes. I’m not such a big radish fan, and boiling potatoes means using the stove, so I leave them both out.

Remove egg yolks and mash well with sugar and mustard. Gradually add water and buttermilk/yogurt and blend. Dice the whites and add them as well as the rest of the ingredients. Chill until serving. Serves 4.

This recipe has been adjusted a bit for “American” ingredients – here we use a yogurt-like beverage called “ryazhanka” for the milk base. I’m not sure what the direct translation is, it might actually be buttermilk. Plain yogurt should also work fine, but you might need to add more water if you use thick yogurt. A different variation of this soup is made with “kvass,” another refreshing summer treat – essentially a beverage made from fermented black bread. In summer it's sold by the cup from big tanks on street corners. It has virtually no alcohol in it, which means it’s Baptist-approved. Karen had difficulty describing it when we bought some for our guests to sample – it looks like iced tea, but is a little tangy and a little sweet, and smells a bit like beer. Although it’s a refreshing summertime beverage, I prefer my Okroshka with a milk base.

Laura

Jazz Concert

Last week we took our guests to a jazz concert in Donetsk. I'm not a jazz conneseur, but it seemed to be a pretty good concert. The hall was as full as I have seen it and was an interesting mix of older and younger people. The band was rumored to be "well-known throughout Europe" and reminded me of the North American band Phish (which I don't consider jazz, but still enjoy). Supposedly the lead singer has roots in Donetsk, and the guitarist in Ukraine, but the others in the band were from Western Europe.

Toward the end of the show, a special guest performer was announced. His name was Valery Kolecnikov, and the person who introduced him excitedly said he had played with some famous jazz muscians, including Dizzy Gilespy. I am not sure how this could be, with Kolecnikov being an older gentleman from the Soviet Union and jazz being forbidden listening, let alone playing. But that's not to say that it wasn't possible and maybe it was a more recent occurrance.

I have heard that jazz was and is very popular here in Ukraine. It was an "underground" thing in Soviet times and seems to have kept its popularity over the last several decades. I don't think I fully realized this until the concert. I counted six approximately 70-year-old men, some in groups and others alone, whose faces were visible from my seat. For the majority of the concert their expressions were distant and complacent; as men of their age here seemingly always are on the the street. But when Kolecnikov took the stage, they leaned forward in their seats so far that their elbows were resting on the seats in front of them. And when he
started bouncing all around the scales with his trumpet, their faces lit up and their heads may have even started bobbing. There was so much expression on these six men's faces. It was amazing and I found myself watching them instead of the concert, thinking about what they may have gone through in their lifetimes to be able to listen to such music. Seeing how much joy it brought them was worth far more than the $4 ticket price.

Visitors, Part 2

We just said goodbye to another set of visitors – my siblings Karen and Tom, and Karen’s friend, Jessica David. They opted to spend all their time in Donetsk, since there wasn’t a lot to spare, so we did a lot of just “hanging out.” Summer arrived with a bang and we’ve been enjoying (enduring) temps in the 90s for a couple of weeks now. So we sat near the fan and tried not to make too much heat.

We haven’t traveled much with the last two groups of visitors and we’re finding that even though sightseeing is always fun, we’ve been having just as much fun just spending time together not doing much at all, since we’ve missed doing that in the past three years.

Laura

Independence

Welcome back, dear laptop.

On a Saturday morning about a month and a half ago, as I do in my usual morning routine, I checked my e-mail, then shut down my computer before heading to my morning class. Upon my return four hours later, my computer was still stuck on the blue shutdown screen, fan running rapidly. I knew something was not right.

In the course of the next week or so, I proceeded to download lots of antivirus software to combat what I thought was a virus. None of that worked, so I decided to take the tried and true step towards virus removal - reformatting the computer; erasing everything and starting over from the beginning. I read up on it on the Internet, and did it myself. About halfway through the process, I realized that wasn’t working, either. At the end of my rope, we enlisted the help of the DCU computer guy, Sasha, who confirmed that the problem was bigger than a virus. About this time, Sasha and his family emigrated to the U.S. and Valek took over computer operations at DCU. He took our laptop to a repair place and we promptly left for MCC retreat. Upon our return, it was waiting for us, ready to go, for the not-too-scary fee of 260 griven ($52). I’ve been told that there were two things wrong with it, neither of which I really understand. All that matters to me is that my laptop is again at my every beck and call for e-mail writing, lesson planning and skypeing.

As I caught up on a month of missed blog reading this evening, I couldn’t help mentally noting my gratitude for Sasha and Valek’s help in the computer situation. As we come to the end of our term, I realize that there are many things I have learned. But I also realize there is still much that I can’t do. When my computer, my main work tool and communication lifeline breaks in Donetsk, Ukraine, what to do? There are no certified HP service centers with smiling customer service representatives around the corner, or anywhere less than a day’s drive away. So then which computer repair shop to try? Just pick the first I see? Do I walk in myself, mumble around in half-coherent Russian and hope they don’t hear dollar bills in my accent and take this helpless foreigner to town? Of course not, I ask for help from competent people, and it is gladly given. It shouldn’t really be hard, but it is. I want to be the independent, self-sufficient American into which my culture shaped me. But while living in a foreign culture, speaking a foreign language, I’ve learned that I simply can’t. I need the help of others, and although I don’t like to, asking for help is a necessary part of living here.

This idea of independence was something I was aware of in myself before we arrived in Ukraine, but have since learned how important it is to me. My sense of independence makes me try absolutely everything I can before I ask for help. It also means that when things that I don’t know how to deal with happen, I freak out. I have an especially bad history with electronics, as Dave can attest to. For example, the time when a drunk fan hugged Dave at a soccer game and he dropped the camera (which broke). Or when he plugged the battery charger into the outlet without flipping the voltage switch from 110 to 220. A poof of black smoke and that was all for that charger cord. Both incidents occurred less than a month after we arrived in Ukraine, when stress levels were already high and the thought of grocery shopping on my own was hard enough, let alone getting a camera repaired. That was nearly unfathomable. Therefore, I am ashamed to admit that I didn’t react well.

Both items were fixed (with the help of a great friend) long ago. And I’m happier to admit that with my most recent computer episode, although there were short times of despair, in the end, there wasn’t too big of a scene. I admit, I am still not good at asking for help. But perhaps I’m improving. One thing I am certain of: I am very grateful for those who willingly do help me, as soon as I calm down, bite my tongue and ask.

Laura

Blogging

A North American living abroad writes a blog entry as a way of venting, repeatedly using the tool of sarcasm to describe an event or chain of events that has either a) frustrated him/her or b) he/she found strange/funny in his/her cross-cultural environment. A national finds the entry, reads it and is offended by it. Relationships become strained and the reconciliation, if possible, ends up requiring infinitely more thought and energy than was put into the initial 150-word entry.

This is a situation that has occurred, from what I gather, several times with MCC’s international service workers. It is also something we all want to avoid. We have our blogs to give family/friends at home a glimpse into what is going on in our lives. We use our blogs to avoid the impersonal mass e-mail (that many end up deleting without reading) and also to save some time on individual communication. It also gives readers a great opening line; when they do decide to send us a message—“I love your blog,” “I was just reading your blog,” “Your blog is so interesting,” …. People can check it if they want according to their own schedule.

Personally, I want to keep our small core of readers and a good way to do that is to entertain them (make them laugh). I use sarcasm that can border on hurtful in order to reach this end. For me, laughing at the uncomfortable situations is a way of coping and it’s not my intention to say that everyone here is “like this.” I have come to realize that many cultures don’t put as much emphasis on sarcasm as maybe I am accustomed to. The response I envision myself hearing is: “we aren’t ALL like that.” And essentially “hasn’t anything good happened?”

Our blog entries tend to be about trips that we take and strange situations in which we find ourselves. Please don’t take this to mean that all we do is travel to exotic places or that we are perpetually in strange situations (even though the frequency is exponentially greater than it was in North America).

For me, my “work” is usually quite interesting; but writing about it constantly could border on boring: for both me the writer and you the reader. I won’t speak for Laura but I think she would agree with this as well. In any case, we hope we haven’t offended anyone and will continue to try to be culturally sensitive when writing our blogs.

Dave

Our Last Retreat

This year we had the opportunity to travel to Egypt for our annual conference/retreat. It was the first year where the MCC Middle East and MCC Europe programs met as one big group, called MCC EME for those of us who can’t seem to get enough acronyms.

It was a great experience. Getting together with other workers is always great. It seems that even if we haven’t ever met before we can still relate to each other really well because we seem to have a lot in common. Spending time with the 70+ others in the group was good for us, helping us to realize that even though MCC began in Ukraine, the organization is doing a lot more worldwide than its relatively limited scope in the “Post Soviet Republics.” The stories of the workers in Palestine, Iraq, and Lebanon were very intimidating to me personally. Comparing these stories to how we live and work in Ukraine makes life here seem peaceful and a bit uneventful.

The former executive director of MCC, Ron Mathies, was the resource person and he did a great job of energizing the workers. He has an unbelievable memory and spent most of his time at the podium telling about a) his years as an MCC worker in southern Africa, b) many of his trips as executive director and c) some of his responsibilities as executive director. Two points really hit me personally. First, the “Ron Mathies” translation of Deuteronomy 26:1-10: where he changes the words a bit to be a history of Mennonites and MCC. Second he talked about how MCC has a history of “ordinary people (in North America and abroad) doing ordinary things with extraordinary worldwide consequences.”

After the retreat, which took place near Alexandria, we had the opportunity to take a vacation day in Cairo. We thought we could see some sites and maybe do some souvenir shopping. Notice the picture of me at the pyramids (no, I'm not practicing my "I'm at the pyramids" disco dance)… Laura is not absent from the picture because she is the one taking it (as is the case with many of our pictures). At the time the photo was taken she was quite possibly stooped next to the toilet in our hotel imagining what the pyramids would be like (I think she saw the outlines of a couple from our bus window and she could have been building on that). That was unfortunate, but I think even after whatever she ate that made her sick, Laura would agree that the trip as a whole was great.

Dave