Perpetual Change

Random Thoughts VI

This is a weird one. I couldn’t clean it up to much; it is rather unwieldy and there are lots of strange and messy ironies, or maybe even contradictions. Take it for whatever it might be worth. I apologize in advance if anyone finds anything “disappointing.” I think I was in a weird mood when I wrote most of these, and I will censor myself if you let me know where.

Because I have all these thoughts and I had no one to share them with here, I was always making notes. I fit right in. Almost all Ukrainians always carry small notebooks and I use mine excessively. I write new words, phrases, observations, thoughts, games, ideas for youth development.

Ukrainians tend to name things more by material than by the use, unlike Americans. For example, borsht is NOT to be confused with soup; although borscht usually has beets, it doesn’t necessarily and this is about the only difference I see between it and soup. A shallow bowl, if made of metal is called a myshka (little mixer), if made of porcelain it is a tarilka (plate), even if their shape and size are identical. A shirt if not made of silk or some other button-down shirt material is called a footbalka, which translates as t-shirt. A polo shirt falls into this category and is therefore considered less formal than a short sleeve, silky shirt, with outrageous patterns on it. These, along with the not so outlandish ones, are called sorochka, or shirts.

At the cemetery, all the graves are in chronological order; in hindsight, how are ours not? The exception is that the past mayors are at the front (sometimes Ukrainians have very common words for surnames, in fact one of the past mayors last name was the dialect word here for Potato). If a husband and wife really want to be buried together and the family hasn’t bought the adjoining plot to hold, then they bury one on top of the other. I also can’t figure out where do we bury our dead in Florida? We should have lots of graveyards, but I can only remember ever even seeing one, in South Florida.

Everything in life is so relative. In the summer, the pool attendants criticized my swim shorts. Everyone else is in speedo’s and they didn’t think mine looked like a bathing suit, and wanted me to go change. I assured them that it was a bathing suit.

Over the course of my time here, the most common question asked of me has changed from, “Are you sad (asked just that open-endedly)?” to, “Could you manager here?” to “Isn’t it better here?” And now I get about equally, “Aren’t you going to stay?” or “Aren’t you glad to be going home?”

Since they were given occupation of their apartments during Soviet times and then were given ownership of them at its end, many people have lived in same apartment or home their whole life. There is a real estate market, but very little on it, which makes most of it very expensive, and robs the Ukrainians of equity and credit for the most part.

I found my name on an announcemet for a credit card offer in my main school’s teachers’ room. I must have really made it “in” as a Ukrainian teacher. Very few people here have credit cards.

I had some old International Affairs magazine that I was reading a year and a half after publication. I was a bit shocked and appalled to find several issues, such as Darfur, still timely.

Did I ever write about the second incident with my pickpocket? Well, there was another volunteer with me the day that I was pickpocketed, and she saw me question the guy. Well she saw the same guy in a funny situation a few days later. Then a few months later, she was pickpocketed by the same guy! She went to the police, and they said, ‘yeah, we know Sasha, but we can’t catch him unless he takes more that $500 worth.’ Something smells fishy.

Why does it seem that the Asians feel/ remember across generations and Western countries and South Korea do not. I think it comes from the cultural spectrum of individualism versus collectivism. More collectivist societies propogate thoughts and memories more effectively across generations. Individiulaists are encouraged to form their own opinions, and so when factors have changed substantially, generations may have very different perceptions of reality. Blia what are your thoughts? (This thought was inspired by several articles I had been reading that alluded to how Japan remembers WW2 better than Korean youth remember the Korean war)

(this, as most of these, was written at least 8 months ago) If my country would mind its own business in general world affairs, and as a result that meant that we packed up PC, which I think is a very worthwhile program, then I would go home without question. It gets harder and harder to understand why I am here the more that I learn Ukrainian culture (maybe the more I become Ukrainian and the less American). I don’t think I would trust me.

posted by jjs @ 4:04 AM