MoldovAnn

My brother has generously financed and supported my blogging habits for the past five years, handling all technical issues, allowing me to remain blissfully tech-unsavvy for a long time. He’s urged me to develop better habits, coaxed me into dabbling with new-fangled things like RSS feeds. I must admit, I’m a curmudgeon at heart, and I fight the changes he encourages, kicking and screaming, until I actually try them and realize they are pretty dang cool.

He finally put his foot down about the blogging; he’s not going to enable my selfish behavior anymore. He’s cutting me off. Really, this is the only way to deal with me. I don’t blame him.

Bless his heart, he’s not just throwing me out to the wolves, to fend for myself. He found a way for me to blog that’s even easier than letting him take care of everything for me.

All this change stuff have also given me the opportunity to reflect on what I want to do with my blogging, too. Sometimes it feels like more of a burden than a pleasure, sometimes I can’t wait to write, most times I don’t manage to find the time to write. Maybe shaking things up a bit, starting up a new site that’s easier for me to use, will help me to blog more.

I’ve decided it’s also time to retire MoldovAnn. I started this blog to share stories with family and friends while I was in Peace Corps in Moldova. I thought I was so clever to call it MoldovAnn. Well, I was in Moldova for one year, and have been in Ukraine for over four years, so it seems time to give myself a moniker that more accurately reflects who I am, or at the least, isn’t completely inaccurate.

And so a new blog is born, Anka’s Place. You can catch me there.

I’m back in Kyiv – exhausted, as usual, after two weeks in the US. Managed to be just grams under the weight limit with my luggage (I’m getting good at that!).

I wish I could have visited with more friends while I was in DC, but the week was really intense and jam-packed. Lots of exciting changes in our organization, which will be both fun and challenging. One new development is the addition of 7 more countries to my portfolio. I’ll definitely have my hands full!

Those of you in the central Ohio region, my school friend Kate is about to complete massage therapy school and I was a very lucky guinea pig for her. It… was…. awesome. If you want her to be on her list when she is fully licensed next month and ready to open shop, let me know and I’ll pass on your contacts to her. Trust me, you will not regret it. She has, as she called it, the Cadillac of massage tables set up in her studio. I would call it the Bentley. She’s got lots of really tall friends so she was purposeful to get an extra long table to accomodate taller frames.

The cat now has a definitive name. As much as we liked Ziggy, his personality ended up setting the name – Trasher. It sounds slightly less awful when said with a heavy Russian accent, but Igor informed me today that it’s the final answer. It’s my own fault, I jokingly refered to the cat once or twice as “musornik”, “trash can” in Russian, ’cause he eats just about anything and everything. Folks living in small towns and villages feed their dogs, cats, chickens and pigs with table scraps, but usually city pets (which so far, in Kyiv at least, don’t seem to include chickens and pigs) often get store-bought pet food. Our guy, for good or bad, is not so fancy and has turned up his nose to most brands of cat food, but is perfectly content with any and all table scraps. So Igor started calling him Trasher, and sadly the consequence of me being gone for two weeks is that now the name has stuck. *Sigh*

Everything else seems OK. Only one thing broke in transit this trip, and I think it’s fixable. I went wild at JoAnn Crafts and now Eileen and I will have sooooo many supplies for all those cross-stitch patterns we bought over the summer! I’m working on baby booties for a friend – they are adorable!

I had a great time in Spain – even though it was exhausting and I literally wore holes in my feet! Not my shoes, mind you, my feet.

Saturday night was a “White Night” in Madrid, which means all the museums stay open super late (like 2-5 am!) and are free, and the city center was just full of people of all ages – from babies and teenagers to grandmas and grandpas. The conference wrapped up around 6, and by the time we got ourselves sorted out enough to do something for the evening, it was after 8. Then dinner, then making away to the Prado… and then waiting in line to get in. It was nearly 11 by the time we entered the museum, and I was really amazed how many people were taking advantage of the free entrance so late – I mean, there were people pushing babies in strollers around the museum at nearly midnight! But those are not hours for me, especially after a really exhausting week. My eyes glazed over pretty quickly, and I know I was looking at famous and important art, but basically nothing was registering. One painting that did capture my attention was this one, the Immaculate Conception.

The church I attended growing up is called Immaculate Conception, and there was a statue that I now know was based on this painting – Mary standing on a blue globe/ball, stepping on a snake.

Sunday we got up early to catch the first train to Toledo. I desperately wanted to sleep in, but in the end was very glad I didn’t. We had a fabulous day in Toledo, walking around, enjoying the beautiful scenery and lovely weather. We stopped in one shop where the craftsman was working with incredibly fine threads of gold, gently tapping each strand (as thin as a strand of hair) into place within an intricate design on a piece of jewelry. I wanted to take a picture, but the thread of gold was barely visible to the naked eye and for sure wouldn’t show up in a photo. I recognized the style of jewelry immediately- I have several pairs of earrings and a brooch that were my grandma’s. I always kinda knew they were Spanish, but I hadn’t realized they were from Toledo. She could have bought them in that very shop 40 years ago. I’ve been wearing them all week, thinking about her.

Igor insisted that I shouldn’t come back to Kyiv until I had visited Alhambra, and I was very sorry to have to disappoint him when I found out it was a 5 hour train ride from Madrid. But it’s always good to have something to go back for, and I hope we’ll be able to visit Spain together someday.

So it turns out Pandora isn’t a koshka (female cat), but rather is a kot (male cat). Rather embarrassing mistake to make, I must admit. But there are definitely parts there that, at least the last time I had a biology class, were not standard on the female anatomy.

So while Pandora is a good name considering what kinds of disasters we have found in the litter box (I swear, he has crapped more than his own physical weight in one go), it no longer seemed appropriate for the kot. After an absurd amount of time considering other names, we have, ta da!, finally settled on Ziggy. I could probably tell you the long circuitous route that led us to the name, but it’s not a very interesting story.

He is growing literally before our eyes. When I got home from Spain Monday night, I could have sworn he had doubled in the week I had been gone. His new favorite spot, at least that night, was the small gap between the kitchen cupboard and the wall. 3 days later he already cannot fit in that space, although it doesn’t seem to have quite sunk into his tiny little brain yet – he keeps dashing for that gap and banging his head and shoulders into the sides. He’s adorable and we love him, but I don’t think he is destined for greatness in this world.

Here are some pics when he was still itty-bitty and when we still thought he was a girl.
(The amusing irony is that Igor, in his private practice as a psychologist, has 2 transgender clients. When he first told me, while I was in Spain, that the cat was a boy, not a girl, I thought he had been spending too much time with his patients.)

He’s more than doubled since we took these photos, and he is ALL TEETH. Loves to play constantly, but hasn’t figured out that his teeth and claws are not enjoyable to the rest of us.

It’s almost like clockwork – September begins and my allergies kick in – itchy, watery eyes, uncontrollable sneezing (10 in a row was Sunday’s record). I suddenly developed autumn allergies about 8 or 9 years ago, I guess. The first year I didn’t understand that’s what it was, I thought I had a weird cold or something, until a friend gave me a Claritin, which quickly became my new best friend throughout the month of September.

I thought maybe the allergies would go away when I moved abroad, hoped whatever plant aggravated them in central Ohio wouldn’t be in eastern Europe. No such luck! I still have no idea exactly what I’m allergic too, maybe it’s simply the month of September, since the allergies settle back down right around October 1.

The kitten Pandora (aka Panda, aka Panda Bear) has settled in like a true princess. She spent most of her first two and a half days with us sleeping like the dead on whatever lap was made available. We thought she was the sweetest thing ever, snuggled up so cutely, purring away. I don’t know if it was the stress of moving, or exhaustion after her few weeks living the wild and dangerous life of a village cat, but she is completely over it now. The only time she is close to still is when she’s eating, and even then she’s so full of energy she has to do a little dance around her bowl now and then to express her excitement. And she eats like a horse – we can’t keep up! Today I have to stock up again, second time this week. Those first couple of days she happily devoured whatever was in her bowl. Now she haughtily turns up her nose at “just” dry food (even the fancy kitten kind with little balls of dried milk and other delectables); she simply must have her packet with the gourmet sauce. How quickly we forget our roots!

She’s adorable, growing right before our eyes but still can’t jump up on most things so hasn’t destroyed much yet. We can’t keep up with her, she wants to play ALL the time. I can’t believe we were thinking about babies – we don’t have the stamina for a kitten!

And my favorite quote of the week:

It’s a pity we can’t just seriously divide the country in two. On one side, all you people who don’t want “socialism” can go and live without Medicare, municipal sewer systems, roads that are maintained by government funds, running water, fire departments, police departments, national/state/city parks, public libraries, and other such disgusting features of life under brownshirt Obamcare socialism. The rest of us commies will hunker down together in our socialist nightmare and finally craft a universal health care system to go along with the rest of evil socialist empire.

As I expected would happen, Igor is completely in love with the kitten. He even skipped his regular trip to the gym to stay home with her instead on Monday. I knew he was done for when he called me at work so I could hear through the phone how loudly she was purring. When I got home later in the evening, he was full of stories of all the cute things she’d done all day- playing tag with him, hiding from the vacuum cleaner, “guarding” the couch (ie, sleeping on it quite seriously, as if to keep it from running off) and eating, eating, eating.

There had been enormous amounts of intake, but no outflow. She looked like an overstuffed sausage on four tiny legs – I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an enormous belly on such a little creature. I finally picked her up and put her directly into her litter box, where she promptly sat down and looked up at me. A moment later an idea seemed to occur to her, and she starting scratching around. Mission accomplished! About 5 minutes later she went back to her box on her own for round 2.

A short time later, Igor started calling her Pandora. It kinda stuck. Lots of cute ways to diminutize it in Russian (and English too, actually). So, I think we have a name.

She was full of spunk after losing some of that belly, and we laughed hard at her antics. Finally curled up on the couch with the loud loud purring in my ear. Awww. She is just too damn cute.

We had a little romp this morning, then breakfast, and now she’s napping in my lap. OK, I am totally in love with her too, we have both lost it completely.

Five years ago today, I wrote my first blog post. I’ve been re-reading some of those first posts, reflecting on the path I started down five years ago. In my second post, I wrote about how it just felt right for me to join Peace Corps, and how the pieces all fell into place bit by bit. I often think of myself as following the path of least resistance at that time – I know that sounds strange! But as challenging and frightening as it was to think about moving to unknown lands and embarking on a mysterious 2-year adventure, it somehow was the one thing that seemed most doable, felt most right.

And it was so clearly the right path for me to have chosen. I marvel now, with the gift of hindsight, at how those choices brought me to where I am today. Two years have turned into five, and might possibly even become a lifetime. Those first steps set me in the direction towards Igor – who knew such an amazing man, such a wonderful partner would be on that path too?

Five years….

We took the new-old Toyota for a test-run to Korosten this weekend, along with about 1/20th of our stuff to store there until after we move. Well, Igor called it 1/20th, I would call it 1/50th. But we’ll see.

Saturday was spent mostly at the table, with a gorgeous spread already set when we arrived. Being the guest-of-honor, Nina had prepared my favorite dishes, namely the evil-but-incredibly-delicious cream cheese and mashed nut “salad”, which is more of a spread, that I usually call “fat with cholesterol”. It’s a heart-attack-in-a-dish, but man is is every tasty. I indulged. The baked catfish was fabulous. The forest mushrooms were too die for. While we waited for the third course, shashlik, to cook, I picked cherries from the tree in the garden. I got all the fruit that was in reasonable reach, basically everything I could get without a ladder.

We brought with us a bottle of the deadly Georgian chacha, knowing that Igor’s family appreciates turpentine-like beverages. It stopped even Igor’s brother-in-law Vova in his tracks. After a two or three courses, Igor’s dad Ivan went to take a nap. After another hour or so, Vova went home to “take a nap.” A little while later I asked Igor if I could lay down for a bit. It wasn’t the chacha, but way too much food and several glasses of champagne, and I was ready for a nap myself. So I basically repeated last weekend’s escapade, only we didn’t have a housefull of guests ourselves. But I feel asleep around 7 on yet another Saturday night. Talk about feeling old! A few hours later Igor’s cousin Andrey called and said they had a Peace Corps Volunteer in their apartment. We did “paper-scissors-rock” to see if we would go over or not (only here it’s “paper-scissors-rock-well”, and Igor pretty much always wins since I always forget what beats “well” so he always picks “well”), and we went to Andrey’s. His wife Natasha is about 8 months pregnant and looks fantastic. The PCV turned out to have served in Turkmenistan about 10 years ago and has been in Ukraine a few months supposedly doing research for his dissertation, but from the looks of things, has spent a lot of energy on his Ukrainian girlfriend (who is a friend of Natasha – convoluted enough?)

We hung out and told jokes for a couple of hours, then headed home. Early Sunday morning, Igor’s mother woke us up with a “suggestion” that we go pick apricots with her. Igor buried his head under the pillow, so I got up to serve for the both of us. Four or five of us spent the next 45 minutes picking up the apricots Ivan shook out of the trees in the garden. By 9:30 we were at the market. We barely got to the spot Nina picked out and a woman bought a bucket of apricots from us (for 20 hrivna). Within a half hour, we’d sold all 5 buckets! Did a little shopping and headed home.

Igor, Ivan and Vova then started a thorough inspection of our new/old car. I know I’m supposed to go to the kitchen to help with the “women’s work”, but I’ve always been more interested in how a car works, so I stuck around with the guys. I can get away with it in part because I’m the only one who can read the English-language manual, so I’m needed for any questions that may come up (which inevitably do). We topped up the oil and anti-freeze, figured out how to put the back seats down to make a big trunk (not as straight-forward as one would think), and discovered all sorts of nooks and crannies in the car, including the jack that apparently no one else had found considering there was another jack in a box in the back of the car (it was under the back seat, which, as mentioned, was not as easy to move as described in the manual).

Another enormous meal, and we were directed to pick more apricots, which turned out to be for Igor and me to take to Kyiv with us. Yikes, we’ll never eat that many! So my tasks once we got home were: (a) pit a bazillion and half cherries, and (b) find a bunch of recipes that use cherries and apricots. I found a couple, and half-a-bazillion cherries are now in the freezer, along with half-a-ton of apricots. Another half-ton apricots await transport to the office tomorrow to give to colleagues who also probably got 6 tons of fruit from their parents’ dachas over the weekend. But we also have one awesome-looking cherry cake (which is hands-off for the time being) and a cherry-apricot crisp which has made my husband fall in love with me all over again. Whew!

The other big event of the weekend was my 20th high school reunion, which I obviously did not attend. I was torn, there were some folks I really would have liked to see, many I would happily never see again (high school was, by and far, not the happiest time of my life), but the final straw came down to timing. The majority picked dates when I wouldn’t already be in the US, and while I was prepared to fit it into a US trip, I wasn’t prepared to make a special US trip for it. Now that I read the posts and see the photos from last night, I’m a little bit regretful that I wasn’t there. Turns out there were a lot more people in high school that I liked than I remembered (why do we always remember the crappy stuff?). On the other hand, I am so happy to have spent my birthday weekend with my in-laws – it made them very happy, I know, and they are such kind and wonderful people, I am extremely grateful to have them in my life.

20 year high school reunion – seems like a time to pause and reflect. Yikes. I’m looking at classmates’ party photos and can’t recognize 2/3 of the people. Some folks take a minute and then I totally see who it is, and flashbacks start. Double yikes.

I’ve had three dreams in the past week about my childhood friend Kate. Normally I can easily trace a dream back to something going in my “real life”, and my first conclusion is that I’ve been thinking about this reunion and kinda wishing I could be there. But what’s weird is that I associate Kate more with grade school than with high school, as we were super-close-best-friends throughout most of grade school, but not so close in high school (and then roommates for awhile in college). I’m not sure who I associate most with high school, so maybe it makes sense that my sub-conscious is thinking about her since she was by and far the longest and probably most important friend of my childhood.

20 years. Good grief. I was such a lost teenager, lost for most of my 20’s too. Somehow when I hit my 30’s I finally felt “in my own.” I realized I was the age I was meant to be and the age I always wanted to be. I had confidence in myself, I took the chances I had always wanted to take, and I did things I never thought I was capable of doing. So my 20th high school reunion coincides with my 38th birthday (ack, forget I said that outloud!). This has been my decade, and even with two more years to go, I am sorry to see it wrapping up. My 30’s were even more than I could have hoped for. I love my life, I love my wonderful husband, and I want to spend decades and decades and decades more with him. My only regret, in my dark moments, are wishing that I had met him ages and ages ago so I could have even more years with him. But deep down I know I wasn’t ready 10 years ago to receive the love that he has to give me, and I certainly wasn’t ready to give the love that I have to give him now. But oh, how I long for eternity so that I could spend it with Igor!

It’s interesting to note how many of my classmates from Bishop Watterson Class of ‘89 are divorced and starting or have started over. It was incredibly hard for me to tell my parents that I my first marriage was failing, being one of very very few in my extended Catholic family to get divorced, and one of the first, if not the first, among my peers. Most of us grew up in fairly devout Catholic families, with in-tact parents. I can remember only a handful of classmates with divorced parents, and as far as I can remember, none of them were Catholic. For the most part, I would say it is a very good thing that I and my peers didn’t feel compelled to stay in unhappy marriages, to spend our short lives in misery or at the least not as happy and fulfilled as we could be. I am sure our parents wonder what happened, though – how it was that they provided us with a good Catholic education and raised us in good Catholic families, and yet we turned out different. I believe it’s progress, but I wonder how many of our parents feel the same way.

Some days I wish very, very much that Igor could have met my mom, and that she could have met him. I hope she would have appreciated how much we adore each other and make each other happy. I know she would have been skeptical about me marrying a non-Catholic foreigner, and she would have been sad about my path taking me so far away from her and our hometown. While she always encouraged me to follow my own path, to be my own person, she at the same time always had very clear wishes of where that path would take me and what person I would be. I imagine I will always struggle with that dichotomy – the freedom she gave me while hoping I would choose what she wanted.

I’m really missing my mom today. Grandma’s birthday was yesterday, she died 3 months after mom. Gosh, I would love to be able to talk to them both again.

We went jogging last night on the track near our apartment. The goals? (A) keep me from falling asleep on the couch at 6pm; (B) wear me out so I would sleep through the night; and (C) start to tackle the extra “luggage” we brought back with us from the US.

Definite success with goal #1: I was up until the whoppingly late hour of 9:00 pm. Slept until 4:30 am, which is progress but I still wouldn’t call it total success. Goal C will take a lot more than one evening’s jog to accomplish, but we started on it at least.

Considering the primary aerobic activity of my month in the US was driving from one eating establishment to another, and my weight training involved the serious exercises of lifting a full fork or glass to my mouth, I was darn impressed that I pulled off 5 running laps and 1 walking lap at the track. We don’t know the distance- Igor guessed 300-350 meters, I guessed 250 (but I have absolutely no metric sense, so he’s probably closer), I may have run anywhere from 1.25 kilometers to 1.75. Whatever the distance, it’s both pathetic (for a person who used to easily run 5K) and impressive (for the person I am now).

And today I’ve managed to stay up until 11:00. Would it be too much to hope I could sleep until 6 am?

It’s been beautiful in Kyiv, warm and sunny, just the way summer ought to be. And the long, long days are in full stride – it was sunny when I woke up at 4:30 this morning, and there was still a bit of sunlight at 10:00 pm. Gosh, I just love it!

We are missing Pepette immensely. The apartment just doesn’t feel right without her. She was with me almost all of the time I’ve lived in Ukraine. And it just feels nice to have a pet in the house. Igor is warming to the idea of getting a new pet, although he’s not completely ready. That’s OK, I’m not completely ready either. But I know it will be good when do get a new cat.

We arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday- fat, exhausted and full of wonderful impressions and memories from an absolutely fabulous vacation.

Apparently our internet provider went out of business during our absence, ’cause our service isn’t working and the phone number is disconnected. It will take a bit of time to find another provider in our part of town, and is the main reason for not updating here or emailing folks since we’ve been back. Hopefully we’ll be back online soon.

I’m in New York this week for a conference. The schedule is really packed, so not much time to just enjoy the city. But I’ll spend some time with Emily and Joanna, Peace Corps Moldova buddies – yeah! And I WILL be eating Mexican food as much as possible. YEAH!

I’ve got tons of work to do, but am feeling totally unmotivated to do it at the moment. Afternoon sluggishness is kicking in, and all I really want to do is curl up in bed and veg.

Oh my, nothing like having something to look forward to! I got approval for my vacation plans today and didn’t waste any time booking our plane tickets. Three weeks in the US west, including a “life list” visit to the Grand Canyon. Just gotta survive a few more months…. Oh, sweet anticipation!

Igor told me last night (bless his heart) that I need some time off, some down right. He’s absolutely right, I don’t disagree. WE need some down time together. I’m making dumb mistakes (like leaving my backpack on the train and not even realizing it until FIVE hours later). But I work for an American organization now, which means a decadent (by American standards) but miserly (by European standards) three weeks of vacation annually. I’m saving it up for a kick-a** trip. Oh, just a few more months….

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I’m in St. Petersburg – the first time since I studied here in 1992. It’s such a beautiful city. I have fallen in love with it all over again. I spent most of my free afternoon on Sunday visiting my old stomping grounds. I was amused to see that my old dorm is now called “Hotel-type dormitory”. It was sooooo far from anything “hotel-like” when I lived there! I hear that it’s still not so hot, despite very nicely remodeled reception area. Personally, I think it would have been easier to demolish the place and start over, rather than try to renovate that monstrosity.

The biggest frustration by far during this trip has been with internet – I have definitely wasted a significant amount of time and energy trying to find places where I can get online. I’m sitting now in a “Mac Cafe” (McDonald’s answer for the cool cafe crowd), which has free wifi, but it is dolled out in 15 minute increments. Argh! The hotel in Nizhny Novgorod had free wifi, which helped a bit with the ridiculous price of staying the night there. But I’ve got to find a better way to deal with this if I’m going to be traveling this much all the time. It’s just too frustrating.

Anyway, this is my last night of this trip, thank goodness! 4 cities in 9 days. Lots of impressions to write about, but I can’t get it all out in 15 minute increments. Time to head back to my quiet hotel room and read the book I bought yesterday at Dom Knigi – which will deserve a post in and of itself – the visit to Dom Knigi, ie Book House, on Nevsky Prospekt. Actually, the book might deserve a post, too – “Wolves Eat Dogs“, by Martin Cruz Smith. I bought it for the flight home, but looks like I might be leaving it in Russia! So far, a good read.

I’m in Russia, visiting advising centers in 4 cities. A different bed nearly every night for 9 days! Today we are in Nizhny Novgorod, an old city on the Volga. Unfortunately, as usual, not much time for siteseeing, but the little I’ve seen is impressive. I’m exhausted from the overnight train trip to get here, and a poor night’s sleep in Moscow before that. We had a super chatty and friendly taxi driver from the train station to the hotel, so we had a very quick but entertaining tour at 6:30 this morning. I love taxi drivers like that – I almost don’t mind getting ripped off by guys like that, the commentary was worth the extra money we paid.

This was my first “Old” New Year without Igor in 3 years. That’s a bummer. The hardest part of these fun and interesting trips is missing my wonderful husband.

I got this from Greetings from Kyiv (thank you!). I decided to pick and choose amongst the questions and just answer the ones I feel like answering.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
Saw the Pyramids; drove nearly 3000 kilometers across Ukraine and Moldova

2. What countries did you visit?
Egypt, Georgia, US, Moldova, Russia, Hungary

3. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
A dual-SIM card cellular phone that works both on the European and the US system, with extremely useful applications like I had with my old Palm Pilot, that syncs with my Google calendar without requiring me to use Microsoft Outlook in any way, that allows me to easily download and listen to podcasts and audio books, with which I can use headphones not Bluetooth (hey, if brain surgeons won’t put cell phones and other wireless devices next to their heads, I’m not going to either). I have a MacBook at home and Windows PC at work, so I’d also like something that works easily on both platforms.

4. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Lots of great memories will stay with me, even if the exact date doesn’t. February – fantastic vacation with Igor in Egypt, I’ll never forget how awesome it was to see the pyramids. November – US presidential election. What an amazing event to witness.

5. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I’m really, really proud that the youth project I initiated is up and running at UNDP

6. What was your biggest failure?
There are some things I am incredibly not proud of; I’ll just leave it at that.

7. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Some pesky skin rash that just won’t go away. It’s getting really annoying, but thankfully nothing more serious.

8. What was the best thing you bought?
Wifi router and internet access at home. How did we live without this?

9. Whose behavior merited celebration?
The American voters – I just can’t express how proud I am of my fellow Americans

10. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Hypocrites, namely people who call themselves Christians yet spend a lot of time and energy judging and hating others

11. Where did most of your money go?
Rent, rent and rent

12. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Being an OSCE election observer in Georgia and my new job

13. Compared to this time last year, are you: (a) happier or sadder? (b) thinner or fatter? (c) richer or poorer?
Happier, fatter, financially comfortable

14. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Seen more of Ukraine

15. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Eating junk food

16. How did you spend Christmas?
Latin Christmas – worked, relaxed at home with Igor. Orthodox Christmas: we’ll be in Korosten with Igor’s family.

17. Did you fall in love in 2008?
I fall more and more in love with my wonderful husband

18. What was your favorite TV program?
Battlestar Galactica

19. What was the best book you read?
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million

20. What did you want and get?
A new job

21. What did you want and not get?
A diet that allows me to eat anything I want and not gain any weight without ever exercising

22. What was your favorite film of this year?
Lots of good movies this year, but nothing overwhelmingly fabulous

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Celebrated at home with Igor and Dad. Turned 37.

24. Who did you miss?
Too many people to list

25. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
It all works out in the end

So now we don’t have internet at work! Yikes! There apparently was some kind of humongous electrical surge in the office neighborhood over the weekend, and something in our server fried. Apparently it was on the news, although Igor and I missed it completely, with reports of people’s computers literally melting. I’m glad I brought my work laptop home over the weekend! But wow, it’s quite a challenge to work as a regional coordinator, with responsibilities to people in 7 countries on 2 continents, with no internet access. And after a full day in the office, the last thing I want to do is sacrifice my evening time with my wonderful husband so I can catch up on emails. Well, tonight had to be an exception. I hope we can get back online soon.

This is International Education Week, with lots of exciting things happening all over the world. Open Doors, a report on international educational exchange, was released today. Most of the detailed statistics are available to members only, but there is still a lot of fascinating information available.

Well, how about the wonderful, the delicious, and the bad idea?

My husband is wonderful. I couldn’t be happier. He said tonight (yes, it was the fifth or sixth cup of sake at the sushi restaurant, but still it made me blush) that he realized during this year that all he needs is me and the cat. I was surprised the cat was included in his top two, but was happy to be placed above her! I suspected they had something sneaky going on during the day when I’m at the office….

The dinner was delicious. We both love Sushi Ya. It’s not upscale, not pretentious, and probably not even real fish, but we like it. And we can stumble home after 400 grams of sake.

Bad idea: doing your own manicure after a couple bottles of sake. Note to self: find the nail polish remover before going to work in the morning.

All in all, a good Igor’s birthday.

My predictions for the baby’s birthday party were right on target. Cross-stitching on a bus – not as easy as expected, especially on a very bouncy bus. Got a bit done, but not much.

This week is off to a hectic and busy week. And it’s still freakin’ cold! I actually wore a scarf this morning. And contemplated the idea of pulling the winter clothes out of storage and putting away the summer stuff. But I’m just not ready for bulky sweaters and wool tights. Please, can we have a few more weeks of t-shirts and sandals?

Since we came back from Korosten by bus, Igor’s mom couldn’t load us up with an absurd amount of food like she usually does. But we did happily accept a big bag of probably the last garden tomatoes of the season. Did I mention I’m not ready for summer to be over? Oh how I love the fresh fruits and veggies straight from the garden!

The topics are not exactly connected, but they are both on my mind lately.

The brief introduction to autumn was short-lived – yeah! It was back up in the 80’s over the weekend, maybe even 90. Hot! I went to a folk festival at the Pirohovo outdoor museum on Saturday. Gosh, I love those things. Most of the time I only hear about such fun stuff after the fact, but I managed to find out in advance this time. We wandered around for a few hours, “window” shopping amongst the hundreds of vendors, enjoying the music and dancing.

Saturday evening Igor and I saw on the news that there had been another festival that day near the Lavra, close to our apartment, so we decided to check it out on Sunday. It must have been just a one-day affair, but there was a small kids’ festival at the Ivan Honchar museum. We popped in the courtyard and checked out the arts and crafts the kids were working on at different stations, watched to the children’s groups singing and dancing. We took advantage of the special free admission to the museum, too (and dutifully left a donation in the collection box). It’s a great little museum. I like it preciously because it is small – just 5 or 6 rooms, completely doable in a reasonable amount of time, no museum burn-out or glazed eyes from too much information. I love the old black-and-white photographs of men, women, families, clubs, teams, orchestras and other groups in traditional Ukrainian costumes. I love to imagine the crazy array of colors they are probably wearing. They have some exquisite examples of Ukrainian vyshyvka (embroidery). I love looking at it, and admire so much the talent, skill and time it takes to create these works of wearable art.

I’ve been thinking for a while to try my own hand at embroidery, actually. There are several arts and crafts shops that I pass occasionally, with embroidery patterns and cross-stitch materials. But I don’t want to do the goofy cats or unicorns or whatever. I’ve been wanting to try the traditional Ukrainian styles, but hadn’t seen any patterns. I finally asked the sales lady last week, and turns out she has a ton of traditional Ukrainian patterns, tucked away under the counter. Skimming through them, I quickly realized that they were all way more than I am ready to take on, so I asked her to suggest something for a beginner. She selected a pretty little napkin, with a Ukrainian motif. Perfect!

Naive me, I thought there would be some easy guide, maybe even step-by-step pictures, included. Nope, just some basic directions in terminology that I’m not at all familiar with. I decided to dive in anyway, and muddled through a few disastrous attempts before trial and error finally resulted in something that seemed to work and even resembled the photo of the finished product. I worked on it off and on over the weekend, making slow but steady progress. It finally occurred to me yesterday that I might be able to find some help on the internet. D’oh! It’s amazing how helpful it is to read the instructions! I was a speed demon last night, completing twice as much in one evening as I had all of the previous three or four days. Amazing! There are still mistakes, but it’s getting better and better.

And I’m loving it! What a great hobby. I used to crochet and do other such kinds of arts and crafts as a kid, but I don’t recall ever trying my hand at embroidery. I’m looking forward to finishing up this little project and starting another. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the skill (or patience) to try an elaborate and intricate ceremonial linen, but who knows!