MoldovAnn

I’m in Moscow – first time in over 14 years! Wow, the city is amazing. Soooo different from what I remember. I thought Kyiv had changed in the 13 years since my first and second visits there, but it doesn’t compare to the change in Moscow.

I went to Red Square last night – so beautiful. I had forgotten how powerful and dramatic it is. I also walked along Old and New Arbat streets. Didn’t recognize either in the least. There is a huge book store on New Arbat that I _think_ I recognized, but it sure didn’t look like the grey drab place I frequented in 1992. If it’s the same store, I thought there was a huge post office across the street, but that is now a giant shopping mall. I’ll have to ask someone if there used to a PO around there, maybe I just didn’t get to quite the right spot.

In 1992, we couldn’t make direct-dial international phone calls from anywhere in St. Petersburg (where I was studying). Instead, we had to go to the post office and order a phone call, then sit down and wait until your number was called over the PA system. Only the announcements sounded just like the Peanuts teacher, only incomprehensible Russian garble instead of incomprehensible English garble. I missed more than one call opportunity because I couldn’t understand when my turn was called. And it wasn’t just my bad Russian – I often asked a local to help me and more often than not, they also couldn’t understand a thing from that PA system. I did meet some nice people that way though, waiting for my phone calls.

Anyway, in 1992 the only city from which direct-dial international calls could be made was Moscow, and when I would be in town I would often go to that giant post office that was somewhere near a giant Dom Knigi (House of Books), wait for an open phone booth, and happily dial away. I remember the first time I called from that post office. For some reason, it wasn’t an automatic two-way connection. I could hear my parents but no matter what I tried to do, I couldn’t figure out how to make them hear me. They guessed it was me calling from Russia and they talked for a few minutes to me; it was so nice to hear their voices but soooo frustrating to not be able to speak to them. It was only later that I somehow figured out that I had to push a button when my parents answered the phone so that they could hear me. It was absolutely incomprehensible to me why someone would make a call and then have to push a button so the other party could hear them – why would you make a phone call and not want them to hear you? I think maybe the prices were different or something if it was a “one-way” call, I don’t remember. Just another one of those little things that is huge when you are clueless.

I’ve got two packed days of meetings, but hope to squeeze in some social calls, too. I learned not too long ago that the daughter of my dear friend Alyona (from Moldova) is living in Moscow, with her Russian husband! I hope to see her tonight and get caught up on a lot of news that I seem to have missed.

I wish my wonderful husband was here with me. I love to travel with him, love to listen to his history lessons. As excited as I am to be back in Russia, I’m also looking forward to going home to Kyiv, to my Igor and our new apartment. Speaking of which, we finally finished the move last weekend. Good grief – all I could think was that I came to this country three years ago with two suitcases, and now we had SEVEN carloads of stuff to move. Even scarier is that we seem to have filled up an apartment more than double the size of the one we just moved out of. How the hell did all of that fit in our two-room apartment?!

The cat handled the move relatively well. She hid most of Saturday, and then Sunday followed me around all day, meowing in a way that made me think she was crying “I want to go home!” Sunday night she seemed more settled in, doing her evening exercises of sprints around the apartment. She also seems to enjoy the vast array of hiding places; Igor couldn’t find her at all this afternoon, and she appeared only when he opened the refrigerator door. What’s really funny is that he said she turned right in the hallway as if to go into the old kitchen, instead of turning left into the new one. I guess animals also develop their own habitual patterns!

Off to meetings.

We spent most of the weekend packing. Good grief, we have a lot more stuff than I realized. Amazing how much one can accumulate in 3 years time, especially when I was supposed to be here just temporarily! Our kitchen is back to state it was in when I first moved in - 2 forks, 2 spoons, 2 knives, 2 plates, no glasses, a few mugs, a couple pots. And to think - that was sufficient back then! As much as I hate packing, I LOVE unpacking. It’s like Christmas, only I get to relive the wonderful memories of each item as I unwrap it. Next weekend the fun part will begin!

The excitement of the weekend was when we discovered that someone had hacked into our wireless network and used up our internet limit for the month in the span of 3 days. Thank goodness we noticed the lights on the router going crazy late Friday night (or was it early Saturday morning) when neither of us was using the internet - we pulled the plug right away and cut the bandit off. We popped over to the internet company’s nearby office on Saturday, and they gave us a print-out of how to change the password for our wireless router. When we got home, we discovered that the screenshots they gave us do not in the least bit resemble the website, and after horsing around for an hour, we finally gave up and decided to go without wifi for the next week until we move.

I took a break from packing and internet fiascos yesterday to go to a huge mall with some American friends. Wow, I didn’t realize we had those kinds of places here! It’s huge, with an indoor ice-skating rink, bowling alley, movie theatre, gigantic grocery store, and a ton of over-priced speciality shops and boutiques. We did some window shopping, had a coffee, and decided to head home. Then the fun began. I swear, only Ukrainian drivers can manage to create a traffic jam in a freakin’ parking lot. Which reminds me, I saw a complete and total disaster of a traffic jam at a McDonald’s drive-through window the other day. How on earth? Only in Ukraine… I can hardly begin to describe the chaos of our particular traffic jam - it was utterly ridiculous. I finally ended up squeezing around a bus that just wasn’t going to move, and got out through the entrance. But we eventually made it home - after spending about twice as much time in the car as we had spent in the mall itself. Not a trip I plan to be repeating.

Tonight we are pooped from all the packing, the cat is busily inspecting all boxes and bags, and I’m looking forward to the week. How wonderful to look forward to going to work!

I made my first University presentation last night, about applying to MBA and PhD programs in the U.S. Wow, did I ever feel in my element! I surprised myself how much information I still have at my fingertips, but then again, I guess working for ten years at Ohio State ought to have left some remnants in my creaky ole brain. I had been thinking that I wouldn’t do so many outreach activities myself, since we have advisers and advising centers who are supposed to do that, but wow, I love being with a group of students again, talking with ease about a subject I know and love. I think I will join in on a couple presentations a month, if I can - especially if I can get away with doing them in English! We started our presentation in Russian last night (I was with one of our Kyiv advisers, Tanya, and my new assistant Ella -who, by the way, is absolutely fabulous), and one of the students called out “In English, please!” So we tag-teamed in two languages, since Tanya is more comfortable presenting in Russian (actually, she’s most comfortable in Ukrainian, but for some reason decided to present in Russian). I had a good chuckle after our presentation when a student came up and said that he was very impressed with my Russian - he said he hadn’t realized at first that I was American! I think he was putting into practice some of the advice from my presentation about the power of flattery - how a little flattery can go a long way if you are trying to get a professor to notice your application.

I’ve been back to the Middle Eastern restaurant 2 more times (and also have realized that they call it an Arab restaurant). On Sunday I got lunch to go, and while I waited I chatted with the young man working the cash register, Mohammed. Really nice young man, married to a Ukrainian woman. He introduced me to the new manager, Abrahim, who doesn’t speak English or Russian but who has a lovely smile and gives a good sales pitch in Arabic (at least he delivered it well, even if I didn’t understand the content). I was there again Tuesday night with Igor and some friends, and both Mohammed and Abrahim remembered me, greeting me with big smiles and a wave from across the restaurant. We had the same waitress as the first time we were there a couple weeks ago, and she also remembered us. I love this place!

We have just over a week until we can move to our new apartment - yeah! The coming weekend will be consumed with packing - yuck! I am so excited that we can finally consider ourselves “settled”. Granted, we’ll still be renting, but mentally I am finally ready to make some purchases that up until now seemed like splurging, not mention a pain the butt to haul around if we had to move to another country - my own set of stainless steel cookware, a food processor, a toaster (actually, Dad promised the toaster as a house-warming gift when we move), and a few other things that will just make life easier. Yeah!

I got a massage last weekend from a masseuse recommended by a colleague. He’s a medical student, and is putting his way through university working as a massage therapist. He comes to your place and does massages on the floor. It was a good massage, and much needed, but what I found most interesting was that he is from Turkmenistan. He’s been living and studying in Kyiv for about 5 years. I was a little embarrassed to admit to him that I know very very little about Turkmenistan, but he took advantage of my undivided attention to tell me a long and detailed history of the country. I didn’t catch all of it (it’s hard to concentrate on a history lesson in Russian when you are trying to relax and enjoy your massage!), but I enjoyed listening to him. Even though he dislikes the current regime, he clearly has a lot of pride in his people and heritage.

The sad news of the week is that I accidentally killed my ipod. It fell in a pot of water, and my attempts to dry it out with a hairdryer turned out to be not such a good idea - I think I fried it, literally. I am really missing my daily news dose on my commute to and from work. Electronics are so freaking expensive here, I hate to think of buying a new ipod here. But I don’t know if I can wait until my next trip to the States….

Here’s a really great article on the impact of the US elections on us Americans living abroad. I am happy to say that I have not experienced such serious anti-American sentiment myself, but I have certainly been called out on what my country has been doing the last 8 years. I’ve lost count of how many people have congratulated me in the last week on our new president, with such big beautiful smiles. One of Igor’s friends remembered that I once said I would not live in the US as long as there was a Bush in the White House - and asked if we are going to move back now!

The time has again come for change. After four years as an international volunteer, I am returning to my career. I’ve loved my experiences, and am so happy I took the chances, and the risks, that I did - so many wonderful opportunities have come my way, so many fantastic changes. I can’t imagine my life without Igor, and that alone makes the sacrifices, the stress, and all the uncertainties worth it.

Professionally, I’ve grown and gained immensely valuable experience, too. I wanted to volunteer internationally in order to change my career, and I have, and I have not.

I will be working as the Regional Educational Advising Coordinator (aka REAC) for Eurasia, working out of American Councils for International Education. Many of you know that I worked at Ohio State University for nearly 10 years, and education is my first field. Moreover, international education is my passion. I couldn’t be more excited to be returning to my first love, and to be doing it on this side of the pond. As so often seems to be the case, in hindsight it all seems to have been leading me here.

We are delighted, no, downright thrilled, to be staying in Kyiv. I’ll be traveling a lot again, and now more internationally than within Ukraine, which is exciting. I hope Igor can join me on some of the trips, that would be so much fun.

It will be interesting to work in such an America-focused environment. After 3 years with the UN, where I was the only American, it’s going to take me awhile to get used to the idea that people not only understand my obsession with Ohio State football, they also know what the heck is college football (and no, I don’t mean soccer!). I will miss the really international environment of the UN, but am also really excited to be back wtih an American organization.

The car is perfectly fine; well, not exactly but nothing is wrong with the brakes. The endless rain leaked into something and caused a short in the wiring that caused the brake warning light to come on. The mechanic apparently took me quite literally when I said “seal up” the leaky sunroof - he taped the roof with masking tape. It looks so bad, I have to laugh. At least I know that won’t last long.

Michael arrived last night, and Igor is playing with all his fancy photography equipment this evening (Michael’s a professional photographer).

We launched our new Youth Social Inclusion project yesterday - hrtrrah! It’s on our UNV website and the Ministry of Family, Youth and Sport. It’s taken nearly a year to get to this point, but we did it! And now for the hard part - actually putting the work plan into action!

3 1/2 days in the field, nearly 12 hours of driving on just one of the days. Although I wasn’t the driver, I’m still beat. It was a good mission, it’s always reinvigorating to meet with people we are trying to help. It’s also nice to get out of Kyiv, breath the fresh village air. I enjoy the village “traffic” jams much more than Kyiv traffic jams - being stuck in a herd of slow moving cows is much more fun than crazy drivers. But the roads in norther Rivne oblast are a nightmare- cobblestone roads for hundreds of kilometers.

Dad tagged along with us, for a change of view and to see a part of Ukraine he’s never been to before. He made friends with many of the village drunks and a few of the less shy kids while we had our meetings. The only word he seems to come up with to describe the trip is “interesting”, which I think means they weren’t the best 3 days of his life but not a total loss.

The storks were amazing - we saw literally hundreds of storks, in their nests, in the fields, flying overhead. The babies are nearly adult-size now but still apparently not entirely confident flyers. One lady told us about watching some young storks try to take their first gawky flight, which sounded hilarious. We also saw some dead storks along the road. I’m not sure how they managed to become roadkill, but I’m guessing they were young and hadn’t quite figured things out.

It’s good to be home. I missed my hubby. He’s off tomorrow to Korosten for some business, so this week we’re just passing each other on the road.

And we’ve got company this weekend, some friends from Tvarditsa who now live near Moscow will stop in Kyiv for the weekend on their way to Moldova for the annual trip home. Dad’s looking forward to being tour guide for them - I knew there was a reason we invited him for the summer!

The past week is a blur. I remember the major outline, but the details are lost. We landed in Kyiv Monday morning and I was in the office by lunchtime. I finally stumbled home about 9pm, after several meetings to confirm plans for the regional workshop we were hosting in Kyiv, with about 40 people attending from all over Eastern Europe and the CIS, 1-3 July. I changed our vacation plans to be in Kyiv for this workshop, and although I really hate that we missed 4th of July in Columbus, it was important to be here for this event, even if I wasn’t anywhere near my best for most of it.

Tuesday morning Igor and I were both wide awake at 4:00 am, and finally decided to get up and go to the grocery store around 4:30. First time we’ve never had to wait in line there! I was at the workshop early, and had a long spacey day. Despite being exhausted all day, I suddenly was wide awake once I got home and couldn’t sleep hardly all night. Wednesday was similar, but I really wanted to visit with my UNV colleagues so I pushed through a long evening and had some friends over for dinner. The workshop wrapped up on Thursday, and we had a nice reception in the evening for everyone. I regretted leaving early, but I was near dead from exhaustion.

Friday we had an important meeting with the Ministry of Family, Youth and Sport about a project I’ve been developing for most of the past year. The project was approved! Just need to finalize the financing, which should happen next week. So, I could finally relax Friday afternoon. I met up with a couple UNV colleagues for a quick beer.

For the first time in 3 years, I was invited to the big Independence Day party at the American Ambassador’s residence. Although I was still really pooped, and was hosting a colleague overnight in Kyiv, I felt I just couldn’t pass up the invitation. It was a fun event, and I enjoyed spending a couple hours with American friends and making some new acquaintances. After that party, I met up with some UNV colleagues for a late night. We stumbled home around 1 am (I think) and collapsed.

Igor went to Korosten on Tuesday, planning to be there a day or two, but that turned into the whole week. After seeing my UNV colleagues off to the airport, I drove to Korosten to finally visit with his family and friends. I had really been looking forward to listening to Igor tell everyone about our trip to the US. I love to listen to him tell stories, for one thing, but also I learn a lot more about his impressions and perceptions when he tells other people about what we’ve done and where we’ve been. Unfortunately, I missed most of his stories this time since he’d been there a week and seen most everybody by the time I got to Korosten. I did hear a couple stories, though - like how awesome Niagara Falls are, and that Ohio is a great place for retirement ’cause everything is set up for comfort (drive-thru banking, drive-up drop off for the library, etc). Igor was also immensely impressed with the vast array of gardening tools my Dad has - a tool for every task, he said.

We had dinner with Igor’s family, then rushed off to meet up with some friends who were waiting for us at their dacha outside Korosten. I was driving, which meant I didn’t have quite as much fun as everyone else, but I honestly didn’t mind the excuse to not have to drink vodka. Time to dry out for a bit.

We slept like the dead Saturday night, and for the first time in weeks I felt like I had a full night’s sleep. We woke up at 9:30 - jumped up is more like it, since we had an appointment at 10. Neither of us could believe we’d slept for over 10 hours! After running some errands, we spent an hour or so picking raspberries and blueberries in the yard - yum! There are still some cherries on the trees, but we decided to pass this time. Igor’s mom made a fabulous spread for lunch (as usual), with the highlight being vareniki (dumplings) with cherries, blueberries and mullberries. We stopped by Igor’s college roommate’s house on the way to Kyiv to visit them and Igor’s godson, and of course a “quick stop” turned into an hour and a half and another bursting table of goodies. We finally made it home around 7:30. The first time in nearly a month when we are home alone, and what do we do? I start the laundry and he starts scrapping the ice out of our crappy freezer - the things that desperately need to get done but we haven’t had time to do for ages. Finally we settle down, open a bottle of wine, and he’s watching boxing while I catch up on my blog.

It hardly seems like we were in Columbus just a week ago.

I spent last week as a volunteer election observer, seconded by the US government to the election observation mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It was a busy, exhausting and really great week. (By the way, I was officially on vacation from UNV and my volunteer work with OSCE was completely unconnected to my work with UNV.)

Most of the short-term observers arrived very early Saturday morning - airspace is less expensive in the middle of the night, so many flights arrive and depart in the capital Tbilisi at hours that I would prefer to think don’t exist. We landed about 4:00 am. After passport control, customs, collecting luggage, checking in with OSCE and finding the right chartered bus for my hotel, it was nearly 7 when I finally collapsed in bed. I slept a few hours, just enough to get me through the only full free day of the week.

My roommate in the hotel was an adorable young woman from Slovenia, Patricija. She and two of her colleagues from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Monika and Marko) made up the entire Slovenian delegation to the mission. They were all some of the nicest people I’ve met in a long time, and I happily spent much of my free time with them during the week. Patricija is a tiny thing, energetic and peppy - kind of like a perky toy poodle. I enjoyed her enthusiasm and optimisitic attitude as much as anything else in Georgia!

But Georgia itself was also really great. Everyone talks about the hospitality and friendliness of Georgians, and I certainly encountered nothing to challenge that legend. I had heard that not many people speak Russian anymore, so I’d been nervous I wouldn’t be able to communicate much with folks. It’s true not so many young people speak Russian these days, but pretty much everyone over 30 I encountered spoke Russian. Their accents were another story though! I took a short guided tour of one ancient church, conducted in Russian, and frankly couldn’t understand 90% of what the guide said. But she was a nice lady!

Saturday the Slovenians kindly adopted me into their group and we all agreed that the first place to visit was the ancient city of Mtskheta, the capital of the Georgian kingdom from the 3rd century BCE to the 5th century CE. We were so anxious to get on the road and do some sightseeing that we hailed the first taxi we saw, made him an offer for a half day of driving, and hopped in. Only after we settled in for the drive outside of Tbilisi did we start to take notice of what exactly we’d gotten in to. Monika was reading her guidebook and asked me to explain one phrase to her - it read something like this: “There are many private taxis, they are safe. But beware of beat-up cars.” I simply looked around and indicated the car we were in to explain the “beat-up” phrase. A couple times during the day, the driver couldn’t get the car started up and we had to push the car while he tried to pop the clutch to get it going. It became quite a joke for us, which of course was much funnier after we were safely back in Tbilisi, having cut short our plans for touring the nearby countryside after just two sites rather than risk getting stranded somewhere.

But those two sites were some of the most famous one near Tbilisi - the ancient capital with its beautiful Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, dating from the 11 century, and the nearby Jvari monastery, dating from the 6th century. Perched on a hilltop, Jvari offers a breathtaking view of Mtskheta and the surrounding hills and valleys. Just gorgeous.

Saturday evening we investigated the famous sulphur baths in Old Town Tbilisi. We visited three or four of them to compare and get the full scoop, planning to come back later in the week. Patricija and I went to one Tuesday night for a truly fantastic experience. The natural spring pours forth water at 50 degrees Celsius (122F), and in the small pools where you soak it is about 42-43C (107-109F). The tiled room is steamy, and the water feels absolutely great. We opted for the massage, which isn’t so much a muscle massage as it is a good thorough scrub down with a special woven hand mitt. You lay on a marble table, and the massuese rubs off so much dead skin you think you’re going to be just bare bones - but it feels great! My skin was soooo soft and smooth afterwards. We soaked, steamed, got rubbed down, soaked again - all in all, we spent an hour there and it was far from enough. We would have happily stayed several more hours.

Sunday the four of us decided to head out early to visit the town of Gori, about 80 km (50 miles) from Tbilisi. Why would we go to this sleepy town of under 47,000 people? It’s the birthplace of world-famous dictator Josef Stalin, and they’ve got a museum to him there. Too bizarre to pass up.

There’s not much I can add to Carpetblogger’s amusing post about the place. The museum is Soviet-style humonstrous, with cavernous halls. Among the many things I couldn’t quite get about the place was what the hell is actually in that huge building? The exhibitions we saw could not have accounted for even half of the space that had to be in there, judging from the outside. Did we miss the good stuff? And by that I mean did we miss the stuff that actually mentioned something about the fact that the subject of the museum was responsible for the death of millions of his citizens? I’m not asking for an analysis, even less a critique of him or his life. But I think what was most offensive about the place was the complete and total absence of any mention whatsoever that he might have done something a little bit bad in his life. I suppose I have to acknowledge that at least they didn’t say he was a good guy either. It was a rather mundane museum - facts, figures, photos, newspaper clippings, office furniture, family photos. You could almost forget the guy was a monster. The closest the guide came to mentioning anything approaching critical, and I’m sure it was more on account of a poor English translation someone gave her of the official tour, was when she pointed to a photo of Stalin casting a ballot and she said “And this is the first democractic election when Stalin elected himself.” I wanted to ask if they counted any of the other ballots cast in that election, or if it the one was enough to call it. I’d like to think it wasn’t just a poor translation but rather someone’s subtle way to sneak something more than the mundane facts into the tour.

I did learn a thing or two - Stalin was married twice and had a son. His second wife is actually still alive and lives in the US. They have a photo of his grandchildren visiting the museum.

They have Stalin’s personal railway car next to the museum, which is the length of two normal railway cars. It was relatively modest inside. The guide said Stalin didn’t like to fly and prefered to travel by rail as much as possible.

They also have the two-room house were Stalin was born and lived the first four years of his life. It looks to have been separated from whatever other construction it used to be part of, and the two rooms stand awkwardly in front of the musuem, under a stone and glass canopy. Stalin and his parents lived in just one of the rooms, which they rented from the people who lived in the other one. It was really small; hard to imagine a family living only in that tiny space.

In the end, I wondered if there might be something to the museum’s non-analytical take on Stalin’s life and reign. After all, everybody else only talks about the crappy stuff he did - but who knew he had a son and that his grandkids are still alive and kickin? I asked our driver what Georgians thought about Stalin. He said there are definitely people who hate him, mostly those who were repressed (go figure!). On the other hand, many Georgians see him as the great leader who defeated facsism and united a huge percentage of the world, and those Georgians are proud that Stalin was Georgian. Our driver also stated proudly that Stalin always made his first toast to Georgia - “He never forgot his motherland,” he said. I wonder if he remembered the ones he shipped off to Siberia?

And toasting in Georgia is a topic worthy of an entire blog post in and of itself, but that will have to wait for another day. It’s late, I’m tired, and the Georgian stomach bug that kindly accompanied me home hasn’t quite gotten the hint yet that it’s time to get packing. More later.

December 5 was International Volunteer Day. The UN marked the day with the usual release of statements from various officials, like the UN Secretary General’s statement, the UNDP Administrator’s statement, and the UNV Executive Coordinator’s statement.

We celebrated the day with a small event at the national medical university, to which we invited university students and anyone else interested in learning more about UN Volunteer opportunities. Featured speakers included one Ukrainian doctor who recently returned from a year serving in a South African hospital as an International UNV volunteer anesthesiologist. He shared great stories and beautiful photographs. Another featured guest was a Ukrainian ecologist who will be leaving in a couple weeks to work on a wetlands project in Bangladesh. I think the students were truly inspired to hear about these opportunities, and I hope they will consider UNV posts in the future.

There were a couple funny moments for me. I arrived at the university before my other colleagues, and I found the room where we would be and there was a young woman waiting. I asked her, in Russian, if she was Natasha, the contact person we had been working with. She responded, also in Russian, that Natasha was downstairs printing signs to hang up in the hallway, and that she herself was Viktoria, also a member of the student council who was handling the arrangements for our event. I introduced myself, still speaking Russian, and suddenly the girl became quite flustered and said “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English.” Hmm, I thought to myself, what language have we been speaking?

Throughout the entire program, I spoke in Russian, with an occasional Ukrainian word or phrase thrown in. Other speakers also spoke either Ukrainian or Russian. Someone started to ask a question in Ukrainian, paused and looked at me and asked if he should speak Russian instead. “No,” I answered in Ukrainian, “I understand.”

After the formal program, we had some refreshments and encouraged participants to talk to the presenters individually. One young woman came up to me and started to ask a question in Russian, then paused and asked if it was OK for her to speak Russian, if I understood? Good grief, I though, was my Russian really so bad the entire last hour that she didn’t even recognize it as her own language?

This was all especially confusing considering I recently learned that I passed the United Nations Language Proficiency Examination in Russian - and with not-too-shabby score, if I do say so myself! I got 86 out of 100 on the written exam, which included listening comprehension, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar; and I got 81/100 on the composition (which was probably more a reflection of my illegible handwriting than anything else). So I’m looking at the certificate on my office wall this morning trying to boost my ego back up and convince myself that someone actually thinks I have decent Russian.

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Yesterday was also noteworthy for a couple other, more personal, reasons. I had my first fitting for the wedding dress. It’s great! The fabric is a silky blue/violet, with a velvet wrap around the waist of a slightly different color. Both are shimmery and look different depending on the lighting. I took a small scrap of fabric to help me find the perfect pair of shoes.

I also FINALLY got my car registered - and I have diplomatic plates! Woohoo!

One nasty, and pricey, experience with the traffic cops back in September convinced me to leave the car in the UN parking lot until the registration was completed. I certainly didn’t realize then that it would take nearly 4 months, but it was well worth it! The cops pulled me over for one of their bogus violations, and made up several more when they heard my accent, but it was difficult for me to fight the fake accusations when in fact I was driving illegally since the car registration hadn’t been officially transferred to me yet. D’oh! But no more worries now, I can drive 100% hassle-free. The sad thing is, I’m probably one of the few drivers on the road who actually tries to obey the traffic rules, stays within the speed limit, and is considerate of other drivers. Why would a person like that need diplomatic plates, you may be wondering? Obeying the law seems to be irrelevant to the traffic cops.

My boss from UNV headquarters was here all week. It was great, but completely and totally exhausting. I feel like I had a 150-hour work week. Today I’m going to work out, have a massage, and go back to the office for a couple hours. But for the first time in over a week, I might actually get to spend an evening with Igor.

We’ve still got a couple more weeks before work slows for either of us.

The dress is being made! I hope to see it this week. I took some pictures of dresses I found on internet stores that I liked to a designer a colleague of mine recommended. She picked gorgeous fabric, and drew up a couple different designs for me. I picked some features of 3 different designs and on the spot she drew a new design that was perfect! I wish I had taken a photo of the drawing. I’ll have to ask if I can do that when I go for a fitting.

It’s snowing in Kyiv. *sigh*

I have been super busy at work and haven’t had anytime to post on my blog, even though there is a lot I want to post about - like my trip to youth centers in Crimea, the international conference on Peace and Tolerance Education I attended in Crimea, and some meetings and discussions I’ve had with Chornobyl-aid organizations. But I am overloaded at work. Things to do: prepare one briefing on the status of civil society development and volunteerism in Ukraine for the UNDP Resident Representative; prepare one project proposal on youth development to submit to UNV headquarters; prepare and conduct briefings for 4 new UNV volunteers; finalize recruitment of an international consultant to conduct a final evaluation mission for the UNV component of Chornobyl Recovery and Development Programme; facilitate said final evaluation mission so that the final report is ready by end of November; plan, organize and facilitate the annual UNV retreat; and prepare contingency plans for managing the work of the UNV country operations assistant, who will be out of the office indefinitely due to a family emergency.

Furthermore, we still have to register our wedding in Korosten, but this can only be done on work days, and I have no idea when we will both be able to take a day off to go to Korosten to take care of this. We also need to make hotel reservations for everyone there, and plan the party. I still don’t have any outfit to wear at the wedding. We don’t have rings. Anyone want to be my wedding coordinator?

Something good that _is_ happening is that I have started exercising regularly again. I am embarrassed by how flabby and weak I’ve gotten in the last 3 years; I had been doing so good with my weight and exercise in the US. But I’m starting to get back on track, working out 3 times a week with some colleagues and a personal trainer. I’m sore as hell, but it feels good to be physically active again. It’s going to be awhile before I can back anywhere near the shape I was in 3 years ago, but I know I can do it.

Hopefully I will get my head above water this week and can post more on the weekend.

I’m heading out today to spend the next week traveling with a group of international volunteers as part of our UNV Volunteerism Promotion Campaign. The volunteers arrived this past Monday from Poland, Serbia, France,Denmark, Turkey, Germany and Japan! They have spent this week at a cute little rural tourism place about 2 hours from Kyiv, participating in trainings and preparing their own presentation for youth groups in the five Chornobyl-affected communities they will visit. My colleague Anna spent most of this week with them, and I visited on Wednesday to make a presentation about the Chornobyl accident and its aftermaths. Another colleague from CRDP told them about their initiatives, especially about the Youth Centers where this group will be working in the next week. We were also extremely honored that Mr. Daisuke Minamino, Second secretary from the Embassy of Japan in Ukraine, joined us to talk about Japanese support for recovery and development initiatives in Chornobyl-affected communities.

I will join them tonight for their last night at the training site, and then tomorrow morning we head to the village of Liubech (Chernihivska oblast), where we will work with the local kids on the renovation of their youth center. In the evening, the international and Ukrainian volunteers will have a “cultural program”, sharing traditions and in general having a fun time together. We’ll spend the night in Liubech (on the floor in the youth center - man, I’m getting too old for that kind of stuff!), and then Sunday head to Kyiv for a free day in the capital.

The rest of the week looks like this:
Monday - excursion to the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone.
Tuesday - volunteer and cultural program in Kruglik (Kyivska oblast)
Wednesday - program in Lystvyn (Zhytomyrska oblast, Ovrutsky raiyon)
Thursday - program in Kyrdany (Zhytomyrska oblast, Ovrutsky raiyon)
Friday - program in Korosten (Zhytomyrska oblast)
Saturday - fun celebrations for the Korosten “City Day” festival
Sunday - return to Kyiv, wrap-up and evaluation
Monday - press conference; participant departure

I’ll write again after Sept. 10 and let you know how it all goes. I think it will be great - let’s just hope my back can handle a week of sleeping on the floor.

Yes, I have been at my new job for exactly two weeks and I am going on vacation! Actually, I’ve had the vacation planned for months, and my new boss very kindly agreed to let me keep my plans.

I am really enjoying this new position, I have to say. I wake up in the morning excited about going to work! While I enjoyed my work in the field with the Chornobyl Programme, I really didn’t care for the time in the office, which was mostly spent proofreading and editing poorly written English-language documents. It looks like I’ll have leadership on several new and really exciting projects as UNV Programme Officer, and well, frankly, I love being in charge. And I love new and exciting projects.

But these first two weeks have worn me ragged! I wore my pedometer one day and tracked over 10 miles of walking - to different buildings for various meetings, up and down three flights of stairs about a hundred times, etc. I decided I didn’t need to count my steps for awhile; I’m definitely getting my 10,000 a day.

So, I’m looking forward to a couple weeks of rest. Dad arrives tomorrow morning and we’ve got some fun and interesting things planned. This is his third time in Kyiv, so I decided we’d travel outside the city as much as possible so we both can see some new and different places. First, we’ll go to Korosten so he can meet Igor’s family (eek!). Then we’ve got a trip to the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. Then 5 days in the Carpathian mountains. I haven’t decided exactly where we’ll go after that, but I’m thinking some day trips to places not too far from Kyiv. We’ll play it by ear.

So folks, enjoy the next two weeks! I don’t expect to writing much until July.

Gosh, I haven’t had any time to keep up with my blog lately, and frankly, nothing seems interesting enough to write about.

I started my new position as Programme Officer for the UN Volunteers Programme in Ukraine on June 1. So far, so good. I’ve mostly been occupied with getting set up - a computer, a telephone, network access, etc. We did, however, conduct two interviews on my first day with Ukrainian nationals who are being considered for International UNV positions in South Africa. That was really cool. One of the candidates already served for 4 years as an IUNV in Tanzania. It’s really exciting to see Ukrainian specialists who are interested and willing to serve as UNVs in other countries, to share their skills and expertise (both of these candidates are doctors and will work in hospitals in South Africa). I’m looking forward promoting such opportunities to other Ukrainians!

I got back to Kyiv last Wednesday, but have only now found a few minutes to write a quick post.

The trainings in Bonn were OK, I did actually learn some stuff that I think will be useful. And it was a lot of fun to meet so many interesting people. The first week was a workshop for UNV Program Officers and Program Managers in Eastern Europe and CIS. Our group included:
- a Mongolian woman working in Kazakhstan
- a British man working in Kyrgyzstan
- a Norwegian man working in Uzbekistan (who also happens to be the ONLY Norwegian in all of Uzbekistan)
- a Japanese woman working in Albania
- a Czech woman working in Bosnia (who graduated from Ohio University and has been living in the Columbus, Ohio, for the past 7 years!)
- a British woman working in Albania
- a Serbian woman who grew up in Sweden, lived for 10 years in the U.S., and is now back in Serbia with UNV
- and an Italian woman who works in Indonesia (she joined our workshop because she started her UNV position just a bit after her region’s workshop was held in Kuala-Lampur, so they let her join us to get the info)

And the UNV headquarters staff is amazingly diverse - people from Vietnam, Germany, Ghana, Albania, Canada, Netherlands, Bosnia, Japan, and many many more countries; I didn’t have time to ask everyone where they were from.

Back in Kyiv, I discovered that the political crisis had moved closer to my home. I live about 2 blocks from the Prosecutor General’s office, and I walk past that building every day on my way to and from work. It seems that President Yushenko fired the PG, and so the tent dwellers moved to the PG’s neighborhood to set up camp there. With temps in the 30’s (80 F), it’s not a pretty thing to walk through a huge crowd of people who’ve been living in tents for who-knows-how long. Even worse for me was that they seem to move over to my street, maybe even right under my apartment window, at night, blaring music, signing, yelling, and smoking up a storm. So now it’s too hot to close the windows, but too noisy to leave them open. Lord, I hope all this ends soon.

Igor and I both have new jobs!

I have accepted the United Nations Volunteers Programme Officer position in Kyiv. I’ll be overseeing the UN Volunteer program in Ukraine, helping to recruit both international and national UNVs, supporting all UNVs in Ukraine, and promoting volunteerism throughout the country. I officially start on June 1, but they wanted me to attend a couple trainings in Bonn, Germany, that were already scheduled. So, I arrived in Bonn last night, after a 4-hour layover in Prague during which I got to hang out with my buddy Hana.

Can I just say how nice it is here? Smooth, well-paved roads. Signs that actually provide directions. And the hotel! I’d nearly forgotten a hotel can be so luxurious – and clean! A bathroom that doesn’t scare the bejeezes out of you. And the efficiency is so impressive - the lights in the hallway turn on as you walk down the hall, and turn down as you pass along. Brilliant! It’s rumored there’s even a swimming pool on the grounds; I’ll check that out later tonight. I’ll be here for 10 lovely days – woohoo!

In the meantime, Igor has officially moved to Kyiv and started his new job last week. He is the Interim Executive Director of a new project sponsored by the German-Polish-Ukrainian Fund, a center for Kyiv street children called “Our Kids.”

The project concept is to create a home-like, family-like experience for street children. The center is located in the three buildings of an old kindergarten on the left bank of Kyiv (Dniprovske neighborhood). The buildings are being renovated into 4 large apartments in two of the buildings (8 apartments total), and the third will be an administrative building. Within each apartment will leave one married couple with 8 children, aged 6-10 years old. The couples will either have no children, or they can have adult children, but they should have no dependent children. The wife will be paid a monthly salary by the Center and will work as a kind of “house mother” for the 8 children; the husband will work part-time outside of the home, and will also receive some financial support from the Center for working part-time at home as a caregiver within the “family unit”. The parents and children will all receive special trainings and support throughout the years they live in the Center. Over the course of three or four years, the hope is that the couple and the kids will form a real family bond, and eventually the couple can adopt the children.

The renovation of the first building will be done sometime this summer, and the center will be ready to accept children by September. In August, when the new Executive Director arrives from Germany, Igor will take over as the Center Director, which is the job he’s really excited about. He will oversee the recruitment, hiring, and training of the married couples, social workers, and all other Center staff. He’ll design and organize trainings, special programs, and all kinds of other interesting things.

Until then, he is overseeing the renovations of the first building on the site. He took me there on Saturday for a quick tour. There’s a lot of work still to be done, but judging by the architectural plans, it’s going to be a beautiful complex.

As Center Director, Igor is expected to live on site, so as soon as the first building is ready, we will be moving into the Director’s apartment. We’re excited to be getting free housing in Kyiv! We walked around the neighborhood for a bit on Saturday, too – checked out a nearby market (it has a fabulous Asian stand!), and a café just across the street from the Center. We were both stunned by the prices – geez, all we did was cross the river, but prices here are so much lower than in the center of the city. A multi-course lunch (soup, meat dish and side dish) costs just 15 hrivnas ($3), and a beer just 5 hrivnas ($1). At the café near my office, a salad alone costs at least 20 hrivna.

Aside from the awesome prices, I enjoyed walking around the “bedroom” neighborhood – lots of little parks and playgrounds, beautiful trees and flowering bushes (on the Center’s grounds alone I counted a weeping willow tree, chestnut trees, some maple trees, lots of gorgeous lilac bushes, and some other flowering bushes I couldn’t identify). We are both looking forward to living in the quiet, family-oriented area.

I’m excited about my new job opportunity, too. I will still be involved with the Chornobyl Programme, as the majority of UNVs in Ukraine are currently affiliated with that project. I’ll also be involved in some new UNDP projects that plan to involve UNVs. And I’m looking forward to being involved in the “Our Kids” activities, and I hope to organize a Peace Camp next summer for the kids.

So, big changes in our lives are happening. I’m thrilled that Igor is finally in Kyiv. And although I’m delighted to get to travel to Bonn (don’t I deserve a nice business trip after a year and a half of traveling throughout some of the most depressed regions of Ukraine?), it’s a pity that I had to leave just a few days after Igor moved in. Maybe it’s good for us in terms of “easing in” to living together – it was a bit strange to have him around during the week, and odd that we both had to get up and go to work instead of lazing around like we usually do during the weekends.

A few months ago, we got a new “signalizatsia” (electronic alarm) system in our office. Being the customer-focused country that is Ukraine, there were a few strange new rules that came along with the system. In particular, we can now only be in the office from 8 am to 8 pm Monday-Friday, and not at all on weekends or official holidays. Even knowing and using the correct code to deactivate the alarm upon entry is insufficient evidence of you being a person actually authorized to use the office during these “off hours.” This makes for some hassles for those of us who live close the office and are accustomed to coming in on weekends or staying late on weeknights to use the internet. But the rules are the rules and we had to adapt to the new plan since there was no way in hell the company was going to adapt the plan to our needs.

Yesterday was a national holiday - Victory Day. As such, the office was closed. Today at about 1:45 pm, two men from the alarm company came to the office to “investigate” an incident from 23 hours ago. They said the alarm was triggered yesterday around 3 pm. Natasha, our secretary, just went through the office asking if anyone had come in yesterday, and it seems none of us was the culprit.

“Natasha,” I innocently asked,”if the alarm went off yesterday, why are they coming only today to check it out?” She stared at me for a moment, then burst out laughing.

I’m off this weekend to Dubrovitsa, in Rivenenska oblast, about 400 km northwest of Kyiv. This is about the same distance as to Odessa, only the the roads are lot crappier to get there and the town at the end of the trip is not nearly as fun and interesting as Odessa. Oh well. I’ll be attending a community organization meeting in Udritsk, and youth center openings in Zalyuzha and Nenkovichi. If I survive a weekend of the accompanying “furshets” (parties/banquets), it will be quite an achievement.

I was in the field again Tuesday and Wednesday, visiting some CRDP youth centers. American photographer Michael Forster Rothbart tagged along for the trip, as he is working on a documentary photo project on people affected by radiation in the former Soviet Union, and as such is particularly interested in meeting and talking with re-settled people from Chornobyl-affected areas. We were able to include a number of interesting stops in our trip, not just interesting for him, but for me as well.

For our drive to Korosten, I opted to take a longer route that goes through a little “bubble” of the Exclusion Zone, an area not originally designated as Exclusion Zone but which was recognized as pretty damn contaminated about a year or two after the accident. Unfortunately, before they realized it was unsafe for human settlements, the authorities had already built a new village for people resettled out of the original Exclusion Zone. People moved into the brand new apartments, and a few months later were evacuated a second time. You can drive through this area on the road from Ivankiv to Ovruch, with checkpoints as you go in and out of the area, and some monitoring of the road inside. It’s interesting to drive through the village, as I’ve done several time, but Michael was disappointed to learn that you aren’t allowed to stop or get out of your car while in the Zone.

His sharp eyes noticed an abandoned village just outside the Exclusion Zone, though. Although I’ve driven on that road several times, I never noticed the empty buildings hidden behind the overgrowth, just a few yards from the road. We stopped and spent about 45 minutes wandering through the village. We both commented how it was kind of eerie, especially the farther you got from the main road. Just a few hundred feet down the former road into the village, you already can’t see the main road through the thick bushes and tall grasses. I felt very sad walking around, looking at the crumbling walls, thinking of everything that people lost after Chornobyl. Not just their material possessions, but their homes, their communities, their relationships with neighbors, their classmates, their pets, their gardens, the night sky over their backyards, the parks, the sense of belonging somewhere.

At first I felt only the loss of the place, sensed the absence of life. But then I started to notice the beautiful songs of the birds. And I saw the green shoots sprouting up through the soil, the buds on the trees, and the flowers about to bloom. I was startled when I heard something rustling in the leaves at my feet, and I saw a tiny bright green frog. Later I saw another one in another part of the village. Life was all around me. Maybe there is even more life in that empty village today preciously because there are no humans.

Wednesday morning we went to Korosten School No. 13 to see and photograph some trainings conducted by the staff from the Korosten Center for Social-Psychological Rehabilitation of the Population Affected by Chornobyl (a mouthful of a name, I know). There are five of these centers in Chornobyl-affected areas of Ukraine - Slavutych, Borodyanka, Ivankiv, Korosten, and Boyarka. The Korosten staff were conducting healthy-lifestyle trainings in many of the town schools with support from a grant from Friends of Chernobyl Centers, U.S. (FOCCUS). For third and fourth graders, the topic was anti-smoking; for sixth and seventh graders, anti-drugs; and for tenth and eleventh grade girls, sex education, including a discussion about abortion. I half-jokingly made a comment that the girls don’t get pregnant without the boys, but they didn’t follow my suggestion of including the boys in the sex ed discussion. The 45-minute sessions were pretty interesting (to me at least, although the kids seemed fairly engaged, too).

After the school, we stopped by the Stalin-era bunkers that I had first toured last October. We didn’t have much time so our tour was rather brief, but I could definitely see they’ve been working hard at renovating the bunker and are expanding the collection it contains of various war and Stalin-era memorabilia. It is well on its way to being an excellent museum.

Our next stop was at the local Radiation Control Laboratory. There wasn’t really anything for Michael to photograph, but we had a very interesting conversation with the lab director. He told us that there used to be a radiation check-point right at the town market, as well as separate laboratories for the town of Korosten and one for the rest of the raiyon. Funding has decreased, though, along with public interest in checking radiation levels in food, and the number of checkpoints has been reduced. Now this one laboratory serves the entire raiyon as well as the town. However, most of the food production places, like the bread bakeries and the dairies, still have their own on-site radiation control personnel. He told us that mostly the contaminated foodstuffs today are forest mushrooms and berries, milk from privately-owned cows, and game meat. Hunters sometimes bring in their catch to be checked, and it can be clean or terribly terribly contaminated. The milk from dairies is safe, he assured us, as it is carefully controlled, but cows kept by villagers still tend to have contaminated milk.

From Korosten we headed to Brusyliv, a town and raiyon that is considered “clean” but CRDP operates there because of the very high percentage of re-settled people in the raiyon. We met the head of the local chapter of the Chornobyl Union, a national organization of people affected by Chornobyl. She told us about the upcoming march and rally in Kyiv, an annual event held on the weekend before the Chornobyl anniversary (April 26), and that this year they would again be protesting the decrease in funding for Chornobylites and Chornobyl issues. She rattled off statistics of how many people are designated Chornobyl-affected in her raiyon, how many invalids of the different categories there are, etc. She described a 14-year old girl in a nearby village as having some kind of debilitating mental and physical disability. I tried to gently inquire why this girl, born 7 years after the Chornobyl accident in a “clean” village has official “Chornobyl-affected” status. Because every child born to a resettled parent, anywhere in the country, receives the designation until they are 18 years old, I was told. This girl’s parents had been evacuated from inside the Exclusion Zone.

What is the benefit of designating every single child of Chornobylites as Chornobyl-affected, regardless of whether or not they have any kind of illness at all? And if the kid really does have some illness or disease that is related to Chornobyl, why are they Chornobyl-invalids only until they are 18? For how many generations will this go on? And why is a person Chornobyl-affected if they were re-located but don’t have any Chornobyl-related illness? Yes, having to move was traumatic and difficult, but who’s to say that without Chornobyl some of those people wouldn’t have moved anyway? The break-up of the Soviet Union and the subsequent economic depression has pushed people to leave rural villages in droves, many even to leave the country, yet the millions of people resettled after the Chornobyl accident receive various social benefits in perpetuity. The policies of social benefits for Chornobylites, if they were actually implemented as they were intended to be, would bankrupt this country. But if they’re not going to really implement the policies honestly, what’s the point in having them at all? As usual, the more I learn about Chornobyl, the more questions I have.

We next visited the village of Privorotye, about 20 minutes from Brusyliv, and met with a group of resettlers and their children who were rehearsing for a Chornobyl anniversary concert. We spoke with a woman who had been mayor of her village in Narodychi raiyon, one of the most affected parts of Ukraine. She described how her entire village was relocated together, all 400-some people were moved to Privorotye in 1989. She told us how warmly they were received by the local residents, and how over the past 17 years her village has completely integrated into their new community - people have intermarried, they’ve had children, and no one anymore thinks of people as “re-settled” or “native”. She told us, with justifiable pride, that not a single person who relocated with them has moved away. This really struck me, as I have read many accounts of people being so homesick or feeling so out-of-place in their new town that they want to move back to their abandoned village - which several hundred people have done, choosing to live in the Exclusion Zone instead of trying to adapt to life in a different, safe, place. I suspect the fact that the entire village moved together was a key factor in the resettlers’ acceptance of their new life and being able to adapt and integrate. Instead of being isolated as the only resettler, or one of just a few resettlers, in a new village, this group of people had everyone familiar around them, even if they lost everything familiar.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately about Chornobyl. Also I’ve been talking about it a lot with some friends who are living and working temporarily in Kyiv, all of whom are very interested to know more about Chornobyl. One friend, Michael, is “working on a documentary photo project on people affected by radiation in the former Soviet Union.” He and I have talked a lot about Chornobyl, swapped resources and contacts, and he will travel with me next week on some site visits to interview and photograph resettled people from the Exclusion Zone.

Something I have noticed is that in all the books and reports I have read, there is never a consistent story of what actually happened, or even of how many people died. One book will say one person died in the initial explosion, another will say three. If a fact as simple as how many people died in the first few minutes can’t be confirmed, how can you believe anything else that is reported about the accident, much less the lasting consequences?

As luck would have it, Andriy Arkhipov stopped by our office today. Andriy is the scientist who guided us through the Exclusion Zone last year. I trust him, and I thought he might be able to provide me with some straight answers, or at least some better insight.

“Why,” I asked him, “do the reports differ all the time about the facts of the accident? How many people actually died in the explosion?”

“The only people who know exactly what happened that night are the people who were there,” he said to me. “No one else knows for sure. What I can tell you is that definitely one man died in the explosion, and he was trapped under rubble and his body was never recovered.” (This fact is consistently reported in everything I’ve read, so I already knew that this was at least true.)

“We also know,” he continued, “that 28 firemen died in the immediate aftermath as a result of extreme radiation exposure (in the first week, two weeks, month).” This was a figure I hadn’t heard before, although I’ve read numerous accounts of the first responders’ heroic efforts and horrific deaths.

All this “activity” lately in my own life about Chornobyl has gotten me thinking about my own safety and how I might be able to take more control of the situation, have more first-hand knowledge about the levels of radiation I may be exposed to. I decided to find out about dosimeters. I found some websites selling dosimeters and other radiation-detection equipment, but quickly realized I have no idea what exactly I’d need. I again took advantage of the chance meeting with Andriy today to ask his advice. I told him I want to be able to measure radiation in foodstuffs at the market. “Impossible,” he said. You need very specific, very advanced, and very big equipment to be able to do that. In other words, not portable, and way out of my price range. He did offer, though, that I could buy a radiation detector device for use at home; it’s about the size of a desktop laser printer, with a hole in the front where you insert the food item in question. Andriy made a quick call, and before I knew it, we had a fax with a price list of radiometers and dosimeters, the least expensive being 897 hrivna (a little under $200) - yikes! And here I’d been thinking I could get something small to carry around with me, thinking to spend something like 50 bucks. Think again!

“So how can people protect themselves? How can we know what’s safe and what’s not?”

“Everything sold in the markets is supposed to be checked by the official radiation detection control point. In theory. In practice, well, not everyone does it.”

So, again, I ask, how are we supposed to protect ourselves? No wonder the general population long ago stopped actively worrying about radiation in their food - whether it’s there or not, you basically have no way of finding out.