And not a moment too soon.

I'll have photos up on the flickr page by Monday.

I moved in at my site twelve days ago. It's a town called Kremenets, in Ternopil Oblast (a province in Western Ukraine).

The school I'm teaching at is a lyceum, sort of the Ukrainian equivalent of a "magnet" or "charter" school or an "honors" high school. There about 200 students in grades 8-11. There are four other English teachers, including my counterpart, Tatyana. The students have been studying English for about six years, so their level is pretty good. We still have a lot of work to do, but I'm thrilled to have engaged and intelligent students. The other teachers are great at what they do and have been very kind and helpful.

Tatyana let me spend the night at her house on my first day in town while my apartment was being readied. She and her husband helped me move in the next day. Later she showed me the lyceum, post office, bank, stores, and bus station. I wouldn't have been able to get around in Kremenets without her help. Another teacher showed me a barber shop and even stood waiting behind the chair, ready to translate for the hairdresser. I couldn't have asked for a better site.

I have a three-room apartment with a short hallway that connects the rooms to the front door. The kitchen and bathroom are about the same size as the ones I had in Amherst. The other room is my bedroom and office space. It has a large bookcase and wardrobe along one wall and a desk at one end by the window. There is a small balcony outside the window.

One thing that's very different about Ukraine is that I do my laundry in the bathtub. I have an electric hot water heater that I must plug in at least five hours before I want any large quantity of warm water. At first it felt strange to be washing everything by hand in a bathtub, but I'm on my third load of laundry now. I'll dry things on a clothesline on the balcony when it's warm. For now I hang things on a line that crosses the kitchen and dry the especially demanding articles of clothing on a special contraption in the bathroom. It's essentially a long, zig-zagging metal tube that is connected to the gas heater in the kitchen. When I turn the heat on it gets nice and warm; anything placed on it dries in a day or two.

When you leave home for a foreign country all sorts of strange ideas and assumptions arrive to play havoc with your perceptions and thoughts. Chief amongst them is the idea that "They're only a little different from me over there." Another silly one is: "I won't have to adapt much."

They're very different from you. And you have to adapt a lot.

I realize what it means to be American much more now than I used to, and I understand my culture in a way that only an expatriate can. In America I felt more or less that I lived pretty much like everyone else on the planet. Of course, I got a vague idea of my peculiarities when I visited Spain for a few weeks in high school. Yet even then, it was mostly just the food, buildings, and language that were different. Living in Ukraine, I see more and more the differences between myself and others. My identity as an American is much more solid. I realize that language is culture and that culture is language. The two are always inseparable: there's a reason they taught us about flan and flamenco when we studied Spanish. When you learn another language you're also learning about the ideas, stories and cuisine of its people. Living abroad you learn this truly: a word is always much more than just a word.

In Ukraine I find myself in a strange, delightful, terrifying, wonderful situation: second childhood.

In my last few entries I was a Ukrainian five-year-old. I could nod and smile and eat and ask simple questions. I am now about eleven or twelve. I can ride a bus and ask (haltingly) where I should get off and transfer, I can buy (confusedly) food at the grocer's, read simple signs, and navigate the bazaar. I guess it's good to be half-adult rather than five, but it's very frustrating: you get treated like a child or an adolescent and feel half-deaf and half-dumb most of the time. You want to be able to speak freely, fluidly, and as eloquently as you can think in English, but nothing even remotely eloquent passes your lips. You want to be able to whistle in houses and put your hands in your pockets and point at things in the street, but you know better than to be rude and offensive in the new culture. You want, essentially, to become an adult. You want to be unrestricted. You want to be able to buy a box of tea without stammering, to know which register to use with your students and which to use with your acquaintances, to have chores seem boring again.

Yet there's also a singular beauty to my situation: I get to experience things anew.

I secretly find shopping for food in America to be an exciting activity. I have no idea why, but there's something great about trolleying around a supermarket. It feels like foraging. Perhaps it awakens an ancient instinct in me. Shopping for food in Ukraine is a thousand times better. I love to wander the bazaar, craning my neck to see the card sitting in a tub of mandarin oranges (15 hryvnia by the kilo) or getting advice about which tomato paste is a better value from the clerk at the grocer's.

It's a pleasure to be able to experience the perfunctory, monotonous things of life anew. Buying toothpaste is a difficult and complex adventure. I felt like I had won the entire world when I managed to ask my neighbor where I could throw away my trash and then found the dumpster where he said it would be. I suppose it's hard to understand, but I feel as if I am learning how to live anew. And it's wonderful to get another chance to feel and smell and see again for the first time.

Thanks for the Christmas and New Year's presents. I ate the cranberries and blueberries with my host family, the weather station is proving useful, I love the Levertov and Gibran, and the tea and socks are wonderful.

I thought you might like to know what I'm eating; perhaps you'll even make it for dinner.

While I eat a lot of varenyki and pelmeni (Ukrainian and Russian dumplings/ravioli), I've also been cooking borsch.

Before moving to Ukraine I thought that borsch was a sickeningly sweet purple beet broth that came in a dusty jar. Now I know better. Traditional Ukrainian borsch is delicious. It always contains potatoes, tomatoes, beets, onions, and cabbage. There is usually some chicken, some garlic, and a lot of other ancillary ingredients. There are two variants of borsch: red and green. Red contains tomatoes, green has chervil or spinach. I tend to prefer red borsch, but I didn't have all of the ingredients last week.

I thought back to the dusty jar of beet broth I'd bought while living in Amherst during college. The only thing appetizing about that so-called borsch was its color. And as I cut into a real beet I realized I had forgotten how beautiful they are within. The flesh is a deep, dark magenta, yet it's partially translucent. You can see down into the layers as you're cutting away the skin, yet the center eludes you. It's strange to say, but I think beets are the prettiest vegetable. Since I had temporarily lost my cookbook and lacked all the ingredients I went along on guesswork. I was very pleasantly surprised by the resulting borsch, which retains the lurid, lovely color of the beet and has all the flavor of a true Ukrainian borsch.

Yan's Improvised Borsch

Ingredients:

one large beet (2-3 small)

7-10 small potatoes (perhaps 4-5 large)

two small onions

4-5 cloves of garlic

two to three small cans of tomato paste (1-1.5 large)

half a cabbage (I used what the Ukrainians call "Chinese cabbage," which is cylindrical and has thinner leaves, but a regular, spherical cabbage should work too.)

1 chicken thigh/leg OR 2 cubes vegetarian bouillon

perhaps some beans or carrots, other assrt. vegetables and spices (I made this borsch without any, but there's room if you want to add them.)

black pepper

red pepper

bay leaves

salt

Notes:

Since this recipe was improvised, its ingredients will be determined somewhat by what you have on hand and by the size of your soup pot. This list is somewhat elastic: feel free to add a few more vegetables or a different meat. You should use your culinary judgement in determining the amount of ingredients and the volume of water to add to your pot.

You'll get about eight to ten servings out of this recipe.

Step one is best done the night before; it's easier to grate the beet when it's cold.

******************************

1. Peel a large beet and cut it into quarters. Boil the pieces until they can be stuck rather easily with a knife or fork, but still resist slightly. Refigerate them.

2. The next day, use a grater to pare the beet into fine shavings. Place the beet shavings into a large metal bowl.

3. Peel and quarter the potatoes. Boil them until they are easily stabbed with a fork, but not mushy.

4. Place the bowl of shredded beet into the sink. Hold a colander on top of the beet and drain the potatoes into the bowl. Don't worry if the bowl overflows, but try to reserve as much of the liquid as possible.

5. Return the potatoes to the pot. Add the beet and the liquid. Add some salt, the black pepper, the bay leaves, and a little red pepper. [Add bouillon and other vegetables and spices.] Add extra water as necessary. Return to a boil.

6. While the pot returns to a boil, sauté the chicken, garlic, and onions in oil. When the meat is browned and the onions have cooked down, add them to the pot.

7. Chop the cabbage according to your taste, then stir it into the pot.

8. Add the tomato paste. [I like a lot of tomato paste. It adds to the color of the soup and gives it a sweetness and tartness that goes well with the potato and beet. If you like less tomato, add only one or two small cans.]

8. Add pepper and salt to taste. The borsch will be finished when the cabbage is no longer crisp and the meat is cooked, but like many soups, the flavors get even better if it is left to sit for a while on the stove or in the refrigerator.

I almost forgot the smetana! Smetana is a Slavic kind of sour cream. It's less fatty and more liquid, closer to yogurt than American sour cream. U.S. sour cream should be a good substitute for it. A small dollop in the center of the bowl is the finishing touch.

For some reason strange reason, I like to drink milk with borsch. (I like a lot of red pepper in my borsch.) For some other strange reason, we buy milk in pouches here. By "pouch" I don't mean the kind with a spigot. I mean the kind of sealed plastic bag that beans and brown sugar are packed in in America. Butter still comes in wax paper, but smetana comes in a bag too.

My new address in Kremenets is:

Брум Ян

а/с 11

М. Кременець

Тернопільська Обл.

47003

Україна (Ukraine)

Let me know how the borsch turns out.

On Sunday I went to the post office and retrieved a package from Mattapoisett. Thank you Friends! My host family and I devoured the blueberries and cranberries and I needed the extra pair of socks. I am quietly reveling in the Levertov and will be drinking the tea throughout the winter. The stamps were beautiful. We examined them all and felt very American and full of color. I am saving them for any Ukrainian philatelists I run across.

Tomorrow we leave Mryn. We've spent three months of training here in the village and are all sorry to be going. When we arrived we weren't sure what to expect, but now we feel we've found a home. To be leaving is both exciting and jarring.

Tomorrow we'll be given our posts for the next two years. We're hoping we'll be posted close together and be able to visit one another.

I'll let you know more (my site, my new address, etc.) as soon as I can. For the rest of the night I'll be packing and spending time with my friends.

[We're to teach according to the rules of British English as much as possible whilst in Ukraine, hence the headline and construction of this entry. Apologies to readers who are actually familiar with real British English, as my linguistic picture of England is something of a triple-cross between P.G. Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Monty Python.]

"I had a letter from Friends this week. It was the first I have received in Ukraine. To see it lying halfway under the door gave me a frisson. How wonderful that people can still scrawl messages to each other on folded slips of paper. How wonderful that we only need affix a stamp to an envelope to know that our despatches shall be delivered into the hands of their recipient no matter where in the world they may live. To my eye, there are only two or three forms of communication more intimate and exaltable than a letter.

I held the envelope in my hands, running the pads of my fingers and the edges of my knuckles over the paper. I felt the grain of it. I tested its weight. I scrutinized the addresses, stamps and postmarks. There is something solid about a letter that makes it quite a lot more than a slip of paper. It has a permanence and a rank in the Hierarchy of Things much higher than that of a mere note or email. It starts out as a set of raw components, but at some point after the pulp, glue, and ink are assembled and sent off there must occur a secret transformation. For as soon as it is posted a letter becomes sturdy and worthy. It ceases to be paper and becomes an essential object containing import in its own right. To receive a letter quickens the heart unlike anything else.

I can hardly suggest that letters should replace the telephone and the computing apparatus as efficient, brisk means of communication. Yet I find a good letter to be a thing unto itself in ways that other forms cannot be; it may be that a letter becomes more important than the information it conveys.

I urge you, kind reader, put pen to paper! Write to your beloved, your friends, your long lost relations. Convey to them your thanks, your aspirations, your encouragements. And if you have neither friends nor family, pick a favourite enemy and offer epistolary rapprochement. If you have no enemies, I am in no position to offer advice to you, but should gladly receive any that you might deign to send me."

Yesterday we travelled to Chernihiv, the provincial capital. It's a small city of about 300,000 on the Desna River. We boarded a bus from our village at half past eight. It took two hours to reach Chernihiv, partly because of the state of the roads and partly because of the roundabout way in which the bus travelled. We stopped to pick up and discharge passengers at half a dozen small towns and villages on our way to the city. By the time we reached the center of Chernihiv we were the only ones left on board.

We were dropped off at the main bus stop: a curb along one long block near the city center in front of a McDonald's. This McDonalds' boasted a "Mc Drive," or drive-through.

We were met by Matt, a PCT from Cleveland who is living with a family near Chernihiv. He had called and told us to walk toward the main railway station and meet him near the bazaar. We worried for a moment that we wouldn't be able to find him, but all of us knew it was him the instant he came into view.

It's easy to recognize foreigners in Ukraine. When we scrutinized this strange man coming down the street we knew instinctively that he was not a Ukrainian. He was wearing a black jacket made from some kind of synthetic material and a hat that did not cover his ears. The hat had a bill that projected from the front which shaded his brow; the image of a smiling man with huge white teeth and red skin was stiched onto the front of it. He also wore that sort of bag with two straps that go around the shoulders that is becoming more popular with schoolchildren in Ukraine. Adding further to his alienness were his mien and face. He was unshaven but had not grown a beard, being somewhere in the place between cleanshavenness and a goatee or moustache. Only a foreigner would cultivate this look. He walked quickly, but his limbs moved rather mechanically or martially, with a severe and athletic range of motion that looks entirely different from the sauntering walk of a European.

Matt graciously escorted us around the city. First he showed us to the train station so that we could buy tickets back to our neighboring village. (It's essential to buy tickets in advance if you are determined to have a seat on a train.) Next he showed us how to use the city buses, which are small and yellow and follow routes and schedules that we did not understand. On the way to the station he showed us a monument to the Great Patriotic War (WWII is called the GPW in FSU countries) which included the first T-4 tank I've ever seen. We saw the main city plaza, Red Square, and had lunch with a large group of PCTs, then proceeded to visit the churches.

It seems to me that almost every Ukrainian city I've been in has a surfeit of churches, cathedrals and monasteries. I suppose that this makes sense in a country where almost everyone is nominally an Orthodox Christian or an Eastern Rite Catholic, but I still don't understand their entire purpose. Many Americans often think of churches as places where the private rituals of a particular sect are conducted, but to Ukrainians churches are something else entirely. It seems to me that a Ukrainian church can fulfill any, one, none, or all of the following purposes:

to be an architectural reminder of important cultural eras and events, often to the point that the church becomes something of a national symbol and a part of Ukrainians' universal cultural heritage, even appearing on coins and banknotes;

to serve as a prominent museum/art gallery, even if the building is owned and run by the state and is nominally or entirely secular;

to serve as a home for monks and nuns (whose lives and duties may be entirely cloistered away or may be completely open to the public);

to be a place for worship and pilgrimage.

Almost all of the churches we've seen have had various overlaping purposes. At some of them our presence as tourists has been ancillary or only partially a part of their function. At these sites we can observe monks and nuns; Ukrainian worshipers praying; Ukrainian tourists snapping pictures; Ukrainian vendors selling food, religious articles, and souvenirs; Secular and religious musical and artistic displays, etc.

Many of the oldest churches show the influence of the Byzantines through their architectural mimickry of the Hagia Sophia. Others from later periods are quintessentially Slavic or Eastern Orthodox, with gold onion domes, baroque chandeliers, and beautiful ikons. Every site is richly layered, with the innovations and developments and additions of successive generations overlapping and succeeding one another. They are utterly unlike our contemporary buildings, which go up all at once and have a solitary, sterile blueprint that stays unchanged as years go by.

We visited at least five churches. I have their names and locations crossed in my memory. The first ones were very old; the last one was built only a few hundred years ago. We touched a lucky stone in the wall of one church and made wishes. The stone originally had a square face and was flush with the wall of the church. After more than five hundred years the mortar surrounding it had been torn away and the stone itself had been worn into a half-sphere. I do not believe in luck, but found myself feeling quite Irish-blooded and superstitious. I refused to touch the stone a second time for a photograph, knowing somehow that my wish would be nullified or turned against me if I did.

We continued to a small chapel that sits above a network of caves in the limestone hills on the outskirts of the city. The caves were carved out as a monastery and are now a museum that houses their bones. The story goes that when the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan invaded Ukraine the monks were trapped in their caves and massacred. Their bones are piled in huge racks and charnel houses. The niches and underground churches of their monastery are bare and whitewashed now. No one in our group knew whether this was due to the Mongols, the Soviets, or someone else. Or perhaps the monks themselves eschewed bright colors and ikons?

As we exited one of the lower chambers we came back into one of the chapels and found a man scooping up coins that had been placed on top of one of the altars that held caches of bones. He looked at us sheepishly from the corners of his eyes and left. "He's going to end up back in here in that pile of bones for doing that," someone said. Back on the surface we stood about and took pictures of eachother. A girl at the bottom of the hill called out "I like Great Britain!"

We went up another hill to a monastery noted for its belltower. From the tower we got a good view of the sun as it set over the city. We saw monks below in the courtyard, the hems of their long black cassocks whipping about in the wind around their feet. We climbed down from the tower and entered the church, but a priest stopped us from going into the sanctuary. We aren't sure why. He kept repeating something about "today," so we assume that it was a special holiday or that we weren't dressed properly.

As we went out of the grounds through the gate a nun selling ikons said something else to us that we couldn't understand. Then the priests in the tower began to ring the bells. We all stopped moving and looked up.

I went over to my friend Shelby's apartment last weekend to pick up a bag that Robert, a fellow PCT, had left there. I was met at the door by Shelby's host mother, Mama Raiya. This is the exchange that followed:

[I should add that in Ukrainian the word for dress, "SOOK-ni-yah," sounds similar to the word for bag, "SOOM-ka." At least it sounds similar to me. Also, whenever I speak in the following dialogue the Ukrainian is terrible and riddled with grammatical and semantic errors.]

Me: Привіт, Мама Раия! (Hi, Mama Raiya!)

Mama R: Привіт, Ян. (Hi, Yan.)

Me: Мене треба брати сукня. (I need to grab a dress.)

Mama R: сукня? (A dress?)

Me: Tak, Так. Де сукня? Рагбурт. (Yes, Yes. Where is dress? Robert.)

Mama R: ...

Me: [rushing into the room where I think the bag is] Сукня тут! (Dress here!)

Mama R: ...

Me: Пока! (Bye!)

Mama R: Пока...

Today we got our primary teacher back.

Natalia, our first Ukrainian tutor, had been away for three weeks. Peace Corps has a policy of "rotation," where the different language tutors are moved around to different training villages for three weeks in the middle of training. Teachers are always relieved by a teacher of the opposite sex. Generally this is a good policy, as it exposes us to male and female voices and keeps us on our toes by exposing us to a different teaching style. The teachers also seem to benefit from the policy, which wipes the slate clean for three weeks and gives them a short respite from their main cluster. After three weeks are up teachers return to their original cluster to finish the rest of training with their PCTs.

We had no complaints about our replacement LCF, Roman, but we were glad to see Natalia back.

I'll write more about what we're up to soon, but we have a project to work on tomorrow that I want to prepare for tonight.

Sunday was rainy and gray. I spent my morning sleeping. I had been planning on going to Nizhn with the rest of the group; it's an old city with ancient churches that are constantly being repaired (some are covered in scaffolding that should probably be preserved as a historical building in its own right). Instead I welshed on the plan and spent my afternoon reading "If on a winter's night a traveler," an Italo Calvino novel that Jordan gave me last night. To lie about and read on a rainy day is one of life's great pleasures.

Eventually I went out to the kitchen and found my younger brother, father, and mother working on something together. Heenkahli! (The name is often spelled Khinkali, but I think "Heenkahli" is a better transcription of what the word actually sounds like.) It's not a Ukrainian food, but we like to eat it in our house on weekends and special occasions. Heenkahli are dumplings formed from kneaded dough and stuffed with spiced meat, usually pork. The pork is macerated so finely that it becomes a paste, then it's spiked with garlic, black pepper, salt, and minced onions.

A ball of dough is rolled out and cut into circles with the lip of a mug. The filling is spooned into the center and the dough is folded up around it. The way that the dough is folded is what characterizes the dumpling: Ukrainian vahreniki are crescent-shaped, with a fold around the edge. Russian pelmeni look like tortellini. Heenkhali are a Georgian invention, and look like little bags that have been twisted up, with a fat knot of dough that sits atop the bag. We learned how to make them from the Georgians that married into our family a generation back. Like everything else that comes out of our kitchen, they're delicious.

I helped cut circles and pinch the dumplings closed. I got the hang of it pretty quickly, although my heenkahli looked a little squashed and one of them developed what can only be called a "dumpling hernia" that required almost a minute of surgical repair. I'll let you know what we decide to make for sauce.

Just received a new Peace Corps manual today. I think I have about 27 now. We like manuals.

According to the new manual, Ukraine passed a new customs law recently that makes it disadvantageous to send things by private express companies. So I take it back. Don't use Fed-Ex or UPS or Meest. Use the good old USPS. It's usually cheaper, anyhow.

There are all kinds of other regulations, e.g. you should write "goods for personal use" on any packages you send.

I've put up new shipping info on the website that clarifies the matter.

I went to the пошта (poshta=post office) today and saw some beautiful stamps. They were very large square portraits of men and women in traditional Ukrainian clothing. I'm going to try and head back tomorrow to snag a few.

Here are the rest of my favorites from Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary":

"Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.

"Influence, n. In politics, a visionary quo given in exchange for a substantial quid.

"Insurrection, n. An unsuccessful revolution. Disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government.

"Kleptomaniac, n. A rich thief.

"Litigation, n. A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

"Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a ['world made for man,'] who has no gills.

"Once, adv. Enough.

"Opposition, n. In politics, the party that prevents the Government from running amuck by hamstringing it.

"Out-Of-Doors, n. That part of one's environment upon which no government has been able to collect taxes. Chiefly useful to inspire poets.

"Trial, n. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, [lawyers], and jurors....

"Truthful, n. Dumb and illiterate.

"Twice, adv. Once too often.

"Vote, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country."

It isn't all I'm reading at the moment, but I love Bierce. A crapulous curmudgeon if there ever was one and a great man. He prevented a massive federal give-away to the Union Pacific and Central P. after the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad by publishing articles on the corrupt congressmen who supported it. He ended up riding off into Mexico with Pancho Villa's army at the turn of the 20th century. He was a crazy seventy-year-old by then (but he might as well have been a crazy seventy-year-old all his life), and was never seen or heard from again.

I've figured out the "indeks" (postal code) for my village, so I'm posting the new address information. I've updated it on my website, too.

Ян Брум

Вул. Щорса 1-В

Кв. 19

Село Мрин

Носівска Район

Чернігівська Област

Україна 17113

Ian Broome (Ян Брум)

1-B Schorsa St. (1-В Щорса)

Apt. 19

Mryn

Nosivka Raion

Chernihiv Oblast

Ukraine 17113

If you have access to a printer, just print out the Ukrainian address and tape it to the front of the envelope.

If you don't have a printer try writing the address in English, then put the Ukrainian translations of the first two lines in parentheses.

Instructions for writing the Cyrillic letters:

My name is a backwards R, then an H. My surname is a lowercase b with a roof extending to the right, then P Y M. The street address, 1-B Schorsa, starts with a letter that is basically a capital E turned on its side and given a tail on its bottom right corner, then the letters O P C A.

As long as it has the postal code and a rough approximation of my name and street it should get here ok.

Let me know if you want a letter or a postcard. Have a great weekend.

Swine Flu is the new international bogeyman. Never mind that SARS and Bird Flu and Y2K turned out alright, "Sweenina Hripa" is on everyone's mind here in Ukraine. Here's what we've learned from our jaundiced anglophone journalists so far:

+This flu is especially deadly, even for the young and healthy.

+ The vaccine may not stop it, may not protect fully without more than one dose, may cause side effects, may not be ready in time, etc.

+ It may be too late for us to do anything at all but curl up in our beds and make piteous oinking noises.

I don't mean to make light of the situation. It's just that I find all of this sensationalism to be thoroughly overblown.

We ought to be careful, wash our hands, cover our coughs, and stay home if we are sick. Still, we're more likely to get a regular flu than swine flu.

The price of lemons has gone up to 30 hryvnia per kilo here (almost $4). Citrus is seen as a preventative. Other remedies for colds and flu have been sold out of pharmacies. Fear is big money, whatever country you do business in.

I hope you're all taking sensible precautions, but please don't panic. It won't be another Spanish Flu.

I have nothing of import to report, although I have engaged in two serendipitous pleasures within the past 48 hours.

The first occurred an hour ago, when my host father called me and my brothers outside. (Tato has taken to calling me Yann-John, presumably after the U.S. hip-hop clothier.)

We went outside toward our black Lada station wagon. The battery had died. I couldn't understand why, but I think they were telling me that someone had left the lights on overnight. We spent about 45 minutes pushing the car around the block trying to get the alternator to produce enough current to start the engine. Just as we were getting discouraged, Tato got the Lada in gear and sped away from us in a cloud of exhaust. It was way more satisfying than jumper cables and a good excuse to go around jumping and whooping in the courtyard.

The second pleasure wasn't truly serendipitous, since I've been reading it bit by bit. I downloaded Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary" last night and am already enamored. I think I'll buy it in hardcopy when I get back to the Massachusetts. Bierce, by the way, was an interesting wackjob: here's a link to his biography.

Some quotations from the Dictionary:

"Entertainment, n. Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection.

Envelope, n. The coffin of a document; the scabbard of a bill; the husk of a remittance; the bed-gown of a love-letter.

Fiddle, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.

Hearse, n. Death's baby-carriage.

History, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

Immigrant, n. An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another.

Inventor, n. A person who makes an ingenious arangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

Justice, n. A commodity which is a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes, and personal service.

Lawful, adj. Compatible with the will of a judge[.]

Lawyer, n. One skilled in the circumvention of the law.

Life, n. A spiritual pickl[ing] preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed."

Last night my host father turned 45. The party started at 4pm and continued until midnight. We filled a restaurant with family and friends, about forty people. I kept wondering when things would end, but whenever the dancing stopped the guests returned to the table and brought out another bottle of horilka (vodka) or champagne or wine.

The best thing to do when faced with a party is not to be embarrassed or annoyed. I was both at the beginning of last night. I wanted to stay in. In my mind it seemed like an obligation or a burden to go. I kept thinking of reasons why I wouldn't like it, reasons to be annoyed. "I can't speak more than a few coherent sentences; I don't like crowds; I want to read my book; I want to write a letter; I should be doing homework; I will be pressured to drink; I have horrible garlic breath from eating so many pampushki at Mama Raiya's house and didn't get a chance to brush my teeth before we left."

I ended up going to and from the restaurant a few times carrying a DVD player and speakers for the party. Svetoslav, my host brother, had written out the lyrics to a song on a piece of paper and demanded that I recite them as we made our trips. I was feeling sullen and uncooperative and butchered the words to the point that he stopped correcting me and said "STOP, STOP, My ears! It sucks. It's bad." I still have no idea what the song is about or what the lyrics mean. It has something to do with a girl and the color green.

The guests entered the restaurant in pairs and groups. They brought bouquets of chrysanthemums and roses for Valera and laid down little envelopes and cards stuffed with money on a side table. One of them had a reproduction of a 100 dollar bill on the front. It's very odd to see Ben Franklin half-smiling on a table in a Ukrainian bar with the words "Federal Reserve Note" and something in golden Cyrillic cursive written across his brow.

I got warmer and warmer to the party as the night went by. After an hour or so I was only mildly annoyed, and by the end of the night I was happy that I had gone. When I arrived the old men on the other side of the table looked like they would be angry with me if I tried to talk. By the end of the night one of them had struck up a conversation. It's never good to be overly trusting, but to be overly fearful is worse.

I've been going through my Jazz CDs and re-reading Leaves of Grass. It's wonderful and strange to listen to Ellington or Whitman 6,000 kilometers away from America. Here's one of the only good lines ever written by Jhumpa Lahiri that describes the feeling partly: "I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination."

Hi Everyone,

I apologize for the great delay in updating my journal and for the use of the passive voice/lack of proofreading in this entry. I wanted to get something up as soon as I got internet access. Here's what I've been up to:

We arrived in Kyiv on the 26th and were immediately sent out to an old Soviet sanatorium-resort called Desna. After three days of plenary training we were split up into smaller cluster groups. Each cluster is sent to live in a different town or village. Trainees stay with Ukrainian families and study with a language teacher for three months. Clusters are paired with another cluster in a different town.

Our group arrived in the village of Mryn on the 29th. There are about 2,000 people in Mryn. We're in Chernihiv Oblast (Province), northeast of Kyiv. There are three women and two men. Betsy is from Wisconsin. Jordan is from Los Angeles. Shelby is from Hawaii. Travis is from Colorado. All of us are in our early twenties. (I'll post pictures of the group when I get a chance to visit the Internet Cafe in Nosivka, our cluster town.)

A few days ago we bought Ukrainian cellphones and have just figured out how to get internet access over the cellular network. When I checked my email I found that most of the messages were from my friends and family. Keep the emails coming! It is an indescribable lift to hear from people I love after a long day of difficult language classes.

Everyone from home has been asking the following questions or variants thereof. I'll answer them here and add to the list in my next post.

+Where do you live?

I live in an apartment with my host family. There are eight rooms. I'd estimate the square footage if I were confident in my ability to make geometric abstractions, but I keep thinking of my high school geometry class. I think I passed because Ms. Bliss was a kind woman and overlooked the fact that I couldn't accurately estimate area. Let's say that it is not a small apartment. Maybe a standard three-bedroom apt. in America?

We live in a village. There are farms or smallholder plots (dachas) and animals often go around in the streets and yards, but people usually drive cars and bike. Almost all of the roads are paved. We have reliable electricity 24HRs a day and our apartment is heated by radiators.

+What is your host family like?

My host father, Valera (Valerii) works at the natural gas plant in town and is approx. 45.

My host mother, Luda (Lyudmila) taught English to young children and is an incredible cook. She's in her forties too.

My host brothers, Svetoslav and Rostik (Rostislav) are 13 and 17. Svetoslav goes to a military school in Kyiv but is often home on the weekends. Rostik is in the last year of high school at the Mryn school.

We also have a cousin, Otar, who is in his thirties and is from Georgia.

+What are the cultural differences?

Ukrainians are very informal with their friends and family. They would almost never refer to themselves or their friends by their full names. Everyone has a short name. Tatiana becomes Tanya. Volodymyr is Vova. Only a president, mayor, teacher, principal or respected elder would be referred to by his/her full name. The same goes for surnames. Here's an example of what I mean: Shelby and I live in the same building. She has a host sister who speaks excellent English. When I referred to my family as "the Didenkos" she was confused for a minute. "We would never say that," she said. "And no one would ever call me Tatiana. That would be weird, [distant], almost [disrespectful]."

Without stereotyping too much (everyone is unique and I don't want to paint with a broad brush and say "Ukrainians are X") I think I can say that Ukrainians have a very different conception of the individual and the personal circle. The individualistic mentality of Americans isn't found here. People look out for eachother and do things together. One has a place in society and adds value to it according to his/her associations with others.

Ukrainians will do anything for their family and friends. The word "friend" (drooh/drooha) doesn't mean the same thing here. In the U.S. people can be "friends" after a single random acquaintance. In Ukraine this could never happen. We have a saying here: "To be someone's friend you must eat at least eight kilos of salt together." 1 kilo = 2.2 pounds; i.e. a Ukrainian friendship develops over many shared experiences. Once formed, it lasts forever.

+Speaking of eating, what's the food like?

I recommend that you visit Ukraine for the food. You don't even have to visit me when you're here, just come to Kyiv and eat.

Ukrainian food is excellent. Forget whatever you heard about cabbage and purple borsch and potatoes. Everything here is home cooked and the meat, dairy and produce are all incredibly fresh. Most families in Mryn have a "dacha," a small farm plot where they grow vegetables and fruit; many keep chickens, ducks, rabbits and cows on their dachas. Ukrainians have never heard of the term locavore or the "local food movement," but they are the ultimate locavores. They pickle and can and ferment their crops for winter meals and buy only bread, sugar, salt, spices, chocolate and a few other staples at the store.

+What about logistics (telecommunications, currency, etc.)?

The Ukrainian currency is the Hryvnia. It's subdivided into 100 kopiok. US$1 exchanges for about 8.3 UAH.

The infrastructure is rapidly developing, but internet is still harder to find in the smaller towns and is available only through the cell phone network in most villages. (Please let me know before sending large emails or pictures so that I can go to Nosivka to download them. In Mryn I pay by the megabyte to download data over my cellphone.)

The roads are ok. PCVs are forbidden from driving outside the U.S., so we take buses or walk everywhere. Kyiv and three of the other large cities have metros (subways) and the telephone connections are generally good.

+How can I contact you?

Visit my webpage (ianbroome.com) and click on "Contact Me" at the top of the welcome page.

The telephone country code is 380. To get an international line from a US phone you'll need to dial 011. If you use a calling card you should follow the intstructions on the card without dialing 011.

Email me for the local phone number to dial after 011-380-.

If you want to call me using a phone card from the U.S. it will be pretty cheap. Skype and Gizmo5 are VOIP programs that you can download for free at Skype.com and Gizmo5.com. I think that it costs about US$0.17 per minute to call UA from Skype.

You can always email me at: ian@ianbroome.com.

Training ends in December. Here's my address for the next three months:

PCT Ian Broome

1-V Schorsa Street

Apt. 19

Mryn

Chernihivska Oblast

Ukraine

I miss you all. Write soon and I'll write back.

Love,

Ian

I've had word from my friends that I haven't been updating the journal nearly often enough. I can only say that I am quite contrite and that my excuse is that I have been packing and reading a lot of Peace Corps manuals and Sherlock Holmes stories rather than taking time for writing. But that's always our excuse, isn't it? "I was doing something else and I forgot to write you. It doesn't mean that I don't love you!"

Well of course it doesn't! It's just that it's easy to forget to keep in touch.

Yet it is better than almost anything short of [insert your favorite sublime pleasure] to know what's going on in the meandering minds of our distant friends. And it only takes a few moments to send email or post messages. (It doesn't even take that long to write a letter.) I hope that we'll all remember to keep in contact with each other this fall, even if it's only in brief summaries such as the following:

On Saturday night the Friends of Mattapoisett (my home Quaker meeting) held an extraordinary worship and dinner to send me off to Ukraine. In addition to the many Friends in attendance, I was very pleasantly surprised by the arrival of Liz Koczera and Dan Harple, who showed up unannounced. I was deeply flattered to see Alex Harrall, Jason Peng, and the incomparable William L. Daly, my best friend since the days of our diaperhood. It was also an honor to see Kathleen Fair, Katherine Gaudet, and Gordon McLennan.

The Friends outdid themselves. The worship was deep and moving. It has strengthened and prepared me for the journey. As to the dinner, I have never seen such a colossal home-cooked smörgåsbord.

The Friends also made sure to provide me with two important Quaker documents: a letter of introduction and a travel minute. In addition, they provided me with two sets of YakTrax (special grips for bootsoles and shoes that will keep me from falling down in the street in Ukraine).

I'm going to miss you all tremendously. There are only three days left until I leave; let me know if you have any final outings or adventures planned.

I've removed the schedule and added a page for photos over at my website. Check it out (www.ianbroome.com).

Thank you all for your support and your love. I'll miss you.

Sincerely Yours,

Ian

p.s. If you'd like a letter or postcard from Ukraine, please make sure to send me your mailing address before I leave on the 25th.

I've returned from San Francisco to Massachusetts and am now in Mississippi.

In SF I visited some old friends and saw the Pacific for the first time. It was odd place-it was partly what I expected, yet also outlandish, even freaky. (I mean "freaky" in all the good ways.) Most of my expectations about Californian culture held up: the hospitality, friendliness, and general openness were in evidence. One thing I didn't expect was the variety of microclimates in the city; the west is wet and the east is almost desert. Go fifty feet up or down a hill and you hit a whole different ecosystem. There were blackberries growing alongside one bus route and desert succulents along another.

When you go to SF you expect the fog, but what I didn't know was how cold it would get. You can wear a coat pretty much all year round, especially on the north and west sides of the peninsula. On the morning we went to the Golden Gate Bridge both of the towers were capped in fog. One of my favorite things about the trip was the giftshop. Not for the kitsch and overpriced sweaters, but for the sign outside. The bridge is a mecca for Japanese tourists who snap away furiously at it with their cameras, so the giftshop has a sign in Japanese: first the Japanese kana for "giftshop" and then the transliteration, which reads "gifuto-shoppu." For some reason this is hilarious to me. I spent most of the walk across the south span of the bridge yelling gifuto-shoppu at the cars and girders and cackling; my friend Tanya had to punch me to make me stop. (Photos of the sign to come.)

I also saw the new California Academy of Sciences. They open up the museum at night once a week and let you rove the exhibits with a drink in your hand while a DJ by the planetarium remixes doof records. I'll be putting pictures up in a few weeks once my film gets developed.

If you've never been to Mississippi you owe yourself the trip. Suffice it to say that your imagination of Mississippi is probably dead wrong and also completely correct. I'll let you know more as things happen.

I'm staying with my aunt and uncle in Jackson. As a visitor's gift of gratitude I brought them twenty Mexican jumping beans, which are quietly jumping in their boxes on the dining room table. I thought they were just an urban legend or a magic trick, but they really jump a lot. Here's why: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laspeyresia_saltitans

Currently reading Per Petterson's novel "Out Stealing Horses." Highly recommended to all.

With love from the Confederacy,

Ian

One Month Until Peace Corps!

Dear Family, Friends, and Colleagues,

I've created this journal to be a chronicle of my time in Ukraine. I'll be posting updates every few days before I leave in September. I'll also be writing from Kyiv during my training period and from the field if there is internet access available. Email me for the password to the journal (ian@ianbroome.com) to see all of the subsequent postings from Ukraine.

If you haven't checked it out already, please head over to my new website, ianbroome.com, which has information on contacting me, the history of Ukraine and the Peace Corps, shipping items (peanut butter care packages?) to Ukraine, and my training schedule.

I'm going to miss you all very much during my service. It will be hard to be away from you for so long. I hope that you will be able to travel along with me via this blog, the photos I post, and the correspondence we send back and forth. Please let me know what you want to see, what you want to hear about, and what you want me to explore on your behalf. I look forward to our time together in Ukraine!

Yours,

Ian