The Kiev apart(y)ment

I know, you've all been reading my blog and thinking "Goodness gracious, Sarah is such a bump on a log. All she ever does is teach, travel, and cook --- she needs to get a life over there in Kiev." Well, I'm here to tell you that I DO have a life, and although I am by no means a partier, the party always finds you when you live in Kiev ...Especially if you have an apartment, and you live with two Italians.


Weekends are practically an open invitation for anyone and everyone we know to come to our apartment and enjoy good company, our fancy living room, and free food (The Italians make pizza, bruschetta, and whatever else they can think of. I usually provide chips and pickles...)


We usually end up playing a silly game or two, once everyone arrives and we decide what kind of party we're going to have. Here we're playing personalities, and I was Cheburashka (a famous androgynous soviet cartoon character).


Aaaaand things usually get silly, we have lots of laughs, and take waaaay too many pictures. Because of the hodge-podge group we have, we're constantly speaking a mixture of Russian, Ukrainian, English, and Italian --- This is one of my favorite aspects of our get-togethers. The language barrier is never an issue for anyone, everyone tries on every other language for size and we have a great time. I personally love adopting Italian for a few minutes, whereupon I exhaust my entire Italian vocabulary and simply repeat the word "Perfetto!" because that's what we are.


At the end of the night, we slowly make our way to respective taxis, bedrooms, or the pull-out couch bed if you're lucky enough to call dibs. In the morning, I make coffee and tea for anyone who's still around, and we spend the rest of the weekend relaxing and soaking up the few hours of daylight we have left on Winter Kiev days. On this day, there was no food or water left anywhere in my apartment, so we had juice for breakfast. Good morning!


So, this is my first time having my own place that isn't a dorm room, and although at first I was disappointed not to be in a host family, I don't feel like I've missed out on the cultural immersion. Living with other people my age, I have the opportunity to learn from so many different people, from so many different cultures and backgrounds. It's definitely a change from living with my Russian host mother in Novgorod, but it's another great learning experience. Constantly learning more about myself, and other people in general. I dig it.

One weekend left in Kiev, and then it's back home for Christmas! I think I'm making Pel'meni with my favorite Ukrainian family today... I'll keep you posted :)

Loooooooove,
Sarah

T-Gives!

Here's a post about Thanksgiving, before I forget about all of it! Unfortunately, I was REALLY sick last weekend, but something magical happened and I was able to pull myself together for our Multi-cultural Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday afternoon. I got up early, met my cooking partner/co-worker, and started cooking. We may have bought rotisserie chickens from the store to save time, but everything else was made from scratch! Look at this beautiful spread...

Mashed potatoes, stuffing, green-bean casserole, corn, chicken, berry sauce (not cranberries, because I couldn't find any) and mushroom gravy. We also had some beautiful pies, apple and pumpkin. Although there were some troubles with the pumpkin pie, i.e. a baking time of about three hours, it still tasted de-li-cious!

It was really nice to just sit down with all of of my friends, Americans, Italians, and Ukrainians, and share a thanksgiving dinner. We all said what we were thankful for, and most of us were just thankful for having each other for support in this crazy country and with this insane language. Good people. Good times. Good Foooooood :) I'm also thankful that by Tuesday of this week, I was finally feeling well enough to leave my apartment.

Thanks to everyone who reads my blog, to my awesome students who make my work so worthwhile, to my great friends here in Kiev, and to my family back home. Stay tuned for more adventures, and another blog coming in February 2012: "Sarah Chao does Georgia (the country)" Wooooo!

Love,

Sarah

New Students, Sister-Weekend, and Cultural Diversity

I find myself with some spare time to write a post, since I am currently waiting for my Landlady to visit about our broken washing machine... Good thing, because quite a bit has happened that's worth writing about. Since my birthday I've been keeping busy --- Last Sunday I had another "Master Class" on Ukrainian cuisine with a previous student, and this time we made Borsch! It was incredibly delicious, don't worry I'm bringing back a recipe. We also watched a VERY famous Russian film, "The Diamond Arm," and some famous soviet cartoons: A Ukrainian folk-tale as well as The Russian version of Winnie the Pooh (my all-time favorite)


The next day I started a new group class, and my new students are (as always) FANTASTIC! We laugh a lot, and sometimes we go on crazy tangents (like discussing the names of different facial-hair styles) but we have a lot of fun and my students don't complain :) This is a really sweet gig, and I'm very seriously considering moving back to Kiev in the future and working as a REAL English teacher. However, I am missing my family more than ever... My wonderful sister came to visit me in Kiev this past weekend, and we crammed as much Kiev-exploring and sister-bonding time as possible into the 48 hours that we had to work with. I actually cried for about a day after she left, but hopefully I'll end up in France soon. Here we are with a Monkey in the city center (there are always crazy people dressed up for pictures at Independence Square).


The weekend was fantastic, we had a lot of coffees from the coffee trucks (they sell espresso from mobile coffee-shops based out of hatch-back sedans all over the place in Kiev), we went to the Lavra (caves monastery), saw the churches Sofia, Mihailovskij, and Andreevskij, ate Pirozhki, Borsch, Chicken Kiev, and everything else I could think of that was especially Ukrainian. We also ran into some Pizanka (Ukrainian painted eggs)


Also, I am happy to say that last night my Italian roommates invited me to hang out with them for the FIRST TIME, because one of their boyfriends is here and he brought fancy chocolate liqueur from his region in Italy. We had that, some tiramisu ice-cream cake, and Butter cookies from Bretagne. It was a total breakthrough in our roommate relationship. All in all it's been a good week! I have three days left of this group class, and I think I'll be going to Lviv/Lvov this weekend to explore and take more pictures (which means another TRAIN RIDE! MY FAVORITE!) I'll keep you updated.

Good Gravy, I love Kiev!
Sarah

Birthday happenings:

С Днём Рождения! Here's a rundown of my Birthday weekend:

-Early celebration at Lviv Handmade Chocolates

-Daisies, Malina berries, and a book of Pushkin Fairy-tales from my Russian Teacher

-Long text messages wishing me success, beauty, happiness, love, etc. from 3 of my previous students who remembered my birthday

-A Putin/Cheburashka themed Birthday card (score) and Crocodile Gena stuck in my head for hours

-A bottle of Champagne, chocolates, and a birthday song from my Coworkers

-Ukrainian-style pie after work with a good Ukrainian friend (and the cat who sat next to us)

-American party at my apartment with Kievskiiy Cake (actually, the cake is kind of weird, but cool that it was Kievskiiy!)


Amazing weekend, but tomorrow it's back to work. I love my students, but for some reason I haven't been given the schedule for classes tomorrow, so I just have to get there early and hope that I can find out where to go/what to do with enough time to spare for planning... I live life on the edge! (literally, because the name "Ukraine"/"Украина" means "On the edge") Wish me luck!

Life is good, my friends. Жизнь --- хорошо.
Sarah

P.S. I forgot to mention one of the best parts of last week, which was when the great April Curtis came to Kiev from St. Petersburg and hung out with yours truly. What a Дама. Had some beers, shot the breeze, listened to some cool, cool jazz in the city center. SO glad she came!

It's the moooost wonderful tiiiime of the yeeeeeeear!

Dear Wonderful World,

It's my BIRTHDAY! I'll update you on how it goes later, but first I need to fill you in on what happened before I turned 22... in numbered format.

1. Master Class on Ukrainian Cooking: Sharlotka and Draniki. One of my students invited me to meet his family and learn some Ukrainian home cooking skills. We made a delicious apple cake called Sharlotka and grated potato pancakes called Draniki (or in Ukrainian, Deruni) SO good, and also the most adorable family I've ever met in my life. I have a soft-spot for Eastern-European children. LOVE them. The baby loves the apple cake. The boy likes staring contests (seriously, that's why he's doing the crazy eye thing).


2. Halloween! We had a party at work with some students form the Naval academy and our awesome receptionists. We carved pumpkins, played never-have-I-ever, had vodka with tomato juice (supposed to look like blood?) and went home early since it was, unfortunately, a Monday. But look how cute our sad pumpkin is! (btw, we did all the carving with that blue bread knife and a butter knife covered in old paint. We're pretty skilled.)


3. My birthday in the Philippines: As a good friend informed me, my Birthday began in the Philippines about 6 hours earlier than in Kiev, so when I met with my Ukrainian friend we didn't have to worry about the common superstition of celebrating a birthday early being bad luck. A poor excuse, but my Birthday lasts longer this way! We went to a famous Chocolate cafe called Lviv Handmade Chocolates where they also have great coffee (which we both love), and later I ordered CHOCOLATE TEA. Seriously? Yes. Chocolate tea. I have no idea how it works, but it was pretty good. In Russia and Ukraine you can put chocolate in anything and it will make it better, just like sour cream. Chocolate tea? Oh yeah. Chocolate condensed milk? Good idea. Chocolate Butter? Why the hell not. Chocolate is always good.


I love everyone here so much. I love chocolate and coffee. I love Kiev. I love my life.
Sarah

p.s. --- On Monday I have a skype interview for a teaching job in Georgia... Wish me luck!

My Dearest Readers...

...I am in love with Kiev right now. I can't even explain it. What we have --- it's something special. I had a wonderful Saturday exploring the north-east corner of the city center with my new Ukrainian tour-guide friend. We walked through Andreevskiy spusk/uzviv/street/whatever, which is a famous old street that turns into a giant flea-market during the day. We also found our way on top of an abandoned building to take some sweet pictures of St. Andrew's Church:


Afterwards my fellow intern and I went to the Kiev National Opera which was BALLER as I'll get out. We saw Tchaikovskii's "Yolanta," about a blind princess who grew up not realizing that there was such a thing as light. It's a crazy plot, but it got lost in the fact that they were singing complicated unintelligible arias... I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have understood it even if it was in English. Good thing I read the synopsis on Wikipedia beforehand :) Anyway, it was really fun, and a good excuse to get dressed up. Ta-da!


The other day I FINALLY was able to explore my neighborhood a bit, and found out that there is a GIGANTIC park just a few blocks away. I spent my Sunday afternoon walking around the trails there, people-watching and listening to the Russian and Ukrainian conversations around me. It was kind of nice. Also there were lots of dogs, ducks, and babies which made me happy :)

Then Monday happened, and now I'm back at work. I loooooooove my students, they are so COOL! (some of them are reading this... Hi guys!) They tell me that they will celebrate my birthday with me, with poppy-seed pie, pirozhki, coffee and 3 liters of milk. We might celebrate at McDonalds, but perhaps we'll go to Barcelona. It's all up to Serendipity. My life is fantastic.

Sarah

Update update update

Guess what I just did? I just finished teaching a two-week English conversation course. Hurray! It was stressful, but a lot of fun! Next week I'll be giving some individual lessons, and then I start a new two-week course on the 17th. I feel cool.

One of the best things about this week, besides my awesome students, is that I've started taking 1-on-1 Russian lessons --- The group Russian lessons were below my level (ego boost GO). My new teacher is FANTASTIC if only because she is completely hilarious. She speaks a mile a minute, occasionally using French exclamations, and thankfully I understand almost everything she says. She gets REALLY excited whenever she finds something new for me to drool over (like a Russian ballet in town, directions to a good restaurant, or new vocabulary), and she tries to fit as much as possible into our hour-and-a-half lessons ("That's so little time!" she always says). She's got me reading some Bulgakov and some Bunin, brushing up on my reflexive verbs, and she's taking me to a book market tomorrow after class. Super excited.

In other news, this morning I accidentally poured sour milk in my cereal but ate it anyway because I was running late. I also made cheese ravioli the other night that was NOT cheese ravioli --- they sweeten the cheese so it's like a dessert dumpling. Too bad I had already covered it in tomato sauce, sour cream, and gouda. On the other hand, I have discovered instant buckwheat cereal (Grechka) which has always been my favorite thing, and now I can make it in three minutes. Ta-da!

I stay up way too late! Goodnight!
Sarah

life is good :)

It's the Weekend!! Slava Bogu (Thank God). My schedule during the week is pretty crazy, and I quite literally have no time for myself: I have to get on the metro by 8:45am in order to make it to my 9:30am Russian class. Class goes until 12:45, when I go out to Lunch at a nearby cafeteria, and make it back to school around 2pm. I have to teach class at 5pm, so I plan my lessons from 2-5 and I teach for four hours... making it to the metro just after 9pm and getting home at 10pm for dinner. After dinner I take about an hour to myself (to digest, to plan for the next day, do some homework) before I fall asleep completely exhausted at midnight. Repeat four times, and you have my week.

BUT I don't teach on Fridays! I was totally zoned out in morning class and then came home with J (the new intern from the US, more well-adjusted than the other guy) to plan ahead for our lessons, finally go grocery shopping, and buy her some Ukrainian-appropriate items (stylish boots, large purse to replace her backpack, hairdryer with a European plug, etc.)


Once again fate has re-directed my plans, probably for the better: I was planning to go to a village on the outskirts of Kiev, a tourist spot to view old-style architecture and lifestyles, with some of my classmates today. I overslept and had to miss out, but because of that I got to spend some time with my roommate over brunch and meet our landlady who came to visit. Our landlady is Ol'ga, she is a total sweetheart, and very talkative. She told us all about her feelings on post-soviet life, about her granddaughter in New York, and where to get clean drinking water for 10x cheaper than the grocery store. I also found out that in the tourist village, there is a huge religious festival on Oct. 14th, so my roommates and I will wait until then to visit. Awesome!


On another note, I'm getting a lot better at grocery shopping and making my own food, but it's hard to really get produce here. I have bananas... and apples... I drink a lot of coffee/tea, and eat a lot of sandwiches and eggs. But the restaurants I go to for lunch are fantastic, usually traditional dishes for really cheap. I bought some more complicated ingredients at the store yesterday, so maybe next week I won't be living off of macaroni, omelets and Russian grilled cheese (although they are extremely delicious).

Off to meet a couchsurfer for lunch and go for a walk in the park!

Love,
Sarah