The winter cold and Krakow with Serdar

IMAGES FROM KRAKOW















Monday morning, alone in the house. Having a day to myself before taking off tonight on the second stage of my three weeks of traveling. It is such a treat to have the house to myself—doesn’t happen all that often.

So—Krakow, Prague, traveling with Serdar, the weather, Kyiv, visa hassles. So much seems to have happened in a short period of time. All of the events of the past two weeks are permeated by one significant factor—the impact of the severe cold. It has made traveling difficult in many ways and is the topic everywhere as Europe, and especially Eastern Europe, suffers under a continual deep freeze. Down here in Crimea the infrastructure is just not equipped to deal with winter weather like this. The deep snows in eastern Crimea remained unplowed from the lack of snow removal equipment, many villages—such as Lenura’s parents—do not have electricity, heating systems are inadequate, and water pipes are unprotected so many people are without water, including us in the evenings. Luckily, our house is toasty warm with the exception of my room which is the coldest in the house because of where it is located. I have to bundle up in blankets to hang out in there. But that isn’t much of a hardship—I spend much of my time downstairs, which is where I am now.

The trip with Serdar was hard on many levels and great on many levels. It started with our overnight train trip up to Kyiv, arriving early in the morning and then off to the hostel where we were staying the night. The hostel was filled with Peace Corps Volunteers returning from a language refresher course, and Serdar immediately took up with them and went off to a café for bagels. One of my few PC friends happened to be at the hostel too, so we did a little sightseeing together. Serdar meanwhile went off on his own, wandering around the city, and eventually all of us met up for dinner. He spent the evening sharing a beer with the owner of the hostel—a good beginning to what I hoped would be a world-opening experience for him.

We took a taxi early the next morning (4am!) out to the airport for our hour flight to Katowice, Poland, which is about a 90 minute bus ride from Krakow. We were flying a discount Hungarian airline called Wizzair, and that is the closest city they flew into. Despite Serdar having a passport and his Shengen visa (which allows entrance to all the EU countries except the British Isles), we were both nervous about the fact that his last name on his passport is spelled different than on his plane ticket. I bought the ticket before he got his passport, and as apparently happens often, his name ended up being spelled differently on the passport because of the Russian/Ukrainian translation into English. “y” becomes “I”, a double “I” appeared. A fellow train passenger thought it was going to be a big problem, the owner of the hostel thought not. And then there was also just the stress of the border guards at Poland checking his passport, etc. This is his first time of travelling internationally and neither of us knew what to expect. I kept reassuring him that all would be okay, but my reassurances didn’t do a lot to reduce our anxiety. But all went well, and we both breathed a huge sigh of relief as we finally walked out of the airport in Poland into a new world for Serdar.

We were both exhausted, cold, hungry, and thus cranky, by the time we got to Krakow. We were immediately greeted by a huge indoor mall, very much like you would find in America. Quite strange. But we eventually found our way to the other side and exited out into old Krakow and made out way to the hostel. A word about hostels—they are great for young people, as it is a chance to meet fellow, mostly student, travelers, but for old folks like me, well… I find them a bit trying. I was very glad for Serdar and knew it was the right choice as I saw him immediately engage with the South American, European, and Australian young people staying at the hostel, but for me, I became somewhat lonely for people closer to my age that I could talk with. There is also the party aspect to hostels—in many hostels every night there are organized pub crawls, or beer/vodka tastings, or whatever the local flavor is. Having just turned legal drinking age, these were great opportunities for Serdar (as he saw it) to party with other young people. Eventually I saw it as an opportunity for me to have some time to myself, so I guess ultimately it worked out. Though I told Serdar that maybe next time we travel together, I will drop him off at a hostel and go stay at a B-and-B.

Krakow was a wonderful city to visit. I wish we had had more time there and that it wasn’t so cold to walk around. We spent three full days there, leaving the third night on an overnight train to Prague. The first day we wandered around on our own, the second day we went on a guided three-hour walking tour of the city, the third day we went on a guided bus excursion to Auschwitz and Birkenau, about an hour from Krakow. I had had many reservations about going to Auschwitz, especially once I arrived in Krakow and saw what a tourist industry it had become—everywhere there were signs advertising tours to Auschwitz. I also had read the comments of the founder of the local Jewish museum who feels that the government needed to shut down the tours to Auschwitz and just let people go there on their own with no cameras and no cell phones. But if it was something Serdar would want to do, then I definitely would go—Ukrainian students seem to learn so little about the Holocaust and of course, Auschwitz is the most famous site. So we ended up going, and I am glad we did. Though the tour was rushed for me--I would definitely have liked to linger longer at some places-- I think the experience was, ultimately, a profound one. Especially being in the vastness of the Birkenau camp--standing on the railroad tracks that brought the train cars of people to their deaths, feeling the frigid wind that people had to endure with little clothing, seeing the dilapidated barracks and wooden plank bunks where people slept six to a bunk, and the long rows of concrete latrines, and trying to imagine being there amongst 100,000 people who had lost their homes, families, loved ones, everything….I felt both a deep sadness that human beings could bring this kind of suffering onto their fellow humans and also amazement that anyone survived these conditions. And perhaps a little deeper understanding of the human spirit.

On to our visit to Prague in my next post.

A bit of winter blues

It’s Monday at the library, my last week of work for a while. Friday I take off with Serdar on our much anticipated week-long trip to Krakow and Prague. We will be taking the overnight train to Kyiv, spending the day there, and then catching an early morning flight to Poland. We will return to Kyiv the following Sunday, and Serdar will take the overnight train back to Simferopol, but I will stay in Kyiv for a few days to have my medical exam for extension clearance. I won’t be back to Simferopol until Thursday and then the following Monday have to leave again for a week to go to Moldova to get my Ukrainian visa (!)

I spent some of the weekend finishing the draft proposal for a Peace Corps grant that was due today. Most of my library time last week was devoted to writing the grant, which made me happy. I like having meaningful work to do; what I don’t like is feeling at loose ends and even more than that, feeling frustrated at the slowness of which things get done around there, which seems to be my major focus of angst lately. Of course, I understand that is a fact of how things seem to operate in Ukraine and probably everywhere in the post-Soviet world, but it’s hard not to be overwhelmed with frustration and ultimately, a feeling of hopelessness that anything will ever really change. But as is true of much of my life here, it becomes an occasion for “practice,” in the Buddhist sense. The practice of patience, of trust that it will eventually happen (and all my experience has shown that to be true), and the necessity of trying to stay open to whatever comes up, to step out of the framework of my culture and realize that perhaps there are other ways of doing things. That is, after all, one of my main reasons for joining the Peace Corps—to experience in a much deeper way life in another part of the world.

I don’t really have much to report in the way of activities these past couple of weeks. The hike I referred to in my last blog post never materialized, due to bad weather, nor did it happen the following weekend like we had hoped, also due to bad weather. Though today is sunny and kind of warm, for the most part the weather has been Crimea winter—cold wind, some snow, grey skies. Not conducive to outdoor activities. I do continue to go for walks from home up in the bluffs, and recently was up there right after a snowstorm and it was so lovely with the soft snow clinging to the trees all around me. But extended hikes haven’t been a possibility. We can only wait for spring and the return of the light and warmth.

My lack of trekking around has meant that I have spent more time at home, more time with the family. I especially like Sundays when often everyone is around, doing their own thing but gathering for meals. It’s a nice feeling, being part of a circle of people living together.

I will have much to write about in my next blog post, I imagine. Until then, love to all of you from your pal in Crimea.

New Year's 2012 and work at the library

Thursday afternoon at the library, just finished up a blog post on New Year’s food for my friend’s blog about Ukrainian food—the Pickle Project. Here's the link:
http://pickleproject.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-years-feast-from-crimea.html

Nadjie and I have a grant proposal due in a couple of weeks, but she is immersed (as is everyone here) in producing some kind of end-of-the-year report for the Ministry of Culture, the government entity that the library functions under. Today we did go visit an organization for the visually impaired that we are hoping to partner with for our grant (the idea being to make the library accessible for visually impaired people). The organization does impressive work—they have a large factory that employs 700 blind and partially blind people, producing mostly small electrical parts, like extensions cords, plugs, etc. (which I have since found out from Neshet that this is a Soviet tradition.) Because of the holiday season, the people weren’t at work, so it was hard to get a true sense of the working conditions. But the large hall was spacious and full of light from the big windows, and even had air conditioning—a rarity in Ukraine. Disabled people here are referred to as “invalids,” and are immensely discriminated against. Almost no buildings are accessible for wheelchairs—including the large new library where I have my English Club, hospitals (!), and the airport. Perhaps a workshop such as the one at this organization would not be considered that wonderful back in the States, but here it provides a much needed opportunity for visually impaired people to have a productive life.

I enjoyed meeting the people and seeing the grounds, but as usual, my Russian only allowed me limited knowledge of what was being discussed. I left with no information on exactly how, or even if, we are going to partner with the organization for this grant, a grant that basically I have to write. Nadjie will do the initial writing in Russian, but then I need to take what comes through in the translation program and turn it into something that will be acceptable to the very demanding Peace Corps requirements. A time consuming process, thus my impatience with our lack of work on it.

And once again, I felt that deep longing to be working somewhere that I can understand what is going on, that I can contribute more to the daily process, to the formation of ideas and the creative process that goes with it. Burnt out on this whole experience of trying to work in such a fog--that is what I am afraid I am feeling--and I wonder what it means for the thoughts I have to remain here for a while. Maybe I just need a break for a bit, and that should happen soon with my trip to Krakow and Prague with Serdar that is coming up in a few weeks.

So I’ll not dwell on it here in this blog post, but go on to happier topics—like the various New Year’s celebrations of the weekend. I think the most fun for me was spending New Year’s Eve day cooking with Lenura (what we cooked is what that Pickle Project blog post is about). And then there was, of course, eating all that fabulous food. And opening our presents. Present giving is not like the States—usually it is just one small present for each person, sometimes just a souvenir of sorts or candy. This year I gave Serdar a little leather notebook, Safie an embroidered pouch for her telephone from the Crimean Tatar museum, and for Lenura and Neshet, a wood trivet from the Frank Lloyd Wright Museum in Chicago that I had purchased when I was there last summer. They gave me a pair of pajamas—hooray, I really needed some new pajamas! Which I guess must have been obvious…

Neshet took off to visit some friend who was here from Moscow and his sister who lives next door came over for a visit. We watched the New Year festivities on TV and then at 5 minutes to midnight, the president of Ukraine gave his annual welcome- to-the-new-year message (a Soviet tradition), which, since they all basically hate him, was pretty much ignored. At midnight the fireworks began—everywhere you looked in the sky big fireworks were going off—in the neighborhood and in the distance in the city center. It was quite the show.

We all went to bed late and slept in. New Year’s Day is typically a time when relatives and neighbors visit. Lenura’s cousin and family came to the house, as did several neighbors, and I went over and visited my old landlords. The following day we drove to Lenura’s parent’s village for a brief New Year’s gathering. It was great to see Lilye and Ablumet, as always. I really do like them so much, and slowly I feel I am able to talk with them a bit more as my Russian understanding improves. I just wish they didn’t live so far away. Maybe I’ll try to go back on my own to visit them, something they are always telling me to do.

It’s Saturday afternoon now (January 7th), which is actually Christmas in Ukraine--I just now remembered that. My family being Muslim, of course it is not an occasion for them, but it is a government holiday and thus we once again have a three-day weekend. The weather has been unusually warm here, so Cheryl and I are talking about taking off for a hike somewhere tomorrow.

Neshet and Serdar are working away on the staircase. The house is a definitely a work-in-progress, and I never know what the motivation is, but once in a while Neshet just starts working on finishing something. The underlying structure of the steps, for instance, have been built for as long as I have been here, and apparently he has had the materials to finish them for quite some time. The whole house is pretty much like that, a fact that continually frustrates Lenura. However, I can relate, because I remember how my house in Minneapolis was also in one of those states of continual construction. I think some projects never got finished!
That’s it for now. Maybe I will have some adventures to report from my hike tomorrow. Much love from
Crimea.

Lenura's presents her stuffed fish.
The New Year's Eve table.
In front of the New Year's tree with my present.
Neshet's sister, Anara, with the kids.
Lenura and her father, Ablumet.

The circus on Christmas!

‘Tis the season to be jolly and here it’s no exception. Though Christmas as we know it isn’t celebrated—the Orthodox Christian Christmas is on January 7th and is a much more subdued affair—the celebrations around New Year’s (or novi gode in Russian) more than make up for the lack of Christmas. It’s Christmas and New Year’s traditions all rolled into one big holiday—Christmas tree (yolka), big family dinner, presents (though much less than the US), a version of Santa Claus called Grandfather Frost (who apparently travels from Finland but minus reindeer—unclear how he actually gets here), fireworks at midnight, and the circus! Yes, that’s right, a special edition of the local circus, and special it was.

On Sunday, PCV friend Cheryl and I went with Serdar and Safie to the circus, thanks to free tickets from Lenura’s workplace. And since Sunday happened to be Christmas, it felt like we got a little Christmas celebration in after all. Actually, there was a gathering of about twenty of the Crimean Peace Corps Volunteers in the apartment of one of the Volunteers in town, so Cheryl and I went there briefly before the circus. It was fun to get to meet some of the newbies (only been at site for a week) and see again some of the Volunteers that have come in the last year. But I wasn’t really into being at a big PCV gathering in a tiny apartment (as usual), so was glad to take off for the circus.

I didn’t know what to expect, but I have always been curious about the circus when I walked by its building located in the center of the city. Circuses here in Ukraine and Russia and maybe all of Europe—that I don’t know—are different from the traveling affairs we know. Any city of any size has a permanent building that houses the circus and a company that puts it on, much like a repertoire theater. Traveling circuses also frequently appear—recently the circus from Moscow was here—but the rest of the time there is a continuous circus with different themes. So what we attended was the circus celebrating New Year’s.

Even though the building looks quite large on the outside, it is a fairly small space and every seat provides a good view. And there wasn’t an empty seat—the place was packed with kids and adults. It was what I think of when I think of old time circuses—a single ring with clowns, music, a juggler, a unicyclist, acrobatic and high wire acts, a mime, Grandfather Frost and his attendants, and… animals. And amazing animals they were. Not the usual circus animals of elephants and tigers—which I was glad of because I know of the charges of how circuses treat their animals. But instead we had “damashne jhivotne”—as Safie called them—home animals. Which consisted of: dogs of all sizes and breeds (though those performing poodles dominated the pack), pigs, one monkey, a raccoon, an animal that looked like a raccoon but wasn’t, a skunk, a goat, two different foxes, a porcupine-looking animal, and birds. Lots of different birds—homing pigeons, a rooster who was trained to play dead, chickens, owls, parrots, three storks, a cormorant, and an enormous vulture of some sort. And they were all trained to at least do something, even if it was just to walk around the ring. Well, I’m not sure about the vulture—I think his deal was just to awe us all by flapping his enormous wings. He didn’t seem overly happy about it. But entertaining it was, though I kept thinking that one of the dogs, who shared his act with three pigs, was saying to himself, “you’ve got to be kidding me—what are those pigs doing??”-- as they went sliding backwards down a slide.

I’m not sure Serdar—being the cool young man of 18 now—was totally into it, but Cheryl and Safie and I had a great time. As a result of Safie taking over my camera, I have a LOT of videos of the various acts. As we were all waiting for the bus to go home, Serdar asked me if I would go again and I said, “well maybe not tomorrow, but yes, someday I would like to go back,” and once again have a circus experience that I feel I have only read about in novels.

Hanging out with the new PCV's before going to the circus.
We meet up with Serdar and Safie in front of the circus building.
The front of the circus building in Simferopol.
Inside the circus.


Yes, that really is a pig rolling that drum.

Our fundraising is a success!

Thursday afternoon at the library, about an hour or so left before I leave to walk over to Franco Library and the first meeting of my adult English Club. I have a few trepidations about it—will anyone come, do I really want to be doing this (my idea, not theirs), will they be supportive enough—not try to shoo us all out before the library closes at 7pm. I have wanted to do another English Club for adults, but it is so hard to find a place that is open late enough. My biggest hope was to do a club in Ak Mechet using the mosque there, but it turns out the mosque isn’t heated and they only have the one large area where the prayers are conducted. And no chairs, of course. I could have gone back to meeting at the Krymchak Museum, but it is after hours there and is a hard place to find. Franco Library is centrally located and very well known in the city. So, we’ll see how it goes. More on the next blog post.

The great news this week is that my Partnership Project with the Peace Corps got fully funded! And this is even after raising the goal by another $1000. In just a month we raised a total of $4000 from approximately 38 individuals—mostly my friends and family—and one organization, a Crimean Tatar women’s organization in New York. I really didn’t think we would raise that much money that fast—I am so grateful that so many of my friends chose to support my project. So to any of you donors who are reading this blog, thanks so very much. Hopefully I have already sent you a thank you, but because the Peace Corps is slow in getting me all the names, there might be some of you I have missed. It means a lot to me that you have such faith in my work here.

The library staff was ecstatic when I told them the money would be coming In January and began to make plans for what microfilms they wanted to convert into digital format, and possibly even being able to acquire copies of Ismail Gasprinskiy newspaper Terdjiman that they don’t have, one of the long time goals of the library.

Though I would like to do more here, I have come to see my role primarily as a fund raiser. And though many of us community developers chafe on that expectation when we first arrive at our sites, ultimately it makes sense that that is mostly what we would be doing, unless we happen to arrive with a fluency in Russian or Ukrainian. The most successful of us community developers—at least in my eyes—have passed that skill on to the partners in their organization, but I don’t see that happening here just yet. No one has the English necessary to be able to write grants and proposals, the great majority of which are required to be in English.

That’s it for now. The various holidays are coming up, so I am sure that will provide some tales. For one thing, I know I am going to the circus(!) on Christmas Day, which is a nonevent here. Christmas exists in the Orthodox Christian church but it is January 7th and not as heavily celebrated as it is in America. The real holiday is New Year’s, and there have already been much discussions at our house around what foods to make, whether or not to get a new tree (I found out the one they have been using all these years they brought from Uzbekistan twenty years ago), will we go to the grandparents—Lilye and Ablumet’s house—which I so hope we do, as I miss them!

Much love from Crimea.

Birthdays and a visit to Aivasovsky Museum

I’m sitting here at my desk at the library, watching the technician from Kyiv install the scanner that we purchased with the $15,000 grant we received last May from a US foundation. Not that I have any choice given the language barrier, but it is so hard to just sit here and let it all happen without butting in with my opinions. Of which, of course, I have many. I do have faith in the young library workers who are most involved in the setting up of the scanner— I know they are both very knowledgeable about computer technology. But I also know that the scanner is just the first step in a long term project to digitize the library’s rare book and newspaper collections. It will be interesting to see how this all develops. Like everything else here, I know it will take some time for them to initiate a system and I will, once again, have the opportunity to practice patience. And trust—that they will indeed get it together to do what they need to do to take advantage of this wonderful gift to the library.

Following up on my last blog, the “prazdniks” continued after Thanksgiving with my neighbor Siyare’s 24th birthday on a Friday night a week later. Siyare is the daughter in the family of my ex-landlords, and I always enjoy going over there. Though now they always say that I don’t come enough, that I have “forgotten them.” But of course I haven’t, and I try to get over there once a week or every other week. Outside my family, they are my best friends in Ak Mechet. And their gatherings are always a lot of fun—lots of food and usually lots of people—relatives and friends. On this occasion, there were the six family members, a brother-in-law, and three friends of Siyare’s, all of whom I knew. There was much toasting as usual—the men with vodka, us women with wine—and I even got them to sing Happy Birthday as we do in America—the first time I have done that in Ukraine. Candles and singing is not something that happens here.

Safie's 14th Birthday Dinner
Safie’s birthday was a little bit more subdued, but Neshet’s sister who lives nearby came, and Serdar for once was home. There was much toasting with wine among us four adults, and Lenura had made another of her fabulous dinners—this time we had rabbit, which was a first for all of us, including Lenura. Neshet likes exploring different foods and sometimes watches a cooking show. On the last show they were preparing rabbit, so he went out and bought a rabbit and gave it to Lenura to come up with a dinner. I’m not sure how she feels about this “cooking on demand,” but she looked up a recipe on the internet for “Christmas Rabbit”—clearly an English dish—and prepared a tasty concoction of rabbit and mushrooms baked in a cream sauce. Well, it wasn’t really a cream sauce, because cream as we know it is pretty impossible to buy here, but it was a tasty white sauce, nevertheless. And for dessert, we had ice cream and fresh fruit, a choice of two different cakes, and a sort of sweetened squash with nuts. You don’t go hungry in my home, that’s for sure.
This week I’ve been sick—a bad cold—and have stayed home from work until today. I feel like I get a lot more colds here than I did in the States; I suppose it is the problem of my immune system not being used to Crimean germs. Quite a few people in my office have been sick lately with colds, but luckily, I don’t seem to have transferred it to anyone in my family.

One of Aivasvosky's paintings.
Before I got sick, I did make an excursion down to the coastal town of Feodocia to go to the Aivazovsky Museum. Ivan Aivazovsky was an Armenian artist who was born in Feodocia in the early 19th century and lived there all his life. He became world famous for his paintings of the sea and even today is considered the greatest painter of seascapes. His works are large—some of them covering an entire wall—and the sea he depicts is usually a violent one, sometimes complete with ship wrecks. As my experience of the Black Sea is one of fairly tranquil waters, it makes me wonder what inspired his paintings. But there is no denying his incredible mastery of water. One of his most famous paintings—completed just a couple of years before he died at the age of 83—is filled with a raging sea, and as you stand and stare at that painting which fills the wall where it hangs, you can’t help but be drawn into the luminance of those turbulent waves. My PCV friend Cheryl, who accompanied me on the museum visit, had been there before, but wanted to return just so she could once again see the painting. As she said, it felt like one could spend hours just looking at that water.

But, of course, that wasn’t really possible, as we both had buses to catch back to our towns, so we left the library and spent an hour or so wondering the waterfront of Feodocia, usually a bustling place in the summer overrun with tourists, but on this cold November afternoon, filled with only a few people walking the promenade in front of the old ornate mansions converted into “sanatoriums,” as resorts are called here. I don’t really like the overcrowded coastal towns in the summer which is why I had waited until November to make the trek here. I had long wanted to see the Aivazovsky paintings, and I boarded my bus for the two-hour trip back to Simferopol, highly satisfied, with their images floating in my head.

Much love from Crimea

November holidays

It feels so slow at the library these days. Without Nadjie to bounce ideas off of, I feel a little groundless and unfocused. Also, she always made an effort to keep me informed of what was going on in the inner workings of the library, and now that is pretty much left up to conjecture on my part and what I can determine from Elmas, the quasi English speaking young woman in my office. However, next week our long awaited rare book scanner that we purchased with a grant I wrote last spring will finally show up. Though I am itching to be part of the decision making around where it will be located, how it will be used, who will be trained on it, I have been pretty much hands off—out of necessity because of language, but also because I think the library needs to make these determinations. I am curious to see how it will all come out.

This is a time of holidays in my life—or “prazdniks” as we call them here—starting with my birthday on November 14th, followed by Serdar’s on the 22nd, Siyare (the neighbor daughter) on December 2nd and then Safie’s on December 6th. Throw in Thanksgiving and New Year’s (Christmas as we know it doesn’t exist here), and it is one long celebration from the beginning of November to the end of December. Or so it seems. I get a little stressed about what to do for presents, especially since I have given up on getting packages from America—any present from America would be a sure success--but mostly it is a fun time of lots of good food with the family. So, a few words and pictures from all these prazdniks:

Because the weather was not so great this year, I didn’t make it out on any hike for my birthday. Instead, I went to work, wondering if they would remember my birthday without Nadjie there, and sure enough, they did, and presented me with flowers. I had bought a small cake in case they had and shared it with my office mates and whoever else happened by. Maybe next year I will get it together to bring (or make!) a cake for the whole library staff, which many people do. I just find it hard to be the subject of so much attention. But home is a different story. I loved the warmth they surrounded me with—literally with the gift of a New Zealand wool wrap knitted in Ukraine to help with my cold room, the delicious dinner complete with one of Lenura’s legendary cakes, and just that feeling of being so loved. That alone is the best gift I could possible hope for on any birthday.
Lenura making my birthday cake.A toast over plov for my birthday.
My family on my 64th birthday.
And then the following week was Serdar’s 18th birthday—a very big birthday here when a child officially becomes an adult—can legally drink, vote, drive a car, apply for an international passport, be drafted—many of the same landmarks as in America on an 18th birthday, but for some reason, here it has taken on a greater significance. Lenura had cooked a wonderful dinner for Serdar with his favorite foods, but with at least her blessing (I am sure Neshet would have preferred he stayed home, but he didn’t say no), as soon as I got home, he took off to the center to celebrate his birthday with his pals. It seemed a little odd to be having a birthday dinner without the intended celebrant, but Neshet and Lenura didn’t seem too outwardly disturbed by it, and in fact, the three of us (Safie took off to the computer as soon as dinner was done) had a nice time sitting around the dinner table, drinking a bottle of wine and talking for several hours. So at least we celebrated, even if Serdar was nowhere around.

Two days later was Thanksgiving. The last two years I just worked on the holiday (since it obviously is not a holiday here), and then got together with other Peace Corps Volunteers on the weekend for a traditional Thanksgiving. This year I decided to switch my days off so I would have Thursday off and cook a Thanksgiving dinner for my family. I invited the other two Peace Corps Volunteers in Simferopol, but only Adrianne was in town. She worked that day and ended up coming after she got home from her school and helped me finish up the cooking. I had never in my life cooked a Thanksgiving dinner, but the family was very excited about the idea, and Neshet searched around where to buy a whole turkey, so I thought I would give it a try. I kept telling Neshet a small turkey, but he came home with a 15 pounder—the smallest he could find. But I read up on the instructions and got it in the oven on time, and it didn’t come out too bad, though next year I can think of some improvements. We also had stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce from fresh cranberries, candied carrots (no sweet potatoes here) and creamed spinach and pumpkin pie contributed by Adrianne. So, my first ever Thanksgiving dinner—in Ukraine! Adrianne was a big help—I guess next year I will have to pull it off without as her, as her Peace Corps service is ending in a few weeks and she is heading back to the States. Sigh…

Coming up: Siyare and Safie’s birthdays. More on that next time.
With love from Crimea.

The turkey comes out of the oven.
Looks like a Thanksgiving plate in America!
The family minus Serdar and with Adrianne on our first Thanksgiving together.