I'm Back

It's been so long since I've blogged that I almost don't know where to begin. Almost.

The school year is wrapping up pretty quickly. I only have two and a half more weeks of school left. This month has gone by fairly quickly thus far, no thanks to the many holdiays we've been celebrating.

The first and the second of May were Labor Days, and we had them off. Most people used those two days to plant their fields. I went to the village with Jennifer's host family and helped them plant potatoes. It was a lot of work. We had to turn the dirt in the fields where we were planting before we could even start dropping in the 'taters. We used shovels to turn the dirt. The chickens and the ducks had a field day running around eating all the worms that we dug up. Being in the village made me very thankful for my cozy apartment. The village had no running water and a lovely pit toilet (that had no door). It smelled like cow dung.

This past weekend we celebrated Victory Day. The official holiday was on Tuesday. So far, Victory Day is my favorite Ukrainian holiday. In the morning, there was a parade. Well, not really a parade parade. It was not Macy's Thanksgivind Day bonanza. It was mostly just people walking in the street with flowers behind a band. After the parade, there were speeches in the center of town near the War memorials. Flowers were laid upon the memorials and veterans were honored. Then everyone gathered in the park. I've never seen the park so alive with people. It was fabulous. There were picnic tables and kiosks selling food and drinks and ice cream. Everyone was all dressed up (except me, nobody mentioned that a picnic and a parade were semi-formal!) and in great moods. There was a very real sense of community at the park.

Jennifer and I sat with her host parents and their friends. We at shashleek and drank champagne. I over-indulged on ice-cream (still kind of embarassed about that one). In the afternoon, I went to the forest with Jennifer's family and we shashleeked and played volleyball and had an overall, very nice time.

In other news, my kolonka was broken for about a week. A kolonka is the gas contraption that gives me hot water. It wasn't working and a gas specialist came and looked at it. Of course, he made it work his first try and so he didn't believe me that there was a problem. He charged me two hryven for the "consultation". The day after, my kolonka went out again. This time is stayed out. Larissa called the gas guy again, but he never showed up to fix it. I guess he didn't believe me. In the end, a couple of neighbors came and fixed it for me. They spent 2.5 hours taking the whole thing apart and putting it back together. I was so blown away by their generosity, especially since they worked on it until nearly 11 o'clock on a Thursday night and I'd never even met them before.

That's it for now. I'm about out of time on the internet here and I want to post this before they give me the boot. My apologies for going so long without posting!