Greetings
from Vinnytsia. We hope you are all well, and enjoying the holiday
season. Our holiday season is a big strange this year – it goes from
December 25th, which is when the Catholics and the few Protestants
here celebrate Christmas, to January 7th, which is the Orthodox
Christmas. But the real holiday is New Year’s, and that is the one
they celebrate with a tree in each home, presents, parties and
family gatherings. Last evening being New Year’s Eve, we decided to
go out to dinner with the other new Peace Corps volunteer in
Vinnytsia. Fortunately we went out early because we only found one
restaurant, a pizza place that closed at 8:00, to be open. We were
surprised to find just about all other restaurants closed, including
even the local McDonald’s. The town is very nicely decorated with
large Christmas/New Year’s trees and many lights along the streets
and outlining the larger government buildings. Ukraine seems to be
slowly starting to understand what can be accomplished by
commercializing Christmas/New Years; most all of our students said
they had a Christmas/New Years tree in their homes, but only a
couple of them said that Santa Claus visited them. Don bought us a
Christmas tree (green plastic), about 2 feet high that we set on a
shelf and decorated with a “garland” we bought at the bazaar.
Christmas Day was a working day in our world, but we did have a
small dinner party in the evening and invited 4 people over. (6 is
our limit for dinner - we have 6 plates and 6 sets of silverware,
plus a very small apartment.) One of the invitees was vegetarian, so
we had spaghetti for Christmas dinner. Plus we do not use our oven
(it is too old and dirty and scary looking), so we really couldn’t
cook a turkey, assuming we could have found one. But the party was a
success, and it was past midnight before everyone left, so we think
they had a good time.
The week of January 1st is the week they all take vacation, so there
is much that is closed. We tried to get cash from the ATM at our
bank yesterday, and found that the ATM was closed also.
We are watching with some interest the situation between Ukraine and
Russia. Ukraine gets most if not all of its gas from Russia, and
there are also pipelines through Ukraine that Russia uses to deliver
and sell gas to other countries in Europe. But it seems that Ukraine
has not paid Russia for gas used in the past couple of years, which
is further complicated by the fact that they also have not even
established the price for this gas delivered and used in past years.
And Russia also is accusing Ukraine of diverting and using gas that
was intended by Russia to be delivered to other countries. Not to
mention they can’t decide what the price of gas should be for the
current year. Russia has traditionally sold gas to Ukraine at prices
significantly below market price, assuming that this price
concession would buy some loyalty from Ukraine to Russia, but it
seems that all Russia got for its efforts was noise from Ukraine
that they wanted to join NATO and condemnation of Russia’s invasion
of Georgia. So if it seems to readers of this that we have at least
some sympathy with Russia in this deal, then you are reading
correctly, especially since Germany has been paying about
$4.25/1000cm for the past two years while Ukraine was only paying
about $2.00, plus in the negotiations that fell apart yesterday
Russia dropped its demand to $2.50/1000cm, but Ukraine said that was
still too high. Go figure that one out. But now according to
news sources, Russia says it will be cutting off the gas supply to
Ukraine sometime very soon, and possibly as early as today. Ukraine
says Russia will not because they have reached a deal. Russia says
they have not reached a deal. We will keep you posted. But Ukraine
also has some gas reserves (which Russia says Ukraine stole from
Russia), so that may buy enough time for Ukraine to figure out a way
to come up with a billion or so dollars to get the bill paid and
keep the gas going.
In the meantime, our immediate concern is our personal hot water
supply. The kolonka (the magic heater of water in our apartment) is
vintage Soviet, probably 50 years old, and is not long for this
world. We are hoping we can get 18 more months out of it, but it
probably will not be so. We are trying to be quite nice to it, even
though we were without any hot water at all for 14 days (but who was
counting) the first part of December. We are however happy to report
that we do now have a brand new toilet, and we only had to stay home
5 days waiting for the plumber before he came. And our new toilet is
firmly cemented to the floor in proper Soviet fashion, so that it
will never be able to be repaired or adjusted. Even though bolts and
other appropriate installation devices came with said toilet. We
think the Peace Corps should maybe send plumbers to Ukraine to
explain the basics.
We have been somewhat following the economic meltdown, both here and
at home. Our daughter Amy says we are lucky that we have “safe
government jobs”; somehow we never quite thought of this that way
but she maybe has a point. Recent events since our last friends and
family post in late November have kept us busy and added some
interest to our lives. On November 22 Ukraine observed a nationwide
remembrance and memorial to the 6 million who died in the forced
starvation and famine instigated by Stalin in 1931-1933. This event
is called the Holodomor (Hunger). In Vinnitsia we attended the
public dedication of a new Holodomor memorial in a nice little park
situated next to the Oblast administration building. It was snowing
and sleeting but a huge crowd showed up. At the end of the ceremony
most brought out candles and lit them and placed them all around the
new stature. We then came back about two hours later for a separate
memorial sponsored by Nasha Podyllya, which is Karen’s organization
where she works.
Thanksgiving passed without much notice as it was a work day here.
We had fun teaching our students at Vinnitsia Language School all
about how Thanksgiving is celebrated back home, and we did the same
regarding Christmas a few weeks later. We finally got snow a day or
two before Christmas, and we now have about 8 inches. Since both of
our offices are closed from December 29 to January 8, we decided to
hop on the train and go visit Lviv for a few days. Lviv is a 700
year old city located in Western Ukraine, and very modern by Ukraine
standards. It was part of Poland until 1945 when Stalin and
Churchill re-drew the map of Europe and then it became part of
Ukraine. What is special about Lviv is that it did not get destroyed
in World War II like so many other cities, and as a result it looks
like an old European city with countless winding narrow cobblestone
streets and row after row of old stone-faced building 3 or 4 stories
high packed side by side, each one with interesting architecture and
outside ornamentation ranging from statues to murals to gargoyles to
other embellishments. Also several huge churches dating back to the
1600’s and later, including one with maybe the only statue in the
world of Christ sitting beside the cross. There is also a very large
grand old palace, built by a Polish nobleman in the 1880’s. The guy
who became famous as a mashochist was from Lviv and the hottest new
restaurant in town is named after him. The food was great, but the
real attraction was the décor, interesting to say the least.
There is good news and bad news with regards to the Language School
where we teach part-time. The good news is they seem to like us -
but the bad news is they added two classes to our schedule. Except
they have all learned British English, and in British English it is
not schedule, but shedule. Anyway, we now have a new class of three
adults to teach, plus another class of upper high school / lower
university type students. Except this one is out of town and
involves a trip of an hour and a half each way to get there. But we
get to travel in the Language School’s owner’s Mercedes (he drives,
Peace Corps says we cannot drive in Ukraine no matter what), so that
part is kind of fun. We are not sure how the owner of a small
language school in Vinnytsia gets to own a very nice Mercedes -
unless it is by marketing his Peace Corps Volunteers to get students
to come to his classes, but that is probably another story that we
shouldn’t go into…
Tomorrow we are going to a friend’s apartment who has satellite to
watch the Nebraska bowl game. It is a delayed broadcast –
starts at 2:00 in the afternoon here – so we are going to be very
careful not to look at any news before that so we can watch it
“live”.
Anyway, we wish you all the best in the New Year. Take care. Don and
Karen |