November in Krakow, Poland.
November in Oświęcim, Poland.
November in Vilnius, Lithuania.
November in Kaunas, Lithuania.
November in Trakai, Lithuania.
November in Šiauliai, Lithuania.
November in Riga, Latvia.
November in Dārziņi, Latvia.
*Music: “Winter Song” -Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson
I’ve been sitting on this blog entry for a while, not sure why. I’ve known for a while I wanted to post it for comedic purposes. One of the great things about living in another country is the gained (or expanded) ability to laugh at yourself. I’m sure I’m often ridiculous in Ukrainian and worthy of the chuckles I’ve gotten, but it carries over to moments having nothing to do with negotiating language barriers. Cross-cultural misunderstandings come in all shapes and sizes; some get resolved, others do not. The most persistent cross-cultural misunderstanding I’ve had throughout my time in Ukraine has been my idea that a hair salon client has a say in what their hair looks like, as in America. For your general amusement, I’ve decided to post a timeline of my Peace Corps service by changes in my hair. It may not be thoughtfully written or reflective like my other posts, but hopefully you’ll find it worth your time for the laughs.
dark chocolate brown
<– Linnea says goodbye: Ukrainians are endlessly amused by my story of why I dyed my hair from blonde to dark chocolate brown. Someone told me (and really, don’t all stories in which you make a horrible decision start this way) there were no blondes in Ukraine. Other PCVs in Ukraine have all spit out their coffee or tea laughing already. So, without question years and years of life as a blonde come to an abrupt end. I buy plum lipsticks and try to work with it, and it makes an amusing Ukrainian dinner party story for the entirety of my Peace Corps service.
hot cocoa brown?
Throughout months of worrying over verb —> conjugation and finding ways to eat less than my host family wanted me to eat, my hair went largely ignored except when I was running late to language class and was desperately trying to throw it into some up-do that could be called a “do.” The plan was to let it fade until I got home from Peace Corps and could easily lift the color back to blonde (for those of you not fluent in hair salon, don’t worry about it). Halloween came to our training group and on early mornings I was still freaking myself out in the mirror because I was expecting to see a blonde staring back at me.
snip snip snip
<—I made it about five months; a valiant attempt if I do say so myself, but I’m sick of being a brunette. My host sister takes me to the hair salon to go back to blonde in time for Swearing-In, but they say my hair has to be “really really dirty” to dye it back to blonde. Strange. So instead, I get bangs, which also never seems to be a great decision when I make it. Nevertheless, off I go to possibly live in a village where I need to haul my own water with new, demanding bangs.
no caption needed
Yes, unfortunately, that would be orange —> hair. Or, as my hairdresser in my new town argued with me…”it’s GOLD!” The day had started off so well, too. My friend, a fellow teacher from school, had brought me to see her hairdresser (also her fiancee’s younger brother), and we had eaten chocolate and drunk champagne for his birthday. I had gotten a lot of Ukrainian practice in. And then the big orange bomb dropped. The best part is, I had to fly out to Copenhagen to see my family for the first time in a year with this disaster.
regaining normalcy
<—I switch hairdressers…as if I needed to clarify that. My new hairdresser is a woman who runs a hair salon out of an addition to her home and calls me “Linnechka.” She’s bubbly, moves constantly, and interprets my “I speak some Ukrainian” as “I’m fluent with a weird accent.” After snorting into her coffee when I told her the brown hair story (didn’t I tell you Ukrainians love it?) and the subsequent “gold” debacle, she tells me she can’t fix it right away without frying my hair. In the meantime, one step lighter it is with a shift from orange to pink tint. Still not a color I would dare wear in America, but we’re getting better.
new year, new color
Off to Egypt with some fellow PCVs to ring —> in the New Year with my hair several shades lighter. It constantly sways between a pink tint and a yellow tint because my hairdresser never seems to remember what color we used the previous time, and doesn’t listen to me when I call out the name. There was a small incident with layers (called “stairs” here) which lead me to only ask for dyes and start cutting my hair at home instead. Imagining myself lopping off a huge section of hair accidentally makes me dread the days when I finally admit my hair is more split than otherwise and needs a bit of a trim. My hairdresser from home might kill me when I get back for what I’ve done to my hair.
what the...?
<—I didn’t ask for the Lady Gaga, but that’s what I got. After months of barely perceptible shade change, this almost knocked me out of the salon chair when it was completely dried. In no way is this an uncommonly bright shade of blonde in Ukraine, but it was a little too much bleach for my tastes. My bangs are still growing out after that bad decision I made over a year ago, and I believe this brings the count up to six distinct hair colors I’ve had throughout my Peace Corps service in Ukraine (perhaps I got to choose one or two of them).
These days, my color has evened out, though it still swings between a pink tint and a gray/purple tint (I’ve been trying to get a picture of this insane sounding color, but have failed miserably) that washes out in two days leaving about the same medium blonde each time. A fellow PCV and I had the somewhat unpleasant experience of being two unaccompanied blonde girls in Georgia, but enjoyed some gorgeous hikes, vicious vertical rock scrambles, and one heavenly morning in a private room at the baths that included the best massage I’ve gotten in my entire life. My Peace Corps group’s Close of Service (COS) conference is in less than a month and paperwork has already started for leaving Ukraine! I’ll be seeing all of you before you know it.
*Music: “New Soul” -Yael Naïm
{i noticed} my blog needs some photos to liven it up, so, відпускний (Graduation/Prom) came and went and with it, the students I’ve been working with for two years now. It was an emotional day for me, though it would have been worse had I gone to the dinner with the graduating class in Truskavets. Unfortunately, standing in heels and walking around town through the event wore me out after my operation and I just didn’t have the energy in me to go. I did, however, get some pictures with the beautiful and handsome graduates.
two of my {advanced english} girls
^ I had the most English classes with this group from my first day at the Lyceum. They’re one of only two classes that will have had me for two years of teaching. They specialized in English and were pretty advanced by the time I arrived and took over. In English, these girls have progressed so much! I’m proud of the entire class, which includes two students that took first and second place at the region Olympiad, one of which advanced to the oblast (~state Olympiad) and missed going to the national Olympiad by {ONE POINT!} They patiently put up with me making them do unheard of things like getting up out of their seats during class and moving around the room for different activities.
{beautiful girls} from the lyceum
^ These aren’t actually my students, just some very sweet girls from the Lyceum. There’s one {definite advantage} of working at the Lyceum, it’s a small school. Everyone knows me, even if I’m not their teacher. It’s nice to walk down the hall and be greeted with “hi”s from every direction (though I’d love to practice my Ukrainian more). I’ll miss their smiling faces around the halls next semester!
student from my {IT specialized} English class
^ The other class I’ve had for two years was a specialized Information Technology class with their required basic English course. At the beginning of the year they skipped class {a lot}. I understood their frustration with general requirements especially in light of my not being allowed to differ from the curriculum long enough to show them how English can be directly applicable to IT. It must be said for them that once the co-teacher talked to them about the waste of my time, they did their best to come. That’s saying something considering one of their classes was the absolute last period on Friday afternoons when only some students had class!
sunset at {L'viv} train station
^ Kelly and I spent some time in L’viv. First we saw my amazing RPCV friend NPO for his birthday who came loaded up with American goodies to share. I missed him terribly and almost cried when I had to say bye once again. We also worked with our fellow PCVs in L’vivska oblast to clean up a women’s center associated with one volunteer’s NGO. We worked side-by-side with the women living in the center doing different jobs, from scraping and repainting a fence to hauling away a huge pile of wood. I got to clear the weeds around the fence with a {real scythe}, awesome, right? Besides getting nettled until I thought my arms were going to fall off, the day was wonderful. We ended the event with a cookout and singing happy birthday to Peace Corps for its 50th Anniversary!
{monsoon season} has arrived in drohobych
^ For about a week and a half straight, this is what it looked like from my balcony. I was caught in downpours three days in a row and not a happy camper. Today is much the same weather, only a little lighter. My umbrella now has a permanent place in my purse.
I’ll have plenty of updates for my cooking/health blog here in the following days, so check back if you’re interested. All this rain has put me in the perfect mood to cook, cook, cook {and bake, bake, bake} not to mention an aversion for going out into the flooded and grime filled streets.
Enjoy Father’s Day & appreciate your dad today; I wish I could be home for it.
*Music: “I Love the Rain the Most” -Joe Purdy
Being a vegetarian in Ukraine is something that starts as a challenge and slowly degenerates into tedium, both in cooking and in representing a lifestyle largely missing from this country. In training, the constant stomach-clenching fear of offending your host family keeps your vegetarian identity edgy and interesting. You’re asked, told, begged, ordered, cajoled into tasting, eating, sampling, nibbling this meat and that. Each situation presents a new obstacle course of cultural values, family traditions, and hospitality to be negotiated with perspicacious mental agility, a situation which largely distracts you from the fact that your diet is, most likely, already dull (if you’ve seen/read it, think restaurant scene from Everything Is Illuminated involving the potato). As a lacto-ovo vegetarian (one that eats eggs and dairy products) my host family finally surrendered to force-feeding me more eggs than I thought a normal person could possibly eat. Varieties in my diet, thus, largely came from different forms in which eggs could be cooked. They now have a certain recipe dubbed “Linnea’s eggs” because they were the kind I was most happy to see come dinner (or lunch or breakfast) time.
After an understandable adjustment period in which a volunteer figures out where everything can be found or purchased for the lowest price at their respective sites, cooking experimentation begins. For me, this wasn’t until spring rolled around, a significant four months into my time at site. Figuring out the stores and bazaar wasn’t the only factor; as TEFL volunteers, we arrive at site for the beginning of a long, hard winter…alone. Missing Christmas away from home for the first time in my life, I largely escaped to the world of fiction and drank hot chocolate for sustenance. Tempest past, I finally emerged and stumbled, amazed into increasingly fresh and tempting produce at the bazaar. The variety of squash, rainbow of fruit, and bouquets of fresh herbs called out creative recipe ideas of their own accord as I tiptoed along boards covering the floor of puddles. Long into September, I was still canning and preserving apple butter and pear jam while trying to resist the raspberry jam made earlier in the summer. Playing around with tastes and textures, I whipped up stuffed eggplant, deep-dish spiced apple pie for an American Thanksgiving abroad. Then fall started frosting over, warning of the winter to come. My schedule wore me down, the setting sun at 4:30 in the afternoon pissed me off, and another approaching Christmas far from the comforts of home was already invidiously wreaking its havoc on my mood. I stopped cooking. I quit baking. I bought hot chocolate.
This curve was paralleled by my experience singularly representing vegetarianism in my community. Food and communal eating plays an important role in Ukrainian culture that is readily apparent. No different from my experience living with a Ukrainian host family, explanations were expected when I balked at the passed cold-cut tray. The first day in my new town had prepared me for the continuation of this dialogue. My attempt at a gracious decline of a fish dinner had been met with the terse response, “so you’re refusing my gift outright.” It was not a question and my verbal footwork had clearly been found lacking.
I gradually tired of sitting with my hands in my lap at parties centered around an array of largely meat-based dishes, smiling like an idiot, answering questions about my lifestyle that were posed with condescension. The fatigue I experience after a night of explaining my particular type of vegetarianism, (as well as providing a brief overview of the spectrum of vegetarian lifestyles) repeating myself for those who hadn’t bothered to listen initially, being misrepresented by those with more proficient Ukrainian, correcting the misrepresentations for the once again deaf ears was one of body, mind, confidence, and enthusiasm. Whereas before I was proud to share a piece of my culture and lifestyle, I found myself frequently begging lack of appetite rather than peak interest in which dishes I was choosing to partake. It strained my appreciation of the culture I had been given the chance to experience. Health conscious but thoroughly castigated, polite apologies were my solution to the dinner party problem. The latent problem was the ambivalence created in respect to my vegetarian diet. Attention to my diet was shirked, as my only focus became a steadfast loyalty to the lifestyle.
Recipes turned to routine and I ate almost the same three meals each day simply because eating is necessary. Something akin to joy left when I stopped cooking to cook, to experiment, to share and to create. Diffidence turned me into a person who happened to not eat meat rather than a vegetarian. I lost sight of the fact that being vegetarian is a sign of my culture, finding nothing extraordinary about it a luxury of my culture. As culture, it should be respected even if it cannot be understood. My patience with Ukrainian culture was worn thin as a result of the constant disparagement of my own. Then a couple weeks ago an unexpected thing happened. Cherries reappeared in the bazaar, and I was ready to cook again.
In the midst of my period of dietary monotony, I volunteered to take the role of head of Healthy Lifestyle Working Group’s newly created Recipe Committee. Part of me clearly wanted to be twirling around the kitchen again. Though in its nascence, the committee had some immediate goals; to acquaint volunteers throughout the country with the ins and outs of Ukrainian gastronomy (as in what is possible, not necessarily cultural) by season and, as the name suggests, dispersing recipes via blogs and monthly newsletters. So here is a declaration to all of my readers, no longer shall I neglect my cooking blog. I cannot promise consistency as Peace Corps summers are filled with travels and summer camps, but for every week I am at site I will share a minimum of two recipes I have tasted, tweaked, or thought up. Perhaps you’ll find something you want to try, perhaps a vegetarian (or carnivorous!) PCV in another Eastern European country will be encouraged or inspired to let their culinary creativity flow or simply to cook after a long, hard day at work. No matter their influence, the recipes will be here…and I’ll be cooking up something new.
*Music: “Rewind” -Diane Birch
End of service in sight, I’m being shredded by conflicting urges. A wanderlust pulls at my feet, shoelaces, ponytail as it whips in the air on my runs. It trips me in any direction, spinning me around for the sake of yet another city, journal entry, photograph, running event. My headphones, their connection broken on one side, emphasize the lack where I could be hearing the crashing of waves as I run along the river in Budapest until the absence is all I can think about. The screaming of adventures to be had reaches a shrill screech that leaves me deprived of any sense of direction yet feverish and itching to move until I throw open the windows in my new apartment and listen to the haunting sound of night trains passing through. Their mournful hooting brings the quiet whispering of the familiar that beckons in the crisp night air, reminiscent of an Illinois frost.
Fears tug and scratch on either side; If I go straight home am I ordinary? If I run home immediately after living abroad, does it negate my separation by revealing a yearning for the familiar, showing that there were indeed rough times or that, mentally, I was home all along? But then, with what speed is it ok to return from a new culture without being seen as fleeing? If I continue to move, am I running from something I’d rather not face? Rarely have I met a volunteer who joined the program simply for the experience; there’s always an ulterior motive, conscious or subconscious, ranging from a desire to change or save the world to the less noble resume padding. On several occasions it has crossed my mind that perhaps, in arriving I was running, making the only literarily (and, if the idea behind mimesis is correct, literally) appropriate next step a return to the abandoned.
The expansive horizon of possibilities has washed over me, suddenly and with surprising force. Perhaps I hit the trifecta, the perfect combination of non-fiction adventure memoirs, personal travels, and boundless optimism, catalyzing my wandering desire. A through-hike of the Appalachian Trail seems a logical next step, never having been seriously considered before. Uprooting my life to live a clandestine year in Budapest makes perfect sense after a brief three day visit. Reckless abandon seems to be the feeling I’m trying to embrace, something akin to what I felt visiting friends at College of Santa Fe when we went cliff jumping. Every fiber tense with the natural urge to hold back, there was something intoxicating in breaking with logic and literally throwing oneself off a cliff. The water’s cushioning presence in no way detracted from my vertiginous tumbling through the air, I tell myself, so why should home? After all, the only reason I leapt was my security in the knowledge that the water would be there at the end of my plunge.
*Music: “The Quick & the Dead” -Bedouin Soundclash
Lately I’ve been seized by an all encompassing quiet. Exhaustion has set in, and only extreme quiet ameliorates my mood. The mental silence of running has become my haven and training for the Prague Marathon is my foundation in many ways. Routine has muffled any mental noise or confusion, and it’s calm if not entirely comforting. My running schedule, diet, and water intake are all regulated closely which, to my surprise, ended up organizing all other parts of my schedule almost entirely. Being without a computer for roughly two weeks did wonders for calming my nerves and anxiety, and I found myself much happier for my ignorance on world news.
Spring, it seems, is bent on ensuring my life isn’t too quiet. My quiet morning runs are full of pops and snaps. The emerging birds drop sticks from the trees with small pops that usually make me jump a little, which I am then forced to play off as if I’m an oddly bouncy walker. Fires snap and pop thickening the morning fogs as the residents of Drohobych clear their yards of sticks, twigs, and trash. The edges of the fields are being prepared for the spring plantings, and the black soil is usually rimmed with a thin red outline as the weeds burn wetly. Sunflower seeds crack in the teeth of local high school boys skipping school as they lean on the sagging metal fences of the local stadium, watching me run.
With two months until the end of the semester I’m close to collapsing. Seeing Erin was an amazing uplifter which turned into as much if not more of a downer the second I said goodbye to her at the airport. I experienced first-hand the confusion of hours upon hours of translating until I could no longer tell which language I was speaking. My working group is preparing for our first summer camp to teach Ukrainian children about healthy lifestyles and all that encompasses – alcohol and smoking awareness, HIV/AIDS awareness, nutrition, sportsmanship and teamwork, and respect for oneself and others. I’m still working out plans for a very quick trip into Moldova to poke around wine country, will be enjoying historic Ukrainian/Polish sites in Poland around Easter time, and seeing a brand new city May 6-9 when my relay runs the marathon in Prague. Things have ceased to seem new, making it hard to know what to write to all of you back home. I’m largely inured to the ups and downs of daily Peace Corps life, but still thoroughly enjoy watching my month countdown dwindle.
*Music: “Expectations” -Belle & Sebastian
Snowy winters suit Drohobych, if not my Prague Marathon training. The dirty yellow haze of a sun looked this morning as if painted in abstract. No warmth comes from it, no rays fall on the cold morning floor, the world has become dove grey, yet the snow seems to dance with the otherwise absent light. Each object is blanketed, the sidewalks merely compressed, not cleared, snow. Even the trodden streets look an oddly pleasing shade of cappuccino as if the color was created with purpose, not just an adulteration of the blinding white bordering the roads. I feel comfortable in this world, nestled in the grey. The texture of the snow covering the streets resembles creamed butter and sugar, the first step of home-made cookies, and the vision is just as comforting as the cookies of which I’m reminded. Fresh snow has twirled and spiraled to the ground for a solid four days as if nature had a great blizzard in store for our sleepy town, but decided there was no need to rush.
Although getting myself out the door to run is an endeavor, gratification always accompanies the effort. I have my own personal lane in the field of white barely recognizable as the sports school track. The crisscross pattern worn into the snow by my YakTracks after each run is gently blurred in the continuously falling snow, yet somehow detectable when I return. In a town big enough to grant anonymity, my runs identify me. The same early morning cross-country skiers share the stadium with me, our breath-clouds looking less forlorn for the company. Though gawking, familiar faces accompany my runs, I create for myself a duel world. The daily commuters and I share this time, the worn familiarity, while I simultaneously cut myself off. In for three, out for two – there’s just my breathing, the falling snow, and the opera I play on my ipod.
*Music: “I Can Feel a Hot One” -Manchester Orchestra
Enjoying some final sun and warmth our last day in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Our friend Hassan wanted us to all pose together, but I prefer the relaxed candid.
*Music: “Bend” -Ben Sollee
I haven’t written a blog entry in quite a while, and that is most likely an understatement. Journaling in general seems vapid and frivolous to me these days. Running on full speed 7-11 each day has worn me thin to the point where I don’t have independent thought outside my minute to minute schedule, let alone find the little that passes through from time to time worth anyone else’s time or energy.
The only thing I’ve had to be thankful for in some time was moment of complete silence walking back from the grocery store two days ago (a three mile round-trip). Along a major road, nonetheless, the only sound was the crunching of gravel under my shoes as I crossed one of the torn apart intersections. It lasted for perhaps 20 seconds, but it was a glimpse of a break and rest I hadn’t gotten in over two weeks. My emotional exhaustion has surpassed anything but vague, hazy notions of emotions and most of the time I feel unenthusiastic and generally sub-par.
I’ve started a journaling project at one school through which the senior students are consistently writing “letters to Linnea.” Though the amount of work I have each night has skyrocketed as a result, the project is what I’d tentatively call fulfilling and a success. Personalizing the attention I give each student through our letters back and forth has already achieved marked improvements their writing and participation. Students I never thought would say a word in class are openly sharing their lives with me through these journals and I’m thankful for that step forward even if it means more sleepless nights of grading past 3 am.
Other than that, I’m regretting my luck of being out of the country for the release of such a ground-breaking book as Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes. Most of you are well aware of my literary fixation, so I’m only going to say that this is the biggest step in melding literary art and visual art since the release of Tristram Shandy (in my humble opinion). I’m jonesing a copy and tearing my hair out over Amazon not having it.
The daily grind keeps going day in and day out, though I’m enjoying a weekend of running, watching “The Wire,” and reading Gone With the Wind. My next rest will be on International Women’s Day, a holiday I’m in full support of America finally adopting.
*Music: “Against the Wind” -Bob Seger
*Please note that temperature discrepancies throughout this entry are due to the fact that it took me several weeks to find enough time to sit down and complete an entire blog entry.
I’ve torn myself, for a few evanescent moments, from the pages of my current reads to devote some attention to my ever increasingly neglected blog. Though the temperatures are mercifully holding steady around a balmy 50oF, the before 5 pm sunsets have me wrapping myself in the comfort and warmth of my annual winter hibernation mode. My daily totals of sleeping hours and tea consumption are simultaneously increasing. This weekend I prematurely indulged in my favorite way to pass a winter weekend – I alternated watching episodes of an entire season of Grey’s Anatomy with reading what amounted to almost three entire books while continually wrapped in my fleece blanket, sipping scorching hot coffee or chai tea lattes. A fireplace would have made the picture complete; that, however, is a luxury waiting for me at the end of my Peace Corps service.
The soothing combination of modern Motown and cinnamon laden hot drinks has driven away any mercurial moods lingering from my mid-semester slump and I eagerly await my favorite season of the year. What I love about winter is simple – everything is wrapped in a fleecy haziness that lulls me into passive good cheer. The crystalline frost outside only underscores the simple comforts of gliding over the wood floor with sock or slipper-clad feet, pulling on a sweatshirt immediately upon waking in the silvery mornings, or sliding my icy fingers through the handle of a steaming mug of tea. Despite my pining for the delicious solitary moments dawning, I should fill you in on all that has happened.
I put my foot down about a fall break, giving myself a week to cross the border into Poland with Kari to meet her gregarious friend Ama. Kari and I crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border on foot, quite the interesting experience. Ukrainians apparently don’t take well to cutting in line, which Kari and I found out through the faux pas of a man who seemed undisturbed by the string of rather harsh curses that followed him.
Krakow main square
Wordpress is hating me right now as it has not allowed me to post any more than the one picture of Krakow no matter how many times I try to update the entry, thus they will be posted at a later date. The first snow has officially fallen and stuck in Drohobych, winter has announced the end of fall. My book goal is going strong and I’m working on catching up on an array of emails, messages, and cards that have been pushed off because of Thanksgiving celebration preparation.
Ten volunteers came into town to partake in an American Thanksgiving that was as American as we could make it. The night before Thanksgiving, Kelly helped me bake apple pies at her apartment, allowing me to video Skype with my mom – the first time I’ve seen her since my trip to Denmark and Sweden in June. Lows hit me harder than some volunteers here who have constant access to video Skype because I don’t have that direct line to a support system be it friends or family. I feel the distance more strongly than many other volunteers because the distance shows through our connection, or lack thereof. We can only talk through Skype with audio interrupted by amounts of static, delays, and cut offs proportionate to the number of miles between us. Steadier connections tend to leave me maudlin for a couple days because of their scarcity – an hour phone call from a friend in the states left me a shaky, sobbing mess from happiness hearing from her and sadness at having to give up the miraculous connection after the shortest hour I’ve ever experienced.
Thanksgiving was memorable this year, for lack of a more concise word. Not only was there massive Thanksgiving dinner preparations going on in my kitchen, I also had to get myself ready and hurry to my best Ukrainian friend’s wedding. I was flattered to be Olesya’s Maid of Honor in the small document-signing ceremony. She and her husband, Ivan, will have their official wedding ceremony this spring (or so our mutual hair dresser was telling me in Ukrainian) but I’m glad I got to be a part of this smaller, more intimate rite. As Maid of Honor, I was allowed to take an active role in some of the traditional rituals, such as laying down the embroidered cloth onto which the bride and groom take their first steps as a married couple. I feel absurdly lucky for having fortuitously met Olesya in the post office one day last winter; her family has become my family. I now have two Ukrainian families of which I feel myself a part. What more can a girl abroad ask for?
Not to brag or anything, but my wedding toast at the reception dinner made her mom cry and dad tear up a bit. In case you’re interested, here’s (approximately) how my extemporaneous toast went (*I don’t remember exactly because it was impromptu and I was shaky and crying all my makeup off);
In Ukrainian; “Although I can speak Ukrainian, I am going to say this in English because I want to be concise. Pavlo (Olesya’s brother) will be my translator.”
In English; “Olesya, I am so happy and honored to be here today because, though it’s only been around a year since I met you, you have become my sister. Your family has become like my family, and I hope that when they come to Ukraine, my family will become like yours. The first time you brought Ivan to a cafe to meet me, I could see in your eyes how happy you were; I knew you had found the person you were meant to find. I cannot tell you how happy I am that you have found the one person who can complete you. Ivan, thank you for making my friend the happiest I have ever seen her. I wish, for both of you, that no matter where you live, what job you have, how much money you make, or how many children you eventually have, that you never forget the feeling you have now of pure happiness of just being with one another.”
As you’ve likely divined, Thanksgiving will never again be the same for me. Despite its ups and downs and my distance from family, this just might have been the best Thanksgiving ever. I hope everyone had a special Thanksgiving, filled with loved ones and warmth.
*Music: “You and I Are a Gang of Losers” -The Dears
