In the village, people knew who we were. I didn't know all of them but they all knew me. They shouted my name on the street and when Matt and Mike went into the disco, the girls screamed like they were rock stars. The guys looked sheepish but they loved it. It was different in this larger town.
I lived in a second-story apartment for a month with two host parents. My new host mom had a small concession kiosk near one of the schools, and my new host dad was a radio deejay or “radio journalist” as he called himself. He gave me a book of poems he had written in Ukrainian. He liked to make jokes and point out things. He was a Ukrainian teacher and offered to be my Ukrainian tutor so I could continue to learn the language.
I had a hard time letting go at first. It was January and winter. I hadn’t seen the sun in weeks. I wrote home about each dark day and about how miserable I was. Antonella and I called each other daily to share our misery.
There was more mud than grass in Ukraine and the roads became wet and muddy in the winter. I suddenly understood why taking off shoes was so important to Ukrainians. I bought Ukrainian black winter booths that were very stylish. Because everyone else in Ukraine took such good care of their shoes, I learned to wipe mine off with a rag after stomping through the mud. I even polished them with black shoe polish when needed. I had never shoe-polished anything in my life.
I wrote my real mom emails full of angsty text I was embarrassed to read later like, "I'm not sure I'll ever be happy here," and "How dare you allow me to move here. What kind of mother are you?"
My mom wrote me an email after a few weeks of these sappy letters and said, "You might not want to hear this, but you can't focus too hard on the past or you won't enjoy the future."
I felt dark, dark, dark. I stayed in my room a lot and moped gloomily around. I cried in the bathtub. I went for long walks and called Antonella. The dead of winter was a bad time to move to a new place.
My new host mom liked to ask me all kinds of questions while we ate and I was always slow to respond as I paged through limited vocabulary words in my head.
I loved my counterpart teacher (my school liaison), Tricia (name changed). She seemed to understand that I was worried and nervous. She was sweet and patient and liked to tease me. I attended classes with her that first week in Koziatyn. I was at lessons on Dec. 25, and the children from fifth from came in and decorated the classroom and lit sparklers to wish me a Merry Christmas. Her classroom was one of the nicest I had ever seen in Ukraine. The desks were smooth and new. Posters, obtained from a volunteer two years previously, hung on the walls and the rear of the room was filled with English textbooks and picture books.
In two of her English lessons, I read dictations for the students, which the kids were both pleased and worried by. We didn't have "dictations" back home. When Sestra back in the village mentioned the word, I was not sure what she meant. "Dictation," she said. "It's an ENGLISH word." It meant I read a paragraph in English to the students and they wrote it down word for word to practice spelling and recognizing the words. Sometimes I'd pronounce something different then the British way and they'd look at their teacher for help. Sometimes my teacher would correct my American pronunciation to sound more British English. As I have a terrible British accent, this was comical. The children were taught not to pronounce the ‘R’ on ‘car’ or ‘bar’ and that one should say, “I shall head to the theater after supper,” instead of “will.”
This meant the Ukrainian children all spoke like little British kids with Ukrainian accidents.
I also fought with Sestra over “supper” versus “dinner” for the evening meal.
I was just in time for the last week of the semester for the students at school in my new town, which meant I didn’t really do much. I walked to school most mornings with Tricia. It was a chilly and peaceful 30-minute walk. The teachers were busy with paperwork and recording grades and the children were eager for the holiday to begin at the end of December.
For my first New Year’s Eve, I got permission to go to Kiev and meet my previous host family. Tamara walked with me to the train station and put me on a train under the care of her friend, who worked one of the cars. New Year’s was more important than Christmas, probably because it was a big non-religious holiday that they were allowed to celebrate during the Soviet Union. People dressed up and lit off fireworks.
I went to the circus with Oksana and Slava, and later we went to a wax museum. I got my picture taken with Stalin, Lenin, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Britney Spears.
In the evening we walked around Independence Square and admired the huge New Year’s Tree. Before I came back home on New Year’s Eve, Tamila ordered pizza for lunch. She laid the table with a plate of fish, holodets and pizza. I smiled at the picture it made of Ukraine and America/Italy on the table. Holodets is a dish made of meat chilled in a bowl of jello meat fat. It’s a traditional Ukrainian dish and many Ukrainians tried to convince me how tasty it was. I was not moved.
Back in Koziatyn, my host family had supper at 11:30 p.m. and toasted the New Year at midnight. I had the thought that the New Year wouldn’t begin for another nine hours in Colorado.
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