To Ujgorod and Beyond! (mid-June)

Immediately after my camp I headed to Ujgorod in Zakarpattia to celebrate Lauren and Sean’s birthdays. We had shashlik at a river with a bunch of PCVs and Ukrainians (the Zakarpatska crew are so close they get to see each other all the time, so it’s a solid group). There was an old mill on the river, so we jumped off the concrete embankment into a deep channel for some thrills. Later we watched a bit of the World Cup in a bar and played Catch-Phrase (wild and crazy party!) in the apartment they rented. Alia and I went on a quest for “Supersnacks” around 3, and convinced Lauren to join us on a sunrise stroll when we returned. On Sunday we walked around town and saw the castle and a cute open-air museum with period housing. It reminded me again of Laura Ingalls, and I stand fast to the belief that rural Ukraine bears a striking similarity to “Little House on the Prairie.”

That night, Sean, Alia, and I took the train to Ternopil for Camilla’s baseball camp. Matvi, Nikita, and Ian joined us there, so the camp was well staffed by PCVs. We stayed at a “hotel” that cost $2.50 a night (the toilet was at the end of the hall, and there were no showers). My baseball experience consists of years of watching my brothers advance through Little League. Baseball has a lot of weird rules that don’t make much sense, especially if you’re a Ukrainian kid who has never seen the game before. It made me realize that Americans like complicated sports. We had kids running the wrong way, lapping their slower teammates around the bases, chasing after people to make outs…it was amusing. The fun continued as we tried to explain pop flies and forced outs and automatic walks. The 4th graders were so cute though, and Camilla is trying to get them ready for Little League in Ukraine, which has a championship tournament in Odessa in May. We went to a sauna one night (personally I find it somewhat masochistic, because it’s borderline unbearable and yet I try to convince myself that I enjoy the sweat). We alternated between skin-prickling dry heat and an ice-cold tub—which my days in Maine prepared me well for. Another day we packed a picnic (after shopping in a giant Wal-Mart-esque store—so exciting!) and ate by the lake in the center of Ternopil, a lovely, leafy green city, under whose waters lies buried a railway depot destroyed during WWII. We also had time to hang out in Camilla’s gorgeous house—her host parents work in Moscow for months at a time, and they make good money in an unidentified business.