Fun stuff:

After the usual marathon GAD meeting at the office in Kiev, Alia, Camille, Lauren, and I sat talking TEFL shop in the apartment for hours, drinking and laughing at our choice of entertainment. Finally we went out and got McDonalds for dinner (I swear, I’ve never eaten more McDonalds in my life!) went to a few bars, and ended up getting sushi at 4 am.

A year into my service, I finally got to attend Arrival Retreat at Desna to greet the new group of TEFL trainees (having missed the first three weeks of training myself, due to my Turkmen Reject status). I was there to represent GAD and talk about secondary projects, so it was nice to meet many of the new arrivals during meals and free time, and try to answer their questions and seem all wise and experienced, teehee.

The next weekend I headed west to Ternopil to celebrate Camille’s birthday with the Bilky/Borova crew and some local volunteers. We got pizza and then camped out in the nice apartment she had rented.

Back again to Kiev, this time to try my hand at flag football for the HIV/AIDS Working Group fundraiser. I pity the poor boys on my team, who had to deny their competitive spirit and accommodate my inability to catch the ball or care about winning. I kept thinking of the “Friends” Thanksgiving episode where Rachel’s job is to “go long.” In the end I actually did catch the ball, once. And made one tackle. Success! I enjoyed myself, but I was more excited for the trail mix than the football pitch. The international school where we played had us all in awe: it looked like AMERICA, shiny and new, with lockers and a real science lab and student projects on the walls and normal bathrooms and people speaking FRENCH!

Fall Break featured Kharkiv Halloween, the infamous, debaucherous, annual PCV extravaganza. It lived up to its name, so we’ll leave it at that. Meghan and I also ventured to another eastern stronghold, Dnipropetrovs’k, to see what all the mafia fuss was about. Downtown is shiny and commercial, like Kiev, flush with new money. We went to see a movie, and got candy, and ate McDonalds, and my consumer heart was happy! We also couchsurfed with a nice girl named Maria, who fed us and showed us around town and stood with us outside at a freezing cold playground drinking non-alcoholic beer with her pregnant friend, and later we watched some ridiculous old Russian comedy about a journalist on a hunting trip and missed our train so we had to take the bus to Kharkiv.

For Katy and Peter’s bon voyage party, a bunch of Vinnytsia volunteers met for a bowling alley extravaganza, featuring sushi (fried and served with ketchup?) and margaritas that cost me a day’s wages. I also saw the new Harry Potter in Ukrainian with Abbey, so it was a pretty fabulous day.

Thanksgiving was celebrated with a Bilky/Borova reunion of our training group at Meghan’s apartment, which impressively had sleeping space for everyone. Camille found a turkey at the Ternopil meat market (I had just baked two chickens for my English club’s celebration), and Meghan’s parents sent cranberry sauce, so we had the works. We also had fun making turkey handprints to decorate the apartment, honed by practice in our English clubs.

I’ve also had a lot of fun this fall with friends in Kozy-town: I went dancing once with Luda from my English club and her friend who studies languages in Kiev, so we spoke Spanish together! I also get to practice my Spanish with “Eduardo” from the center, who debuted his skills with Peter at the summer BBQ. Every so often I go to the center on a Sunday night, when they have gatherings and celebrate birthdays and eat and play charades. Occasionally I’ll have tea with my neighbor, and then there’s the requisite stop-to-chat-with-an-acquaintance-when-you-run-into-each-other-on-the-street phenomenon. I also hang out and chat with my friends after English club, when they switch into heavy Russian surjik and I am content to play Joey and laugh along. When Matt and Anya are in town we go out for a drink. And I’m such a frequent visitor of Kamilia’s apartment that her son Djora sometimes asks her, “De Ketlin?” We cook and bake and eat and watch movies and scheme about grand ideas.

I celebrated the 24th with Kamilia at her mother’s apartment, stuffing a giant fish that baked for 2 hours. I celebrated American Christmas with an epic 3.5 hour skype chat with my family, as a fly on the wall watching them unwrap their presents. Ukrainian Holy Supper was spent with Natasha at her mother’s, and Ukrainian Christmas at Marina’s playing with her adorable three-year-old daughter. Larissa came too, so I got to celebrate with almost all my work colleagues. By celebrate, I mean eat enormous quantities of food.

Transylvanian New Year: A Guide to Successful International Border Crossings During Holiday Weekends, When Public Transport Fails You:

Step 1: Assume Polish identity
Step 2: Keep walking till someone shouts at you, and then present passport (at which point sheepishly drop Polish identity in front of taxi driver who drove you to the border and said you could walk across, P.S. I’m AMERICAN, what?!)
Step 3: Hitchhike with deaf couple who gift guards with ballpoint pens; wonder what they’re talking about as you stare out the winder and wish you remembered more from 3rd grade sign-language club
Step 4: Find way to hostel where you are the only guest, therefore enjoy on the house traditional meatball soup, spicy cabbage rolls, a cake baked by the owner’s neighbor, and a bizarre Christmas film, Romanian man who had lived in Spain and Israel, Ukrainian-Romanian guy
Step 5: Wake up at 6 am the next day for an enchanting 8-hour bus ride through the snowcapped forests covering the somber slopes of the Transylvanian mountains, shrouded in white by the same blizzard that has made you lose feeling in your toes and fear for their survival.
Step 6: Stumble off the bus, starving (because during the lunch break the only things available for purchase were pretzels or chips) with a headache and non-functioning toes, and opt for a taxi instead of trying to figure out where the heck you are. This time, pretend you are Russian. Bask in the warmth and comfort of a private hostel room with TV and shower for the same price as a regular berth, and enjoy the English programs on Vikings and giant snakes showing on the Discovery Channel. Eat microwaveable food, because there is a microwave. Read “In Style” and drool over the pretty clothes.
Step 7: HEATHER AND ADAM ARRIVE, I GIFT THEM WITH GARLIC, AND WE BEGIN OUR OWN TRANSYLVANIAN ADVENTURE! This mostly consists of eating tasty foods and seeing the essential sites, because the poor madrileños aren’t used to the cold, and we’re all quite content to feast our stomachs more than our eyes. We stayed in Brasov and Cluj, and visited Dracula’s castle at Bran (Vlad Tepej never actually lived there, but the real castle is in ruins so this one gets the credit; the interior is actually quite cozy, redecorated by a queen who was gifted the estate for doing something admirable at some time or other of national strife and turmoil). We ate polenta with fried eggs and meat, and garlicky bean soup, and drank palinca (traditional plum brandy), which smelled awful but tasted nice mixed with peach juice. I impressed Adam with my ability to consume pasta at an Italian restaurant, and Heather impressed us with her ability to cook it (we made risotto in the freezing cold kitchen of the hostel, wearing our winter coats). Arpie the hostel reception guy was in love with Heather’s Spanish accent, so he begged us to come to the hostel’s New Year’s party, which consisted of an odd assortment of guests and international students from Columbia and Pakistan, respectively. We went out to the square at midnight for a beautiful fireworks display, and then danced our little hearts out at a club playing fabulous blasts from the past. We had a late brunch and took a short walk to the grocery store before polishing off the risotto, watching Shanghai Noon, and making grilled cheese, ham, and pineapple sandwiches (for which I specifically bought ketchup) before my midnight departure. Overnight trains without beds are decidedly less comfortable, and also I didn’t really like being shut in a compartment with two strangers. I arrived sleepily at Suceava to find that nothing was open, since it was a Sunday and the day after New Years. It’s at times like those that I miss America, where you can always buy something to eat, get from point A to point B, and go pee for free. Since there was no bus, I negotiated a taxi to the border and began my crossing in reverse. This time it was harder to hitch a ride; the first few cars didn’t stop (and some I didn’t hail, because the well-oiled occupants of the shiny black Mercedes looked like they might sell me into slavery), so I just started walking down the highway, and finally the owner of a suitably crappy car picked me up, and we settled on Spanish as he showed his ID cards from all the places he’s lived and worked, including Israel. He wasn’t going to Chernivtsi, so he dropped me off at an intersection and I continued my solitary march till the next car stopped; this Ukrainian-born Romanian drove me all the way to the bus station, and I managed to get a ticket to Vinnytsia and from there another marshrutka home, hours ahead of the overnight train. Success!