One Giant Steppe for Mankind

08 February 2015

Photo Frenzy from Four Weeks of Frolicking

Sorry for the hiatus. Make sure you check out the new pages in the tabs at the TOP of the blog. They were very interesting to write and both contain pictures that you'll want to see.

Anyway, December through the end of January was packed with the following.

(1) My family visiting Dnipropetrovs'k, Kyiv, and L'viv, ending with a New Year's Eve extravaganza with the Ukrainian cousins (Possibly additional pictures to come from Mom and Dad, as they were the primary photographers)

Dnipropetrovs'k

Oddly enough, one of our only family photos (unfortunately a seflie) from the trip;
on a cloudy Dnipropetrovs'k day on the river

Great traditional Ukrainian restaurant

The Embankment at nighttime

Kyiv

Blessed with nice weather at Pecherska Lavra;
toured a mini catacomb;
proud of mom, dad, and Chris for overcoming fake claustrophobia

Geiger counter for added comfort

Mom getting artsy (probably by accident) with iPhone filters;
Kyiv train station, L'viv-bound

L'viv

Someone finally decided to start using her Ukrainian;
She was quite uncooperative in Dnipropetrovs'k and Kyiv

Best use of English-language advertising in Ukraine

We found a Chinese (and unfortunately Japanese) restaurant in L'viv named Beijing (Pekin);
My dad was a celebrity and let's just say Chinatown and Flushing
don't have much competition in Ukraine

One of many family reunions;
this one was on the farm where my grandmother grew up

Long Island, NY

Couldn't resist.
This is exhausted Sophie after welcoming the family home (sans yours truly)

Thank you mom, dad, and Chris for the incredible visit. It hasn't been easy living so far away from you, but the challenges are what have made the journey so exciting. I'm thankful to have shared some of my adventures with you. I hope seeing and experiencing Ukraine was as eye-opening for you as it continues to be for me. The part of this journey that has had the strongest impact on me is that this is the opportunity to live, work, and learn for others, especially when those others are our ancestral brothers and sisters in Ukraine. I have you to thank for instilling in me the mindset to pursue an unwavering commitment to other people. I bet babcha and aunt Stephanie have the biggest smiles on right now.

(2) Volunteering at a U.S. Embassy-sponsored camp in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitski for teenaged Ukrainian students studying American English in Cherkassy, Donetsk, and Luhansk

Sunset on the icy Dnipro

The students, teachers, and staff at the US Embassy in Kyiv with the US Ambassador to Ukraine
(Geoffrey Pyatt, with the green tie);
He has been on the US news a lot and even met with John Kerry and President Poroshenko recently in Kyiv

I can't emphasize how much I enjoyed working with these students and their teachers. They were from the central Ukrainian city of Cherkassy, and the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. From the humanities and arts to mathematics and the sciences, these students are extremely talented and motivated. They are now equipped with American English in addition to Ukrainian and Russian, so the world is theirs to explore. They are certainly going to have nothing but positive impacts on the people around them in the future and I am proud to know them.

Another big thank you to fellow volunteers at the camp. I can't wait for reunions and future projects together.

(3) Visiting Krakow and doing another round of Kyiv/Dnipropetrovs'k with my BC friend/second-violin partner/lifeguard coworker/Campus School Marathon teammate Hayley

Krakow

Passport control entering Poland

Wawel

Just a fire-breathing dragon

Beautiful rivers are abundant in Eastern Europe

Not your everyday intersections
Left: in Krakow; note L'wów (L'viv in Polish) a mere 280 km away
Right: Somewhere on Route 66 in the American Southwest; seeing the sign in Krakow
made me recall the amazing travels I had this summer while interning; note Warsaw is 5887 miles away

Wieliczka Salt Mine Cathedral
Flashback to the first day of 9th grade geology, licking halite

Me and one of many Pope John Paul II Statues

Saw a chamber concert in this church
Chopin was partly featured of course

Krakow Opera House

The Cloth Hall

Eagles in Krakow; Hopefully the end of my selfie career

(More) Kyiv

We saw the immediate Maidan response to the events in Mariupol
Photo credit: Hayley

More Le Petit Prince;
this time with fox, a dashing robe,
and a former French language student

National Philharmonic of Ukraine;
Barber, Prokofiev, and Brahms night

The Funicular

We couldn't resist trying Domino's;
apparently they take delivery very seriously

(More) Dnipropetrovs'k

Hayley, you have a great knack for exploration, pretty sharp photography skills, and an uncanny ability to locate felines. Thank you for the crazy adventure. I'm sure it won't be our last.

Location omitted for emphasis

One of my new favorites in Ukraine is this sculpture,

27 November 2014

The Life and Times of Dnipropetrovsk- Part 2

Before anything, Happy Thanksgiving to my family, my friends, and everyone else in the United States. You are with me everyday in spirit and Thanksgiving Day is no exception. This is the first Thanksgiving I've spent away from my family, much less the entire country. I've been sure to spread the love of my favorite US holiday to my students and coworkers. It kills me to miss everything, but I will celebrate wholeheartedly here with my Dnipropetrovs'k family. Stay tuned for documentation of the festivities.

Fun fact, if you have a friend who speaks Russian, ask him/her to translate the word for "Native American woman". Then watch the smile creep up on his/her face. There are two possibilities: (1) there exists no Russian word for "Native American woman" and (2) the word is the same word for "turkey". No one here knows (envision me shrugging my shoulders).

This will be a photo post, arguably the best kind. Please enjoy the pictures and the occasional witty caption.

Some notes before beginning,

(1) I promise to get to the aforementioned topics in last post's "next time" section.

(2) I've noticed that I have used a consistently clumsy spelling of my city's name. To begin an explanation with a simpler example, Kyiv is the English transcription of the Ukrainian and Kiev is the English transcription of the Russian. Naturally I try to show my Ukrainian pride by sticking with the Ukrainian variant. I encourage you to do the same. My spelling of Dnipropetrovsk is actually a careless hybrid of of the Ukrainian and Russian transcriptions. Ukrainian: Dnipropetrovs'k / Russian: Dnepropetrovsk. Therefore I will henceforth use Dnipropetrovs'k. In my defense, my neglectfulness could very well be from my environment. As I have stated before, my academic background is in Russian language and I have minor verbal knowledge of Ukrainian from my mother's side of the family. In Ukraine, all official documents, street signs, grocery store signs, and largely anything written, are in Ukrainian since it is the sole national language. Ukrainian is the main language of verbal communication in western Ukraine. Central Ukraine flip flops between Russian and Ukrainian. Eastern Ukraine (like where I am, although I believe I'm technically central Ukraine), is dominantly verbally Russian. Naturally this makes it complex for me to practice reading Russian. Ukrainian is almost identical to Russian at times, but is equally almost identical to Polish at other times (in pronunciation only since Polish uses the Latin alphabet while Ukrainian and Russian use the Cyrillic alphabet). Ukrainian can also be entirely independent from Russian and Polish. So in the most complicated way possible, I justify my spelling mistake. Futurama and Sir Patrick Stewart adequately convey my daily linguistic struggles. (Transcriptions do not adhere to standard rules, and are for ease of pronunciation to the American reading eye only)