The Kafe

Our language trainer decided that all the families and PCT's should all go out for dinner one night our first week. It was very fun and involved tasting all sorts of interesting things like pizza with mayonaise and tongue (which was really really good).

But after the meal the fun began. She proposed a game of singing, which is in a sense a Ukrainian pasttime, where the Americans would sing some American song, and the Ukrainians would sing either a Russian or Ukrainian song. They began. It was beautiful. After their turn had ended, we looked around the table somewhat confused. I can't remember what we settled on, but during this time frame we sang, "This Land is Your Land," "You are My Sunshine," "Oh, Suzanna!" "Stop in the Name of Love," and some patriotic songs. The Ukrainians cleaned the floor with our poor American showmanship. Their songs were beautiful and very melodic and they easily won that match.

The three of us women in the group (we are all about the same age, there are an older couple in my cluster as well) decided one night after a particularly stressful language lesson (we are also all at different levels of the language, the two of them having studied it at length prior and have an excellent grasp on it, whilst I have a small background and the couple have none) to go to the kafe again and drink some piva (beer) and chai (tea). We sat outside, although a bit cold, and just talked and talked for quite some time. After a while had passed, the waitress brought out three pieces of cake and explained that some boys had bought them for us. We could not see anyone around, but gladly took the torte. Soon after three men came and sat down at the table next to us, but they didn't seem like the sorts that would be interested in buying cake for young American devushki's (girls) so we sent in the best Russian speaker to ask the woman who bought them for us. She took her by the hand and repeated Vee-tall-eee. We followed her into the bar next door and this young man stood up and introduced himself. We walked outside and talked for a bit and I was simply excited by the fact that I could follow the conversation. He did not speak English, wanted to know what we were doing there, and why were there. We thanked him for the cake, to which he replied, "you can't have tea without cake" in Russian, which was quite nice. After that we all left, and we were all quite pleased at how well that interaction went instead of it ending up being some smarmy Ukrainian looking for "easy" American girls.

But that interaction has been more the norm here than anything else. Ukrainians are very friendly on the whole and the town where I am is quite different than my prior experience in St. Petersburg where smiling was not something you did on the street or talking to strangers.