What I Miss
It has yet to really warm up here in Boston, and I find myself missing the beating hot sun in the Southern Ukrainian sky. I find that I miss so many things that I decided to take a break from what I was doing (shopping online for shoes) to compile a short list:
1) Speaking Russian. Or rather, attempting to speak Russian on a daily basis. It was a challenge, something I never mastered, and something that I was quite shy about doing. However, I miss it, and find myself asking students who come into our office "where are you from" about 5 times a day, hoping for a Russian or Belarusian to speak with.
2) Beer tents. While the public intoxication was not so cool, sitting down and relaxing with friends over some Bile or Yantar was nice. Also, strolling around town with beer or drinking and relaxing in parks was quite pleasant.
3) Paprika soyc. And yes, I do miss galuptsi and veriniki too. I could probably just find a Russian grocery store here, but c'mon, I'm too lazy and it's not like it was a 5 minute walk for me to get these things like it was in Nik.
4) Cheap transportation. I miss marshrutkas. I miss the buses that would take you to any podunk town in the middle of nowhere that you needed to go to. I miss the overnight trains where you could lie down and go to sleep and wake up, ready to go in a new city. I believe that one ticket to visit my padrooga in Nashville cost more than what I spent on marshrutkas, trains, and buses in my two years with Peace Corps. (Okay, maybe a year and a half?)
5) My schedule and flexibility. I had off 4 months of every year. Also, I didn't always work every single day of the week--it depended on the scheduling of my classes, so I rarely would work a 9 to 5 ever, even it meant getting up early and not finishing up with everything until 9pm or so. I'd have breaks in-between to run errands or walk down Sovietskaya. That part of the whole experience was heavenly and I did not take it for granted.
6) Crimea and Western Ukraine. Because of number 4 and 5, vacation spots were more obtainable.
7) My students and friends. I miss teaching. I love being in front of a classroom. This was something that I did not anticipate and that I'm still trying to figure out if I truly did love teaching, or just enjoyed the flexibility of it. I can't see myself desiring to return to academia for another 4 years in order to get the PhD needed to teach in the United States, so I suppose that I did not love it that much OR I just don't want to teach anyone who can oppose my authority. :)
8) Access to Europe. It pains me to think that last summer I went all over the place and relatively cheaply, and here I sit in Boston distributing my piddily two week vacation over 12 months. Oh, it's enough to make me start looking on Dave's ESL.
9) My washing machine. I hate going to laudromats.
10) Cost of living. While I made significantly less money (currently I make more in one week than I made in 2 and a half months in Ukraine) I also didn't have the same expenditures: rent, health insurance, gas, transportation, food, Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, restaurants, cable, internet, etc. It's true that not everything in that list is necessary to exist, but sort of the expectation here in the United States. And it's hard to keep up. It also didn't hurt that in Ukraine, I really didn't care too much about how I looked, as dressing professionally was a much more loose intrepretation and since I was never going to dress like the locals anyway, it didn't matter that my clothes maybe were old or dirty.
1) Speaking Russian. Or rather, attempting to speak Russian on a daily basis. It was a challenge, something I never mastered, and something that I was quite shy about doing. However, I miss it, and find myself asking students who come into our office "where are you from" about 5 times a day, hoping for a Russian or Belarusian to speak with.
2) Beer tents. While the public intoxication was not so cool, sitting down and relaxing with friends over some Bile or Yantar was nice. Also, strolling around town with beer or drinking and relaxing in parks was quite pleasant.
3) Paprika soyc. And yes, I do miss galuptsi and veriniki too. I could probably just find a Russian grocery store here, but c'mon, I'm too lazy and it's not like it was a 5 minute walk for me to get these things like it was in Nik.
4) Cheap transportation. I miss marshrutkas. I miss the buses that would take you to any podunk town in the middle of nowhere that you needed to go to. I miss the overnight trains where you could lie down and go to sleep and wake up, ready to go in a new city. I believe that one ticket to visit my padrooga in Nashville cost more than what I spent on marshrutkas, trains, and buses in my two years with Peace Corps. (Okay, maybe a year and a half?)
5) My schedule and flexibility. I had off 4 months of every year. Also, I didn't always work every single day of the week--it depended on the scheduling of my classes, so I rarely would work a 9 to 5 ever, even it meant getting up early and not finishing up with everything until 9pm or so. I'd have breaks in-between to run errands or walk down Sovietskaya. That part of the whole experience was heavenly and I did not take it for granted.
6) Crimea and Western Ukraine. Because of number 4 and 5, vacation spots were more obtainable.
7) My students and friends. I miss teaching. I love being in front of a classroom. This was something that I did not anticipate and that I'm still trying to figure out if I truly did love teaching, or just enjoyed the flexibility of it. I can't see myself desiring to return to academia for another 4 years in order to get the PhD needed to teach in the United States, so I suppose that I did not love it that much OR I just don't want to teach anyone who can oppose my authority. :)
8) Access to Europe. It pains me to think that last summer I went all over the place and relatively cheaply, and here I sit in Boston distributing my piddily two week vacation over 12 months. Oh, it's enough to make me start looking on Dave's ESL.
9) My washing machine. I hate going to laudromats.
10) Cost of living. While I made significantly less money (currently I make more in one week than I made in 2 and a half months in Ukraine) I also didn't have the same expenditures: rent, health insurance, gas, transportation, food, Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, restaurants, cable, internet, etc. It's true that not everything in that list is necessary to exist, but sort of the expectation here in the United States. And it's hard to keep up. It also didn't hurt that in Ukraine, I really didn't care too much about how I looked, as dressing professionally was a much more loose intrepretation and since I was never going to dress like the locals anyway, it didn't matter that my clothes maybe were old or dirty.
posted by Molly | 5:48 AM
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