2007 Photo Montage

Merry Christmas!

Greetings!
Our Christmas photo montage is attached! It’s Christmas Eve (kind of) here in Kiev. The snow has melted during the last couple of days and the weather, for winter, is quite pleasant. Since Ukraine was under communism, Christmas is really celebrated, but trees and decorations and gifts are exchanged during the New Year. Some people also take advantage of the Orthodox Christmas (Jan 7th) to head out for a drink or another holiday party. Alister and I will celebrate our Christmas on the 25th – old habits die hard and really – how can you wait another 2 weeks until opening presents!!!
Really, it is quite nice. There is no holiday rush, no frenzy. The stores are just as crowded (or empty) as they are during other weeks. Only the street venders selling fireworks and garlands and the fact that all the supermarkets have Soviet Champaign on special – betray the fact that now we have entered into a different buying season.
We are looking forward to celebrating our first Christmas together and discovering the many adventures in store for us over the next year. One project for sure will be fixing up a mud walled cottage that we are trying to buy out in the country. As it’s not ours yet – and as its winter – our only active fixing up to date has been to burn piles and piles of rotting clothes and shoes that had been providing a home for rodents over the past 25 years. Currently we are planning the best solution for an outhouse. Our neighbor, who goes to our church and moved to the village a few years ago – has promised to teach us how to make the clay and manure mixture needed to patch and strengthen the crumbing walls and I guess we’ll figure out the rest of it as we go along.

We’re thinking of you as you celebrate this season and anticipate your own plans for the next year.

Wishes of Peace and Joy
-Sarah and Alister

Black Glasses Update: a PS on observing

I got to observe for the elections! Despite all possible detterents, things fell into place at the last minute. I visited three polling stations, had hoped to watch the count at a fourth, but ended up unable to attend.

The story of this will follow - but right now I am off to Russian class!

Opaque Black Glasses

I've seemingling missed my chance to be an election observer.

I had thought I had done everything right - called the right people, filled out the appropriate forms. I even read 300 pages of material in order to take (and pass) an official OSCE test for people working with the OSCE.

It turns out, that all the right people - weren't quite right. I did more that was necesary and yet managed to do none of the right things at all in order to be an observer. When I called again on Wednesday - just wanting to follow up - I was informed that the Central Election Committee was no longer accepting applications.
Well what about my application, I asked.

They hadn't heard of me. When I told them the process I had gone through she said she was sorry but that they hadn't heard of that and that the Embassy must have misunderstood and told me the wrong thing.

Sigh.

The worst part is that even my BackAlley connection turned out to be a little sketchy.

After three phone calls - always at progressively later times each night (the last calling at 11pm to set up an appointment for the next day without telling me a time or a place for the appointment) we finally managed to meet. Basically he called "the next day" I dropped everything and went to meet him then rather than meet him at 10pm at night in an unkonown region of the city - which was his first proposition.

He says that he can get me - or rather - has requested an Observer position for me. However, he will tell me more about this when i come to a festival that he and others, who he doesn't want to mention or go into details about, are sponsoring next Wednesday at 10am. This is, afterall, only the first time that we have met and is only the start of our relationship. At this next meeting he would be able to tell me more about the possibility of observing and even give me an observer pass to go and Observe wherever i want. I would be observing alone, without a group or anyone to report to. - Except I would be expected to share my experience with him and his collegues at three other Festivals to take place in April, June and October of next year on Dates which were revealed to him by God just as God revealed the plan of the New Jeruselm Temple to Moses and told him to build a copy of it on earth.

The most curious thing about the meeting was that he had three books in front of them, and he referred to them off an on throughout our conversation. However, with one of the books he always put on glasses while with the other books, he read without the glasses. This in itself may not seem strange, if not for the composition of the glasses themselves.

Each of the glasses lenses was made from solid, opaque black plastic. Within each lens, several, small, pinsized holes had been drilled so that 12 - 20 small holes penetrated the surface. An observer could not have seen the eyes of the reader through the holes, and to my mind, the reader would have had a very difficult time trying to read through a small splattering of holes.

The man didn't cooperate with answering any of my questions. I had already been in his office and hour and decdied that something so mysterious as the impenatrable black glasses, would be met with an equally opaque answer as those i had been given regaurding other matters. I decided to leave.

Still, I would like to know what the glasses were for.

Organizing orSpices

In my mother's kitchen, seasonings neatly occupy two lazy susans on the bottom and middle shelves of her cupboard. Though some herbs and spices are more beloved than others, the place of each is dictated not by frequence of use or love, but rather by whatever scientific study or luck granted to each seasoning its English name begining with one of the 26 letters of the latin alphabet. The seasoning are stacked in two contentric circles on the lazy susans - cinnamon, clove, corriander, cumin, etc.

After scouring the streets and stores of Kiev, I have finally purchased an ample store of all the useful seasonings that I am bound to use and which are available in Kiev. Some were harder than others to locate. Rosemary and Sage - for example - can only be found in the bulk food store - though I did once see a Babushka selling live rosemary plants, most Ukrainians are not likely to know what I want when I ask for rozmarin.

Now that I have my spices, I'm not uite sure what to do with them. Not only do I not have a lazy susan, but neither do the spices come in compact bottles and tubes that can be easily arranged and stacked. Rather they come in large, paper packages, which take up an abundant amount of space and are always falling over. I finally solved this problem by cuttin ghte topp off of a cerial box and stuffing the packets in the box in mimicry of a poorly formed roladex.

I had thought this would solve the problem, but unfortunately, no. The first time I went to cook - I discovered that I didn't know where my seasoning were and had to flip through every item in the box to find what i wanted. How do I organize the the spices? Alphbetically by their English names didn't work - because the packages are in Russian - But I don't know all the russian names yet - and who knows when I actually will get them all. Second - i don't know the correct order of the Russian alphabet, and not only are some of the letters in very differnt places (V coming after B) but some of the letters are completely diferent (a "sh" letter for instance that looks like a double UU).

There seem to be only three alternatives
1) I learn the Russian Alphabet and organize alphabetically using Cyrillic letters
2) I relable all of the packages in English
3)I invent a new order of the russian Alphabet that makes sense to me but not anyone else.

So far option number three is the most attractive - but we'll see how long its functionality will take it.

Did you take pictures of our wedding?

Just a quick question - if you took pictures of our wedding - Please sign up for Winkflash, http://www.winkflash.com/ upload the photos, and add me as a friend (use junk email alt@dr.com with alister's name) capable of viewing your shared folder.

We are putting together our wedding albulm and right now Winkflash is having a sale where all books - no matter how many pages can be made for 19.95 (shipping not included) Anyway - we want to take advantage of this but we also want to include the pictures you all took too - in order to get a full picture of our speacial day.

THANKS

Who says stuff can't make you happy?

Just a quicky - The Meest packages we shipped arrived today! The man arrived at 9am and all boxes were intact - nothing broken and so many precious surprises! I now have cookbooks! And aprons! And my lovely, warm quilts that my mommy made me!

Not to mention my Russian textbook that I risked sending because I was sure the box would arrive before classes started ;-) My teacher, I know, will be thrilled when I come to class with my books today.

So the great thing about Meest is that its reliable (6-8 wks by boat) - unlike the post office (the only letters that seem to come through are from my dad . . . . Maybe if you pretend to be him - yours will come too. ) Also for the service (almost 100% guaranteed courier delivery) the price is reasonable - also better than standard post, fedex, and other shipping options. Prices vary depending on your location in the US and you can either mail things directly from the offices (giving you a little taste of Russia - at the Federal Way office where we shipped - there were scores of Belorussians, Ukrainians, and Russians shipping out packages and suggesting the best way to tape up our boxes - no English was spoken by any of the staff there.) Or you can pre-fill the custom forms and ship via UPS to a Meest office and they will ship your package for you.
Thanks Meest for a job well done and for adding a HUGE smile to the start of our day!