comings and goings.

My dear friend Anya from Belarus left yesterday and Lord-willing arrived safely in Kiev, Ukraine about 2 hours ago. We had such a wonderful summer together. I took her to some neat places, most in Kentucky, which included the following highlights... (I recommend checking out every place listed below if you find yourself in the area!)

-The Historic Kentucky Theatre
-The Lexington Farmer's Market
-Shakertown
-Poor Richard's
-Keeneland
-Red River Gorge and Natural Bridge
-Miguel's at the Gorge
-Laurel Lake
-Natasha's Cafe
-Common Grounds
-Alfalfa's
-Henderson State Park in Destin, FL
-The Track in Destin
-Fudpucker's in Destin
-Costa's BBQ in Birmingham, AL
-The Jam House in Scottsville, KY (owned by Mennonites, so they're not on the internet)

As for our movie list, here are the newest additions:

-Lawrence of Arabia
-To Kill a Mockingbird
-The Philadelphia Story (seen in the Historic KY theater!)
-The Graduate
-Singin' in the Rain

I can recommend them all... the cinematography of LoA was amazing... fascinating story.

My apartment is quiet and a bit lonely now without her. I tried to explain to Alyosha that Anya left but he gave me a blank sad puppy dog look of incomprehension...

flash snow fall.

We had a furious flash snow fall yesterday. I was caught outside in it, without a hat or a hood on my coat, and of course without an umbrella. I found refuge under a tree to take some pictures. (I’ve been carrying my camera around with me everywhere… I just get too self-conscious sometimes to pull it out.)
Today, snow is melted, sun is shining across clear, blue skies. (Such a rarity for Belarus!)

I recently finished reading a book called Freedom of Simplicity by Richard Foster. This book was wonderful to read for this season leading up to Easter. The first half deals with the theology of simplicity, while the second half of the book deals with application. In the second half, he looks at three areas for living in simplicity’s freedom: inward, outward, and corporate simplicity. I found myself dog-earring a plethora of passages. I’ve decided to do a short series of blog posts on a variety of quotes from this book with my own personal commentary and reflections. So check back this week and please, join in the conversation in the comments!

the secret ingredients.

I had a friend over for dinner last night. I made a soup. My friend remarked that it didn't look or smell like a Belarusian soup. (But she said it still tasted good ;))

I thought about the ingredients...

No beets.
No cabbage.
No potatoes.
No carrots.

Nope, defintely not a Belarusian soup. Not at all.

i love language.

I love language.

I put my hair up, a bit sloppily, the other morning. But what ensued on the bus was an amusing exchange with my roommate that reminded me why languages can be so fun(ny) sometimes. (Basically recapped below.)

Roommate: I like your hair today.
Me: Oh, thanks. I was thinking it looked pretty messy.
Roommate: No, it’s like, organized hows. ::the word she said sounded like ‘hows’ to my ears::
Me: Hows? It’s like an organized what?
Roommate: Hows.
Me: House? ::thinking to myself, what kind of weird Russian compliment is this?!::
Roommate: No, howz.
Me: ::thinking to myself, what on earth is she trying to say, so I take a second guess…:: Cows???
Roommate: ::laughs::
Me: I totally don’t understand. Organized house? Organized cows?
Roommate: No, you know, the English word for something without order, in Russian it’s hows.
Me: ::thinking:: Oh…. CHAOS?
Roommate: Yes! Keyhows.
Me: No. KAY-OSS. Like my name, K, and then “-os,” kind of like you’d say “Aussie”
Roommate: Oh, is it spelled with a K?
Me: No, C-H. C-H-A-O-S.
Roommate: Uh, right.

Proof That Hungary Doesn’t Belong to Eastern Europe

(or at least doesn’t resemble Belarus)


-I found sweet potatoes, microwave popcorn, caramel sauce, and Philadelphia cream cheese in the grocery store
-The grocery store looked like a two story classy Walmart with its own parking garage underneath
-There were lots of roundabouts on their roads
-Roads and sidewalks were narrow
-There were lots of hills
-There was a large lake, and it was actually pretty
-I saw blue skies and sunshine almost every day
-I ate at a Mexican restaurant in the downtown
-There was lots of graffiti in the downtown
-Prices are very expensive: I paid over $20 for a sandwich at a small café
-The movie theater featured flicks in English
-People don’t speak Russian, or those that do, don’t like to
-On the other hand, most people understand English even if they don’t speak it well

American politics from a Brit, er, a European

An interesting conversation took place this week between my new British classmate and myself:

Brit: American politics are so exciting.
American: How so?
B: You stay up all day and night watching the results come in, it’s like this exciting game. And it’s never predictable like it is in England, elections in England are so boring. But it always seems to me that those on the east and west coasts stick together in their choices while all the states in the middle go for the opposite guy. I figure everyone in the middle of the US is either really stupid or really crazy; they always pick the wrong guy.
A: For clarification, what do you mean by ‘the wrong guy’? The guy who loses or the one you don’t like or…?
B: The guy who wins.
.....
B: I don’t like to be called an Englishman.
A: How about British?
B: No, I don’t like that either.
A: Why? You live in England, right? Are you not from there?
B: Sure, I live there. But I don’t feel like an Englishman.
A: Are your parents English? Are they from England?
B: Well yes, they live in England. But they are originally from Lithuania.
A: So would you consider yourself Lithuanian?
B: Hell no. I never want to live in Lithuania.
A: Where do you want to live?
B: Wherever there is ocean and mountains.
A: How about Switzerland? They have mountains and lakes.
B: No, I want to go scuba diving. I want to live near the ocean.
A: How about Egypt?
B: No way! I’d hate everyone there.
A: How about Greece?
B: No, I also would hate it.
A: How about somewhere in Asia?
B: No.
A: Well you could come to the States. I’m sure you can find mountains and ocean there.
B: Not in the same city! I’m thinking maybe I’d live in Canada.
A: Really? Have you been to Canada?
B: No.
A: Hmm. Maybe you should stick to England… So what do you want to be called if not English?
B: I’m a European. You can call me a European.

*****

Another interesting occurrence this week at my Russian class. We had a visitor come sit in on our class. He was Turkish. He sat down in a chair next to me, and pulled out his laptop while we were going over some new vocabulary. As I glanced over, I noticed his laptop wasn’t just any laptop… it was a MacBook Pro… in fact, the exact same one as I own. It was my first time seeing someone with a Mac in Belarus besides myself… definitely NOT an everyday occurrence! (After class, I told him he had a very good computer, the same as mine. His question in response was where I am from. When I told him the States, he started talking to me in English. Said he used to live in Chicago.)

*****

I also informed my Russian teacher and classmates today that the forbidden fruit in Genesis was not (necessarily) an apple... because the Biblical account does not specify what type of fruit. My teacher was quite shocked to be debunked of her long-held notion... Once again, culture serves as the preferred foundation of truth.

the cold.

It is so cold here that the roads and sidewalks have all turned white.

It is so cold here that your face feels frozen as soon as you walk outside, making you think maybe there was still moisture on your face from showering that got icy, but no, it's just that cold.

It is so cold here that you sometimes forget you are wearing gloves, because the air goes right through them.

It is so cold here that my iPod earbuds get stiff and fall out of my ears over and over again.

It is so cold here that there is not only fog and frost on the windows of vehicles, but yes, even a layer of ice that coats the insides of all the windows of the buses, completely obscuring your view to the outside... and even though buses should have heaters, most of them are not operational or are neglected to be turned on.

It is so cold here that the only warm places I have found are 1. the metro and 2. my bedroom. Ironically, since they turned the heat on in my building, it has become like a sauna in my room. I have to sleep in shorts and a t-shirt and leave my door open to get cooler air from the rest of the apartment, or the little heater in my small bedroom will make it stuffy real fast.

Ah, winter. And it has only just begun. Temperatures were -16 degrees Celsius yesterday. Oh, it will get much worse... MUCH worse...

unholiday depression overseas...

I have on more than one occasion railed about the commercialism in America, and the consumeristic, materialistic addictions we as Americans have that are, literally, consuming us from the inside out. This commercialism and consumerism is all the more rampant at the time of Christmas. Oh, how I once loathed when the malls would be rife with Santas and trees and stockings, advertising, tempting you, to buy this or that trinket, this or that item… and how the pressure to buy buy buy and please please please others often racks us… and it will break us. For a month, maybe even two, Americans are surrounded by commercials, advertisements, decorations, meant to supply the spirit and joy of the holiday, the Christmas spirit perhaps. Oh, I grew to hate it. I already hated malls, all I needed was another time of year to have an even better excuse to avoid entering their premises.

And yet.

Here I am, miles and miles away. I am in a culture that does not celebrate Christmas until January 7th. Even then, it is not their big holiday. It is their religious holiday, for religious types. Which means it goes basically unnoticed by the culture at large. Maybe they’ll give you the day off of work and studies, but maybe not. No, the real holiday here is New Years. In searching for Christmas cards, it’s ironic that from the outside, they LOOK like Christmas cards, at least, your run-of-the-mill American “Christmas” scene sans the baby Jesus (“Christlessmas”). Bells, garlands, wreaths, snow covered homes, ornaments, pine trees, sleds, presents, candles… But when you read the words, they rarely make mention of Christmas… rather, they wish you a happy new year. Ironic.

Maybe you wonder, how is the new year celebrated here? I’ll tell you: they have new year’s trees, very much like our Christmas trees. They exchange gifts. They spend it with family, and occasionally with friends. They eat a lot of food. They watch TV after midnight when the President gives a speech congratulating the people on the new year. They have fireworks. They drink, a lot. They don’t go to work the next day. This is new year. And Christmas? Most people don’t celebrate it at all.

So I find myself… missing America at Christmas time. Yes, even slightly missing the barrage of decorations and music incessantly playing in the shopping malls… but I remember being in the States and feeling like it was Christmas time, awaiting it. There was more anticipation for its arrival. Maybe I anticipated the days off of school or work. Maybe I anticipated time with family and watching American football on TV. Maybe I anticipated the holiday foods. The scents of sugar cookies and apple cider and fires in the fireplace and pine. The joy of stealthily wrapping a few carefully selected gifts for those near and dear to me. Hearing the piano played, or singing some carols. Seeing the sanctuary every Sunday, decorated and reminding me of One’s great coming. Such joy, expectation, anticipation, delight, wonder... Here, I am lacking some of this luster, this Christmas spirit. Granted, nothing about trees and garlands and lights truly belongs to Christmas... but it brought me joy, and ushered my heart into a time of expectation, reflection... here I find I'm simply falling into a dry winter depression. No one here is thinking much about Christmas and only a handful celebrate it on December 25th. Every “Christmas”-esque decoration is hailing the new year, not the birth of Jesus. No one knows any Christmas hymns to sing. Here we are, less than 10 days away from the day, and I still don’t feel like it’s already here… Celebrating holidays overseas is just not the same. It is enough to make me feel depressed!

I am thankful though, because I must make my own preparations, in my mind and heart as well as among my friends, for this great celebration. Two days ago, my roommates and I hung up decorations: tree, garland, lights, candles, cards, stockings. We played Christmas music from my computer. There was even some snow blowing around outside our window. Though vastly different from being among family and friends at Christmas, it was still very much welcome… without such little things, the holidays really are very depressing for an expat.

(Luckily, this expat won’t be alone on Christmas. I’ll be visiting wonderful people sojourning for this year in Copenhagen. Perhaps there, we can enjoy fellowship on this day, and together celebrate the great Advent.)

All the more, how I must, on my own, look deeply into myself, and once again find that great joy worth searching the whole world over for, worth giving up life as we familiarly know it for… the joy that is good tidings and peace on earth for men… the joy of knowing the mysterious and beautiful Love Incarnate.

pomp & circumstance

Today, I was hoping to get a glimpse from across a five lane road of none other than President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. Alas, it was not meant to be. Now, I did wait patiently in sub-zero temperatures at our infamous Victory Square. I even skipped the second half of my Russian class, in hopes of seeing him and hearing him give some short speech. The military arrives. Roads were blocked off. Metro was inaccessible. The military band arrives with instruments. Film crew arrives and sets up. Black clothed security patrols the streets and the square. Photographers are preparing to snap away. People rush around talking on their cell phones, radios squawk. A banner proudly welcomes the president. Light poles are adorned with flags of Belarus and Russia, side by side. The colors of Red, Green, White, and Blue are seen wherever your eyes glance. Students line up on the curbs of the streets surrounding the Square, flying high the flags of those two countries. There was certainly a lot of pomp, but the circumstance was less than hoped. I was there. I arrived after 11:15am. I was watching. Waiting. I was joking with my friends that maybe his car was speeding and he got pulled over. They joked back that maybe he forgot to bring his passport with him, or tried to enter the metro without a token. We waited longer. We were freezing. It was 1pm when my Korean classmates decided to leave. I decided to hold out a little longer. I stood with a Frenchman and a Swede. We shivered. We talked with some Belarusians. We asked “official” looking people and “unofficial” people when the President might arrive… no one knew. We were told 11:15. We were there at 11:15. No President. Fashionably late, I suppose. By 1:35pm the band and military left the square to practice and take a break underground. Probably to warm up as well. Students were leaving in droves. The flag-bearers didn’t want to stick around anymore. If we knew when he was to arrive, we might have been able to know whether it was worth it to wait. But by 1:45pm, I decided my nearly frozen fingers and toes were more precious to me than seeing Russia’s President. As usual, lots of show! But where was the delivery?

Maybe I can read about it in the paper tomorrow.

small worldliness

Interesting experience the other day. I go to a Belarusian gathering of believers and before meeting at the Table, they showed a short film clip about a guy who carries this card table around and sets up his own communion for passerbys, which is for the most part ignored or unnoticed. But this wasn’t even what struck me. As soon as they started playing the film, I knew exactly where this film was shot. It was shot in the historic downtown Annapolis, Maryland. None other than my college town. There was Stevens hardware on the corner, there were the boats at city dock, the market house behind the dock, there was the food court at the Annapolis mall, etc. Every place in this video I had been. Now how weird and random is this: I’m halfway around the world in a culture entirely other than my native country and culture and in this place, I find myself on a Sunday morning at a service entirely in the Russian language, watching a short video clip in a room full of Belarusians (with a few Russians, Chinese, Slovakians, Cameroonians, Nigerians, and the scattered Americans as well), and there we watch together scenes from a town that I once called home. The strangeness of the circumstance made me smile.

chores.

I've come to realize that differences in life between Belarus and America extend beyond just the obvious "exterior" cultural ones... differences permeate home life as well. For example, I have learned how to deal with many adjustments at my apartment. I've learned how to light, operate, and control my own water heater. I've had to adjust to life without a dryer, instead having to "freeze dry" my clothes on the balcony or drape them over the heaters. I now work exclusively with a gas stove AND oven. I've had to deal with my inability to control the temperature in my apartment. Plus, when it's cold and the heaters have not been turned on, I've learned that I have to tape my windows, which are old and create drafts. I regularly use a trash chute that's located in the stair well of my building on the 9th floor. People always remove their shoes once they enter an apartment. Of course, there is also no dishwasher. (I'm privileged to even have a microwave.) But last week I discovered yet another way that apartment living in Minsk is different than in the the States: cleaning the carpet.

In Minsk, you can buy vacuum cleaners. However, they are expensive, and my roommates were not willing/able to pitch in for one. So, we decided to do without a vacuum cleaner. But when last week I was expecting many friends to come over as company, and knew we would be sitting on the floor of my living room, I realized the carpet would have to be cleaned somehow. I quickly realized you can't sweep carpet with a broom. (I tried.) I ended up having to resort to a wet rag. I was on my hands and knees, trying to scrub and gather dust and dirt and whatever else out of the carpet. It took me over an hour and even then, the job was neither complete nor thorough. I felt like Cinderella. It was not glamorous... and I hope I don't have to do that ever again. ;)

In the States, my favorite chore is mowing the lawn. I love yardwork. I love working with my hands, working with plants or building things from wood or grilling food, or anything having to do with design. Everything else is pretty much boring routine, but above all, my least favorite chore is probably laundry. (All the moreso in Belarus.)

lucrative McD's career?

I know a guy, a university student, here in Minsk who works at the McDonald’s. He was recently promoted to work as a cashier. He only works part time. I wondered if he enjoyed his job. I don’t know for sure first hand, but his roommate speculated that he liked it because it made good money. So. I had to ask. How much money does a McDonald’s employee in Belarus make? The answer was very interesting.

According to my friend, if a person starts working full time at McDonald’s, on the lowest rung of job opportunities, say, the janitor… full time work will pay them $300 a month.

This is shocking. Well, $300 is practically nothing by American standards. Rent on a single apartment will probably cost you at least $500 in my city back in the States, so $300 would not even cover your basic rent expense each month. But in Belarus, economy is of course much different, and thus so is cost of living. Did you know that this McDonald’s employee would earn more money than a full time teacher? Not only that, but most likely, this McDonald’s employee would earn more money than most full time professions for the average worker in Belarus! The McDonald’s employee would certainly make more money than either of my roommates, who have university degrees.

So there you have it. Belarusians could make a decent living by working as a janitor at McD’s. Not just decent, but better than most. And they don’t even need higher education.

convenient cages

I love the smell of toasted brown bread. Mmm.

The joys of apartment living: hearing other people’s arguments.

I saw the sun today. It is becoming a rarity so I feel like I should note every time it happens.

I saw a little 8 or 9-year-old girl riding the same bus as me the other day. She struck me because she looked like she could have been an American girl. I say this because nowadays, kids in the States are incredibly fashionable at a young age. (I think back to when I was in elementary school, and remember the fashion conscious bug really didn’t hit me until the 6th grade, and then I really didn’t go anything about it until 8th or 9th grade. I didn’t really pay attention to it until I realized other people around me did.) This particular little girl had a pink and grey backpack, which matched her pink and grey socks peeking out from under her skirt and tall boots. She also had a matching pink glitter hair tie. To top if off, she had a striped pink scarf. This girl was cute. There was, however, one dead give away that she couldn’t be American, and was actually Belarusian: she was carrying a plastic bag with her. If you take a quick survey of people on the public transportation, you can easily see that 90% of the people riding the bus or metro are carrying a plastic bag. It may hold their groceries, their schoolbooks, their work or important papers, their umbrella, … who knows. But everyone seems to carry them - men, women, elderly, working class, students, and kids alike. (Not me.)

I was talking to my roommate the other day. We were talking about transportation. In Minsk, there are many cars, but most people use buses, trams, trolleys, and metro. Of course this is in stark contrast to how most Americans get around, mainly by car and only by public transportation if they live in a big city. Even then, people often drive first to their stop to get the train into the city if they don’t actually live in the center. My roommate shared about her friend in Minsk who bought and started driving a car in the past year. Apparently, she has begun missing public transportation. She misses seeing all the people.

I wondered whether any Americans would be able to relate to this… would anyone actually prefer to give up their car, which affords them convenience, privacy, comfortability, freedom, complete control over temperature, music, speed… and choose to deal with the inconvenience of waiting for and catching buses, standing for long periods of time, being surrounded and at times squashed by other people, often feeling cold from the continual drafts coming through the opening and shutting doors, being at the complete mercy of the driver and the traffic that day…? It seems very unlikely to me that any American would rather choose this. But this is also because we have grown so accustomed and reliant on our cars. We don’t even really carpool anymore. Spouses rarely share a car. Work partners rarely travel together. But over here, people are not used to having their own space, their own privacy, in their vehicles. So now, some people who have experienced this convenience are longing for the people that are absent from their personal automobile. They miss the interaction and the connection to their people, their neighbors you could say.

So my roommate concluded that she doesn’t think she could ever live in America. She says that for her, as well as her friend, she likes the metro and the buses. Her favorite part of the day is taking public transportation.

Something in me doesn’t fully “get it.” I suppose it has something to do with the fact that I’m American and I love driving… But part of me also dreams of giving up my car and just biking everywhere. I don’t, notice, dream of giving up my car and taking public buses everywhere.

I now have to wonder and ask and push the question, are we as Americans missing out on something by leading our lives the way we do, or, in the words penned by my favorite band, “do we know what life is outside of our convenient Lexus cages”? Is there something “Gone” that needs to be regained?