Week Five

Dear Readers,

It is about 9:20pm here as I begin writing this entry. Today was a very full day. It started out as usual, as I had my workshop from 10:00-1:00. Then I went to UKU for lunch and my weekly check in meeting. I would have written this entry there like usual, but I didn't have time. After my meeting, I went back to the Emaus Centre (the Faith and Light head office) and ended up helping translating something from Ukrainian into English. Well, sort of. I didn't actually do the translating, I just helped out with getting the wording right for the English translation. That was a bit of a chore, since the Ukrainian was written in such a way that it was very difficult not to get an awkward English translation.

Afterward I ran into Petro at UKU (remember, he works there) and Natalia was there also. Their plans were to go to the market to buy groceries, then go to their cottege in the suburbs to fix up some things, and then go home. So, I went with them! It was actually pretty neat. It was my first time in a market here. First, we went to an indoor market to buy meat and cheese, then we went outside to buy produce.

We then went to their cottege in the suburbs, which is really a very small house on a small piece of land. They also have a small garden there. We didn't spend a whole lot of time there. Petro just wanted to clean up some things around the yard.

Now, about my week...

Remember how last Friday I mentioned that I had no plans for the weekend? Boy, did that change come Sunday morning. At around 10:30 in the morning, Petro's brother Taras came over to invite me to spend Sunday and Monday with him, his daughter (13 year old Olena), and my three host sisters at his cottage in the Carpathian mountains. So, I decided to go. I went the Carpathian mountains for the first time!

The drive was about 2 hours, and was really nice. On the way, we stopped to go to church, and then we stopped again by a river to eat lunch outside and go swimming, except I really didn't feel like swimming. When we finally got the cottage, I wasn't feeling well at all unfortunately. However, the scenery was beautiful. It isn't Rockey Mountains beautiful, but there are endless miles of high hills, forrest, and farms. Taras and I went to visit one of his friends down the street, while the four girls stayed at the cottage. At Taras' friend's place, there were 2 people who could speak English reasonably well. Everyone at that house is related, and they also have relatives in...Mississauga! That was a really neat connection.

So, we stayed there for an hour and a half I think, then we went back to the cottage. When we got to the cottage, I felt no better, so I had a little nap while Taras and the girls made supper. It was Olena's 13th birthday, and Taras made sausage and cabbage salad. After my nap, I felt a little better, or at least good enough to eat.

After supper, I went to sleep, or at least I tried. Taras and I shared a bed with no mattress, and it was one of my worst nights of sleeping I can remember in a very long time. Some time in the middle of the night, I woke up, and lay in this hard, uncomfortable bed, unable to fall asleep. Then, at around 4:00am, my dinner from the previous night came up the way it went in, which of course was very pleasant. Although I felt a little bit better, I simply couldn't sleep the rest of the night.

We came back on Monday, with another stop at the same river for swimming, and luckily I was able to sleep in the car. After that, I felt much much better. We got home, and life went on.

This week I experienced the frustration that comes with not being able to speak to people. After workshop on Wednesday, I went to UKU for my Ukrainian language class, which was to begin at 5:00. One of the assistants (Iryna, Ira for short) at my workshop also had to go to UKU, because she had an exam there that evening (yes, she is an UKU student). It takes about 20 minutes to get to UKU from our workshop, and the whole time we could barely talk at all! She knows Ukrainian, Polish, and Italian (she lived there for six months), and of course, I know English and troshky (a little) Ukrainian. Actually, I think her English is about the same as my Ukrainian. Our conversation was, well, interesting, and most of it was us laughing at ourselves, at each other, and at the whole situation. Sometimes I would actually whip out the little French or Latin I know because the words I needed are closer to Italian in those languages than they are in English. It actually worked. When we got to UKU, we both went to Emaus where there were people who knew both English and Ukrainian. That was a relief.

On Thursday morning, Kimberley and I went to the orphanage instead of our respective workshops. We were there for two hours, and just played with the children the whole time. Their ages ranged from 2 to 4, or something like that. It was fun, but I think two hours was about as much as I could handle for that day. After that, we both went back to our workshops for the afternoon portion of the day.

So, that was my week five, in a nutshell. Only seven more to go.

Until next time,
Michael