Far Apart, but Surprisingly Close

I now have the privilege of living in the sci-fi fantasy of past generations.  My car has a control panel worthy of a spaceship, my phone is smarter than me, and thanks to social networks, I know more than I ever wanted to know about distant acquaintances’ food preferences.  I’ve even formed and developed relationships with people thousands of miles away, sometimes without having to meet them in person.  Technology has transformed most social relationships, personal and professional.  Many argue this is for the worse, with texting and social networks unable to express the subtle nuances of body language and tone.  I too agree that this is often the case, and I don’t count myself among those who rejoice in the ability to run a full day’s errands without any human contact.  However, technology has been incredibly successful in allowing people to connect over long distances, and the innovation of video calling has majorly benefited human contact

I derive most of my social satisfaction from being in the presence of another person, even in the absence of conversation. When you look at telephone calling versus video calling, there’s no comparison. Seeing the person’s face allows for an infinitely more complete level of communication and personal connection, inaccessible through words alone.  Consequently, though I have worked and studied abroad in Turkey, Ukraine, and Spain, I have done so while being fully able to maintain my dearest relationships.  Video calling technology has significantly contributed to my freedom of movement, and my freedom to pursue my passions.

My academic and personal drive is based around exploring and improving intercultural dialogue and understanding through research. In pursuit of that, before I even had specific academic goals for it, I studied languages voraciously. I’m fluent in Spanish, English and Russian, and I can communicate in Turkish, Ukrainian, German, and French. I have traveled all over trying to connect with people, developing relationships with folks from all sorts of people across cultures and communication styles. That passion has also driven my academic pursuits and career goals.

As I am about to embark on a year-long masters program at Cambridge University, video calling has become even more instrumental to my goals. My research will be on the gender concepts surrounding traditional Albanian women who live as men.  In pursuit of this, I will need to learn the relatively obscure Albanian language as I will read scientific articles in Albanian as well as communicate with local people while I am conducting research there.  Extensive searching for local courses in Albanian or teachers who could give me private lessons yielded nothing. My searching led me to get in touch with Valbona, a native Albanian who teaches multiple languages in her home country. Despite our physical distance, we arranged for weekly lessons that we conduct via video call.  We have been working together for months now, and I am now conversational in Albanian.  

My online Albanian classes aren’t only about learning the language; I have also been developing a relationship with my teacher Valbona and learning about her faraway world  from her personal perspective.  This closeness between us could not have been reached without the important social gesture of seeing each other face-to-face.  This simple part of communication not only facilitates communication and instruction, it most importantly humanizes virtual relationships.

As I begin my studies in England, and my research in Albania, video calling will not only continue to provide me with the only meaningful method of long-distance contact with the my friends and family from California to Spain to Ukraine, it will also serve as an instrumental aspect of my career goals.  My computer can never replace human presence, but it comes surprisingly close.  In a world that is becoming more connected and globalized every day, the way we communicate is gaining sociological and political importance.  And what more effective way of improving cross-cultural understanding than humanizing others by allowing us to see them?

The Baltics

At the beginning of May, we had a two-week break for Ukrainian "May holidays", including their Labor Day, Orthodox Easter, and Victory Day.  Edward was going to the Baltics with his mom and her boyfriend Bill and I was very luckily invited along!  I really knew nothing about any of the Baltic countries' histories, cultures, or languages.  I still know next to nothing, but it's a huge improvement on what I knew before.  Our trip started with a couple days in Kiev, after which we went to Vilnius, Trakai, and Anyksciai in Lithuania, Riga (Latvia), and Tallinn (Estonia):

Kiev

Even though I had lived in Kiev for a week during training, we had had no opportunity to see the city.  So, we planned to start our trip with a couple days there to make up for that.  Isaac, an AEC teacher in Kiev, was our wonderful tour guide and showed us so many beautiful sights.

Central square

A really interesting building with a ton of strange gargoyles!

The presidential building

8O

Monument to the ~6 million victims of the Russian famine of 1921

Lavra (big religious complex with caves!)

The Motherland statue

Lithuania

I fell in love with Vilnius.  After being there for a few hours I was already scheming to get someone to pay me to live there.  Granted, I'm sure I'd feel differently if I experienced their winter, which probably puts Ukraine's to shame.  But while we were there the weather was sunny and warm.  The old town is gorgeous and almost quaint, although not at all kitsch.  It's really small which gives it an incredibly personal atmosphere that I loved.  Also, there were a lot of young people, a lot of street musicians, and a good balance of locals and tourists that made it very lively.  On our first night there we went out and I ended up running around the town until 10 am with a group of locals.  And the food was so good!  One of Lithuania's culinary claims to fame is called "Zeppelini", since they're the same shape as zeppelins.  They consist of potato dough stuffed with meat and covered with oil.  And sometimes fried.  And sometimes also covered with bacon.  Or sour cream.  Not for the faint of heart, or for anyone who has any respect for their heart.  Also delicious.

There was so much amber!

Cathedral

The fortress at Trakai

Riga

I didn't bond to Riga the way I did to Vilnius, but I was nevertheless surprised and blown away by it's architectural wealth.  Riga has explosive pockets of art nouveau buildings, covered in the most unexpected images ranging from classical human figures to Mayan heads to steam punk robots.  Meanwhile, the city preserves older architecture mostly in stunning churches.  There were moments when it felt you were walking in one big work of art.  The main reason I think I didn't connect as much to Riga was that everything was much bigger and less personal.

The apartment we stayed in through Air B&B!

Russian church

View from a sky-scraper

Tallinn

The last city we visited was Tallinn, Estonia.  Tallinn had some interesting architecture, but was mostly fun for it's lively medieval-themed atmosphere.  This was definitely the most touristy of all the cities, and it really played up it's character with medieval restaurants, kiosks, and even costumes for the employees to wear.

Old city walls

Russian church

Finally, after a lot of driving, a couple flights, a long time at the train station, and a short train trip that seemed like forever, I got home and started settling back in.  I just started a new semester with much fewer hours since enrollment is low over the summer.  Of course that means a smaller salary, but I think I will welcome the extra time.

Belated Update

Ayayay, it has been so long since I've updated this blog!  The past couple months became especially busy, plus it became increasingly important for me to prioritize studying Russian, and blog-time was my greatest casualty.

But I would like to renew my blogacious fervor, beginning with this post just to recap some of the changes from the past few months:

• IT'S WARM. No, IT'S HOT!!!  REALLY, TRULY, UNCOMFORTABLY HOT!!!  I never thought I could be so excited to see flies in the house, have trouble sleeping from heat, or sweat through my work clothes.  It's a joy.
• I moved!!  Due to complicated circumstances, I was moved into a house with a Ukrainian family.  The family is really wonderful, and it has been helping my Russian, but I definitely sacrificed a lot of privacy and convenience.  I will have the opportunity to move back into my old apartment in another two months so right now I'm weighing the pros and cons.
• I'm a little bit better at Russian!  I still have a loooong way to go, and it's incredibly frustrating, but I know I can't let myself get discouraged.
• I'm significantly worse at English.  Even though I speak English 100% of the time at my job, 97% is with non-native speakers, and their mistakes are starting to sound very normal.
• I just got back from a two-week trip to Kiev and the Baltics!  It was really amazing, I will write more details in my next post.
• I'VE EATEN PEANUT BUTTER!!!  Unfortunately, it still seems that no place in Ukraine has it, but my mom sent me some and I found some in the Baltics.  And then I gave myself a stomach ache.  No regrets.

At the moment, we are about to start our third semester at AEC and I'm very curious to hear which levels I'll be teaching.  I'm still enjoying my life here, but I miss home terribly, which hasn't been helped by the fact that I haven't had much time to communicate with people.

That's about all I have to sum up at the moment.  I'll leave you with a picture of one of my new roommates:

Home Remedies

I really like my apartment.  It's small enough that I use what I have and don't feel like there's too much to take care of.  The ceilings are high enough it doesn't feel cramped.  There are enough aesthetic details that I don't feel like I'm living in a jail cell.  There's even a balcony, although it's pretty shabby and the weather hasn't been warm enough to use it much.  My favorite thing in the apartment?  My window sill, which is plenty wide enough for me to sit on and bask in the much-missed sunlight, protected from the cold air, and peer out into the courtyard if my mind wanders.  I'M SO WARM!!

I would still like to talk about shopping in Ukraine at some point, but before that I'd like to talk about home remedies here.  Since we're talking about favorites, maybe my favorite thing about my job is that it requires extensive cultural dialogue with locals.  This is especially true for the conversation clubs, where we can literally talk about anything for an hour.  But even in my lessons, where we usually are asked to focus on grammar, there are opportunities to talk about culture.  Last week one of my lessons asked us to talk about traditional home remedies.  There were so many that my students could think of!  And, while some greatly resembled American home-remedy-logic (such as hot tea for a sore throat), some were totally different from anything I'd ever heard of (such as putting a dead bee on your tooth).  Here are some of the ones I remember:

For flu and cold:

• vodka with pepper
• cabbage leaf with honey on chest
• potato compress
• cabbage leaf on head
• breathe potato steam
• hot vodka with honey and lime
• hot beer
• hot wine
• smell burnt garlic
• hot (dry) mustard on feet
• hot egg or salt on nose

Other:

• put just hand on the ground for a hangover
• dead, fried bee or salo (traditional meat dish) on tooth for a toothache
• hot bottles or jars on back for a backache

Settling In, Part II

I always feel like there are different levels of settling in when I go to a new place, or start anything new, really.  The past couple of weeks have felt like a new level of settling, beginning inauspiciously with food poisoning.  A couple days later my roommate decided this wasn't the job for her, leaving me as a the sole inhabitant of our apartment.  The following week included our first excursion to a club and our first use of the Kharkov taxi.

Overall, this apartment has been feeling more and more like a home.  It just needs a good cleaning that I'm reluctant to do because the previous inhabitant should pay for a "deep clean".  But maybe the dustbunnies add to the sense of home...?  Not that I've ever seen a single dustbunny in my mom's impeccable house....

Teaching has also been feeling much more comfortable.  I feel like I'm getting the hang of maintaining energy and attention during class (the students' and my own), although it's something I'm still working on.  And I'm getting positive feedback from students, which always makes me feel warm and fuzzy, much like the subject of this video:

In other news, it's been a lot warmer!  Most of the ice has melted and, even though it snowed yesterday, I've actually been out of the house without a hat, and twice without my heavy snow jacket on top of my sweater-jacket!  I saw my reflection in a store window and for a second thought I must have lost a lot of weight until I realized I just wasn't all Michelin-ed in a puffy jacket....

I also have sooo many things to look forward to, too!  I've been invited to two outings by students this weekend, my director found me a seemingly good dance studio, and I have tickets to go to Turkey in March!!!  I'm so excited for everything, much like the subject of this video:

In my next post, I think I'm going to talk about the interesting experience of shopping in Ukraine!  For now, I'll leave you with some cultural differences that I've found interesting recently:

• It is 100% normal for a teacher to read all the students' test scores out loud to the whole class
• In private homes, the toilet is always (or seemingly always) separate from the room with the sink and shower
• There often (not just at my school) aren't doors to the stalls of squatter toilets in public restrooms
• People feel very comfortable talking expressively about their romantic relationships to strangers, such as too the whole class, even if their partner is in the room
• There is much less personal space between people talking, even if they are relative strangers
• Dancing on tables in bars is very normal and acceptable ;)

Slippery Slopes

Walking around on the ice has been treacherous, but I've had even more unsettling culture shock in the past few days.  Besides teaching conversational lessons, I also teach "conversation club", which is basically a space for students to converse as much as possible without the restraints of the class structure and with me as a mediator.  We have a booklet to guide our topics, one per day, on everything ranging from "marriage" to "genetics" to, god knows why, "insurance".  Two days ago the topic was "men and women", and yesterday's was "cultural stereotypes".  Of course, since I'm interested in the critical theory of these topics, that's where they ended up.  So I had three sessions of gender issues discussion on Sunday, during which many (though not all) male and female students expressed an opinion of female inferiority in some way.  For example, one young woman said that maybe there are fewer women scientists because women are less capable of concentrating on one thing for a long period of time.  Ironically, she is studying to be a doctor.  The worst, however, was one young man who came into a class late and I asked to comment on the topic of whether gender differences are biological or socialized.  His response was something like "all men are more intelligent than women biologically".  Wow.  I didn't know what to say to something so dramatic and explicit (and not to mention WRONG), even though in retrospect there are many things I wish I had said.  Even after class he approached me and insisted that his statement was a fact.  In cultural stereotypes yesterday there was subtler discrimination expressed by a particular fellow, this time towards women and homosexuals.  And then this man got into a heated argument about the government's involvement in stereotypes with a classmate.  All in all, those two days were very emotionally draining from dealing with high tension and discrimination, in particular towards my own identity as a woman.  I think I also felt shaken up because it was reminder from a new angle that I'm really not in San Francisco anymore.  Needless to say, I was very relieved that conversation club moved on to the topic of "pets" today.

On a lighter note, I would like to put in a couple of words about actually walking around on the ice.  Every trip on foot has ranged from comical to embarrassing.  And I'm still blown away by how well locals deal with it.  Although I have seen some fall, they're more likely to use the ice to slide quickly and effortlessly along their way.  Which blows my mind.  Even more incomprehensible is that women are still walking around in heels.  (And sometimes in miniskirts, too...).  Since either walking on heels or ice usually requires all of my concentration, doing both simultaneously sounds like my chance to become acquainted with the Ukrainian health care system.  Which leads me to believe that these stylish locals must have some trick.  I thought that maybe the heels act as spikes that stick in the ice, and someone else mentioned that heels have less surface area to reduce the amount of not-pushing-off the ground one has to do.  This is clearly a question for science.  In any case, as with most things in life, you never really appreciate friction until it's gone.

Despite bruised hips and egos, we are learning how to walk differently.  I even think I'm sore from developing new muscles for walking on ice.  Here's what I've learned:

• Take small, slow steps
• Watch where you step
• It's easier to lift your hip to move your foot forward instead of pushing off the ground
• Waiving your arms by your side really does help

It's hard to explain using words, so here's a demonstration from the world's best ice-walkers:

Although, to be honest, this next video made me feel a lot better about my own struggle (even the sounds are similar):

In Pictures

I found my camera cord!!  Here are some pictures of the last two weeks here:

Kiev:

View of the Dnipre River (frozen) on the walk to work

Mistletoe!!  :*****

Cute little church

What happens when you take a flash photo while it's snowing!!

Edward and Brad on our mini excursion of central Kiev

Central Kiev

Our group of teachers in training

Kharkov:

My classroom!!

The walk to work

A lovely church

Ice-covered trees 8D

The closest I got to seeing the sun in the past two weeks... (also view from my room)

I miss you all!!!