Drevyev

In Ukraine they have real hot chocolate ("haryachiy shokolat"). When I mean real, I mean that there is no powder involved at all. I think they only put a little milk in it, and very little sugar. The effect is a warm, cozy cup of melted dark chocolate with the consistency of Hershey's syrup, but much, much less sweet. It was a drink the whole family could (and did) love!

Has anyone ever had this in the US? If so, let me know where. Even if it's in a different town, I will make a point to find it when I'm in your town.

One time when Hollie and I were talking in the living room, we heard some bad screaming and crying coming from the bedroom where the girls were. I peeked in the room and saw punching and hair-pulling.
"What's going on in there?" I asked.
"Nellie/Kali hit/pinched me!" Nellie and/or Kali said.
"Why are you doing that to each other?" I continued.
"We miss our friends and we're sick of each other!" Kali said through her tears.
This episode made me realize how much I take language for granted. The girls are very sociable, and can make friends with folks and play easily. However, they are used to telling stories, either real or imaginary. They like to invent scenarios, or pull them from books or movies. Then they assign roles and play them out. Recently, I've heard them pull the little neighbor boy into their stories.

In Ukrainian or Russian, however, they were cramped. They could communicate all their needs, but they couldn't "express" themselves. They couldn't make jokes, pretend, or even talk about what wasn't right there. So they were stuck with the only kid who could understand all this: their sister; and both were experiencing the frustration of not being able to say everything they want.

Who knows? This may even be where depression starts for adults. Once people can't communicate their imaginations, fantasies, or jokes, they get frustrated. Then they smack the person who actually can understand them. Now psychologists have (re?)learned that music and art therapy help people with mental illnesses. Maybe we should all try to express ourselves.

Or maybe we should call up our friend before we punch our sister.

I remember when Hollie was pregnant with the girls, we had the option of a "triple screen" to see if the chromosomes were ok on the babies. This procedure carries a very small risk, and it allows the parents to screen for genetic deficiencies. Carrying out the procedure didn't make much sense to us. It was kind of too late to do anything about it. Only later did we realize that one could abort the kids whose chromosomes were deficient.

Here is a picture of kids with chromosomal deficiencies. I don't know if their parents had access to triple screens. I know that these kids have really hard lives, and their parents bear an awful strain trying to take care of them with no governmental--and very little social--support. The care workers get stressed and burnt out, too.

But I learned a lot from them about how I see myself in only my few hours with them. (I'm sure Hollie can vouch that she experienced something similar.) They made me nervous at first. You can't find them on the "map" of other such acquaintances you know. They might shy away from you, yell, hug, kiss, or ignore you. Whatever they do, though, is from the heart. Fortunately for me, they came right up to me because they loved Hollie so much, so I was already their brother.

I read a priest's story about a woman with Down's syndrome in his parish. (From Fr John Breck's _Sacred Gift of Life_) Every Good Friday she wept uncontrollably at the tomb of Christ. She experienced his death without any of the distance or explanations that I usually think about. She really loves Christ.

They made me ask myself, why don't I feel like that? Something keeps out extreme emotions. I think it's fear--maybe of rejection or judgment--but these people probably have more to worry about than I do. But people don't reject them at the Emmaus Center. The sincerity that they show catches people off guard, but people love and accept their sincerity.

So what am I afraid of? Why screen out the feelings that might get judged or mistreated? How do I know they will be received?

Here is a card with a picture that my students had made for me. The charicature is pretty striking, eh? (I'm on the right. Ha!) It was very sweet. I was especially impressed by the Hebrew at the top, which the students must have done themselves. It says, "And the word of the Lord came to Richard, the son of Confidence, saying . . ."

Let me explain the "son of Confidence" reference. In the first days, the students often felt defeated because of how much work I was assigning them. For example, when I found out they hadn't learned the alphabet before the class stared, I said, "No problem, you'll know it tomorrow." They looked aghast.

I had to keep reminding them often that in spite of the requirements, I had full confidence that they would get through it and learn. They said I had too much confidence. It was my duty to tell them that I am an American, and thus an optimist, and I could only believe that anything was possible. When they countered that I was only one American optimist in a room full of Ukrainian pessimists, I challenged them. By the end of the class, I assured them, my American optimism would overpower even all of their pessimism put together. In the end I was able to keep half of the class afloat (since half left!).

So they dubbed me in the card, "the son of confidence."

I thought I'd be able to post the presentation we did in Church last Sunday. Unfortunately, I can't upload .ppt files. I'll try to post more pics and stories here, as a result.

In case you're around Madison, we will be giving a presentation on our trip this Sunday, Aug 20, at St. Ignatius after coffee hour (probably will start around 12:00-12:30).

While I've talked about the problems of apartment living, I didn't talk about the solution, which the locals were very keen on. The solution was to go to the country. We managed to go about an hour out of town for half a day to this monastery (Univ Monastery), which was wonderful. For once we took for granted that the kids could run yards and yards without supervision--on *grass*. Beyond what you see in the picture, there were only more farms.

Pretty much everyone we met in Ukraine had 1) relatives in the country, or 2) favorite spots in the country, where the visited every summer. One family we knew went to the ponds outside of town on almost a weekly basis during the summer. Others would visit parents in the country, drop of the kids, and come back to get them in a couple weeks. A guy who worked at my university (UCU) heard that I hadn't been to the Carpathian mountains. He sounded sad, but said, "Next time you'll come to teach for one month and rest in the Carpathians two months." Everyone always sounded like they had the time of their lives in the country.

One regret I have is not taking advantage of "green tourism" in Ukraine. This movement, now occurring all over the world, is tourism that circumvents big business. You go to the country and stay and individuals' houses. It is similar to bed & breakfasts in the US, though in Ukraine I'm not sure you get much more. However, you stay with real village-folk who know the countryside, keep family farms, and know all the old songs, stories, and recipies. And it's around $10-15/night.

Check out the link on the side to Green Tourism in Ukraine. You might be taken by the views alone, as I was. It looks like Switzerland probably did about 100 years ago.

Here is a picture of the girls playing at a small playground in front of a mural of a woman working in a traditional village setting. When kids play they play hard. My kids don't veg out; they run or create or climb. I guess that sounds like work, but they're playing. The woman in the background: she's working for reals.

That's how I feel about my experience teaching in Ukraine. Teaching Hebrew in Ukrainian was so fun and fulfilling I feel a little guilty calling it "work." I taught for free, and I feel like I got the good end of the bargain. I can't imagine getting paid. I spend three months getting materials ready, fly many hours across the ocean, stand up in front of a class for 4 hours a day as I teach in Ukrainian, and it always feels like playing. In the background I see people all around me doing "real" work, but I feel like I'm in the front, playing and working.

I'm not as impractical as I sound. I understand the need for an income. I like to eat, as do my children. Insurance is always on my mind, as well as house payments and gas prices. Nevertheless, I would work for subsistance income if I could teach like I was teaching.

On some prime-time, "newsy" show (Primetime, 20/20, or the like) there was a guy who made a bazillion dollars by the time he was 21. He now writes books about how to make a bazillion dollars (for which I'm sure he makes a bazillion dollars). On the show he said there are three important questions to ask in the beginning.

1. What comes easily to me and difficult to others?
2. What could I do for free and still feel fulfilled?
3. How can I use that to serve others?

I feel so fortunate that the answers to these questions yell out loud and clear to me ("LEARN LANGUAGES"), and that I was already able to act on them in Ukraine. However, I still am not seeing my bazillions. Maybe I need the book . . .

(Photo of grass behind UCU, with the initials in Cyrillic: YKY.)

I had a thought about the success of UCU, namely, how it does so well and keeps free from corruption. The thought brings me back to the success of the Baltic republics (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) after the fall of the USSR. UCU seems to be following the same pattern as those countries, though unconsciously, as they remain noticeably un-communist and atypical of its immediate surroundings.

A friend of my mom from Estonia told us in 1994 that Estonian politics was extremely clean for the region. The Mafia had little control, and the government functioned relatively cheaply and efficiently. Economically, the country did extremely well, without the hyperinflation that other former-Soviet states suffered. One factor that was probably significant was that the majority of the first politicians (according to our friend) were either under 35 or over 60. The reason: the in-between generation was seen as tainted by the Soviets and thus received no popular support.

At UCU, one friend noted off-hand that many of the people involved in UCU had previously been part of a Catholic student organization during college. I was under the impression that this was towards the end of the USSR, but maybe somewhat before. Many of the professors and administrators were my age (mid 30s). That meant that they went to Soviet high schools, but post-Soviet colleges. Thus few of them had served in Soviet jobs, let alone in the Soviet political hierarchy.

The professors and administrators are noticeably hard working, and they have a reputation of functioning in a "corruption-free zone." Students don't cheat (which was not just common but expected during earlier eras) and can't buy diplomas. Knowledge of foreign languages, especially English, is widespread if not the norm. Most significantly, the students, professors, and administrators I met were fiercely determined to help their country, even though their knowledge of foreign languages and travel make them prime material for much higher-paying jobs.

I wonder how much involvement in the Catholic student organization helped the university to evolve in the positive directions it has. First of all, I must admit I am basing my musings on an off-hand comment. Nevertheless, the difference that one sees in UCU compared to most post-USSR institutions could have arisen from the influence of a Christian group. As a Catholic organization, the group had to be antithetical to communism. Further, its participants are too young to have been involved heavily in party politics. Perhaps as a Christian group, it established a basic morality that has become second-nature to UCU. This may have also helped them stay above the level of materialism that the USSR has spawned.

It would be interesting to hear about this counter-communistic force in the early days of the break-up of the USSR. Because of my own work in an Orthodox student movement, it makes me happy to think about the possible influence that such a group can have in the long run.

Here is a picture of our house in Lviv. Our dwelling was the empty apartments of residents who were out of town while we were in Lviv. We were treated very hospitably by the director of the Emmaus Center (at whose place we stayed for the first week), and Jeffrey, the UCU go-to man, my initial contact with UCU, and the one to help organize our work there.

The tree in front is a white mulberry tree that went way up to our second storey window. The kids' strategy was to shake the tree as hard as they could, then scramble after the berries while they were still moving, and thus still distinguishable from the ones that were already on the ground. This process of eating off the ground made old ladies shudder. Even Jeffrey advised against it, unless, as he put it, we saw it as safer than the girls trying to grab the berries out of a second-storey window. So we just told the girls not to do it while there were any old ladies around.