Yum yum, salo house.
As I mentioned in my blog last Saturday, I attended a festival that celebrated SALO! For those of you who don’t know that is straight up pig fat with very little if at all meat in it. It was in Lutsk the nearby city. My fellow PCVs and I enjoyed watching Ukrainian dancers and a band. It was very interesting to see people come out and taste test the different types of salo, salo spread and other misc. things that were being sold. The most unique item I saw was a house made of salo and other meat products. Don’t know if it really made me hungry though.
I sampled a thinly sliced piece of salo on a piece of dark bread and also the spread on the same bread. The ones I tried where heavy salted so it didn’t taste that bad. I still can’t get the idea of eating salo. It is fat. So I look at it and think I could just take it and slap it to my butt because that is surely where it is going to end up. I would much rather eat a piece of chocolate that tastes good and I don’t imagine going directly to my butt (even though it all ends up there).
Most eventful thing of the week: MOVING. I was under the impression on Friday afternoon that I would be moving Monday afternoon. Monday morning rolls around, I gently ask the babushka if I can shower. She starts yelling loudly. I can pick up ‘you can shower at your new place’ and then blah blah blah in Ukrainian that I didn’t understand. This just makes me so happy I’m moving. I get to school and ask my vice principle at what time I’m moving later in the day. She says oh, you can’t move today maybe Tuesday or Wednesday.
PROBLEM in my mind!! Monday is the day of the month that I normally pay rent. I explained to my vice principle that the babushka is not happy to be losing income with me moving out of her house and that I don’t think she will let me stay for an extra two days. My vice principle tells me not to worry that she will call the lady and everything will be alright. Later, that day my VP calls the babushka. Again I hear from my room yelling at my VP on the phone. I for sure understood ‘this isn’t my problem, this is her problem.’ They continued talking with a little less yelling.
I just sat in my room not fully understanding what is going on. Eventually an hour later my counterpart calls me and says at 6pm, I will come with a car and you will move. This is at 3pm so I awkwardly say in my room for a couple of hours before finally moving. Before leaving the house, I tried to smooth over the tension by saying after I have moved in that I would like to have her and the medical college boys over to my flat. It worked a little bit but she was still very sour about me leaving.
Thumbs up for the long awaited move.
So Monday night, I spent the night in my place without electricity, heat or gas which wasn’t a big deal if you let your pee mellow. Tuesday night not waiting to see if the electricity was actually going to come on, I headed into Lutsk to hang out with Melissa and use her shower (I hadn’t had a real shower in 5 days). Wednesday, I had my Ukrainian friend, Tanya, come over for tea and burned her some DVDs of Friends. Thursday, I enjoyed my first fully solo day in my place.
Friday, I hosted my first dinner party of my life. The volunteers closest to me (Melissa, Jon, Katie, and Terry) all came over for pelmeni. Dinner started around 6ish. It was delicious. Terry had made a Ukrainian salad with the main ingredient being beets. Jon pitched in with making us some very interesting mixed drinks. Melissa topped it all off with baking oatmeal cookies for dessert. Quite tasty if you ask me. Katie (who is COSing in 2 weeks) brought me some house warming presents. Terry headed out at 9:30 to catch the last marsuka back to the city. The rest of us enjoyed the remainder of the night by playing some games, and watching a movie. I was first to go to bed because we discovered that the second devon (fold out couch) of my place is a lot more comfortable than the one I had been sleeping on because of the lack of foot board (a plus for us tall people).
The socializing is always in the kitchen.
Saturday, I was woken up at 9am by my counterpart knocking at my door. She came over to show me how to use ‘the values’ aka turning on my faucet and being like ‘you have water.’ She also showed me how to turn the gas and water off. I already knew it because the first day I watched her do it. Oh, good times. I wish Ukrainians understood that just because I’m horrible at their language doesn’t mean I’m incompetent. Eventually, we got up and moving because at 2pm, we planned to have a writing workshop at Melissa’s.
But before the workshop, we enjoyed a smorgasbord of sandwich materials that were great on bread along with Melissa’s homemade potato wedges. We talked about our experiences with writing. Then we all shared different things we have written. The most amusing part was when we acted out Katie’s short plays that expressed the craziest moments of her Ukrainian life. The one that had me laughing pretty good was when her host mother and dad were so worried that she had a pimple right before going home knowing that she was going to see her boyfriend. Oh, how funny Ukrainians can be.
So as you can see it was a very busy week. That is the reason I took today off which means besides showering I wasn’t too productive. I sat around in my pajamas. Well I take that back I have already started on my Christmas list and making a schedule so I don’t miss anything important when I’m home visiting. For example, I already wrote down the two Bears games that will happen. Oh, can’t wait to watch some American football soon.
Part of my life that makes me think of my pops.
Well I need to get moving. Allison is headed over and I’m looking forward to kicking off fall break (no school this week) with her. Hope all is well at home. Note: only 58 days until I’m home in the Land of Lincoln!!!
Kate
No comments:
Post a Comment