cultural differences & hilarity

I have a fear of birds. Mainly of them flying at me and impaling me with their gross beaks. This fear is only validated here in Ukraine. Pigeons fly at you all the time!! They get down in the metro entrances and don't have a lot of places to escape so they get kind of desperate and crazy. One time a whole flock was flying right at me I swear so I just covered up my head with my scarf and waited till they were gone. If it wasn't obvious that I'm not from around here, it had to be after that.

When the landlord is coming, we have to make it looks like no one lives at our apartment. I guess Ukrainians define clean as "empty" rather than you know, showers, windex, toothpaste, ect. The first time they came, they asked if we didn't have enough drawers because there were things on the shelves... like books. And they were disturbed by the fact that our dirty laundry baskets were inside the house instead of on the porch. I guess if I wore my clothes for a week straight maybe I would feel pressure to put them out on the porch too. Today he was convinced that we had been letting hoards of people come over and crash every other night, that people were complaining. I think he overestimates how many people can fit in the two beds that we do have. I think it is a natural tendency to blame the Americans for being the loud ones. And I thought clean checks at the Ridge were bad.

Someone starts speaking to me in Russian on the streets at least once a day.Normally I just tell them I don't speak Russian, in Russian, but sometimes in Spanish, just for kicks. My Russian skills finally came in handy the week after we learned numbers. Last week. I was in the elevator with an old lady who kept saying, "vosim vosim" because she couldn't see it in the dark ( our elevator is pretty dark) Vosim is 8. And I pressed the 8 button for her. Go Russian lessons!

I overheard one of my teachers telling the kids that smoking was bad. They acted like she was crazy. They share the sentiment of all here, when I go running in the morning it's more like smoker dodging. It is super unpleasant to take a deep breathe and inhale a bunch of 2nd hand smoke. I have to dodge them so that my lungs last longer than my running shoes. Lung cancer aint no thang here, there are bigger things to worry about like girls unknowingly freezing their ovaries and people not looking in the mirror after they forget something at home.

Something that is awesome about Ukraine though is how cheap most things are. I can buy 4 kiwis for less than an American dollar, a loaf of bread for about 30 cents, and a king size snickers (which I have been known to enjoy once and a while) for 5 hryvna. There are 7.9 hryvna in a dollar.

The world is the bathroom here. As just confirmed by the guy who is going right now, outside the window of my school as I type this. It's not the first time that has happened. It's a regular occurrence, guys just going to the bathroom by trees in front of passerby. Amber and Tysen saw a babushka pee on the sidewalk actually. Which is a tiny bit more awkward.