Saturday, July 25, 2009

home (not in the U.S., but still home)

I'm as happy as a lark.

L'viv, despite its beauty and claims to be more European than the rest of Ukraine (while at the same time being more Ukrainian than the rest of Ukraine), is not home. Home, whenever I am in Ukraine, is Balaklia and most of all, the Yukhymets family. It's being lifted off the ground in a hug, bags and all, by Viktor when I arrived. It's telling Nadia stories about my adventures in L'viv until she's helpless from laughter and tells me I need to write a book. It's lying on my back in an inflatable boat on the pond out back on a hot summer afternoon (I opted not to swim, much to Valera's utter bafflement, due to my unfamiliarity with the pond and the fact that at no point was I going to be able to touch the bottom). It's sitting on a bench under a pear tree eating fresh pears and being interrogated on various topics by Valera. It's looking at my pictures of the summer and showing off my new shoes to Vlada. It's hearing Vitaly's news (more on that below!). It's being taught how to make an origami flower by Ruslan (before breakfast!). It's Nadia telling me that my room up here on the third floor is mine whenever I want it. It's being sunburned and bruised and exhausted but knowing that I love and am loved.

And the family is growing! No, no more kids are being taken in from orphanages...Vitaly's engaged! His fiancee is Katya Vlasova, a former student of mine who goes to the same church as the Kotlar family (until tomorrow, anyway, when she transfers her membership over to ours). They're quite young--Vitaly is 19 and Katya's 17, having just finished school this May, but I think they'll be good for each other and understand that marriage is a life-long committment (although, remembering when Katya was in 8th grade, I feel OLD!). They got engaged this past Monday (apparently it was completely out of the blue as far as Katya was concerned, although Vitaly has been contemplating this for quite some time, I suspect...I wondered if there was something going on there when I was here in May) and the wedding will be sometime this fall, probably in October. I'm sad that I'm not going to be here for the wedding. It's hard, having people I care a lot about in on opposite sides of the world. Wherever I am, I'm missing out on half of everything. But that's the price of having friends and families on both sides of the Atlantic, and I will just have to find a nice wedding gift before I leave.

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