mistaken national identity

Well, the answer to how much of the liturgy I could understand at the Catholic service on Sunday morning is "very little," as the service was in Polish, not Ukrainian. There are enough cognates that I had a slight idea what was going on, but not much.

After that, I met Allie and Vanessa for the opera Natalka Potavka, which was nice, even though the plot was somewhat predictable. Allie had quite the experience before the opera--she had been going to come to church with us, but then ended up at the Greek Catholic church instead of the Roman Catholic church. A very cute (in her words) guy helped her find her way back to the opera theater, and was talking to her in Ukrainian the whole time (Allie speaks some Russian but is a beginner in Ukrainian). At the end, he said something she didn't understand, and she said, "Yes." He then kissed her! I've asked many people for directions over the years in Ukraine, but no one's ever kissed me. :) (Allie said that that was because I actually understand what they're saying...)

However, I did have a funny thing happen last night. I went to L'viv Central Baptist Church for the evening service. The third sermon (there are generally three short sermons at Baptist churches in Ukraine, interspersed with lots of music) was given by a visiting American pastor, who was in charge of a missions trip who would be teaching English to people in L'viv. After the service, I decided to go up and say hello. The visiting pastor was saying hello to some kids in English, so they could practice what they knew how to say. I walked up and said, in what I thought was fluent English, "I appreciated your message. What state are you from?" Very slowly, with a great deal of enunciation, the pastor replied, "I am from the state of Texas." He thought I was a Ukrainian who spoke English! I replied, "I'm from Michigan!" "Really?" he said, and we chatted for a minute or two. I've had people think I'm from all over here, but it's rare that Americans don't recognize me as one of their own!

I did have a similar experience once when I was in the Peace Corps. I was at a Kyiv McDonald's, and a woman there (who might have been a native speaker of English...at any rate, she wasn't Ukrainian or Russian) was having trouble ordering (which is sort of amazing, as it's all cognates). I helped her out, and she said something like, "You must be an English teacher" (because I spoke English). "Yes," I replied.

This afternoon I met with a professor from the English department here, and she took some of my surveys to pass out. I'm glad to have made the contact with her, because I've had some down time on my thesis research and I'd like to get started again.

We head to Kyiv Thursday through Sunday, taking a university van for the 7-hour trip rather than taking an overnight train. It'll be interesting to do Kyiv as a tourist, rather than running errands. On Friday we're going to the Percheska Lavra (Cave Monestary), which is somewhere I've never been, as well as some other places. On Saturday, we have a free day, and I'm hoping to meet up with Sasha Malko and Vitaly Yukhymets, although probably not at the same time. The universe might implode with that odd combination.

a multilingual evening and my current love life (completely non-exciting)

Well, the guests all came and we now have 22 people here (although one or two kids might have been sent off to Grandma's next door to sleep). One of the best parts of the evening included having a conversation in English with Hannes, an older man from Switzerland who is a friend of Valentin's (the friend of Viktor and Nadia who is visiting). Hannes knows some English, and he speaks English better than Russian, so we visited for a bit and he showed me pictures of the Swiss Alps on his digital camera. My other favorite part of the evening was when I played the piano and we sang "How Great Thou Art", and when we came to the chorus, people were singing in English, Russian, and German (and possibly Swiss and Ukrainian).

Less fun was getting accidentally elbowed in the face by Valera during a game of dodgeball. Fortunately, he missed my glasses, but the kid doesn't know how strong he is, and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm a bit black and blue there tomorrow. Sigh.

That aside, Valera is still as much my buddy as he ever was, and if the kiss on the cheek I got yesterday was any indication, the crush he had on me at age 9 is still extant at age 11 (albeit he also has a crush on a Roma girl named Sophia who went to our church for a short period of time). He loves to ask me questions about anything and everything, all day long, and it's thanks to him that I have gotten much better at conditionals in Ukrainian ("What would you do if...?").

To continue with the Y children's interest in my love life, the other day I was getting ready to go visit Robert, the 40-something PCV in town, for tea, and Ihor (age 7) asked where I was going. "I'm having tea with Robert," I said. "You're going on a DATE!" Ihor crowed. Nadia and I about died laughing, Nadia adding, "I didn't think he even knew what that was!"

Snizhanna (age 6) said to Liza the other day while we were playing dolls, "Miss Sally's going to marry Vitaly (age 19)!" I told her that that was in fact inaccurate, and when I told Nadia, she said, "That's what Snizhanna would like!" Snizhanna loves playing dolls, helping Nadia in the kitchen, and being a girl, and the fact that I am one more girl in a houseful of boys has endeared me to her deeply.

Due to all the extra people, Liza and Vlada are in the room next to mine on the third floor. So far they have thrown toys at me, stolen my key, knocked incessantly on my door, and played what sounded like the accordion. I've been utilizing the "ignore them and they will go away" approach, which is fairly effective. When Valera came upstairs to bug me, they told him to go away. "Miss Sally's sleeping!" And yet they play the accordion!