Easter Sunday

It seems very strange for me to think that this last weekend, was my last weekend in Petersburg. Next weekend I'll be in Pskov, weekend after that at Tanya and Seryosha's dacha, and in just one weeks time beyond that I'll be leaving for the United States.

Though I unfortunately have a bit of a head cold I've spent this last weekend trying to absorb as much as I can of the city. It makes me sad to think that soon I will be leaving it.

I want to come home, there is much that I miss about the U.S. - I just didn't expect that I would feel such a sense of loss over leaving Russia.

To me it seems as though I finally started to figure out this country only a few weeks ago, and now I have such little time to savor it. Perhaps it is the knowledge that so soon I will be gone that makes my time here so precious.

The big things I know I will remember. It's all of the little details that I've been trying to imprint on my mind in the hopes I will not forget them.

One of those little details comes from something I heard over and over again before I left for this country. That Russians are a very cold people, at least on the street, and because of this on the road on the metro their faces are like stone.

I thought that when I first came here. But after the months of living here, I realize that this is not true. I can look at another passenger on the bus, or metro, see some one on the street, and the faces are not alike to me. One only needs to take a moment to pay attention and it becomes obvious who is having a good day, who is worrying, who is upset, who is day-dreaming, and who is happily in love. Perhaps in public the Russian people are not as openly expressive as Americans, but emotions are not fully hidden.

Saturday I spent the day at Pushkin (Tsarskoe Selo) with other American students. While I am not particularly fond of the Catherine Palace - it is far too gaudy (especially in respect to the Yusopov Palace that I visited on Sunday) for my tastes- however the grounds were pleasant. Combined with a sunny warm day it was a wonderful way to pass the time.

Sunday started off with Easter and the traditional greeting "S Praznikom, Kristos Voskrese" - "Celebrate, Christ is Risen." We had a treat of Kulich with breakfast - kulich is a kind of bread made only for Easter. I sort of learned how to make it on Friday when a group of us went to Nathan and Lumilla's for this purpose, but I went home before it was done, feeling tired. It is a rather elaborate process.

We also cracked "perchki (?)" or easter eggs before breakfast. There is some sort of a game associated with the cracking of the eggs that I didn't quite follow, as I apparently beat Seryosha at it and later in the day, Olya beat Dima after carefully selecting her egg as a "winner". All of them were amused by my explanation of an American easter egg hunt. They thought it sounded like fun for children but I could tell they really weren't certain what the point is... then again I really don't know why we hide eggs and chocolates for kids to find either. It really has nothing to do with Christ's resurrection.

Here easter is much more centered around religion, and around remembrance as Tanya explained to me a few days ago that often people go to the cemeteries to remember loved ones with flowers.

There were a lot of flowers and ribbons decorating the cemetery in Pushkin when we drove by it on Saturday.

I am finding that speaking Russian has it's pluses and draw backs and is certainly cause for an amusing story or two.

I went to the Yusopov Palace on the Moika sunday afternoon. I'd tried going to the one on the Fontanka a few weeks ago, however that is apparently now a building somehow affiliated with SPbGU and not a museum.

As one is required to take an audio-guide with them trough the museum I decided to go with an English language guide just so I could get more out of it, and because I was worried the quality of player would not be great. For some reason the idea of wandering through yet another palace with a crappy recording in Russian while my ears are plugged up form my head cold just didn't seem appealing.

I managed however to create great confusion at the ticket office. The tourists in front of me were not native English speakers but also apparently didn't speak Russian. So they got along with broken English and were given audio-guides in the language they wanted.

I came up and asked for a student ticket in Russian and showed my studiencheskiy billet. Normally this gets me the foreign student price, however the woman responded with "You are a Russian citizen?" I told her "no"... to which she had to take my ID to look at it, before handing me a student ticket with the "Russian Federation" price. I then asked if I could have an English language audio-guide which confused her. "You speak Russian... you want Russian language."
"Yes I speak Russian, but I'd like to listen in English. Could I please have English? it would be better/easier for me than Russian."
"You speak Russian but you want to listen in English?"
"Yes"
"Oh, I understand, good practice."

So I guess with a head cold my accent is less or something and so I'm now a Russian student studying English....

I was also mistaken for being a Russian when I went to Savior on Spilled Blood and sent (once again with a Russian fed ticket) on a Russian language tour of the cathedral.

On my way back to the metro to go home I had a woman ask me for directions, I didn't hear her and asked "where?" She gave a pause and looked me up and down before asking "I'm sorry, but are you not Russian?" I sadly shook my head and said "No, I'm sorry." She gave a sigh and walked off.

Before heading home I stopped at a kiosk to buy ice-cream. It's the cheap kind that comes in the plastic packaging - sort of like the kind one can buy at Costco or some place like that in the states. Still it tastes good. I think ice-cream - even the cheap kind- is made with real cream here so it has a very satisfying flavor.

I walked along Nevsky with my ice-cream cone in hand and realized how much I've begun to feel at home in this country. I tried to picture myself wandering down-town Seattle with an ice-cream cone as my leisurely Sunday afternoon pursuit and failed. As much as I am going to miss this city and miss the people that I have come to know, I am also realizing that there is much that I have yet to explore in my own country and in the cities where I live. If I can learn this much about a completely foreign city in 3 months, I really ought to improve my knowledge of Seattle and Spokane.

I wish that there were some way to make the two countries closer together. Though they are half a world apart by geography, I can no longer make them half a world apart in my mind.

[Four new photo albums have been added to the photo gallery. Due to how they were transferred, we do not currently have the information text that describes each photo. Hopefully we can fix that after Gwen returns home ... Ed]

Photo galleries updated with Moscow and Kyiv photos

Two new photo albums have been added "Moscow 2" and "Kyiv" - there are a total of about 140 new photos added today.

Because of how these were transferred, they are missing the text explanations for what each photo shows. There were problems uploading from Russia so we handled it a different way.

I also made a gallery configuration change that improves the performance so the galleries now display much faster.

Ed (a.k.a. Gwen's Dad)

Travel Week Part III

I thought I'd already posted this - however, I guess it didn't actually publish or something. Sorry for the confusing, and thanks to Mom for alerting me to the fact that 4 does not immediately follow 2. :-)


Travel Week Part III

Monday in some ways ended up being a bit of a bust for us. Many of the Museums have Monday as their one day of the week that they are closed therefore, while we walked to the locations of many of them, we couldn’t actually go inside.

Still we did manage to have a few cool things happen.

One -- getting out of the Metro we saw protestors gather to walk together towards the main square for the Anti-NATO/ Anti-Bush demonstrations.

We found Marinsky Park which was large enough to wander around, and had many interesting statues and fountains. (Fountains that don’t work until summer though.)

At the far end of the park is some sort of Government building. Which exactly I don’t know, but I overheard two of the guards outside talking about Bush’s upcoming visit.

We also spotted what looks like castle out of a dream or fair-tale. After lunch we ended up back in the same district and went to explore. This entire afternoon was a high of the trip as far as I am concerned.

Good points:
1) Friendship arch and panoramic view number 6? 7?
2) Bumper cars! There was an amusement park (very tiny) by the arch that had bumper cars for cheap. We played a rounds worth or slamming into each other. It is amazing how much fun it was. Everyone also realized it was the first time that any of us had driven a bumper car since actually learning how to drive. In my case the first time since I’ve been long enough to both reach the petal and see over the steering wheel.
3) We then climbed further up the hill to the water-works museum, which an old man explain to us was once a watch tower.
4) The castle we’d seen from below was now right below us. It turns out it is a children’s theatre. We look to see what was playing but nothing was scheduled for the time when we would be in Kyiv and could watch it.
5) On the bus ride back to our place, the bus conductor* carried on a conversation with Rauliegh and I about the demonstrators which we could see walking along the street out the window.

Oh, and I didn’t mention it already but we went to Ukrainian grocery stores (Produkti and gastronom) for food. A gastronom is sort of like a deli in the U.S. and so we were able to buy sliced meats and cheeses. The other way in that they are like a deli is that you must go to the counter to order what you want – meaning lots of good Russian practice for us. Just down the street from the Gastronom was a bakery. Ukrainian bread is EXCELLENT, very cheap to buy and some of the best bread I’ve ever eaten. I now understand why it is that Ukrainians I’ve met in Seattle are willing to drive to Tacoma for the one Ukrainian/Russian bakery in the Seattle region.


Tuesday was moving day for us, as we moved from our first hostel into a second hostel closer to the train station. The reason for the move was because we could not reserve either hostel for the full period of time for 6 people.

Our new hostel was in an ideal location, close to the train station, and to the metro line. In terms of place, and upkeep it was wonderful, what was not so wonderful as the hostel owner. He was a Norwegian immigrant who’d been living in Ukraine for a couple of years. He was quite warm and friendly to us until we mentioned that we’d been living in Russia for the last two months. He was very anti-Russian, and anti-Ukrainian, and the fact we wouldn’t help him bash Russia to other visitors staying there and instead moved to defend the country put us on tough terms with one another.

We spent as much time away from the hostel as we could during the following days, trying to keep ourselves to polite conversation only and making sure not to mention Russia in front of him again. Good thing Kyiv has lots of museums and is a great place to just wander around on foot.

The good news about hostelling is that you meet cool people. We spent a couple of days with a guy from Banf, Canada who has been back-packing eastern Europe for the past few months. We also met another American girl, on her way to Krygystan, and another guy from Finland, and another girl from Latvia.

Later in the week we made it out of the city center to the Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra. For those who don’t know a Lavra is a very large, very important monastery, there are only 5 of them in Russian Orthodoxy. Keivo-Pecherskaya, known in English as the Monastery of the Caves is the oldest and most important of these Lavras.

The grounds cover an entire hill side, and the underground caverns in which the monastery first started are extensive as well. About half of the monastery still functions as a monastery. As such when entering the older section of the monastery, us girls had to don head-scarves, thankfully we all had long coats, or else we would have had to wear tie on skirts as well.

An amusing bit about the Lavra was that upon buying our entrance tickets to the grounds there were two Babushki. The first one we approach in Russian to ask about ticket prices and what not, she was willing to accept our SPSU ID cards to give us student rates. When the second Babushka came up she started scolding the first because she could tell that we weren’t native Russian speakers, asking us what country we were from, what language would we prefer for a guide, and then fretting when they didn’t have an English language guide available. The first Babushka just kept explaing the lay-out of the Lavra to us, and even gave us a ticket to visit the caves at a very discounted rate. I think she was just utterly thrilled that we spoke Russian and kept exclaiming to the other Babushka “They understand! See look at them they understand Russian well! They understand everything I say to them!”

She also gave us the advice that we would need to buy a “light” to enter the caves because they are very dark. We understood “light” in the American sense of needing to buy a flashlight or a torch to guide us through the caves. Not so.

Upon reaching the lower monastery we went to purchase a flashlight only to find out that we should have taken to word “light” in a more literal sense. One walks the caves in the same manner pilgrims have done for hundreds of years, modestly dressed and carrying a beeswax candle.

Our guide for the caves monastery was a very devout Babushka. (The tour was entirely in Russian). She explained the history of the monastery, it was founded by hermits in the 10th (?) century. We paused at the entrance of the caves to light our candles from the candelabrum, and then made our way down the steps into the caves.

The caves were nothing like what I was expecting. I had for some reason assumed that they would be roughhewn caverns. Instead they were plastered and white washed, making smooth narrow tunnels through the earth. On either side of the passage way are nooks that hold the bodies of monks from the early years of the Lavra and of saints. Many of the walls also hold indentations, behind these indentations lie the remains of eve more monks, the hermits who lived alone in the caves they dug off the main passage way. Every few days other monks would leave food and holy water outside their cave entrance, if the hermit left the food untouched it would be a sign that he had died and his cave would be closed leaving his body entombed inside.

I am glad that I saw these caverns but I also felt a bit odd at times, for most of the other people wandering these caves it was a holy place of utmost importance. Our Babushka-guide would come up to the body of a saint entombed in a glass coffin or an ikon, and would cross herself, offer up a prayer and kiss the glass. Though I wore the garb of an orthodox believer and carried a pilgrim’s candle I felt apart, as I think the rest of our tour group did, because for me these saints held little personal meaning, only interesting history to learn from.

Upon leaving the Lavra behind us the day became even heavier as we walked to the neighboring hill top where the largest WWII memorial in the world is located.

Upon first entering the park it seems more or less like any war memorial, with collections of artillery and tanks. However one cannot ignore the statue that looms over the hillside and the city below. As you move closer to her you walk through a covered passageway, which is lined with statues of soldiers and peasants. Soviet Era patriotic music is piped in. It is a slightly creepy experience and very moving.

Under the statue’s base is a museum dedicated to the soldiers of WWII. Every room in the lower two floors is filled with letters home, uniforms, pictures, badges, pictures, weapons and stories from both sides of the eastern front. The last room is very long and along both sides from floor to ceiling are pictures of the men who lost their lives in battler. Each picture is just barely larger than wallet size and they run floor to ceiling along the entire length of the room.

Down the center is a singular long wood table. When you look closely you realized the supporting legs are bombshells. Standing on the table, down one side are the broken and battered flasks of soldiers, and down the other opposite each flask is a shot glass.

When you come out of this room, you step into a huge contrast. The bottom two floors of the museum are of dark brown marble, and show the horrors of war. The last room of the museum is in the base of the statue. It is all white marble, on each of the 6 supporting pillars is listed the names of Ukraine’s war heroes in gold lettering. Between each pillar is a large glass window. It is like standing in the copula of a Byzantine style church with light pouring in and guiding your eye upwards. In the center is a seal of the Soviet Union, and around the ring is a mosaic mural. It , to me, contributed to the feeling of having stepped into a temple of light and wonder as the style is reminiscent of the mosaic works in Orthodox churches.

For a museum and memorial built by the soviet regime it was perfectly styled to plunge a person into a vision of hell before raising them up in a temple of peace. Few churches I have been in have managed to create such a spiritual impact on me from architecture alone.

Travel Week Part IV

Friday…

I suppose I should just say it and get it over with: I went to Chernobyl’.

I still am not entirely positive why I went, but I do not regret my choice in going. I think that there are some parts of history and of human destruction that must be witnessed and that we must make an attempt at understanding.

After visiting the Chernobyl’ museum in Kyiv earlier in the week, I thought that I had a decent idea of what to expect, and yet still I was unprepared for the reality of it.

Chernobyl’s is a place halted 20 years past. Cranes loom over projects that stand unfinished.

Even now, perhaps more now that I have allowed time to pass I am not sure how to describe the place.

What was most haunting to me was not the reactor encased in the “Sarcophagus” but the town of Priyat’. I’ve been to ghost towns before, but never a ghost town this large, nor this modern. 50 thousand people were told to evacuate this city in less than 36 hours. Most left, carrying only the clothing on their backs and nothing more.

Much of the city has been cleaned up – so there are few personal remnants left behind after all these years. One place where items have not been removed is a former kindergarten, seeing toys scattered on the floor and indoor shoes still left infront of painted cubbies suddenly drives home the fact that this was once a city filled with people of all ages, a place where families lived – not just worked.

I think what hit all of us in my group hardest though was the grounds of a former amusement park. A highlight of our time in Kiev had been bumper-cars. Here too stood a bumper-car rink, cars sitting in what is now grass, rusted through somewhat eerily they sit hodge-podge not even pushed over to one corner as if their former occupants simply stood up and walked off.

Though the sight of skeleton buildings is eerie and haunting – what is perhaps worse to contemplate is the fact that people once again work at Chernobyl’s and at the site of the exploded reactor. Close to the Sarcohagus radiation has not yet been clean-up to entirely safe levels like much of the rest of the site (or at least the places that are used frequently.)

Our guide warned us over and over again not to step off the concrete road. The roadways have been cleaned; in many cases soil was stripped several meters and then clean soil put-down and new concrete placed over the top, yet we saw workers sitting in the grass to eat lunch. Several hundered people work at the Chernobyl’ plant again, while they are paid more than the average village worker makes their wages are not all that high, especially when one considers the fact that all of them will probably die of cancer caused by repeated exposure to high radiation levels. One day it is possible that a new functioning reactor will be built in this same site. Right now preparation is underway to start tearing down the two reactors that were never finished, and to build a new sarcophagus over reactor number 4. The old sarcophagus is starting to weaken. It was never meant to be a long term solution to containing the radiation, only a quick temporary fix while something else could be thought up. The new sarcophagus will hopefully buy us humans another hundred years worth of time – then we will be back in the same predicament again: How do we contain dangerous nuclear radiation, and prevent a second catastrophe from occurring?

I am also glad that in this trip I as able to catch a glimpse of life in the Ukrainian country side. It seems much more in-between worlds than does Kyiv. I know I saw a Dedushka sitting in the back of a horse drawn wage parked behind a nice Mercedes Benz in one village we drove through. The country side still has a feel of an older time to it, I wonder how Ukraine as a whole country will progress when cities like Kyiv are becoming increasingly wealthy, capitalistic, and global, and the villages remain agricultural and impoverished?


A Note:
I still have one more part left to post - hopefully that will be up this week. Also, photos should be coming soon. Sorry to keep you all hanging.

Update from Ed: Gwen has successfully uploaded perhaps 150 photos via FTP to our server. I have downloaded the images and I will be posting these to the photo gallery for her. However, I am currently at the NAB convention in Las Vegas and will not have time to upload to the gallery until about Thursday of this week. Check back later this week for a massive photo update!

Travel Week Part II

Travel Week Part II

We traveled to Kyiv an overnight train. The only major event was being awoken during the night with a Russian guard standing over us wanting our passports. At first I was a bit alarmed but after I woke up enough to begin understanding and speaking coherent Russian, I could understand that all that was really going on was a routine passport check, and that many of the other questions he was asking were nothing more than simple curiosity on his part. I think he was a bit bewildered as to why he was dealing with 3 American girls (the boys were in a different wagon) at 4 in the morning, on a train to Kyiv, traveling "Platscart" (most common class for Russians to travel), whose visa stated that they were students at SPSU, and whose Russian was understandable but not fluent.

He had to pull out his book to figure out how to fill out our paperwork. I imagine Americans crossing from Russian into Ukraine in the middle of the night aboard a train is a fairly unique situation.

About an hour later we then had to repeat a similar process with a Ukrainian border guard.

Arrival in Kyiv was I think, the first time I’ve had one of those “oh my gosh I’m in a different country moments” since coming to Russia. I think in part because Ukraine is similar to Russia, while still having just a few things dissimilar enough that they stand out in stark relief. After a few minutes looking around we realized that though all the signs were written in Ukrainian we could actually understand them.

We took a bus from the train station to our hostel for the first few nights of our time in Kyiv. After crashing for a short while, we set off to explore. Our group didn’t really have much of a plan in mind, but the receptionist told us where we could catch a bus, so we went into the city center.

Just walking from the bus stop to Independence Square one realizes how different a character Kyiv has from either Petersburg or Moscow. This city is an eclectic mix of architectural design spanning from the 10th cent to the 21st. Some how this mix works and the city appears beautiful for it. It might also have helped that compared to Petersburg, which we had left after a heavy snow-storm, the bright warm sun made Kyiv irresistible, and after Moscow’s crazy hustle and bustle, Kyiv’s laid back character felt welcoming and relaxing.

While many places are closed on Sunday in Kyiv we went to the mall food court for food. Surprisingly it was reasonably priced and none too bad. After our lunch we continued to wander about, making our way back up the hill to Sofisky Sobor (St. Spohia’s Cathedral). This is where we learned that as anal as Russian cashiers are about having small change to pay for things, Ukraine is ever stricter. I attempted to pay for a 2 grivena ticket with a 5 grieven – it didn’t fly and I had to dig out 2 ones rather than generating any change I could use a different place.

Still the Cathedral was amazing. The outside is not particularly spectacular as is common with Orthodox churches, though the fact it has 13 copulas and multiple apses and galleries is both impressive and very unique for an Orthodox church.

(Sofiskiy Sobor)

The inside of the church though is one of the better interiors of an Orthodox church I have been in. They have frescoes ranging across the centuries, models of the church as it has evolved, and cut away sections to revels the different styles of decoration from different eras.

The upstairs galleries offered more of a museum experience, while the downstairs was kept closer to the original church.

From the Bell Tower we could look out on the whole city of Kyiv below us. Unfortunately my lack of a head for heights got to me a bit so my pictures from this view aren’t amazing.

We proceeded to meander down the down to Mikhailovsky Monastery and were just in time to listen to the bells chiming the quarter hour.


Rather than go in we wandered down yet another street. This turned out to be a great plan as we ended up walking along a market of paintings for sale. Whole blocks lined with pictures of all shapes, sizes and styles. Some day when I’ve managed to save up a great some of money and have a nice house that I want to decorate, I think I’ll go to Kyiv to buy Ukrainian paintings. I saw so many there that I loved.

At the end of this street stand Andreevsky Cathedral, an impressive high baroque monument overlooking yet another vantage of Kyiv. (I think we managed 10 scenic vantage points in the time we had in Kyiv.) It was early evening with slanting soft light, down from the cathedral winds a long, twisty, cobble-stone street edged with souvenir stands and shops. We followed this street down before spotting a stair-case up to the top of another hill.

(Andreevsky)

I think this hill we discovered was a local hang out spot as it became apparent we were more than a bit out of place there, so after a short time exploring we headed back down and made our way back to the hostel where we spent the evening watch the Russian movie “Mongol” on Rauley’s lap-top. The movie was dialog heavy, with out subtitles, and dubbed into Russian from Mongolian which made it a bit difficult to follow at times, but I managed to understand a surprising amount of what was going on, and regardless of how important the dialog was the cinematography was well done and thus interesting to watch.

Travel Week Part I

I think that it would be best for me to break travel week up into several smaller sections. I’ve already broken my photo albums up as such, and I will attempt to keep the same breaks in my posts.


Travel Week Part I

Wednesday ended up being a very long day for me. After lessons we held Smolny’s malsinitsa celebration. True, it was about 3 weeks late, but it was still good fun. Various groups sang Russian songs, read poetry, preformed dances – the crowning jewel was a children’s troupe who preformed national folk-songs and dance routines. They were so adorable! I wish I hadn’t forgotten that the part was happening and thus brought my camera to school with me that day.

As soon as the part wrapped up and every one was stuffed with blini and pastries I raced back to my home-stay to unpack school supplies and pack for my trip to Moscow and then to Kyiv. Happily that didn’t take extremely long.

The long part was waiting around to leave, and then going to Moscovsky Vokzal to catch our night train to Petersburg. The good news is that trains here leave more or less on time. That meant that many of the people who traveled on Russian trains before were freaking out that our train left the station 5 minutes after scheduled time. This is not normal for Russia. If one could combine the ease of booking a train in the U.S. with the cleanliness of Russian rail-stations, and timeliness of Russian trains – one might very well have the best train system in the world. The only down sides to Russian train travel are a) booking tickets if you do not speak Russian, and b) the toilets onboard the train, which can get pretty gross.

We arrived in Moscow early Thursday morning and promptly took a bus tour around the city as it was still too early to check into our hotel. As usual, Russian Language program students were sent with a Russian-speaking guide and Area Studies with English speaking. It was rather amusing to us Russian Language students as our guide normally gave tours in English and would occasionally forget and give us a place name in English instead of Russian or ask us “how do you say X in Russian?” He was a great guide however, his Russian very understandable and with a great sense of humor.

Probably the funniest part of our guided excursions occurred on the second day of our time in Moscow. We were taking our tour of the Kremlin and a one of the Babushki in Cathedral Square scolded him for speaking in Russian – “they are Americans - speak English!” She didn’t really buy his explanation that we understood Russian perfectly well and was threatening to report him to one of the guide organizations for leading an unauthorized Russian language tour. :-P

Moscow is a very intimidating city and a bit difficult to find one’s way around in. The metro system is HUGE. (Though it actually feels less chaotic than the Petersburg metro once you start figuring out where you are. People are more laid back in the metro in Moscow.)

(Moscow Metro system map)

As such I didn’t see nearly as much of the city as I perhaps would have liked. Still, I am not overly fond of Moscow, my only real regret in lack of exploration was not seeing the Tretnikovskaya Galley.

I did however manage a visit to the State History Museum, which was actually quite interesting containing a collection of artifacts ranging from ancient tribes to the 19th century. (To see more recent artifacts one must going to the Contemporary History Museum.)

(State History Museum viewed across Red Square)


After the visit to the Museum the group I was with was accosted by an Russian woman who wanted to tell us about the Clones. Why she chose our group I’m not sure as we had been speaking in English at the time and her entire rant was in Russian. We understood it – for better or ill, we just couldn’t figure out why she came to us to warn us that Putin, Medvedev’, The Minister of Finance, and even President Bush are pieces in a plot to take over the human race by clones from Transylvania. Thankfully she was harmless, and once we politely thanked her for her warning she raced of through the crowd to find more people to warn of Man’s impending doom.

Finally Friday afternoon my travel group of 6 departed for Kievsky Vokzal and our train to Kiev.


EDIT:

It will be some time before I have pictures uploaded. I tried today to get my Moscow album on my gallery and for some reason it is not exporting. Until I figure out why it won't export more than the first 4 images, those are all you will be stuck with.

Protests

Because of Bush's visit to Kyiv, various political factions have been protesting NATO and Bush. I don't know what the western media has covered of this. I overheard from some one else that they had been saying there where violent riots going on in Independence Square. I haven't had any direct access to news however on my own.

Because I don't know what is being covered in the western media, I thought I'd put up a quick post to reassure everyone that while there have been protests in the city center almost every day since I have arrived, they have, to my knowledge, not been violent. The one I saw our second day here was very peaceful with people waving flags, listening to music, and making speeches before walking down one of the major street. Our bus konductor talked to Rauliegh and I about it during our ride home after being out in the city. If anything she seemed amused by the protest, and summed it up with the quintessential phrase "sto delat?" (what is to b done?)I am unsure if she knew we were american as we were speaking in Russian the entire time about the situation. She blamed the protests on Bush, but was content to gossip with us about them.

Anti-Bush sentiment, and Anti-NATO sentiment is very strong here, however anti-american sentiment is not. While it may help that I speak Russian, every Ukrainian that I have encountered here, from the armed border guard to the museum Babushki have been incredibly kind and welcoming.

It is interesting to be in Ukraine during this time of Bush's visit and to see the city's reaction to it. I am very thankful that the people here, even the communist flag waving rebel protesters make a clear distinction between the president of the USA and american citizens, they may be vehemently opposed to the political policies of Bush and NATO, but to us students visiting their country, we are welcomed with out any fuss, a little curiosity, and a great amount of warmth and kindness.