Dreck and Doodie - or Duty

 I used to nanny for a couple of kids in Philadelphia. One of them offered to do an impression of me for Ivo. "CaaaaLm day-own." apparently, that's how I was "calm down."
When I worked at a tri-lingual Kindergarten, all the kids would say "bea-uuuuuuuuuuutiful" when speaking English. I guess that that is how I say "beautiful."
Now, when I'm at home with Ivo and he's speaking in English and makes any mistake or asks about an English thing, I recognize my teacher voice creeping in. I have my "this is how it's pronounced" voice, for when Ivo says a word he's only ever read before (it has a questioning quality, so that the listener knows that they should repeat after me.) (It sounds better in a classroom than at the breakfast table.) Then there is the moment when he's misspoken or changed sentence mid-thought just like a native would and I jump in to correct  and immediately try to stop myself. "It's - nevermind!"
Ivo is wonderfully patient with me. This is good, because I need to learn when to step in and when to leave well enough alone, when teaching English. I'm navigating the difference between having taught children and currently teaching adults. The biggest hurdle is that one of my students acts like a child.
Last week, we were learning about Names. One way to do this was the use of a family tree. One of my students decided that she hated family trees, that she can't do them in any language and doesn't intend to do them ever. O-K
She then had a similar reaction to grammar. When I asked the class to open their books, she loudly slammed her hands on her closed book and said "No!" I asked if there was a problem and she said "no grammar." I tried to soothe her and tell her that we would be doing this together, that we'd take it step-by-step, that she could ask any questions. no problem. Her hands remained on the book and, I swear, she shook her head with her mouth pinched closed, like a small child. Perhaps it was this child-like behavior that caused my reaction. Whatever it was, i put on my stern voice and said "Oh, I'll wait." and starred her down. I felt so foolish later.
On the up-side, I played a fairly childish game with my students last week, to practice people and place names and my students were totally down. 
I'm really enjoying teaching classes. We're slowly discovering how to best care for Penny with our full schedules.  We're also adjusting to living further away from the dog-doo receptacle. This seems silly, but it's a bit of a nuisance. It used to be, that Penny would poo on our way home and we'd conveniently throw it in the Robidog (said receptacle) in front of our house. now that there is none there, we'd need to drag the dog way out of the way, which is difficult for a stubborn pup. So now, I put the bright red bag of refuse in my bike basket, which is right by the front door. I then throw it away when I'm on my way out next. This often means that I'm walking down the road, dog-less with a bag of dog-poo, looking quite strange.
In the meantime, my husband, the husband of crazy dog-poo-lady, is invited to the Finnish ambassador's house for dinner tomorrow night.

No biggie.

I wasn't even supposed to be here today

Recently, Ivo had a big career decision to make. He'd been offered a gig closer to home, for more cash and a year longer contract and had to choose whether or not to leave the position he's in now; where he's working on a project that he's passionate about and has been shaping for 2 years.
There were pros and cons for both options. I listened to them all. The only 2 cents I gave was to speak to this career counselor, whom he'd enjoyed speaking to in the past.
A few times, Ivo tried to trick me into choosing for him. But I bested him and held my cards so close to my chest, that he didn't even know which choice I'd been hoping for. He thought that I'd wanted the closer job but the secret is, I wanted him to make a choice that would make him happiest in future. I think that he chose that.
In future, when it comes to moving house or applying at far away universities, I will make my voice heard in addition to listening to Ivo's ideas (I hope), but so far as career-shaping decisions that don't involve me moving, I'm fairly neutral. I do know that I do not ever want to be responsible for a decision that Ivo might regret.
When I was getting ready to move to Switzerland, Ivo asked me, in every way that he could think of, if I felt sure that this was a decision I was making for me. It was. I'd read Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris and remembered his way of comforting himself in anticipation of being an "ex-pat."
I promised Ivo that I would never say "I didn't even want to come here."
In the meantime, I think that Ivo reaffirming his comittment to his current job(s) will have a wonderful outcome.

Not your mother's dog owner

When I'm out socializing my dog, (which involves awkward conversation among owners while the dogs terrorize or hump one another) I like to ask other dog owners how long they've had dogs and if this is their first. As coincidence has it, nearly every dog owner I encounter in Kreis 3 have been raised with dogs. This doesn't surprise me.
I'm unsurprised because these people react similar to one another, but unlike myself, when a non-dogwalker walks past. When a pedestrian turns a corner near the park or is approaching us on a sidewalk, I hold my dog tight. I interrupt my dog's eye-line and wait to see how the person is reacting to being near a dog. This is similar to the amount of space I give people when I go on public transport. This is because I was not raised with dogs, but was raised with a cynaphobic. My mother had a fear of dogs.
The dog owners in the hood have no compunction about telling scary stories of dogs eating or drinking something and being mortally ill or talking about the "dog-haters" in the world, but they seem completely ignorant of the fact that they're cynaphobic-haters.
But then, This is only my second pup. Maybe I'll learn

and yet more language

I missed the first week of my Swiss Sign Language course. That'd be the class where everyone gets to tell everyone why they're there. So I entered a class full of hearing people, unaware of their motivations.
II learned ASL at school in RI. My motivation for learning Swiss German sign is the desire to know more about the swiss Deaf community, to attend their poetry slams and generally pursue a language that can aid or replace the ASL that I am now steadily losing.
While waiting for the class to start, I walked over to the poster on the wall with the finger alphabet. There I discovered that swiss sign has finger signs for "ch" and "sch." Amazing.
In the break, I was talking to the teacher about where I'm from and then possibly made the worst first impression possible. Up until then we'd been having a great class. The teacher is Deaf, which is new for me. Apparently the first half of the first class included an interpreter. The second half, the students were able to discover how well our teacher speaks and lip reads and how well they can follow his signs with no previous education.
Anyhow, while talking to my teacher, he asked where I was from and I was spelling out places, as I didn't know if certain signs were international. I was pleased when I began asking about country names and discovered that they're mostly the same. Then I spelled out Philadelphia and the students around me got freaked out at the speed of my spelling. Then I felt like a teacher's pet and a weird person who doesn't fit.
But the class was amazing. We did these excellent exercises to work on body positioning and  hand and wrist and head movement. This is something that wasn't really tended to in my ASL course. I'm curious if having a Deaf teacher means that the focus is different and I'm super excited about the class.
Our homework is to study the vocabulary that we learned yesterday. Each sign was slightly or completely different from ASL.
On the way home, I ran a kilometer to the train station in torrential rain with 2 fellow students. We squished into the train and dripped our way to Zürich and I got to hear their motivations for learning to sign.
Best cure for jet lag I've ever found: learning + torrential rain. 

controlling no more?

Yesterday, I emerged from my weekend certification course to discover an SMS from Ivo saying that he was at the animal emergency room with Penny.
After Ivo fished a chunk of moldy bread out of our pup's mouth on the river side, she instantly evacuated out of both ends and collapsed. Ivo called every vet and clinic we've ever known and then called a cab (requesting one with floor covers) and took her to the emergency clinic. The poor dear was so dehydrated that the docs couldn't palpate her organs. I got home and drove the car to meet them at clinic, but Ivo was there alone. The poop pooch had been admitted for IV fluids and antibiotics and tests.
My heart is slightly broken for our pech-puppy (pech: bad luck) but I never felt terrified while heading to the clinic. I knew that Ivo was doing everything that he could and that there was nothing that I could do. This is all terribly unremarkable for most people. But for me, the fact that I wasn't constantly thinking that I should have been there, that I could have done better, that if only I hadn't had this class.....
This is little, but it makes me happy.
I'll be alot happier when our pupperoni is home safe and sound and stinkin' up the joint

last post from Kiev

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24.06.2012

Datcha calmed.

Yesterday, Tobi and Patricia arrived in Kiev from Moscow. Their journey began in Latvia a while ago. After stopping over in St. Petersburg to stay with our friend Danilla, they then took the train to Moscow. I must say that it’s lovely to have another lady around and they’re such agreeable holiday mates. After giving them a quick breakfast, we headed to Larissa and Vladi’s datcha for a relaxing day. The datcha is about 12 km away from the city. The harrowing drive (I can not imagine any tourist renting a car and giving the unwritten rules of post-soviet roads a go) led us past elegant looking high-rises and massive supermarkets. As we got nearer the holiday home, however, the streets got shabbier and the houses were one-family constructions. Vladi and Larissa’s datcha is large and covered in siding. Bars on the window and doors and an alarm system keep it safe in their absence. The security features aren’t as harsh-looking as the description may imply. Behing the garden is a quite large shed; about the size of what I’d been expecting. When Tobi suggested that this was their shed, I said that I thought it may be someone else’s datcha. Larissa soon opened it’s doors however and revealed a number of lounge chairs and plastic garden chairs. Vladi was meanwhile unzipping a tent which covered a large table with benches, surrounded by mosquito netting. There was an outdoor toilet with a lino floor that wasn’t too bad at all. Hands could be washed from a spigot where hand soap lay next to the bucket, which collected our grey water, which was then used to water Larissa’s incredible garden.

The temperature was chillier than it had been and the sky was alternatively cloudy and sunny. The others had a quick swim in the Nieper, which is meant to be cleaner away from the city, but I found the air to be too cool for that. The river was reached by a 10 minute walk along the road-side and the adrenaline rush of crossing said road was as invigorating as a dip in cold water, I suspect. The fellas got draft beers at a stand along the way and other than the large billboard for a tiling company (picturing a woman wearing over-alls with no shirt and a hard-hat) the way was quite rustic.

We had an insanely massive lunch, a lovely nap in the garden and some really stimulating conversation around the outdoor dining table. I tried to help Larissa as best I could in preparing and washing up. My first attempt at offering help was met with her turning her head and shouting to Vladi “Vlad, Jessica is trying to tall me something and I don’t understand it.” (Or so it had sounded to me.) The rest of our interactions were done with small attempts at using words that were common in our languages or that we’d already learned (Larissa took a German course years ago, but the knowledge has lapsed without practice. My Russian knowledge is based, of course, on 2 weeks of holidays in Russian-speaking countries.) Things like “Sol” and “Paprika” being offered while I was preparing vegetables for grilling were easy. Compliments like “schön” while drying a lovely tea cup were appreciated. Otherwise we worked silently and with a number or gestures to denote what we wanted or needed.

Larissa is an amazing orator. When she speaks, it’s always with passionate inflection and an amazing cadence. One can often follow the general meaning of what she’s saying if a few words can be caught. You only need to hang on, as her speech arches and drops, to understand what she’s talking about. Then you need Ivo to clarify that she’s referring to the “singing underpants” that were apparently featured in Eurovision. She’s already let you know what she thought of them. In other pronouncements, Vladi’s response of “let’s not talk about politics” (indicated by tone and the Ukrainian word for politics’ similarity to English) and Ivo’s lack of translation let’s one know that the soliloquy was likely something anti-american or mildly conspiracy-based. (I discovered that after pressing for translation a few times.) At lunch, she said that Ukraine was falling apart before it’d ever really become a true nation. When I answered that many countries are falling apart at the moment, she said that America would never fall apart because there are too many truly patriotic people there. This didn’t feel like a compliment.

Last night, we went to the nearby bar “Nirvana”. The wait-staff all wear T-shirts from the band Nirvana and the walls are papered with posters of American groups. The football was only shown in the basement (above ground a TV was showing America’s Funniest Home Videos.) We had an assortment of Ukrainian snacks and were pleased when the surrounding viewers all showed themselves to be Spain supporters. Patricia is particularly passionate about Spanish football, being half Spanish, but did not loudly sing her version of the anthem. When I’d asked her earlier in the afternoon how she feels about the lyricless anthem (there hasn’t been any agreed-upon text since the 1950s and the text up to then was a temporary post-Franco solution) she said that different regions have different word, but that they are often quite rude.

Today we will finally make an attempt at seeing the Lavra. It’s a Sunday so wait times may be long, but I’m confident that we can keep one another entertained. I must say, the more time I spend with Patricia and the more I get to know her the more I like her. I’m quite excited that she and Tobi will be our downstairs neighbors this fall.

more adventures in Kiev

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My previous Maschrutka voyage in Petersburg had been over-filled and stinky and scary. The two Mashrotka rides today, however, had seats enough for everybody and were pretty darned pleasant. On out first ride, a woman entered and then rode two stops without paying. Payment is 3 Grivna, no matter how far you’re going. One either pays the driver directly or hands the money forward, person to person, it the bus is full. The driver stayed at the stop and told the woman had to pay. She had a heated exchange with the driver and then left the bus without paying. Ivo then explained that she’d said “what about the foreigners?” (referring to us.) The driver answered “They’ve paid; 1-2-3.” I think that she was assuming that he’d charged us a foreigner’s price and so she should be able to ride free on his profits.

Here there are often different prices for foreigners. If prices are written somewhere, they’ll often have a lower price advertised in Cyrilic and a higher price advertised in English. Failing that, the price quoted verbally will vary with language. When Ivo and I first went to St. Petersburg, an effort to buy a SIM card for his handy was met with a flat refusal. When Ivo told his local friends, they said that this was just because he was a foreigner and needed to be more assertive. Sure enough, another visit to the Handy shop yielded a card, likely more pricey than any one sold to a Russian.

Last night, we met with Ivo’s hosts from 5 years ago. Pacha has been promoted to a chief engineer and edits and corrects other engineer’s plans. Natascha (Pacha’s cousin) was recently married to the man who accompanied herself and Ivo to that same outdoor museum we visited, lo those five years ago. She works in imports customs for a private company in Kiev and told us about a colleague who took a job at customs in the airport shortly before the Eurocup. He has since complained that there is no possibility of receiving bribes and that the job is far worse for it. Natascha explained that bribes, in her job, are simply an expected part of the system. Similarly, the expectation to refute accusations of taking bribes is equally part of the system.

The two cousin’s English has apparently improved a lot in the past 5 years. Either that or they refused to speak to Ivo in English before so that he could practice his Russian. Whatever it may be, they were able to express themselves very well in English at an increasing rate as the beer and vodka was poured. We watched the Portugal Czec game while having long and intense conversations about everything under the sun (philosophy, biology, anthropology,...) in which every long-winded exchange ended in someone calling someone else a “botanist” (Ukranian for nerd.) Natascha shared a homemade “aphorismus”: women fake orgasms and interest in football. She seemed more interested in talking about pop-culture and personal lives than evolution and prejudices. The evening ended with promises to see one another again. This is made more likely by the fact that Natascha is hooking us up with an apartment for Tobi and Patricia, who are coming tomorrow. I’ll head with Vladi to pick them up at the train station at 8am while Steff and Ivo head to the datcha before us, earlier in the morning. We’ll all meet up at the datcha and grill and swim, we’ve been told. Today is another sweltering day and we’ll head downtown to pick up souveniers.

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And we did.

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One of my favorite things to do with Ivo when travelling is “guess the person”. We’ll be sat somewhere and see someone and guess where they’re from and why they are here. In Kiev at the moment, most people’s nationalities are either presented in large letters on their chests or with flags painted on to their faces. Nevertheless, we still find occasions to guess at more subtle citizens.

While sitting outside the café after our Chernobyl museum visit, Ivo spotted a woman and began: “She’s an American art student.” Apparently she resembled many different American art history students he’d known in the past. As I was still clearing my brain after the museum, I didn’t truly play along, but as I stood up to go find the restroom, I ducked my head down and told Ivo quietly, “her fork is in her left hand;” thus not contributing to, but crushing the game.

Yesterday we took the metro from its farthest western point (though it appears that construction is leading the way to further Metro stations.) As we headed into the cars, a young woman opposite us considered standing and then decided to sit. As she transferred her backpack onto her lap I observed that she had a Futurama t-shit, with red collar and short sleeve hems. Her hair was frizzy and to her shoulders, nothing held it back except her massive headphones. She closed her eyes as she sat and listened. She did not tap her feet, which were in some sort of rafting sandal.

“American:” I began, “Shoes.”

“Canadian:” Says Ivo “backpack. Or German?”

“Nope, American: Futurama Tshirt.”

“Hmmm,” says Ivo

“Canadian,” I say “eyes closed on a rush hour train?”

“Canadian sophomore on a trip alone. Her grandparents are Ukrainian.” Ivo contributes.

“She’ll be a sophomore in the fall. She’s not sure if she wants to transfer schools because no one at college seemed to get her.” I continue.

This woman remained a mystery to us. Her eyes remained closed and she sat in her seat as the train became more and more full. Eventually we were at our stop and departed the train and will never know where the hell that lady was from or where she was going.

This reminds me of my obsession with an old pedestrian overpass n Providence. I would sit on the foot-bridge over to India Point park and watch all of the people driving places and try to imagine where they were going and why. Now and again a truck would speed under and the old bridge would sway slightly and I’d love feeling moved by the movement of these vehicles. I think that the initial motivation to hang out there came from my summer in the hospital. I’d been encouraged to walk around, but didn’t really like to. It wasn’t just the movement (it was partially the movement) but that not many people want to walk around wearing a johnny while pushing a massive IV tree around swinging their daily nutrition. I never knew where I was supposed to be going because pacing the halls didn’t seem that great but leaving the wing seemed like it would disturb the hospital employees and visitors. The nurses also didn’t really like me to go by myself, as I had a habit of feeling woozy.

So I’d push my IV tree just outside the wing to the large windows that overlooked the large street that ran between the two wings of the building. People emerged from the Orange line and if I leaned my head against the window I could see foot and car traffic on Washington St. I would watch the people and try to judge how hot it was outside from their clothing and pace. Where I was it was the same temperature the entire month: mildly chilly. But out there, those people had temperature fluctuation; they had places to go. Some people had lunches in bags that were solid, not bags of foods in intravaeneous form. These people had important, annoying, envigorating, gauling, pleasant lives. Maybe their visiting someone or just going for noodles. Maybe they work around here or are tourists in search of Chinatown. Maybe their med-students or are heading in for a colonoscopy. Maybe they just want a coffee at one of the city’s 3,000 Au Bon Pains and the New England Medical Center location is most convenient.

Now the footbridge to India Point has been newly built and wouldn’t sway if a herd of elephants were racing beneath it. Sure, there are still families, employees, employers and young couples speeding underneath it, but I don’t get to feel a part of it anymore. Not if the bridge doesn’t shake from their momentum.