This is so typical of Ukraine. It will throw bad days
at you like rain and then all of the sudden, one day,
everything will be picture perfect. Weirdly perfect,
like you woke up on another planet. I had been sick
all weekend. Some kind of flu that made it hurt to
walk and ended in a dramatic 15 hour migraine. It
took 14 hours of sleep to put me back to normal.
Then today happened. First off, I wore cloths I
brought back from America. It is the first time I
have worn white in over a year. I got to school and
the kids all yelled "hello" at me. They have pretty
much stopped saying Russian greetings to me. The
teachers who saw me said the informal hello instead of
the regular formal one. This might not seem like a
lot, but it really makes a huge difference.
At teacher tea I was congratulated on a recent grant
that I wrote and asked about my trip to America.
Amazingly, this is the first time I've ever been asked
anything about my life during teacher tea. We talked
about all of the snow and as new teachers arrived, the
information was repeated to them as if what I said was
interesting to them. I found myself understanding
more Ukrainian than I remembered knowing.
After teacher tea I was taken downstairs to get my
picture taken for the yearbook. The 11th form decided
that they wanted "The American" in their pages. The
teacher assured me I looked good and the picture was
taken. The picture room was just across the
director's office so I stopped in to pass a document
onto her computer. The document would not open and
the computer teacher had to be called. For the first
time since arriving at site she was nice to me. She
even looked at me when I talked.
I had just enough time to make it upstairs and collect
materials when the bell rang for art class. As I
walked down the hall the kids from class came running,
yelling my name and engulfing me in many hugs. The
other teachers laughed at me as I made my way down the
hall in a pack of children. We made bracelets, their
favorite. The cleaning ladies started cleaning early
and they were all interested in the project. As I
left I gave each of them cowboy and pirate stickers,
which they thought extremely funny, and I left the
room with new friends.
Even as I walked to and from school the villagers all
said hello. Some even initiated the greeting and
smiled. This has never happened before today. Could
it be the spring air? Could it be a new confidence in
myself? I try not to think of tomorrow or the next
day because soon I am likely to have an awful day –
things must remain in balance.
I would like to think that today was a turning point,
but I know it is just Ukraine being Ukraine. One day
someone will be your best friend and the next they
will be distant and formal. It happens to everyone.
One just has to remember these perfect days when
things aren't going well. They do happen. And they
are totally worth the bad days between.
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