3-1-09 Butter Day

It is not so often now that I see things in this country that are new to me. At some point my attitude shifted from, "holy shit, is that baba eating a block of butter? Did she just offer you a bite?" to "wow. That baba's purse is meowing. She stuffed her cat in her purse to take the bus. That's the third one this week." Yesterday proved to be one of those ever more rare "block of butter" moments.

I call the holiday Butter Day, but I'm sure there is a much better translation of it somewhere. It is the day before lent starts. It is the last day people are allowed to eat sweets, meat and dairy products, though honestly I have never met a Ukrainian who actually follows this rule.
Eryn and I headed over to Eileen's tiny village to celebrate the holiday, which consists of eating a lot, getting drunk, and then jumping over a huge fire to ensure luck through the year. A winner combination. The fire was billowing black smoke and was taller than me when we arrived. That's because they burn tires. Big tires. Tractor tires.

We all took a chance jumping through the flames and drinking shots of wine or vodka in between. Eileen's neighbor, Grisha, was really excited about the jumping part and kept grabbing one of us and making us jump again, even after the second tire was piled on. Before long I was seated on Baba Raia's lap while she put her coat around me, snuggled me like a two year old, and even bounced me on her leg. I finally told her I was quite warm enough seeing that there was a huge fire eight feet away.

I should mention that before the fire jumping started Eryn, Eileen and I were completely immersed in season one of 24. So when I saw a boy with a fake gun rolling around on the ground and hiding behind trees I thought it would be fun to mess with him a little. I used the cover of a tree to run towards him and then blasted him with my fake hand gun using an awesome sound effect that, unfortunately, cannot be duplicated in writing. I thought it was a pretty funny joke until about a half an hour later when, mid conversation, I was shot in the shoulder by a BB gun.
"Ouch!" Everyone kind of went quiet.

"OUCH! Malchik (boy)! 'Gun sound effect and hand motion!'"

Perhaps my best translation to date. It got the job done though and the gun disappeared – hopefully in the fire. We headed home covered in black soot, but positive that our year ahead would be full of some kind of luck.