Participants Blog

Goodbye Ukraine

These last few days have been some of the busiest of my life. Thursday was my last day with my l’Arche workshop, and everyone was very emotional. Firstly, my workshop is moving to a new location because the rent at the current location is too high. And so the last week at the workshop we were moving all of the stuff to the new location. On Thursday morning, we finished that job. In the afternoon we had a barbeque, and it amounted to a typical l’Arche Ukraine party. It was very much in the spirit of l’Arche, with all of us being together, singing together, eating together, etc…. And it was very Ukrainian due to the food we ate. We had kovbasky (sausages), bread, potatoes, tomatoes, and cucumbers. The party was very nice.

As the Temperature Rises

Dear Readers,

I think today I will share with you an aspect of Ukrainian culture which until this point hasn’t really bothered me that much. But as the temperature rises, this little quirk gets more and more annoying. You see, in Ukraine, everyone over 25 seems to be deathly afraid of wind blowing in their face. They all fear that they will get sick from it somehow. And for some reason, the belief is that women are more likely to get sick from it. So what? I will tell you what.

A thought: The informal ‘you’ vs. the formal ‘You’

Dear Readers,

I had a little bit of an awkward encounter with my host grandmother, and it had to do with a feature of the Ukrainian language which is no longer part of the English language. I don’t think it is a huge deal, but I thought I would write about it anyway.

Michael in Ukraine - Week Four Complete

Dear Readers,

Week four is now complete, and I can’t believe it! They say that the first month of the Intercordia placement is supposed to be long and hard and not too enjoyable, but I have had such an amazing time so far. The time has just flown by!