Pestilog

Do I Have "Sexpot" Written Across My Forehead, Or What?

Today was the weirdest day ever. Honestly. It's only 11pm here and I'm ready to just go to bed and be done with it.

For starters, I slept in. I slept in a lot. Till like 11:30. And then I had a really slow morning, which was nice, cause I was exhausted from this whole trip (still kinda am) and I went out last night AND there was a 7pm women's meeting at the community center that I wanted to attend. So, no waking up early for me. This was kind of exciting for me also because the last few days in the center have been BORING. I usually get there at about 9 or 930 and stay till 230 or 3. At that point, most of the action is over. The action doesnt actually start till about 12 either, so the first few hours that I am there are good for the occasional interview if a staff member happens to be passing through, but are often really slow. I have started bringing articles with me to read during the long down times. Well, apparently this morning, the morning that I was delighted to sleep through, was a doozie. The first busy day at the clinic, and I slept through it. Apparently, people were even running out of materials charts and intake forms. THAT'S how busy it was. And then after I got there, total jack went down for hours. I even started screwing around on the computer because there was nothing to do and no one to talk to. And then this blasted women's meeting, which I recently heard someone describe to the rep of a very prominent US benefactor of this organization as "pratically a movement," never happened, cause no one showed up. I asked Marina about the meeting yesterday, and she said that it's popular, but the attendance fluxuates a lot. "Like a storm," she said, laughing. Funny. Really.

Ok, then the weirder stuff. Near the end of the day, Elena, a staff member who has hardly said a word to me since I got here, came up to me and handed me an e mail address that she had written on a scrap of paper. "Here" she said, "This is from Dima, he wanted me to give it to you." I said thanks, then looked closer at the address and realized that I had no idea who she was talking about. I went back over to her office and said, "I'm sorry, who is this?" She looked at me as though I had just asked where the front door was. "Dima!" she said, "You were talking to him the other day and he asked me to give you his address!" Like...Duh!

I have no idea who Dima is.

After I gave up on the women's group, I went out for a beer with Andrei. Andrei is interesting. Allegedly, he works for this organization. In reality, he spends a significant portion of the day on translate.ru looking for the words to describe to me his particular affinity to philosophies of black magic and voodoo studies and his current course of training, or playing roll-playing games on the computer that involve fantasy lands with dwarves wielding large axes. You'd never guess, looking at the guy. He looks like a totally normal, boring 40-something dude with cable sweaters and a degree in engineering. Anyway, he had been inviting me for a beer for a few days, so I finally took him up on it this evening. His son was there too. He was excited or me to meet his son because he traveled a lot with his dad when he was young, and speaks many languages, and he wants his son to meet worldly people and learn new languages too--like english for example.

His son is 6. When we met, the kid pulled a lighter out of his pocket and starts playing with it. I immediately have flash backs to when I was 4 and found a lighter and was very clearly instructed by my mother that these were not for people under the age of 30 to touch or play with. I recall even thinking that people who carried them were somehow bad people until I was about ten. Andrei is not ruffled by this at all, and, in fact, pays no attention as his son starts pulling cigarette butts out of the coffee can used as an ashtray by the front stairs of the center and lights the little paper bits left at the end of the filter on fire. Then goes over to the telephone pole, rips down some ads, comes back, and lights those on fire, then steals his dad's empty cigarette pack, pulls out all the foil paper, and tries repeatedly to light that on fire. Oh my lord. My sensibilities were so offended. But, the kid was also filthy--brown sticky hands, dirty clothes, brown face--which told me that his dad lets him play and lets him play hard, which I have to admit I have a lot of respect for. I don't know what I did, but I was somehow deemed acceptable by the kid, because as soon as the three of us walked out towards a cafe to get a drink, his grubby little mitt shot into mine and clung on for the rest of the trip. With his other free, smelly, soot covered little hand, he kept feeding me cola jellies out of his jacket pocket. It was cool. We were pals.

Then, at the bar, we order a couple of beers, and the kid is totally swigging his dad's beer. He apparently drinks vodka too. I can't imagine a kid that young even tolerating the taste of beer, but this one is way ahead of the curve apparently. But then it gets even weirder, because we start talking about languages and school and travel (frequent topics of conversation when the only common vocabulary you have with someone in any of the languages you share are of the second year "Hola, me llamo Paco. Voy a la biblioteca. Me gusta mucho comer manzanas," variety). But then after a bit, the conversation veers towards how awful Andrei's wife is, how she lives with her brother and doesn't care for the kid, and how Andrei has been telling his kid about me at home, and how the boy allegedly goes "Oh papa! An American girl? A wife for you and a mom for me!"

Holy Jebus. I'm, like, so gone. Now.

So, I tell him I need to split and head home. We pay the tab, walk out, and it turns out that he and his kid live like 3 blocks away from me, so they walk the whole 20 min back with me. Awkward. But, on the way home, Andrei tells me another funny story. It appears that a SECOND person made an attempt to show up on my doorstep professing love. The first is not Andrei. The first, if you havn't heard the story, was this dude who's name I don't even remember, from our tour group to the catacombs last week. We had a nice conversation (first pleasant, easy conversation I have had in Ukrainian since I got here, actually) all the way back from the village that we drove to that day, and then the guides and the group parted ways at the hostel and he lingered all awkwardly by the door and then finally left. Monday night, he shows up at the hostel, totally unannounced, dressed up, hair slicked back, trying to talk me into going out to dinner with him. And he's so nervous that he's talking fast and I can't understand a word he's saying. Too bad. He was kind of cute. But I had been wandering the streets of the city with the mobile exchange all day so I was tired and filthy, had already eaten, needed a shower badly, and didn't have the energy to deal with any more foreign languages at the moment, so that whole well intentioned endeavor failed (women, you know? sheesh). Well, apparently this ALMOST happened again, because on tuesday, I met a client named Vova. Vova asked me where I was staying in Odessa. I said that I was staying at the Black Sea Hostel, which is true. Now, not only is this a very very new place, so few people, except maybe the really really active local hospitality club members, will have heard of it, but hostels are sort of a new phenomenon in Ukraine as well. The word "hostel" doesn't really translate. I have to explain to most people here what it is, and they are often still confused afterwards. There is a huge three-star hotel in the city center called the Black Sea Hotel, so when I tell people where I am living, they usually hear me say 'hotel' instead of 'hostel' and think I am staying there. Well, the next night, Vova apparently got good and liquored up, and trucked his way down to the Black Sea Hotel and tried to find me. I have this incredible image in my head of this dude stumbling up to the counter and being like "where do you keep your Americans!?"

So, yea, its been an interesting week to say the least, and today totally topped it. I mean, Ukrainian women are hot. Hot. And I have been the awkward girl, who dresses like a slob and spends her time misunderstanding everyone, generally being in the way and making all those clumsy mistakes that crack people up like trying to pay for my own drinks and waiting to be seated at restaurants and assuming that there is any philosophy here of 'standing in line.' Oh, and speaking Ukrainian but not Russian. That also makes me a weirdo. Several people have actually burst out laughing when they hear that. Yet, somehow, I have managed to procure that 'exotic appeal.' Only in Ukraine, I think, and in working-class post-industrial Ukraine at that, do I get to be the intriguing foreign girl that everyone wants a piece of. And its totally not any fun, which is a damned shame. It's mostly just nerve wracking because, while I can generally get by just fine, I don't have the language skills to handle these situations adeptly, or with any grace at all for that matter, so I generally end up either exhausting myself trying desperately to assess whatever situation I find myself in, or just standing around with my finger up my nose, while some dude next to me thinks he's working it and it totally golden.

I never thought I'd say this, but this actually makes me miss dating in highschool. At least then you didn't have all these stupid adult sensibilities, so when people showed up unexpectedly, drunk off their asses, at your hotel, it was funny.

And speaking of whom, I have joined forces with Duncan to start a new blog...its like an ugly child. No one but us will love it, but we will love it so hard.

Labels: odessa, rabble rousing, travel, ukraine, wtf

posted by Veruka2 @ 10:10 PM