Spring Fever...or I Hope I Don't Have Drug-Resistant TB

What happened to April?! I guess with every intense “formative” experience “the days are like weeks and the weeks are like days,” (Mark, TMS). It feels like I just posted that bit about the “Revolution,” but it’s actually been almost a month....but the days themselves went by sooooo sloooooowly.

Passover feels like eons ago…all in all I went to FIVE Seders, two of which I co-lead with a Hillel student. It was a whole lot of Passover and I was ready for it to end mid-way through. As much hard work as it was and as difficult as it was to be away from home, it was of course very meaningful and memorable. As with all Jewish traditions I witness here, I was deeply moved by how much the holiday meant to the community here; how deeply proud and happy the people were to be able to celebrate Passover. At all of the Seders I went to, it was at least one persons first Seder. In addition to all of my usual feelings of guilt for taking being Jewish for granted was the poignancy of the idea of freedom, that we were freed from slavery in Egypt and how today in Ukraine, Jews are free to practice Judaism. This made the holiday particularly meaningful.

After Passover, Josh (my older brother) came to visit! We did literally every single touristy thing Kyiv has to offer…and then we struggled to fill the next two days of his visit. Haha. Josh managed to point out, and not in a mean way, but rather a well-traveled way, all of Kyiv’s shortcomings as a destination city. Nothing he mentioned was news to me, but were all things I am well aware of and choose to ignore so I can go about my life here. As much fun as we had visiting churches, synagogues, old ladies (they LOVED him), wax museums, outdoor markets, demonstrations (they’re pretty unavoidable, you have to walk through them to get around the center of the city) and the Scorpions concert (hilarious), when Josh left I wished it was me in his suitcase instead of all my winter clothes.

Luckily, I only had to bear Kyiv for a few days until I flew to London for a much needed break from Ukraine and time with my mom! We had a glorious long weekend in London town filled with speaking English and eating delicious rarities like Thai and Indian food.

Now I’m in Kyiv trying to wrap my head around where the time has gone and how I will make it through 3.5 more months…I know the time will fly but I am starting to go a little nuts/turn Ukrainian.

The demonstrations have been going on for almost a month and the only change that seems to have occurred is an increase in the severity of traffic due to lots of major street closings. I should mention that the bulk of the protesters here are people from rural Ukraine who get bussed into the capitol and paid $30 a day to wave the flag of the party who’s paying them…That’s how we do democracy.

In other news, a couple days ago as Katya and I were enjoying one of our taco feasts in my apartment, someone tossed a FLAMING mattress out of their 3^rd story window down into my courtyard. Luckily no people or stray cats were hurt…