"They say I'm lazy but it takes all my time..."

     And here I thought I'd go crazy from not having enough to do. I've got plenty to do. It's just a different sort of busy from what I was expecting. So, I guess I've got a lot of catch-up to play. It's been a few days since I last wrote something here and each of them has been busy. I'll just begin where I left off and go from there. Grab a cup of coffee or tea, this is a long post.

     I decided to go to a Christmas Eve service on Thursday evening. Before that though, I had dinner with the Eides. They had some of their family in for Christmas from around the world and the dining room (converted from the living room) was packed. Like every other time, it's good to spend time in a family environment. Good food and conversation are good too.

     The Christmas Eve service was a good surprise. The Church of the Holy Trinity is a reformed church in Kiev associated with MTW. They normally have a Russian-language service in the morning with an English service in the evening. Other than the language difference, it was almost identical to the service we have at home. After the greeting, the service progressed without much direction alternating between hymns and lessons. Each of the lessons (Bible passages) was read in Russian with the English words up on the screen. For the hymns, we had the English words up on the screen and in a hymnal. But the songs were sung in both Russian and English. Besides there not being a short sermon, the only other difference was that the last song had a piano to give the melody. Normally at home we sing Silent Night without instruments. Being there felt a lot like home. I also got to see a bunch of people from Big City as well as a few of the camp staff whom I hadn't seen since last year.

     One interesting thing happened to me on the way back to the Eides. I was planning to take the metro but ran into a snag. I had to wait for the third train to stop at the station. Both of the first two were so packed with people that I couldn't even get on. It wasn't until the third that one of the cars (or wagons as they are called here) had enough space. I went back to the Eides to enjoy a fire outside for a little while but then left to go back to my place. I managed to get a short Skype chat in too before bed time. However the time difference between here and the US east coast is killer sometimes. I was ready to go to bed and my family was just getting ready to go to the Christmas Eve service at church. We finally finished the call around 00:35 my time.

     Christmas day I got up and started to make the meal for brunch. I finished it right as I had to leave to walk to the elevator and ride upstairs. I made the fried-rice-and-ham again and it was awesome, again. It even got some compliments. One I was kind of surprised about. The rice has eggs in it and apparently the combination of eggs and soy sauce is part of what makes it good. One of the people put the soy sauce on the egg casserole and liked it a lot. They said they might do that more often.

Candy-filled, gingerbread-constructed, sugary-overload domicile.

     Christmas turned out to be more like a birthday party than Christmas. I thought it would just be me and the McLanes. It turned out they had invited a bunch of Ukrainians and Americans from KCA (including my language tutor and her son). But that's OK. I got to spend the day with friends in a family environment. I was also introduced to a few new family traditions including the destruction of a gingerbread house right after singing "Happy Birthday." 

     My morning was spent cooking. The afternoon was eating, games, a movie, and lots of conversation (including kibitzing and speculation about the new Star Wars trilogy). Then about 10 minutes after I got back to my apartment, I got text invitation to go to the Eides for Christmas dinner. I almost didn't go but I'm glad I went. The dinner was Moroccan chicken, couscous, and veggies. By that point in the day, I shouldn't have eaten anything else but it was too good to refuse. Christmas and New Years are probably the only days I don't care how much food I eat. Celebrations are worth the extra calories.

     After fixing a popcorn maker at the Eides, I made it back to my apartment in time to have two good long Skype chats with my family, one at their home and one with them and my dad's friends. 

     On a side note, Christmas day marked five months since stepping off the plane in Kiev. It finally feels like I've been here a while.

     Saturday I had some time to relax. I didn't have a lot going on but this was where my weekend turned upside down. I was planning to go to the Christmas Camp at St. Sophia's Cathedral in the evening with a student from the English club. But before that I got a phone call I was hoping wouldn't come. Let me rewind a bit.

     On Thursday, I received a phone call from one of our regulars at English Club. She is a teacher and her boss was looking for an American to be Santa Claus for a group of students for about an hour. I gave her the name and number of a person I thought would do a better job than me. I also thought I would be too busy to do it this weekend. Turns out, the person I recommended couldn't do it. So when I got the call on Saturday, I agreed to do it. The teacher's boss called me and asked me to do it. I thought I would have enough time to do it and get back to my apartment in time to complete the other things I promised to do. It ended up becoming a case of doing the wrong thing for the right reason. I'll explain once this story gets to Sunday afternoon.

Where can I buy a jar of Nutella that big?

Looking down Volodomyr'ski Passage toward St. Michael's Monastery

     So, Saturday evening I met up with Slava, a student from English club, to go see the Christmas Camp at St. Sophia's Cathedral. It actually wasn't just at St. Sophia's Cathedral. The whole event stretched from there to in front of St. Michael's Monastery. For those of you who have been to Christmas Village in Bernville, it's not much like that. More like a festival or fair with a big Christmas theme. There were lots of lights, a huge decorated tree, food and souvenir vendors.  The event was very popular. Even with the light rain, I didn't notice if it was any less crowded than it could have been. Near St. Sophia's, it was almost impossible to walk in a straight line because of all the people. The road between St. Sophia's and St. Michael's was half-closed with vendors covering the sidewalk and part of the road. If I hadn't been in a hurry, I would have liked to stay longer and just enjoy the sights. I don't get to go to fairs and festivals often and this was a lot of fun to see. Unfortunately, I had to rush back and buy supplies for the cooking I needed to do on Sunday and Monday.

This place is almost more American than I am.

The statue of Bohdan Khmelnytsky.

Me and Slava.

     Anyways, Sunday. I woke up after a bad night's sleep and had my customary shower before a ham and cheese omelet. Then it was off to church. Sunday was unusually warm. It got up to about 10C outside. Big temperature change for today but I'll get to that later. I had to leave church right after the service ended to get to the kid's party in time. I hopped on the metro at Shuliavska and had to transfer to the blue line to get up to Station Minska. The party was at a place called Sky Park. It's a business like Chuck-E-Cheese's or Major Magic's. They cater kid's parties in a facility with games and activities. It's in the far north end of a place called Dream Town 2. I definitely got my exercise on Sunday with all the walking around.

Pictured: one half-melted Brian.

     I got there right before 2PM which was apparently, right on time. The teacher, Sandy, came out to meet me and I got dressed in the provided Santa Claus costume. Basically, I was there to be an English-speaking person for the kids to sing and talk to. The teacher had promised an American Santa to the kids and it fell to me to deliver. Fortunately I didn't need to do a whole lot. Be friendly, talk in English, wave, listen to them sing and not melt from the hot costume. A little after I got there, the kids got up on stage to sing some songs. I listened and applauded and talked to them a little. Then we handed out presents. The parents had already wrapped the presents and labeled them. All I had to do was read the name (and not butcher the pronunciation) and the kid would come up and get their present. Some wanted to sing or recite a poem. We didn't have time for a story which the teacher wanted me to tell. But we did have a few moments for pictures before the next act came up and pushed us off the stage.

     Overall, the experience wasn't bad. It was just so far divorced from my comfort zone that they might as well have been in separate solar systems. Improvisation isn't one of my strong suits. But I doubt the kids cared. Some were so scared they couldn't even look at me. But most were happy to have "Santa" there. I'm glad I got to help out.

     So the "wrong thing for the right reason" thing became apparent as I tried to get back to my apartment quickly. I don't have a car here. Even if I did, I doubt it would have changed anything. It took almost about an hour to get from the party back to my apartment. By that time, I only had twenty-two minutes to prepare the salad I was asked to make for the Liberty Christmas party. I had all the ingredients and might have been able to make it if I hadn't done the appearance at the kid's party. I chose to make a group of kids happy and be Santa for an hour instead of making a salad for the English party. In the end I went and bought some pre-made salad at the store. The point of making it myself was to have something special instead of store-bought. But I'm also not entirely convinced I made the wrong decision. 

     Anyways, the Liberty Christmas party. I got there in time to help setup after buying the pre-made salad. Actually, there was so much setup to do that we went right on setting up after everyone arrived and went to the worship service. The point of the evening was to have a real, Christmas worship service for the English club. Liberty is meant to be a church plant and not simply an English club. The planning group (which I'm part of) wants to eventually start holding monthly worship services. I was still helping setup while it was going on. It didn't matter a lot because the whole thing was in Russian. But it covered the same sort of things that a normal worship service does. Bible reading, singing, prayer and a sermon. I think most people weren't expecting it. But we had a lot of people there. Probably twenty-five. 

     I left after dinner to go back to my apartment and relax. It had already been a long day before the party and was even more so by the time I got back. All I had to do was a Skype chat with my extended family. Sunday was the Tuscher Family Christmas. Every year, my family, aunts, uncles and cousins gather together for a reunion-of-sorts. It's just a normal family gathering with food and gifts and fun at Christmas time.

Before

     Monday was another long day. I got up, did my normal morning routine and then got started on making the salad. This one was for the Big City English Club Christmas Party. One of the things about Ukrainian cuisine I still don't understand is the fascination with mayonnaise. I used the majority of two 380gm packets of the stuff. But it was a hit. These are the before and after pictures. There were only about twenty minutes from when the hounds were released until it was just a bowl of unclaimed mayonnaise globs. 

After

     The intent was to make it look like a wreath. I sort of succeeded. There were a bunch of other things that were supposed to go on the salad but I couldn't manage to make them work. It should have had four garlic/cheese/egg-white candles spaced around it. I had to get creative and start making things up as I went when that didn't work. I also discovered that the higher I piled ingredients, the less stable the concoction became. I needed to put the cup in the middle to keep it from slumping down into a mayonnaise and veggie puddle. 

     After throwing the remaining ingredients into a last-minute separate salad, I had about forty-five minutes to finish my video for the party. I had started it on Saturday but still needed some narration. I improvised a recording booth with a heavy blanket and added the voice-over in with about ten minutes to spare before leaving. At the planning meeting two weeks ago, I was asked to show what an American Christmas is like. Every family has different traditions and I wanted to show that my favorite was being with family. Here is that video.

     Since Big City English isn't a church plant, the evening was more of a party.  I showed the video right after David's opening comments. Then we sang a few Christmas songs. Pastor Max did speak to the students since it was Christmas. We heard the testimony from one of Big City's members and ended the main portion of the night with two more songs. From there we had a lot of food. Luckily all the salad I made was finished so I didn't need to lug any leftovers back. After dinner, almost everyone went back to the orange room for a master class on making greeting cards.

      That brings me up to today. KCA, where my tutor teaches, is on vacation until next year so I had my lesson early today. It was weird getting there at 10:30 in the daylight. I got to see all sorts of things I normally miss because of the dark. I'm kind of glad too that I went during the day. Today was also a lot colder than it has been. It's actually more in line with a normal Ukrainian winter. We had some snow and freezing rain yesterday that stuck around through today.

     OK, that's enough update for now. Have a good week.