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btw, the man doesn't speak english at all. and while i understand russian fluently i don't really speak well at all. So we had a pretty interesting conversation about OSC using my mom as an intermediary!
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Lemme know if you see my husband's old job. He lost it when it was outsourced to the Ukraine.
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I'm surprised nobody dobied this with "Things I didn't expect to find in <name of 7th planet>".
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Don't mind me, I'm just envious. I've never made it out of the US. I hope you have a great visit, Strider. Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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I don't know how soon he's going to check back here, but for anyone who's wondering, he was born in Ukraine. His mom and he are visiting the area she grew up in, and he lived in until he was 2.
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I am! I think I'll be surrounding you this vacation. After this we'll be in Prague for a few days. Where in Poland are you? I thought about seeing if you wanted to meet up, but I have no idea what the distance is like. I'm thinking pretty far right?
The guy who is a big OSC fan is an old friend of my mom's from college. He reads a lot of fantasy and sci-fi, and has read Asimov, Robert Jordon, George R.R. Martin, Terry Goodkind, Anne Mccaffrey and some others. He's never read Hart's Hope and i'm trying to figure out a way to translate the title into russian, but even my mom has no idea how to translate "Hart". Don't even know if the book is translated into russian. If it isn't...it should be! *ahem* OSC...
quote:Find any mail order brides? I hear they're quite a few of them over there...
still looking. you want one?
So far the trip has been pretty interesting. This much time alone with my mother is getting to me, but I'm practicing Zen like calming rituals to deal with it.
I think I'll change the thread title and add some interesting things that have struck me about Ukraine and the trip.
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3)apparently mullets are the hot new fashion trend. It's really bizarre.
4)Every young person in the Ukraine is either a punk, a mod, or a soccer player. once they get in their mid twenties they conform to the standard European look. The soccer players stick around though.
5)Capitlism has run wild here and the country wasn't ready for it. The stark constrast between "old" Ukraine and "new" Ukraine is really interesting.
6)It's weird being in a place SO homogeneous. There are NO minorities(a very very small perecentage of Asians is the exception, very small, but i'm thinking most of those are from the southern portion of the former U.S.S.R.). And there's really no tourism here. At least not from any non slavic countries. Barely anyone speaks English. I'm betting this would be different in Moscow/Russia.
7)If you wanna get a rough feel for the place, watch Everything is Illuminated, it was pretty damn accurate.
8)Kiev is a huge city and the main area really isn't so different from NYC.
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hey, mullets are still all the rage in certain parts of the USA, as well. If i go a full day without seeing at least a few dozen adults and children sporting them, it's a slow day indeed.
also, they can't be mail order brides if you're currently IN the Ukraine. what you need to do is just sniff out a few hot russians, get their addresses, wait til you get home, and THEN offer them a free plane ticket.
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10) there are no parking rules here. everyone just drives up on the side walk and parks right in the walkway
11) it's absolutely amazing how much of a language you don't hear in normal conversation with your family. A lot of the words I don't understand are names and places, but there are still a decent amount of words that I've just never heard in my life. Usually at home I might not understand a word here and there, but can pick them up through context. But when half the sentence is words you've never heard, context isn't so easy anymore.
12) not to harp on the minorty thing, but in a city of 2.5 million people, i've seen one indian, one black person, and maybe 10 asian people.
13) no open container law = cool
14) no drinking age, and yet no problem with underage drinking...go figure.
15) apparently the russian females i knew growing up were NOT an indicator of what Russian women look like. The woman here are absolutely beautiful. Maybe it's just the russian blood in me, but I'm in awe.
16) when the traffic lights are turning red, they first blink green, then turn yellow, then red. Then they turn back to yellow before they turn green.
Kira, you're in Disneyworld, so you're seeing a pretty large cross section of America. Most people don't see mullets that often. And even when you do, they're certainly not considered cool! Especially in the largest metropolitan area in the country.
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I'm seeing a pretty large cross-section of the world. Do you know how many Brazilians, Germans, Russians, Brits, Scots, Canadians, Chinese, and Japanese I meet in any given day?
And isn't there a stereotype that a bunch of countries are about 15-20 years behind the US, pop culture-wise? So maybe Ukraine's just getting into the 80's.
Seeing a lot of fringe bangs, rhinestones, and/or loud, clashy color choices?
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quote:11) it's absolutely amazing how much of a language you don't hear in normal conversation with your family. A lot of the words I don't understand are names and places, but there are still a decent amount of words that I've just never heard in my life. Usually at home I might not understand a word here and there, but can pick them up through context. But when half the sentence is words you've never heard, context isn't so easy anymore.
that's true. My cousin lives in Germany, and her mom speaks Polish to her, but she herself doesn't really speak it much. When we go there and my mum talks with her, there is a lot she doesn't understand, just because it's not words you normally use in everyday household conversations.
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: 15) apparently the russian females i knew growing up were NOT an indicator of what Russian women look like. The woman here are absolutely beautiful. Maybe it's just the russian blood in me, but I'm in awe.
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Eugene Hutz is quite possibly the sexiest man alive. Rowr! I love "Everything is Illuminated". Very good movie. I was tempted to recommend it to my Ukranian boss, who is breathtakingly casual about his anti-semitism, but after a discussion we had about Gogol Bordello where he described their music as "Gypsy, Jewish crap" I decided not to. I value my job. Though if anyone needs to see that movie, it's him. I've wanted to visit the Ukraine for a long time now. It looks beautiful, and the culture seems fascinating.
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quote:I was tempted to recommend it to my Ukranian boss, who is breathtakingly casual about his anti-semitism, but after a discussion we had about Gogol Bordello where he described their music as "Gypsy, Jewish crap" I decided not to. I value my job. Though if anyone needs to see that movie, it's him.
The anti-Jewish sentiments in parts of Eastern Europe are really something. I don't know if it's getting better, worse, or if it is stablely bad. In that sort of situation, foundling, I usually say, "I'm not sure it's that simple." Then again, I've never valued my jobs enough to button my lip. Granted, I've been canned so many times and varied ways that I have a good sense of humor about the whole business.
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Oh, when he first said it I let him have it. I couldnt just let it go, and at the moment I wasnt thinking about my job. I said something along the lines of "So you're telling me you dont like their music because they're Gypsy? Or because they're Jewish? Dont you think that's a little ignorant?" and he sputtered something along the lines of "NO NO, that's not why!" and then we dropped it.
But I can see him thinking I recommended the movie to highlight his ignorance (which, of course, would be correct) and I can see him getting really pissed about that.
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my grandfather was from Ukraine, left because if he didn't he would have been in the Czars army or killed by cossacks..... then in US my sister married a Ukrainian whose uncle had been a cossack... I teased him about it, and he teased back, saying we should thank his family instead, cause by making them leave Ukraine, it probably saved them all from everything horrible that came after the Czar! (rest of the family was Scots, French, and Hillbilly)
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