Ukranian adventure

Last Saturday, after much talk and little action, the famous Jenny Ball and I finally made it across the boarder to Ukraine. Of course she couldn’t find her camera, and I couldn’t find my charger, so there is nothing to show for it other than the bottle of paprika vodka in my fridge, some very cheap butter, and the stamp in my passport. You would expect that considering I waited 6 months to go to Ukraine it must have been a difficult trip, but after a 45-minute bus ride, and a half an hour walk, we arrived in Solotvyno. To our pleasant surprise while most things were illegible everybody in Solotvyno speaks Romanian, so communication was not a problem. After changing our money our first line of business was to find some traditional Ukrainian cuisine. The menus at the restaurant were written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but after asking the waitress to interpret for us I found that the traditional food was exactly the same as the food in historic Maramures, where I live. The similarities didn’t end there. We crashed a mother’s day performance, and all the kids were dressed in traditional outfits, nearly identical to the ones worn in Rozavlea. Despite the similarities there was plenty new to explore. The markets not only had cheap goods, but also were full of things we had never seen or heard of. We loaded up on a few new things at every store we passed. After our bags were good and heavy we headed out into the old salt mine looking for the mud baths that we had heard of, but nobody in the town seemed to know about. After walking through, the salt flats for about 20 minutes we stumbled upon an abandoned tourist village that was, and likely is mud baths and salt springs when summer rolls around. It was very strange coming across this well-established tourist destination in the middle of a the old salt mining area. Supposedly people with ailments come from all over Ukraine to be healed in these springs and baths. I hope to come back in the summer when it is up and running, but for some reason I have some reservations about vacationing amongst ailing Ukrainians.

Solotvyno has a fascinating history. Check it out: http://simsester.co.ua/English/History.htm

March first is big day for a Romanian Peace Corps volunteer, as it is both Martisor and the Peace Corps anniversary. This year was particularly important as it marked 50 years of Peace Corps. In celebration, my Peace Corps neighbor, Jenny Ball, joined me in hosting an event at the American Corner at the Baia Mare library. Sixty plus kids show up, eager to practice their English and learn about volunteering. Jenny and I decided to use this as an opportunity to both teach and fulfill two of the Peace Corps goals. The first, being to share information about The States and our culture with people from the host country, and what better way than with a game of audience participation jeopardy. The gem of all our questions had to be, how many Romania’s would fit in the USA. The answer is 41, or 42, I forget. The second goal that we focused on was sharing things about Romanian culture with American. We did this by passing out papers and having the students write one thing that they thought Americans should know about Romanian and Romanians. Here are some of the answers we received. Warning, I didn’t fact check al of these.
-Christmas is very important in Romania, and there are many traditions (hopefully I showed that a bit in my last entry)
-Oina is Romania’s national sport. It resembles baseball.
-March first is known as Martisor. It is the first official day of Spring, and t is customary. for people to give woman pins that they wear until the 8th.
-Bucharest is the capitol of Romania, not Budapest (no offense).
Hope you learned something!