Culture. Shock.

It is 11 am on Friday, January 9th. I am in the living room of our apartment in Chernigov, Ukraine. Alex is asleep in the bedroom under a big fleece leopard-print blanket his mother sent us from Greece. We returned at 8 this morning from a trip to West Ukraine. It was a whole mix of things but generally one big culture shock for me. It started on January 3rd in the afternoon. I was feeling sick and we were about to embark on a 12-hour bus ride with 20 other people. Destination: Karpati, Ukraine. The mountains in Western Ukraine where we would snowboard and see a little of West Ukraine. We boarded the bus at about 4 pm (an hour after we were supposed to). The crowd was mostly youngish-couples with one family and a mother and her 10-year-old daughter. Alex and I were going with one of his best friends and his wife. When everyone settled in our guide, Alexandr Andrevivich, took the microphone at the front of the bus and started laughing and making jokes (that I didn't understand, clearly, and this is a big factor for me) and promised us champagne since he was late. I thought it was an empty promise but sure enough when the bus started he passed out plastic cups and bottles of champagne. I drank some despite feeling sick (as I mentioned earlier) but was worried because I didn't think a long bus ride + champagne + sickness + a (newfound) tendency to get car-sick would end very well. As we finished our champagne... all hell broke loose. People started tearing open hidden bottles of cognac (mostly cognac for some reason) and taking shots out of their plastic cups. I looked around in horror and realized Alex and his friends were not only taking part in this insanity, but were LEADING in it. In a matter of 2 minutes the bus has turned into a full-out party and I was just sitting there in shock. I refused shots several times over the course of a few minutes and as I watched this I got sort of pissed (in the American sense- HA)... no one had warned me that this was what Ukraine bus trips were like (and trust me, they all knew) and I was not prepared to get shitfaced and not exactly thrilled that Alex was ignoring me and everyone was speaking Russian and I was sitting in my window seat like a loser. Eventually things calmed down and Alex explained to me that, yes, this is typical. Soon the bus pulled over so the drunken passengers could use the bathroom. I got off the bus and saw no bathrooms... just trees. "Where are the bathrooms?" I asked Alex. "Just go by a tree." He said. This is normal in America for a car, maybe, if someone really has to go... but an entire bus, nuh-uh. I was feeling culture-shocked already. Finally, after hours of drunken craziness that I refused to take part in (maybe if they were drinking beer I would have cracked, but I still can't handle the thought of cognac on a bus), sort-of sleeping and a realization that my American-ness was going to be a big attraction (one drunk girl sat with me for 45 minutes pointing to things and making me say them in English) we arrived at our hotel. The rooms were bearable, but sub-par and decorated with glitter on the walls and fake plants hanging above the beds. It was morning at the point and we went down for breakfast (thank God, I was starving and all breakfasts and dinners were included in the price of our trip). The room where we were to eat was barely above freezing and even in a turtleneck and sweater and I was shivering. And then there was the food. Sitting at every place on a long table were bowls of beet salad and cookies. This was breakfast? I sat down and pushed the food around my plate, starving. Little did I know this was only the beginning of a week of terrible food experiences. After breakfast we headed off for a tram ride. It was pretty fun even thought it was a small train, not a tram, and did not go "up the mountains" as promised. At one point we stopped and drank "life water" from a spring and then literally stopped at an old lady's house who served us bread with butter, pickles and meat and tea from a giant metal bucket (needless to say I didn't have any) in exchange for tips from us. People drank the entire tram ride. After the tram we went to a Kaliba (traditional Ukrainian restaurant that is rustic in every sense of the word... and from my experience they are never really heated) and I had a decent meal of soup and some potato thing. It was fortunate that the meal was good. Dinner that night was not edible and included yogurt and an orange. We spent the evening drinking. Go figure. The next day we got up early to go snowboarding and skiing. I was a little worried about breakfast and rightfully so. We were served cabbage salad and assorted piece of cake (sound like leftovers to you?) and then... get this... mashed potatoes with meat. FOR BREAKFAST. I walked out and never came back to breakfast. The next morning they got soup. As we got back to the room Alex said "I'm worried that you didn't eat any breakfast..." I replied, "I'm worried you DID." Snowboarding the first day was a disaster. First we went to a mountain and all the lifts were broken. Then we drove to a farther away one and they didn't have any snowboards of course. We ended up having a nice day though... Alex and I took a sleigh ride out to this nice waterfall... but seriously, no snowboards at all? Alex eventually got them to get some for us for the next day but I was still pretty annoyed. It turns out though, and I realized this the next day, the snowboarding was AWFUL. The chair lifts were from 1900 and the trails were so skied-off there was more grass than snow. Ugh. So, after the snowboard-less day we went to another Kaliba. This one wasn't heated at ALL except for an open fire in the middle of the room. (I could still see my breath.) We ate shashlike (a traditional meat kabob) and listened to live music and drank (do you see a pattern?). It was a lot of fun. We danced around the fire and had a good time. Alex even fake-proposed to me to the delight of everyone (I'm still waiting for the real one :-) ). The days went on like this. A mix of disappointments and delights. Sometimes I was really happy and sometimes I was like "let's go home, please, right now". I can't really explain culture shock or how strange it was for Ukrainians to have an American among them (people were asking Alex questions left and right and alternating between treating me like a princess and ignoring me. The little girl (and also Alex's other friends who met us there's daughter) spoke some English and was obsessed with me. I've promised to go horseback riding with her sometime. A REAL LIVE AMERICAN.) but it was generally kind of strange and difficult to deal with at times. Culture shock happens when you aren't looking and it isn't necessarily about the big things- those you expect- but the little things, like beets for breakfast.