Observations

A few little things I’ve noticed in my not-quite six months in country:

The light switches are almost always outside the bathroom. Convenient for not running your hand over the entire wall trying to find it in the dark. Not so convenient if you have prankster friends who like to leave you in the dark.

My host dad joked the other day that he knows how to cheer up any American in five seconds: pull out the camera and say cheese. Ukrainians smile less in photos and at strangers than Americans do, and many of them think we’re a little strange/silly because of it.

Katherine and I practicing our Ukrainian photo faces at the castle. PC: Kyle

Second hand stores are a big thing. Maybe this is just Mukachevo, but I can think of about eight second hand stores off the top of my head. Every store has a set restock day where the prices are the highest, and then they drop a bit more every day. Restock day is a race to find the best goodies, and then a lot of people will head over to the bazaar and resell it there. They sell things by weight in almost all of the shops, which seems way more efficient than pricing every item out. Like any second hand store, you can find some amazing deals if you have time to sift through racks on racks on racks. Peep this perfect Advent calendar sweater that will win me all sorts of prizes at ugly sweater parties:

This country has bread down to an art, which isn’t surprisingly considering it used to be the bread basket of Europe. Sadly, I turn down a lot of it because there is so much other delicious food being offered at every meal that I have no room in my stomach for extras.

Language. Okay, you’re probably tired of hearing about this from me, but the more time I spend here, the more fascinating it is. This past Sunday I spent the day with more of my extended host family and right away heard a conversation that included several Hungarian words, as well as a significant helping of both Ukrainian and Russian. Some of the family live in villages that are majority Hungarian and use it for daily communication, while others barely know ten words. There are also villages in Zakarpattya that are majority Polish, German, or Romanian, where there are stronger cultural and linguistic influences from each of those countries. Here in Mukachevo, I’ve noticed that even people who speak mostly Ukrainian use the Russian yes/da and no/nyet.

There are surprise holidays! These vary by religion, region, city, village, family, etc. I scheduled an English Club a few weeks ago and was confused and a little frustrated when no one showed up, only to be told later that it was a religious holiday that everyone knew about. I’m hoping that after a year I’ll have a better idea of what’s going on, if only because I’ll remember all the surprise holidays that happened!