Dreaming of Nizhen

Picture yourself strolling the quiet streets of a suburban town, it’s tranquil and all you hear is the wind breezing through your hair. The main road you’re on is surrounded by trees with leaves draping nearly to the ground and it leads you to a huge white columned building. Eleven steps up the stair case continues to lead you into the building, where once you enter and glance over to the right, there is a concrete image of the Ukrainian flag embedded in the wall (HUGE by the way). This place is known as no other than the Nikolai Gogol University in Nizhen, a town an hour and 45 minutes away from Chernigov.


But I’m getting ahead of myself in telling you about his glorious day, so let me start from the very beginning. Today, October 30th (my sister’s birthday) was our first time on the Elektrichka (train). The experience was good and bad because once we got on, there was absolutely no place for us to sit… or stand for that matter. Packed like sardines for the first 20 minutes of the ride was the most intimate I had ever been with my cluster mates. The concept of personal space went out the window the minute I stepped foot off the plane to this country and standing not even an inch away from Kate was proof of this. Through the pushing and shoving of passengers needing to get off on the next exit, I nearly sat on the lap of some strange old man. “What is this butt doing in my face?” I kept imagining him saying to himself. Oh well… I wasn’t alone with this same problem, so the only thing Kate and I can do was just laugh about it.


Finally we arrived to Nizhen and quickly headed over to the “House of Children and Youth”. At first, I was confused if this place was a school or one of those city sponsored programs hosted in a government building… but it is what its name says. Parents bring their children here during the week (and/or Saturdays) for extra-curricular activities or educational reinforcements… since apparently children can’t get enough of school. This place is great though and really gives children/teenagers the opportunity to develop academically and creatively. It offers art/painting, singing, dancing, acting, language learning, and a few others. The lady giving us a tour of the place let us sit in on one of the English classes with the kindergarteners… it was the most adorable thing ever. Ten little Ukrainian children sat in red miniature chairs in front of us. “Hello” they all said, and continued on with their lesson. I would love to teach this age group, but in order to do so, my Ukrainian (and perhaps Russian) would have to be close to perfect. It was great seeing how one would teach such young children, and they were well behaved too (then again, there were like 13 of us in the room). Shortly after the class observation, we headed outside where 4 guys dressed in traditional Cossack clothing performed a reenactment sword fight.

For almost two weeks now, our Technical trainer Katarina had been wanting to bring us here, her home town of Nizhen. “I was not born here, but moved here with my parents when I was 6 years old”, she said when I asked if this was where she’s lived her entire life. The trip was originally supposed to take place last Sunday, but she had a family emergency to tend to. Although dealing with a family emergency is never a positive thing, postponing the trip for this past Saturday turned out to be one of best things for various reasons.



Reason #1
See… when the last group left from D.C., leaving me behind, one of my favorite people left along in that group and I’d been wanting to see her (Kate Tremont). I briefly saw her at the café in Chernigov where all the volunteers go to on the weekend to use the internet. Unfortunately when I was coming in, she was leaving to catch her bus for a 2 hour bus ride back to her village. It sucks that not everyone lives near the city like me; it makes it that much harder to hang out with them. She did manage to tell me that her cluster was planning on going to Nizhen the following Saturday so maybe we could work something out. Well it worked out and her cluster tagged along with whatever activities we had going on for the day (except touring the university).
Reason #2
I finally met him… him being the only other Spanish speaker in Peace Corps Ukraine. Simon is his name and he’s in Kate’s cluster group. I’m thinking she told him about me the night I called her and she was over at his place working on lesson plans. Turns out that this guy from Ohio lived in Argentina for 5 months and picked up Spanish pretty quickly. I think it’s an awesome connection that out of all places, he lived in Argentina… Guatemala would’ve been better, but I’ll take what I can get. Needless to say, I have a new buddy, one I can speak Spanish to so I won’t lose the language (since I’m already struggling with it).

Reason #3
The weather was great. Right now is the time when the days are supposed to get shorter and colder. Winter, the heavy snow kind of winter, starts in a few weeks so we should be seeing less of the sun any time soon. So it was great having such a sunny and warm day, even if it was just for a little bit. It made the scenery that much prettier, making it great for pictures.

So there we were, a good 14 of us Americans walking around Nizhen like we knew the place. Seeing the reaction of the locals as we walked by talking oh so loudly… I can only imagine what they were thinking. Americans are pretty loud now that I witness it everywhere we go. But the minute we stepped foot in the cathedral, our voices went to mute mood. The inside of this place was quite beautiful yet spooky. I’m not used to being surrounded by icons and idols, but I must admit the art of it was quite nice and the golden stands glimmering from the fire of the candles gave the place a nice ambiance. Our arrival seemed to be timed perfectly because within minutes of us gazing at our surroundings, a trio began to sing in angelical voices. It echoed throughout the church, making it sound even sweeter in our ears. All I could do was just close my eyes and take it all in. I’ve only heard such singing in movies when the scene takes place in a church and the bad guy confuses his sins. But being there and hearing it in person was a whole lot better than any surround sound movie theatre.

Oh Nizhen… how I enjoyed touring you and making new friends. If I ever feel like getting away from the busy lifestyle of the city, or want to reenact my version of a romantic movie scene, I shall go back to you, for this day was like a dream and it almost had all the right people in it.