So I started thinking today that perhaps I was a little too harsh with my remarks about Belarus. I think it was really just a huge culture shock for me, and it was a little unfair for me to call it a miserable place. Anyway, I wanted to write down a few things I remembered that I forgot to include.
In Ukraine:
I’m not sure if I said this before, but I am fairly certain I was the shortest and ugliest person in the entire country. It’s ridiculous how tall and beautiful everyone in Kyiv is.
It’s somewhat confusing talking with Ukrainians…they switch back and froth between Russian and Ukrainian from sentence to sentence.
When I checked out of the hotel, I was talking with the floor manager (there was a desk on every floor) while I waited for the hotel. She told me she had a niece who went to America a few years ago and didn’t like it. She said the girls were too sloppy and lazy. Then she told me that I should keep my eye out for a nice Ukrainian girl, because unlike American girls who are only concerned with their independence, Ukrainian girls care about keeping up their appearances at all times so they can please their man.
In Belarus:
When I was outside the U.S. embassy in Minsk talking to the guard while we waited for a foreign service officer, I told him about all the problems I had on the border coming into Belarus. He told me “don’t worry about it now, after you pass your exam you can come back here with a diplomat’s passport and laugh in their face while you go over the border, because then they won’t be able to touch you!”
While I was in a park, I wasn’t quite sure which direction to go to find a particular monument, so I sat down on a bench next to an old woman. I noticed her looking over my shoulder, so I asked her for her help. She helped me figure out where we were, and gave me some ideas for restaurants in the area, explained what entails ‘Belorussian cuisine,’ and gave me some ideas for some other things to see. Then when I told her I was from America, she started talking to me about some friend of her husband’s that moved to Canada and started to perform their “dirty work.” I asked her what that meant, and she said that he had a higher education, I forget what he did, but he had a formal education and a prestigious career, and he went to Canada and worked minimum wage jobs doing menial labor. She said it was disgusting that people would throw away their lives like that. I wanted to say “maybe he believed that despite everything his life was better in Canada than here” but I decided it was better not to.
The sidewalks were made up of colored bricks so that everywhere you went you saw the colors of the Belorussian flag. Also, on every corner there were billboards or posters encouraging people to join either the army or the police. They usually had people holding babies or women, and the idea was that you were becoming society’s hero by defending your homeland.
As far as the police, I’ve come to the conclusion that yes, they hate foreigners…but at least they are fair. When I had the issue with the policeman for trying to photograph the president’s house, he explained to me that what I was doing was illegal, told me why, made me delete the picture, checked my documents, and sent me on my way. He even told me how to get to a museum a few blocks away. If that had happened in Russia, I would have been arrested, had the police try to intimidate me into giving them all of my money, or both. The rules might be strict, but at least in Belarus they follow them. I suppose it's just another perspective…they like strict order and discipline, whereas I’m used to a society where we have more freedoms. Of course I’m not saying I’m in any hurry to go back there, but I think I judged them a little too quickly, and unfairly. For a country that has been in extreme poverty for a very long time with very few freedoms, they are making the best of what they have. They keep a clean, orderly country and rely on trade with Russia to keep them going. Incidentally, I asked around today and found out that Belorussian produce is actually considered to be very good quality.
On another note- I picked up my official certification today that I passed the TORFL level two, as well as the paperwork to receive my grades. Apparently after I receive my grades I return to the administrator and receive some sort of certificate of completion. I also went to register my new migration card from my reentry into the Russian Federation. For one reason or another, this was the easiest time I’ve ever had dealing with the people in the document registration office in the university. It’s a very strange feeling knowing that I’ll be home in less than a month…
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