If I run fast enough, can I catch myself?

Link to a few photos of Kiev taken today:  https://picasaweb.google.com/nundabud/ViewsOfKiev02?authkey=Gv1sRgCPuIq6iY89PC5gE#

There are photos of the blessing of a couple but I won't post the link on the blog because of privacy and security issues.  If you'd like the link, email me at mulcahyj@citlink.net and I'll send it to you.

Hi.  You know, I'm a slow learner.  I just can't get it into my head that I'm not 20, or even 30, 40, 50 or 60.  I can't get it into my head that 70 is only two years or so away.  So, I keep pushing.  And sometimes life pushes back.

I've had a great couple of days.  Yesterday I actually did some Ukrainian language homework.  It's been frustrating for me that I meet with my teacher and then don't have time before the next class to do the assignments.  But, we're making some small progress anyway.  My ability to memorize words isn't what it used to be.   I'm getting ahead of myself here but as I was on my way on the metro to have a lesson this morning, I was scanning the ads in the metro car.  The Cyrillic alphabet is really comfortably familiar to me now, even when I'm not sure where in the word the stress comes.  An ad caught my eye and I loved that I understood it.  "Hair removal and pedicure in your home!"  I kept saying it so I wouldn't forget it and it was the first thing I said when I met Anna.  Fortunately, she already knew I was nuts!  Ok, back to yesterday (Thursday).

I studied in the morning and hand-washed some clothes and hung them to dry and headed in on the metro to meet Anna at "my" cafe, Glossary Organic Cafe.  We caught up, studied numbers to 100.  I also had questions about Ukrainian culture.  As I was paying the cafe bill, I was offered a discount card since I'm a regular.  I was ridiculously pleased to be a regular!  Pleased all out of importance at getting a 5% discount card!  Anna walked me down to Khreshchatik St which is really a main street where people walk and shop. We stopped on the way so she could introduce me to Ukrainian "junk food" - her guilty pleasure and, I fear, my new guilty pleasure.  It's fried dough with a hotdog inside, or at least a sausage that tastes like hot dog.  It has everything delicious and comforting, especially grease.  It's called perepichka. After leaving Anna,  I just wandered with no set schedule and sat on a bench reading and people watching for a couple of hours.  It felt really good that there was nowhere I had to be.  When I decided to head back to Kharkivska and the apartment, I bumped into a friend and chatted for a few minutes before continuing home.  I didn't stay up too long after I got home.
This morning I had to get up early to set out for my language lesson (at the McCafe - they actually have a separate area in a large Mickey D's that is a coffee shop with great desserts).  I had woken early but then fell back asleep and I had that shocky feeling when I did finally get up.  I set out but stopped for a cappuccino before I caught the metro.  It was fun waiting for Anna and people watching again (and also watching people watch me.  No way I can blend in.)  I was wearing a collarless blue shirt and and old man came up and grabbed my shoulder and asked "where's your collar?" - I actually understood him but he freaked me out a little so I moved away quickly.  When Anna came we had quite a good lesson, my last until after my next travel and conference, so it will be almost June before I can sit with her again.

I had an appointment with friends right after the lesson and met them on a metro platform.  We hopped the metro again to go quite far to a park.  We gathered our friends along the way until we were 10.  Our purpose was to go to a small chapel to bless the relationship of two of the guys who had been together for six years.  Unfortunately the chapel was occupied and we were out of luck.  That chapel would have been full with our little company, that's how small it was.   The whole park was the site of a village destroyed by the Germans in WWII.  We took the metro again, also quite far, then took an ancient Soviet-era trolley bus, then walked a considerable distance to the offices of a local AIDS organization where we could use a terrific room for our service.  Now, here's the exciting part.  A wonderful gay historian, John Boswell, wrote books about gays in the middle ages.  One of his books detailed a religious rite for the "making of brothers" - it seems to be a medieval version of a same-sex marriage ceremony.  One of our friends had adapted it and we had an incredible blended ceremony, quite Orthodox in flavor in which we blessed/married our couple.  It was in Old Church Slavonic, English and Russian.  All the priest parts were chanted by me.  At the beginning of the ceremony, I took a decorative sash and bound them together around the waist.  During the actual blessing prayers, they bowed and my stole was over both their heads for the several prayers and blessings.  Then, I tied their hands with my stole and led them three times around the "altar" table while a friend chanted.  Then I offered them a cup of wine and held it for each of them while they drank three times each.  First one, then the other, and so forth until finally after the third drink, the cup was empty.  It was incredible to be part of this service, to see a blending of east and west, modern and medieval ceremony, orthodox and protestant.  There was a fair amount of chanting and much of it was me and no one ran screaming from the room.  I will post some pictures I took today and yesterday of Kiev.  I cannot post the pictures of our ceremony because of security concerns but if you'd like to see them, let me know and I will send you a link.  I ask you not to share the link nor to post any of the pictures anywhere.  There still is cause for fear here.

Lest I forget the celebration - first champagne toast, then somehow two or three bottles of wine for further toasts, along with sweets.  It was the first solid food I had had all day and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with heat, alcohol and low blood sugar.

We took the LONG walk back to the metro and parted ways at Teatralna station (did you guess that's the theater district?).  I wended my way to Glossary to have a meal.  First I drank water, then had an energizing fresh vegetable juice drink.  then I had a cappucino and an absolutely delicious soup (solyanka)  with veal and sausage and ham in a tomato base.

I was energized for the long metro ride home and lucked out by getting a seat during late rush hour.  I took a liesurely walk home and stopped for a big bottle of mineral water which is almost finished.  I think I've been a bit dehydrated.  The heat is really quite strong and, as you know, I'm more comfortable below freezing than I am above 70!