It has been already 4 days since I came back home to Ukraine for holidays!
Time passes by, I enjoy staying with my family, meeting my friends, eating food I love, walking down the streets of my childhood, everything is good, just can’t get read of some thoughts.
Comparison is something that I do hundreds of times each day, I know it’s natural and it’s kind of reintegration element (even tough I came for 2 weeks only).
So, firstly about my observations:
People’s appearance. In Vienna airport waiting for boarding to my flight to Dnepropetrovsk I finally saw a lot of Ukrainians in one place. My attention was taken by a girl wearing 12 centimeters high spike hills, jacket made from the fur of unknown animal. She had mop of perhydrol blond hair, huge blue eyes and pink lips. She was not prostitute, of course one can never know, but just my snap judgment (God Bless Gladwell for introducing me to this nice termJ), she was just typical, quite typical representative of Ukrainian or even post soviet beauty standards. I was shamelessly examining her for around 3 minutes, slowly realizing that I haven’t seen this kind of outfit for around 6 months. Observation number one: even tough I’m still quite shocked when people don’t iron their clothes, don’t make manicure and things like that, but I definitely got used to it to European casualness.
Fools and roads.
Roads and runways. Dnepropetrovsk might be not the best Ukrainian airport, but for sure is not the worst one, but seeing holes and cracks on the runways is not contributing to raising pride for my country.
Fools and attitude. I’ve traveled quite a lot in past 2 months and I was never ever asked anything about my visa, reasons of my stay in Italy. Never ever before arriving home and talking to a custom officer in DP. I had to spend 5 minutes explaining him in details what I’m doing in Italy, what is AIESEC and why the f… I came back home for New Year. In past few days I took hopper buses (марштрутка) few times and drivers were literally starring at me after hearing “Thank you” 3 times. After buying some of the gifts for New Year I realized that you can only hear thanks (especially from female shop assistants) after you buy something which costs more then 20 euros (in the shop with average price of 10).
And the last, but not the least, you always need to have wet napkins to clean your boots, because they’ll always be dirty.
That all is quite negative and pessimistic, isn’t it?
Those are random observations that practically don’t tell you a lot about the city, country and mentality, people etc. These are some random (yes, that is in the list of my favorite wordsJ) thoughts of a girl, who stayed some 6 months in the other reality and thinks that she has the power to criticize and judge something that she is too young to understand and evaluate. And that’s true. On the one hand. But on the other hand, the funny thing is that this criticism is only raising my feeling of patriotism that is properly “fertilized” by ideas taken from books that I recently have read.
Actually these kinds of things provoke me to think about what are the changes that my country needs, who are the leaders that have capacity, strong will and, moreover, belief in changes. I’m quite sure that country needs leaders, I’m quite sure that there are people capable of becoming such leaders, and there are people who can follow them. The question is how many people there need to be to create this critical mass that can turn this passive desire and dreams into kind of social epidemics that can in fact start the change. And the last – what can be my own contribution into that… I’m frequently coming back to thoughts of Raskolnikov from “Crime and punishment” about people who “the high and mighty” (власть имущие) or “weak people” (there is no literal translation I guess for твари дрожащие). All that thoughts not in sense of committing crime, but in the sense of being able and having courage to drive transformational change in Ukrainian society. Just a curiosity now whether I can really do something or whether I will give up as many others for having family, children, nice house, car, 24 days of vacations etc. which is in fact nothing bad, just ordinary… it’s not about being Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa… It’s about few words: desire and courage to drive changes.
“Because people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who actually do”….. even tough I know that changes start from within.
So what is the change that you are able to make in yourself to change at least your local environment for better?
Time passes by, I enjoy staying with my family, meeting my friends, eating food I love, walking down the streets of my childhood, everything is good, just can’t get read of some thoughts.
Comparison is something that I do hundreds of times each day, I know it’s natural and it’s kind of reintegration element (even tough I came for 2 weeks only).
So, firstly about my observations:
People’s appearance. In Vienna airport waiting for boarding to my flight to Dnepropetrovsk I finally saw a lot of Ukrainians in one place. My attention was taken by a girl wearing 12 centimeters high spike hills, jacket made from the fur of unknown animal. She had mop of perhydrol blond hair, huge blue eyes and pink lips. She was not prostitute, of course one can never know, but just my snap judgment (God Bless Gladwell for introducing me to this nice termJ), she was just typical, quite typical representative of Ukrainian or even post soviet beauty standards. I was shamelessly examining her for around 3 minutes, slowly realizing that I haven’t seen this kind of outfit for around 6 months. Observation number one: even tough I’m still quite shocked when people don’t iron their clothes, don’t make manicure and things like that, but I definitely got used to it to European casualness.
Fools and roads.
Roads and runways. Dnepropetrovsk might be not the best Ukrainian airport, but for sure is not the worst one, but seeing holes and cracks on the runways is not contributing to raising pride for my country.
Fools and attitude. I’ve traveled quite a lot in past 2 months and I was never ever asked anything about my visa, reasons of my stay in Italy. Never ever before arriving home and talking to a custom officer in DP. I had to spend 5 minutes explaining him in details what I’m doing in Italy, what is AIESEC and why the f… I came back home for New Year. In past few days I took hopper buses (марштрутка) few times and drivers were literally starring at me after hearing “Thank you” 3 times. After buying some of the gifts for New Year I realized that you can only hear thanks (especially from female shop assistants) after you buy something which costs more then 20 euros (in the shop with average price of 10).
And the last, but not the least, you always need to have wet napkins to clean your boots, because they’ll always be dirty.
That all is quite negative and pessimistic, isn’t it?
Those are random observations that practically don’t tell you a lot about the city, country and mentality, people etc. These are some random (yes, that is in the list of my favorite wordsJ) thoughts of a girl, who stayed some 6 months in the other reality and thinks that she has the power to criticize and judge something that she is too young to understand and evaluate. And that’s true. On the one hand. But on the other hand, the funny thing is that this criticism is only raising my feeling of patriotism that is properly “fertilized” by ideas taken from books that I recently have read.
Actually these kinds of things provoke me to think about what are the changes that my country needs, who are the leaders that have capacity, strong will and, moreover, belief in changes. I’m quite sure that country needs leaders, I’m quite sure that there are people capable of becoming such leaders, and there are people who can follow them. The question is how many people there need to be to create this critical mass that can turn this passive desire and dreams into kind of social epidemics that can in fact start the change. And the last – what can be my own contribution into that… I’m frequently coming back to thoughts of Raskolnikov from “Crime and punishment” about people who “the high and mighty” (власть имущие) or “weak people” (there is no literal translation I guess for твари дрожащие). All that thoughts not in sense of committing crime, but in the sense of being able and having courage to drive transformational change in Ukrainian society. Just a curiosity now whether I can really do something or whether I will give up as many others for having family, children, nice house, car, 24 days of vacations etc. which is in fact nothing bad, just ordinary… it’s not about being Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa… It’s about few words: desire and courage to drive changes.
“Because people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who actually do”….. even tough I know that changes start from within.
So what is the change that you are able to make in yourself to change at least your local environment for better?
2 comments:
Маша, памятаю, коли я повернулась після двох років життя в Італії, мене так само вражали ті повсякденні речі, яких я раніше не помічала в нашому суспільстві.було дуже сумно... і шкода свою країну... але як ти правильно написала, треба починати з себе, і бути готовим привносити зміни в нашій країні.
Дякую за цей пост:)
Masha, ja posmihalalsya koly chytala cej post.
Lyublyu tebe.
Osoblyvo pislya 2 tygniv v US, taki dumky mene pereslidujut duzhe chasto.
Pro nashu krajinu i pro nashu vidpovidalnist za jiji majbutnje.
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