Kyiv Expat Life: February 2020 Round Up

Just by looking at this blog, someone could assume my life only involves epic train trips, road tripping through Eastern Europe, and an exorbitant number of cocktails.

However, only one of those things is true.

As my life has changed over the past year, and I’ve made a transition into more ‘settled’ expat life, I’d like this blog to change a little bit with it. Or at least, to reflect what’s going on more accurately. Because when people say, “I’m living vicariously through you!” they probably aren’t thinking of how I’m living through hot water shut offs or giving presentations at TEFL conferences, going to the doctor with a coworker so I can have a translator or going for aimless Sunday walks with my boyfriend. It is, in many ways, a typical life.

But there is a lot of cool stuff about being an expat in Kyiv. After living and teaching English in half a dozen countries, I’ve come back to this one. And I thought that by starting a monthly round-up I could help people who are thinking of moving to Kyiv (or live here already and feel a bit stuck), as well as give an insight into what it’s like to be a career TEFL teacher.         

Cool Kyiv Events

The Festival of Chinese Lanterns

To celebrate the New Year, Kyiv is hosting the Festival of Chinese Lanterns. After getting a recommendation from a coworker, my boyfriend and I decided to go (because if there’s anything that will get us out of the apartment in winter it’s some glintwein). The lanterns were kinda cool, but we spent most of our time watching the fire dancing competition. I’m not sure how fire dancers who go by the names “Trickster” or “Flaming Heart” and who dance to pseudo-metal music connect to the Chinese New Year, but it was still pretty entertaining.

The Festival of Chinese Lanterns, complete with accompanying entertainment, continues until March 31.

The Ivan Marchuk Exhibit

A recommendation from a Ukrainian coworker, the Ivan Marchuk exhibit features the work of one of Ukraine’s greatest contemporary artists. Marchuk was unrecognized during the Soviet period but was inducted into the Golden Guild of the International Academy of Modern Art in Rome (sounds pretty prestigious, right?).

Despite not being huge art aficionados, we really enjoyed the exhibit. Marchuk’s art is engaging on a technical and psychological level. Plus, there was a fun digital gallery where we got to sip really cheap sparkling wine and act very cultured.

The Ivan Marchuk exhibit is running at ARTarea until March 26.

Parasite

It’s tough to see movies in their original language in Kyiv, especially if they’re not the typical blockbuster fare. So after the Oscars, when the demand to see the award-winning Parasite was strong enough to get some screenings scheduled, we jumped at the chance to see it.

We saw Parasite in Kyiv in a tiny theatre called Kino42. The film was excellent, and this theatre is a great find. It’s right next to Bursa Hotel – I think they might be owned by the same person. It’s a wonderful place to see films in their original language with subtitles, especially art films that don’t make it to the multiplexes.

Artists’ Alley

Kyiv is built on several hills, and if I’m being honest I’ll tell you I do my best to avoid them. However, on one sunny winter Sunday we found ourselves wandering on Volodymyrska Hill. After you cross under the funicular, on your way from the Friendship Arch to St. Andrew’s, you wander through a pleasant park where dozens of artists have set up their wares. It was the first time I’d ever been down Aleya Khudozhnykiv. While I didn’t end up with any art (it’s not so easy to cart around when you’re an expat), Artists’ Alley is going to be in my regular weekend rotation when the weather is nicer.

Modern Ethno Market

Всі Свої is a Ukrainian-made department store that has grown steadily in the past few years, from their flagship location on Khreschatyk to a home goods location to having an on-going weekend market at a third location (I went there for their Christmas market – it was four floors of shopping insanity. Despite the crowds, I managed to check off half my Christmas list.)

One weekend they had a ‘ modern ethno’ market, featuring artists and producers inspired by folk art and crafts. While many of the things I lusted after were out of my price range (or just straight impractical – there’s no place to put a natural wood vanity with mirror and beauty lights in my flat), it was still fun to walk around. I did pick up a few postcards from an artist I had seen at the Christmas market. Hoping to do some small-scale apartment decoration with them in the future!

You can visit Всі Свої’s markets at 12 Desyatinnaya Street. Every weekend has a different theme, but they all focus on Ukrainian-made products. Entrance is usually free.

Kyiv Bars and Restaurants

I have pretty comprehensive guides to Kyiv restaurants and bars, but here are my favorite places we went this month.

Kytaysʹkyy Pryvit

The best place for Chinese food in Kyiv on a mid-range budget! And they actually do spicy food.

Mama Manana

Mama Manana has always been one of my favorite Georgian restaurants in Kyiv. They’ve been expanding and now have locations near the train station and in Podil.

St. Andre’s Botel

My boyfriend and I were out walking by the river one evening and stumbled on a riverboat-esque restaurant. It was totally dead empty, but something about the crushed velvet drapery and table lamps drew me in. I was truly delighted when I learned it was also a hotel! I wouldn’t recommend coming for a meal (it seemed they had mostly breakfast food) but it’s a fun random place to grab a drink. Will be checking it out again in the summer.

Loggerhead

I went to this bar once yeeeears ago and had one of the best cocktails of my life, a riff on tom yam soup. I’ve never been able to get back into this bar – the times we’ve tried, they’ve claimed being too full. But on Leap Day we managed to finagle our way to seats at the bar, and I got to test out whether this cocktail is as good as I remembered.

It is.

Books Read

The President’s Last Love

As a Kyiv expat I try to read books either set in Ukraine or by Ukrainian authors. Andrey Kurkov is a contemporary Ukrainian writer whose novels are full of black humor and commentary on Ukrainian society. The first book I read by him was Death and the Penguin, and it took me ages to find an affordable copy. Death and the Penguin is a slim whimsical but gut-wrenching novel, and after finishing it I decided to stock my library with Kurkov titles.

The President’s Last Love weaves together three timelines of Sergey Pavlovich Bunin’s life, in which, by the third timeline, he is the Ukrainian president. It manages to examine life in the crumbling Soviet Union, satirize modern politics, and be a bittersweet love story. It also has a chilling prophetic element. The novel was written in the early 2000s, but Kurkov sets a third of the novel in 2015 and 2016. There is, at times, a surprising overlap between his satire and how real life played out…

Reporting Under Fire

Probably a quarter of the books I consume are memoirs of war correspondents, in part because in a different life I was probably a journalist and in part because it’s the best way for me to learn about history. (Some of my favorites include Love Thy Brother, Naked in Baghdad, and It’s What I Do.) I picked up Reporting Under Fire as it was something a bit different, a collection of mini biographies about different female war correspondents stretching from World War I to the present day.

It was interesting, but the first part of the book was a bit repetitive. Woman wants to cover the war, they won’t let her because she’s a woman, she manages to fight to get her credentials. However, it did have some of what I like about best memoirs, personal reflection on the events of the time. It was especially interesting to read the personal comments of women who covered World War II. And the book reminded me I have some gaps still in my general world knowledge (been focusing a bit too much on Eastern European history and the USSR up until this point).

Only as a Kyiv Expat…

Making waffles in my bedroom

I got myself a new waffle maker for Christmas (a sign that I’m settling down!), but when I tried to use it, it tripped the circuit. We finally figured out that probably having the fridge and the waffle maker on the same circuit was the problem – and so I had to set up my waffle making station in my bedroom. It was one of those moments of, Why can’t things just work properly, but also, there’s no problem with having your room smell of freshly made waffles.

Going to the doctor

I’ve had an irritating come-and-go pain in my leg since the holidays (when I, in a moment of hypochondria, self-diagnosed it as a blood clot that would eventually give me a brain aneurysm) and I finally decided to go to a doctor about it. However, the doctor that my company sent me to didn’t speak English so I was chaperoned by an administrator from work.

Not only is it awkward to have to describe your health through a translator, but ALSO the pain in my leg was non-existent that day. So the appointment involved a lot of me trying not to burst into laughter as a doctor pushed and prodded my leg and my coworker translated “Does this hurt? Does this hurt?” with me just repeating “No, no, nope.” In the end, we did maybe figure out what the problem was (I had totally forgotten I threw out my back in December, which tends to cause other issues) but I did feel bad for my poor coworker, who probably did not realize accompanying foreigners to the doctor was going to be part of her work responsibilities.

Teaching English in Kyiv

A new semester

We started our new adult semester in February, which meant a small change in my timetable (side note: one thing I love about where I work is that our timetables so rarely change. At the beginning of each semester there are a few weeks of smoothing them out, but after that it’s pretty set. It’s not like in some schools where they change your timetable every few weeks.). Almost all of my adult classes changed, with me picking up an advanced general English, a new FCE class, and our only business English group.

IATEFL proposal

The biggest conference of the year, IATEFL Ukraine, is coming up in April with Scott Thornbury slated as the headlining speaker. After presenting at the IH Kyiv conference in October, I haven’t submitted any other speaker proposals anywhere. I wasn’t sure about sending a proposal in to IATEFL, but I’ve been working on some ideas with oral controlled practice activities and thought it might have a chance. I almost flaked out at the end, a mixture of not wanting the extra work and not wanting the rejection. But I came back to be a Kyiv expat was to focus on my TEFL career, so I shined up my proposal and sent it in – and they accepted it!

Upcoming News

While there has been pitifully little traveling in 2020 so far, March is when things start to get interesting. This month I have trips to both Lviv and Odessa planned (have to work on cocktail bar guides!). And this month I finally booked tickets to my great Eastern European white whale – Minsk! I’ve never spent so much time in one airport without actually visiting the city, so I’m thrilled to finally have found affordable flights. My boyfriend and I will be going for the long Easter weekend, so if you have any suggestions please let me know!