Kyiv Expat Life: March 2020 Round Up

March came at us fast – and not easily.

At the beginning of the month, I felt like I was finally getting back into the swing of things, emerging from Ukrainian winter hibernation, exploring the city on weekends, finding a rhythm of creativity and productivity. We were working hard, but we were relaxing… hard too. The weather was abnormally warming up to a pleasant but in all honesty kind of alarming temperature, and travel plans were on the horizon.

On March 3, the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was announced.

Ukraine did nothing for a while. It was strange, waiting to see how the government was going to react. For over a week, only that single case was confirmed — and we all know that couldn’t be it. Rumors started circulating on Facebook groups about villages that were besieged with a ‘severe flu,’ expats in various cities began reporting half their social circles were sick. We could avoid panic, but there was no trust in the government that they were reporting the situation correctly. It was clear COVID-19 was already in Ukraine, maybe even had been for a while, but no one knew to what extent.

When the government did finally mobilize, it was swift and harsh. The restrictions toppled down one after another. First the schools and universities were closed. A few days later, restaurants, cafes, bars, and non-essential shops were shuttered. The next day the metro was shut down. Within a week, we had gone from a handful of confirmed coronavirus cases to near-total lockdown.

We are now teetering on the edge of total lockdown. We’ve been working from home for weeks, but we’re still allowed to out. You can visit the grocery stores without documents, but you do need a mask – and you might even get your temperature checked.

Testing finally got started. As of April 2, the official count, depending on where you get your information from, of COVID-19 cases is just over 800. It’s a difficult number to trust, for many reasons. But there are no shortages in the grocery stores. My Ukrainian coworkers don’t seem to be panicking. One of my Ukrainian friends thinks we’ve already weathered the worst of it – we just didn’t know because we didn’t have the tests.

I’m not sure why Ukrainians are responding with such stalwartness. Maybe it’s because they understand the severe quarantine restrictions are there to protect the underprepared healthcare system. Maybe it’s because this country has already weathered so much in its short history of independence. Maybe it’s because Ukrainian schools regularly close for quarantine anyway when a cold or flu season gets bad – they’ve been training for this their whole lives.

Cool Things To Do in Kyiv

House with Chimeras

While most of the month has been spent in lockdown, that first weekend we went to see the House with Chimeras, or Horodecki House. This over-the-top, straight-out-Harry-Potter house is one of the President of Ukraine’s official residents and was, until recently, locked off from the public. Horodecki was a huge hunting aficionado, so he commissioned Italian architect Emilio Sala to deck the house out with animal sculptures. It’s a bizarre house, and well worth seeing.

Kyiv Restaurants, Cafes and Bars

Chang

Chang is one of our favorite places for upscale Vietnamese food in Kyiv. We went to celebrate my boyfriend’s birthday and splashed out on some ribs that, unfortunately, we only get to dream about for the next few months.

March and Co.

I found out about March and Co. through an expat Facebook group. This little bakery had been mostly providing cakes and cookies to cafes and restaurants, so when they were all forced to close the bakery started looking to get their cakes directly into people’s homes. The bakery is, serendipitously, within walking distance, so we’ve been keeping ourselves delightfully sugared up even in quarantine. (They also do delivery!)

Bumble Bee

A donut place! In Kyiv! I restrained myself from getting one of each when we discovered it, but when quarantine is over I’ll be going back.

For more restaurant and bar suggestions, make sure you check out my full Kyiv food and bar guides.

Mini Adventures

Weekend in Lviv

Our work trip to Lviv, which had been planned for weeks, was less than twenty-four hours away when we got the first sign that the Ukrainian government was taking COVID-19 seriously. On Wednesday they announced the closure of all schools and universities, and on Thursday I woke up to catch the train to Lviv (the same day that the news that the US was going to start restricting flights from Europe). It was a weird train journey, knowing that all the meetings we had been planning and preparing for were going to be scrambled to talk about restructuring our school for the upcoming shifts.

I had planned to stay in Lviv the whole weekend, an extra day to enjoy the city, but I decided to cancel that and return with the rest of my coworkers Saturday morning after our meetings. Still, we managed to explore a few new hidden cocktail bars corners. It was my seventh trip to Lviv, and – despite all the stress we were going through – perhaps my favourite trip yet.

Canceled – Weekend in Odessa

I had planned to go to Odessa at the end of the month, but it quickly became apparent that wasn’t going to happen. Hopefully over the summer.

Books Read

Between East to West

Anne Applebaum, one of the premiere journalists on Soviet and post-Soviet history, took a trip from Kaliningrad to Odessa in the early 1990s. Her journey produced Between East and West, her first book — ten years later she would win a Pulitzer Prize for Gulag: A History. Her early travelogue is a solid blend of history and her experiences — and an acute observation on how the constant rewriting of history and the redrawing of borders seeps into modern conflicts.

How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

On a theme this month, I started reading renowned Croatian journalist Slavenka Drakulic’s collection of essays on life around the time Yugoslavia voted for democracy. I loved this book. So many of her essays articulated feelings I’ve had living in the post-Soviet world — including her critical observations of life in the Western world. I think one of the reasons this book was so poignant was that it took sweeping sociological statements and pinpointed the realities of them in the lives of Drakulic, her family, and her friends.   

Teaching English in Kyiv

Management Training

I’ve been in management training all year, but nothing has been as hands-on as this past month. There’s working through case studies and talking about strategies — and then there’s watching your boss make crisis management decisions in real time and hearing him explain the rational.

Moving Online

Like schools around the world, we had to move online and move quickly. We took a few days off classes to get our team trained and the new system organized. The staff has been doing fantastic at the transition, and it’s been gratifying to see a lot of our students are following us online.

Still – it’s not easy. There are a lot of things to adjust to – new schedules, access to materials, teaching a group of nine students who all have their cameras off. We’ve been doing it for about two weeks now, and it’s been a huge learning process. One of the strangest things has been how group dynamics change when going online — also how adults seem to be way better at understanding the platform than teens.

But the bottom line here is — I feel incredibly lucky to be in the professional position that I am. I feel as English teachers in today’s situation are in one of two spots — the school pushes hard to go online or the school just shutters and leaves the teachers out in the cold. Our boss and management team is throwing everything in to going online and making the best of the situation.

IATEFL Canceled

I was very excited to be presenting at IATEFL Ukraine (Scott Thornbury was coming!). Naturally, it was cancelled — or rather, rescheduled. For 2021. Keep your tickets, guys, and come see me next year!

Only as a Kyiv Expat…

The freak snowstorm in March. The most fairytale snow we had all year after an incredibly dry and warm winter.

Upcoming News

There’s not much. We’re still working hard at making our online classes even better, so much of my week is spent on that. All my travel plans for April — Minsk over Easter, Turkey for spring break — have been canceled. We’re doing our best to sit tight and adapt to the lockdown routines.

Stay safe, guys, and wash your hands.