¶ 9:11 AM //

People often ask me how Christmas is, or what Christmas is like here in Kyiv. I’ve been trying to describe in my head what the emotional feeling is about spending the best holiday of the year in Eastern Europe, and I think I’ve come up with a satisfactory answer. Christmas is like… well it’s a lot like Tuesday.
I can’t really put a finger on it. I’ve tried to make Christmas feel like Christmas. I’ve bent over backwards making the season as Christmasy as possible. I have 211 Christmas songs on my computer in mp3 format that have played over and over. I had a multitude of Christmas parties. I played Santa Claus (aka “Det Moros” twice), once in an orphanage and once in a hospital. I watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Year Without a Santa Claus” (starring Heat Miser and Snow Miser. You remember them?) I’m surrounded by people I love and who love me. We’ve exchanged gifts. Steven and I performed a puppet show with the obligatory “true meaning of Christmas” message. But there’s that missing element…
I made my first gingerbread house this year, well, not exactly a house. My friend from Finland invited some of us to come over and take part of this construction project. We were supposed to bring decorations, like mints and gumdrops. But in my quest, I saw the Kinder eggs.
Kinder eggs are hollow chocolate eggs with a plastic yellow yolk inside. The yolk always contains some sort of toy. (they’re cooler in Germany) The eggs usually have little figures in them. So I decided to buy two eggs so that we had someone to live in the house.
Since we hadn’t made a decision on what to build, we decided to design the house around whoever came out of the egg. So I opened the first egg and out came… a robot. The second one was a little mouse praying. So we decided to build a space ship for the robot and a church for the mouse. So altogether it looks like the robot has come from outer space to discover the true meaning of Christmas, where he meets the mouse.
My computer says that the Christmas song I’ve listened to the most is “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” the song recorded by Bing Crosby. I can honestly say the highlight of my Christmas was the 45 minutes I spent on the phone with my sister and the family. We didn’t talk about profound things, I mainly remember Barb Ratter’s sandwich cookies and lots of discussion from Isaiah about his new Buzz Lightyear stuff.
So I guess the missing element of my Christmas can be expressed in three words: Bing, Barb and Buzz. It’s fun to say anyway. Merry Christmas! Bing, Barb, and Buzz!

¶ 9:01 AM //

All the happy Goodie Bag makers prove that it really is more blessed to give then receive.

¶ 9:48 AM //

Too young for deodorant, Popovich was just as happy with his new bear (and a bag of Whoppers to boot).

¶ 9:43 AM //

Despite a great audition and an attractive beard, Sonya did not receive the role of Det Moros (Father Frost) this year.

¶ 9:40 AM //

Until this week, I’ve never seen someone get excited about the gift of deodorant. I mean, at my house, it was one of those practical things that mom gave you in your stocking. For Christmas at the gypsy orphanage, we gave away toys and music, fruit and candy. But deodorant seemed to be the surprise hit in Uzhgorod this Christmas.
I just returned from a 16 hour excursion by railway from Kyiv to Uzhgorod. Unlike last year, I was in charge of this year’s trip. There were eleven of us altogether, representing four different nations; Denmark, Finland, Ukraine, and the United States.
We spent three days at the orphanage, coming after the kids were done with school. The first day, we played games outside. Winter 2005 was record cold for Ukraine. This year is crazy mild. We saw snow in October and it hasn’t really appeared much since. These are the same children we had summer camp with in July, so Day 1 was a time to reacquaint with old friends and make new ones.
Our second day was almost all on stage in the orphanage mini-auditorium. We presented the Christmas story (acted out by the children) and sang Christmas songs. We sang Silent Night in all of our native languages, (and German too, since I could…) I also had it printed in the Klingon dialect just in case, but there were no actual Klingons on the team this year.
The last day I wore a shabby St Nick costume and we gave 93 goodie bags to all the kiddos in the orphanage. (The kids range from maybe 7 to 18) When I was home in America this last time, I returned to Kyiv with two suitcases of teddy bears and stuffed animals. These went to the smaller children and the girls. We tried to make “manly” gift bags for the older boys this year, which is why the deodorant was included. When we handed out gifts in the “big kids” classrooms, the students pulled out the deodorant sticks to see what they smell like. They were happy and it was quite a big deal.
In discussing this afterwards with Ukrainians, I learned that deodorant is really considered a luxury item, and in the villages, almost nobody wears it. Certainly orphans don’t get any. It costs about the same price here as it does in the states, around $2 a stick. That doesn’t seem like much unless you consider that at the best of times, I can buy all my groceries for a week for around $14 equivalent. (Disclaimer: I am considered frugal for an American.)
People are continually asking me about donations for the orphans here. I’ve now got a couple more ideas. Deodorant is a wonderful gift, and if you find it at a great price, we could use lots of it. I’ll certainly give out more at camp this summer. Another idea is teenage oriented Christian music. They listen to a lot of garbage here. I’m ashamed to be an American sometimes when I look at the entertainment we export. For some reason, it seemed these guys gravitate toward boy bands and rap music.
So a big part of my Christmas is behind me. Thanks for helping me celebrate it through your support and prayers.

¶ 12:43 PM //