It’s Wednesday and day 2 in Mariupol, but it honestly feels like my first day.  However, the calendar doesn’t lie and since I recall doing stuff yesterday that didn’t involve airplanes, this is definitely my second day here.  And since I didn’t do a post yesterday, I’ll give you the highlights from both days so far.

Mariupol is a smaller and decidedly different place from Odessa.  The main drag of Mariupol is Lenina Street (aka Lenin Street) and is very different from Deribasovskaya in Odessa.  Where Odessa (at least the part I was staying in) was geared toward tourists, this main part of Mariupol is definitely for Ukrainians.  Most of this city’s tourists are actually from other parts of the country, not other parts of the world.  I may be the only American in this city of ~500,000.

Language-wise, I am so far out of my element that if I wasn’t able to laugh about it, I’d probably cry.  Book-learnt Russian is a joke – at least as far as I had gotten – and honestly, the stuff I’ve picked up from Rosetta Stone and Byki isn’t that much better.  Just today I had tried to use the phrase for “I’m sorry” from the Byki lessons (“ya shezaleia”), and I was met with confused stares.  From now on I’m sticking with “excuse me” (“izvenitcha”); I know that works.  I’m also getting good use from a phrase I cobbled together from other examples:  “ya neh pa-rooski” – “I don’t speak Russian.”  I find it curious that, of the books I have here, none of them have the phrase for “I don’t speak Russian.”  I guess having that phrase in a Russian phrase book runs somewhat counter to the goal of the book itself.

Should anyone be curious, the weather people aren’t any more correct here than they are in the US.  When I was preparing to leave Portland and doing my final packing, I was paying close attention to the weather reports I could find for Odessa and Mariupol.  In all the reports – short term, long term, extended forecast – it was pretty much all sun all the time.  (Even so, I didn’t pack nearly enough shorts or short-sleeve shirts — and yet somehow came away with twice as many socks as I need.)  A couple partly-cloudy days in the mix, but by and large, dry days.  No need for an umbrella, right?  Well, the hour and a half downpour yesterday – and I’m talking solid rain here – suggests I might have had just as much luck consulting a Magic 8 Ball instead of the Weather Channel.  I think my shoes are still drying out, although I was able to put on some dry socks.  And there was some pretty awesome thunder and lightning, including one strike close enough to where I was to set off some car alarms.

The neighborhood here where I’m staying is interesting, and from my walking around, doesn’t seem all that different from other nearby environs.  For the most part it looks like a slum — most places could, charitably speaking, use a new coat of paint — and yet you’ll never know what you’ll find from one block to the next or around a corner.  My building looks like project housing, and not recent project housing either.  And yet, one corner of the building houses a branch office for a local bank.  It’s clean and white and looks like it belongs anywhere but here.  Up the street a little is a mini-mansion:  a large and new-looking building, immaculately groomed landscaping and clean walkways, and some security guards that occasionally peek over the fence.  (I’d take a picture, but I’m fond of my thumbs, and walking, and actually getting back to the US in one piece.)

By the way, banks are everywhere here and I do mean EVERYWHERE.  It’s hard to go more than a block without seeing a sign for a bank, complete with their current buy/sell exchange rates.  And if you are on a block without a bank office, chances are there’s an ATM, or in Russian, “bankomat.”

Something I’ve really come to appreciate during my time here and in Odessa is tap water.  We just take it for granted most of the time, but you can’t do that here.  No one drinks tap water here, except for maybe the street dogs, street cats and some pigeons — and I’ll bet even those would pick bottled water if they could.  Apparently it’s OK (but definitely not tasty) after boiling, so tea isn’t a problem, but brushing my teeth here has been an interesting challenge.  Fortunately, you can buy bottled water — or soda, or something with a little more kick that comes in bottle — almost everywhere; a half-liter runs about 5 hrivnya (60 cents), and most people carry some water with them.

This will make my environmentally-conscious readers cringe, but recycling hasn’t come to Ukraine yet.  They sell a ton of bottled water, and nearly all those bottles end up in the trash.  I was talking with someone about this, and apparently a few years ago the city (or perhaps the country) had tried having people sort their recyclables from their garbage, but it was a dismal failure.  So now there’s no recycling — at least nothing obvious.  Perhaps it’s something done by the waste management people instead…