Borderland Edition

A brief snapshot of my Thanksgiving in Ukraine. It definitely wasn’t the same as the pictures I saw from home, but it definitely will be memorable. I’ll write a longer post about the entire weekend later, but for now I just wanted to give you the tasty tidbit about how we watched our own turkey being slaughtered.

About 15 of us PCVs made the trek down to a tiny village south of Odesa to meet up for the holiday celebration. The night before our Thanksgiving ‘feast’ we went to the neighbor’s house to watch the turkey’s demise in person. Since I’m running shot on time, I’m going to let Shannon, another Colorado-native do the play-by-play,

Then we went to see our turkey. I had visions of gazing on a large nicley browned stuffed bird. Instead I looked at this bird and it looked back at me. And gobbled a little. Then gave a surprizing human like scream as the neighbor picked it and its buddy up by the back legs and in one motion chopped their little heads off. I may never eat turkey again. And it really does take about 10 minutes for the bodies to stop flapping around. Then the kindly neighbor showed us how to pluck our turkey and gut it so it is ready to cook. Besides the screaming the rest of it was not that bad and now I can say that I know how to clean a bird. I am not planning on doing it again but at least I know how.

Enjoy the start of the holiday shopping season!

Happy Thanksgiving America! Unfortunately there is no turkey on my plate today, only some fried potatoes and eggs. In a couple hours I’ll board a train to head south to meet some other PCVs for a belated Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. Hopefully we’ll find a turkey to kill in the village. Not as good as home, but we’ll make do…

I liked the title of this article, Hi, I’m Mike. I’m a nice guy. Please don’t blow me up.

America must bear the burden of being both loved and hated at once. Our embassies will at once be blown up and packed with locals seeking visas.

Yesterday I was talking to a student at the academy who used to dislike America. But, then he spent this summer living in the states. Now he says, that “I love America, I want to go back and live there forever.” Then he went on for about 10 minutes about how great America is, in front of the whole class. It’s funny how visiting a place allows you to really see how it’s like.

Ah, Putin. Always interesting. Always coming up with new and interesting ways of solidifying his reign.

Russia Casts A Selective Net in Piracy Crackdown