Well, first off, I meant to write something last week. I really did, I promise. Lots to catch up on, a real updatey-update.

First things first then, I guess. I moved into my new apartment in Podil, once the historic market quarter and port of old Kyiv, now the cool, trendy part of town. Kyiv-Mohyla and the Ukrainian National Chornobyl Museum are blocks away, and I’m a 4 minute walk to the metro. My neighborhood is quiet and I have everything I need nearby. Sure, the apartment’s a studio on the 4th floor with no lift, but it fits my needs and I can’t ask for a better location. Huge shout out to Teren Plus for being great. The pic up top is the view from the window.

Moving in to this place though was not without some hassle. Like having to call the maintenance guy the 2nd day because the hot water was doing weird things (turns out the lines were switched going into the tiny boiler) or having to buy pillows and a sheet set—all kinds of new words I had to learn. There is a random assortment of kitchen things—like 6 plates, 4 bowls, 3 large plates, 5 small plates, 2 tea cups, one mug, and one other matching ceramic piece I can’t figure out what it is—but was lacking some things, like a sharp knife, a skillet, and a cutting board. Most of these things were easily taken care of with some trips to the huge Petrivka bazaar, MegaMarket, and the local grocer, but man, the hassle.

Speaking of, and to the Brazil part of the title, Ukrainian bureaucracy is suffocating. All this running around. Regulations upon regulations. Everyone knows it too, but what can you do? You play the game to get th things done you need. These troubles in particular stem from the registration process. Allow me to explain.

If you’re in Ukraine for more than 3 months, you need 1) a visa and 2) to register. The visa process is stupid in itself, requiring a letter of invitation from a university, a letter affirming my reason for being there from Fulbright, a letter from the Ministry of Education, a set of photos, and my passport. The registration process needs even more things. First, I needed a suite of documents similar to those for the visa, but just different enough to require new ones that of course all have to be the originals and notarized—plus the new addition of a receipt of purchase of mandatory Ukrainian insurance. That meant another letter from Fulbright, a letter of affiliation from Kyiv-Mohyla, and a new letter from the Ministry of Education. With these in hand, plus more photos, Christina, Zoe, and I (the 3 Mohylantsi Fulbrighters) went with Olya and Natalia (from the KMA office of international students) to the immigration office. This office was an hour-long bus ride that went across the river and into the almost-suburbs. To get to the immigration office though, you had to walk about 15 minutes off any roads into the spaces between buildings before coming to the squat govt office. We got there at 9:30 to line up in advance. The office didn’t open until 10, but you had to get there before it opened to get in line to be early enough to get onto the list to be seen that day. When our collective turn came up, Christina went with Olya and Natalia into the room with the immigration officer, but they were only there for about 5 minutes before they were yelled at to leave because we didn’t bring enough pictures of each of us. Or more precisely: the immigration office website said to bring 2 each but they had changed the regulations to 4 without telling anyone. So we had to forfeit our place in line to walk out of the concrete jungle, find a place that would take and print our pictures, and then walk back, only to wait in line again. In all, what should have taken 30 mins, minus travel time, ended taking up 5 hours total.

And then, to make it all the better, all of this was only a preliminary hearing of sorts for the immigration officer to make sure we had all the right forms. Tomorrow I have to give my passport to KMA so they can go back to immigration with all the forms the next day in order to receive my temporary registration card.

Because all this nonsense so far is just for a temporary registration card. Which, after you get one, can be turned into an actual registration card within 45 days if you take your passport, temp reg, landlord or -lady, the original ownership document of the apartment, and enough cash to cover the registration tax down to your local friendly registration office (Zhek). So when I get my temp reg on Friday—assuming of course that everything goes cleanly in the black box of the immigration office bureaucracy—then I can take a trip with my landlady to the same office you go to get marriage licenses and pay your gas bill so I can live here legally and have my single-entry visa turned into a multi-entry visa. Braziiiiiiil.

Here’s a picture of the Red Building of Shevchenko National University at night to break things up.

Want some more Brazil? Okay, here’s a story from today.

I had a meeting scheduled with my in-country advisor at Kyiv-Mohyla today. She’s been working on a list of authors and contacts for me to help in my research, which I’m super grateful for. I also emailed her about writing some letters of introduction for the archives I want to visit, but never heard anything back, but since I was meeting her today I figured I’d just ask her about it rather than sending another email. So I went to the building at 1:30, went up to the 2nd floor, saw my advisor in the hall. She comes up, says (in Ukrainian, mind) “Hi! I got your email about archive letters, but didn’t see it until Friday. I wrote them but they won’t be ready to pick up until tomorrow because I had them printed on official letterhead, so let’s just meet at this time again tomorrow.” I was cool with that because hey, letters. Since I had some time to fill, I figured I’d just go drop off my passport to Olya for registration even though it wasn’t due until tomorrow. I go up there, no Olya. The sign on the door says it’s her lunch hour. I say well okay I’ll come back at 3 when the lunch hour is over. So I go to the library (that you can check books out at, but then can’t remove them from the building) and my laptop won’t connect to the internet. No idea why. Getting limited connection errors and then it just straight up refuses to connect after working for about 5 mins. So I get done what I need to (which was find the exact numbers of the laws that relate to Chornobyl in this book of laws so I could looks the laws up online later) and at 3 go back to Olya’s office. She’s still not there, but one of the Fulbright scholar ladies is up there so we chat, and she says Olya isn’t in today at all. Very frustrating, but since I have to be up there tomorrow anyway for my rescheduled meeting, it’s all good.

Then there was the In-Country Orientation. Two days of mandatory fun!

It wasn’t all that bad actually. Day 1 was in the US Embassy, where they confiscated all electronics so I have no pics. A bunch of people talked to us about orientationy things and we asked a bunch of questions, including a lengthy and ridiculous discussion on the fact that in the extremely unlikely event that the embassy decides all Americans need to be evac’d, no they would not foot the bill, we’d have to pay ourselves. It started off with a joke that was taken seriously and the whole conversation just went off the rails.

At the end of Day 1 we met up for a reception at the old embassy, which has been renamed and repurposed as America House, where all kinds of cultural events happen. We were told we can also use the premises for whatever we need, like interviews and whatnot, which is very generous and cool. It was fun having the larger Fulbrighter community all hanging out in one place, since all the non-Kyivers came in for the orientation.

On Day 2 though the everyone-hanging-in-one-place thing was taken to its uncomfortable extreme. It started off well enough, with 3 speakers at the Fulbright office—one on his photojournalism project with wounded Ukrainian soldiers, another on his upcoming book about Maidan—excuse me, the Revolution of Dignity—as a tripartite revolution of a kind hitherto unseen, and the third on the state of tv journalism in the country. But then, we all got on a bus to get on a boat to take a 4-hour cruise down the Dnipro.

In case you didn’t know, 4 hours is a loooooooong time to be stuck on a boat. I mean, I talked to cool people about cool things, but at about 2.5 hours in, EVERYONE was exhausted. It was hot, humid, and we were trapped in a room. Sure the room was floating on a river, but we were trapped nonetheless. Perhaps describing it that way makes it sound worse than it was though, but like in any situation, you try to make the best of it and I think everybody had a pretty good time overall.

Afterward though, a small group of us got together for some Georgian food, so it ended on a high note.