I know my last entry was a bit of a bummer. I can’t deny it, as well as I can’t deny having a serious bout of homesickness. But I wanted to make up for it by commenting on the funnier side of my life in this entry.
I live right on the outside of Rivne: walking one block in I pass a bazaar and a grocery store and yet if I walk the other direction I get to walk out into some stunning fields and pastures. Yup, and you heard that right, a real grocery store, one that I can actually walk through and pick up the items and put them in a cart rather than having to ask the shopkeeper to grab me something off the shelf behind her counter. So farm land and grocery stores at my direction… I mean discretion.
What stinks about this outskirts living is that the main, and thereby better supplied with variety, bazaar is in the center of the city and a thirty minute walk on a good day with a functioning knee. But I realized recently, that my mini-bazaar (I have two in my neighborhood, one decent sized and with a fair amount of vendors, the other is my mini-bazaar with two vendors) is open until 8pm which means that I no longer have to purchase veggies for the entire week. Normally, I would have to go on a weekend, when I am not working, and purchase everything then because the bazaar closes the same time I get out of work.
And yes, I know that whole last paragraph of an introduction to the fact that bazaars close early was probably the most disorganized and wordy paragraph. And I know Brittany, Flash, my Mom, Beatrix and Rachel are all probably cringing, but I can’t help it! The words and ideas come and I can mostly type as fast so it just turns to rambles. But there I go doing it again.
Starting over, I have a mini bazaar that is open late so I go shopping there. (That was easy, if boring). And of the two vendors, I generally go to the second. Not that there is anything wrong with the gentleman at the first one, for indeed he actually has more produce and a variety of products. But the lady at the second one knows me. No, she doesn’t know my name, and while she doesn’t know me as American specifically, she knows that I am a foreigner.
Mind you, if I were her, I would probably refer to me as the “squash girl.” Because every single time I go, I buy squash (a summer squash that is like a yellow squash meets zucchini but sweet). And how could I not? It’s like a penny to get a squash that fills my vegetable intake for a week! But the kicker to the fact that I always buy this squash is that I never ever can remember what it is called in Ukrainian. And she knows this, so when I walk up, she already starts bagging some squash. And before she started doing this, our little interaction would go something like this; I order my tomatoes, onions, carrots, cabbages and who knows what else in perfect Ukrainian. Then I get to order my squash and it just stops. A look of comical confusion enters my face, and I just start chuckling. So I make something up about the “thing next to the carrots” or the “yellow vegetable” or even on occasion I just point. And this has been happening for three whole months. Including times that the only thing I buy is this squash! And this lady has the patience of a saint because every week she will tell me “кабачок” and I repeat it. Smile. Pay for everything, wish her a pleasant day and walk away. Just to come back in a few days, or a week, and smile like an idiot because I have already forgotten the word.
So I am proud to say that I finally can remember this word and am so excited because I even know the plural form and can spell it out. But as I was mentally preparing my shopping list for the weekend, I realized that while it is super awesome I can finally remember this word, it is also fall. And soon, this wonderful veggie will no longer even be available for me to buy. So I wonder, will she still remember me even when I don’t order squash? And will I still remember this word when the squash reappears in the bazaars next summer or will I have to start all over again?
New mantra for the winter- кабачок кабачок кабачок кабачок кабачок кабачок. Which is pronounced kabachok, kabachki for the plural just as a bit of extra info for you.
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