A day on the town

Slavic took me to “the Centre” (the square in the middle of Ternopil) to meet my fellow students and tutors for a sightseeing tour. Monday, May 9 is Labour Day in Ukraine so the square was very busy with children, their parents and teenagers. Since then, I’ve noticed that Ukranians take a lot of pride in their music and crafts. Because these are such a huge part of the culture, there is some kind of celebration with music and crafts almost every other day.

Families (children especially) and religion also make up a huge part of Ukranian culture. This can be noted by the abundance of churches (one at every block so people can attend daily), and amount of adults that can be seen actively playing at the park with their kids. I think this is a worthwhile habit for western culture to pick up!

Ukranian culture was further solidified when we saw some of Ternopil’s monuments. My favourite was the one of the Mother standing with her arms out wide. Is it meant to symbolize the women saying that children are the future of the city, a mentality that is also very apparent in the living. There were also many war monuments – even the old army tanks substituted for jungle gyms in an area. As good as it was to learn some history of the area, it was erie to see children playing so naturally on the machines that killed so many people.

I really appreciated seeing that town but just couldn’t get into the touring mentality and wasn’t all that excited about anything I did, saw or ate. I really hoped that, since I had already been away from home for a while, this attitude was simply me exiting the honeymoon stage o being away and not a permanent state of culture shock.