Summer is a Little Life

Ukrainians are not usually very gullible about weather forecasts, even though some people are used to following these programs as closely as their favorite TV-shows or political news. They do this so they are informed about the subject and so they have the ability to chat about it later. For some reason they feel really proud of themselves or even satisfied when they find out that the forecast lied like politicians do. This corresponds to their image of our country and makes them certain that all things are in their correct place (which really means in the wrong ones). Also, this is the perfect reason to enjoy yourself complaining about our unfair lives.

As long as everybody lies, there is only one thing to believe in – a paper calendar which as a rule says there are three months in summer. No matter how hot it is in May or September, Ukrainians will correct you if you use the word summer with respect to those months.

I’ve never thought about unofficial summer, but I guess it’s about time I did. I think for most people it consists of vacation days (28 according to the law). These are usually divided into two parts so that you can’t get really relaxed and lose your professional skills. Actually nobody really wants to work in summer so it’s quite difficult for each company to let all their employees go on vacation during June-August. Working during the summer is much worse at state companies than at private ones because of the lack of air conditioning (see the topic on the blog below).

It seems like the summer is a land of milk and honey for two categories of Ukrainian people – students and teachers, but every silver lining has its own cloud (I guess this version of saying was plagiarized from John), because the children are dependent on where and when their parents go and teachers just can’t afford to go very far for vacation. The most exciting thing is that they are usually supposed to do a lot of paper work in June, even though the studying process in is over by this time. Also they must get used to dying, painting, repairing and cleaning classrooms during this time. At some schools it’s pretty common to force students of 9-11 grades and their parents to do something around the school. And frequently parents must pay if they don’t want to do this.

University professors are not required to do repair work (students by and large do all of it), but they’ve got to give final exams in June and accept entrants in July with their exams accordingly, so their summer really isn’t much more than one month like for most people.

I have been thinking about Russian (Ukrainian) summer songs to post here but the most popular of them during the last summer was quite scandalous (hence its popularity) and it would be rude to post it with the Doors, so you can google or youtube it to understand what I’m talking about (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZfnoEwfuWU).

Posted by Helen

P.S. Summer is a little life is a common saying here and also a song of Oleg Mityayev.