Dear Daniel

Dear Daniel,

This week was officially my last week of work. So yesterday I took a bunch of food to the office for a goodbye party. I'm not sure if you're supposed to throw your own goodbye parties here, but I wanted to do something nice for my coworkers.

As I was preparing the food for the party, I realized how much I've adapted to the culture in the last three years. It's true that I still have much to learn, and I don't feel at home in the culture yet. But so much that seemed odd to me at first now seems so natural that I don't even pause to think about it. For example, when I was preparing the menu for the party, I immediately settled on open-faced sandwiches for the main dish. I decided that half of them would be butter, salami, and cucumber sandwiches, and for a really gourmet treat that I knew everyone would appreciate, I planned butter, salted fish, and lemon sandwiches.

Only after I had finished making all the open-faced sandwiches did I realize that this would seem like strange party food to Americans. And then I stopped to think, "Well, what would be normal food for an American party?" And you know what? I couldn't immediately think of the answer. Now after having the question in the back of my mind for a day, I think I've figured it out: pizza, chips and dip, and soda. If it was a nicer party (I wanted to give my coworkers a nice party), then the American hostess would probably serve an assortment of hors d'oeuvres -- like little quiches, little cubes of cheese on toothpicks, whole-grain crackers with some sort of spread, and a fruit and/or vegetable tray.

Well, the menu for my fancy Ukrainian party was as follows: two types of open-faced sandwiches, seedless grapes (a new thing here is that quite a hit), French chocolate truffles, chocolate-mint meringue cookies that I baked, two kinds of fruit juice (a special brand made from imported fruits), and two kinds of soda. Everyone loved everything, except that no one touched the soda.

Georgie came to the goodbye party, as did Cara, the woman from our church who will be replacing me. We all had a good time together, and I feel like I left on a positive note. Praise God for that!

Before the party yesterday, I went shopping for Georgie's birthday present. The store were I went to buy it is next to our neighborhood, about a 20-minute walk from our apartment. It's not a pleasant walk, because half of it is through the dirt on the side of a busy highway (there's no sidewalk). But yesterday the walk was more enjoyable, because I was thinking of you. Here's why: it has been above freezing ever since we had that thaw that I told you about. But yesterday when I left home to walk to the store to get Georgie's gift, I was surprised at how cold it was. It was the type of day where the air seems to bite every square millimeter of bare skin; you probably don't know what I mean. I'm almost sure that you don't own any clothes that would have kept you warm on a day like this, because on top of the cold, the wind was blowing. I was very thankful for my heavy winter coat. It kept me so warm that I was actually sweating after my brisk walk to the store!

Anyway, as I walked in the dirt on the side of the road, I kept seeing muddy puddles that had frozen overnight. Some of them were deep enough that only the surface had frozen, leaving liquid water beneath. As I looked at them, I thought that if you were here, you would be so fascinated by them. I imagined how you would say, "Oh, cool!" and step on them to see if the ice would hold your weight. You would probably also be fascinated by how the ground freezes when it's cold. One day everything will be all soft and muddy, and the next day it can be hard as rock -- and the patterns made by car tires driving through the mud the day before will now be frozen solid.

After the cold day, yesterday evening it started to snow again. It snowed hard for several hours, and in those few hours, we got more snow than we'd gotten all season. Now the world outside looks like the front of a Christmas card! Every single twig on the bare trees is outlined in white from the snow that has collected on it. It's beautiful. I wish you could see it.

Love, Sharon