Resolved (i.e., forced) to learn Ukrainian. Springtime.

Friday I took the written driving test to get a Ukrainian driver's license. With two cars in the family, it seems like about time.

It turns out that they stopped giving the driving test in Russian three years ago. The reason is pretty obvious. They make no accommodation whatsoever for other kinds of foreigners. The test is given in Ukrainian only. Moreover, the test is quite heavily text oriented. I understand written Ukrainian passably well, but not well enough to pass the test.

I have received several suggestions about what to do. Investigate giving a bribe. Get a license in another European country that will be valid here. However, I have decided on a third course of action. Try to learn Ukrainian!

The technology available is pretty impressive. I have been able to copy all of the text including the picture above into Microsoft Word. I then edit out all of the pictures and save it to a Microsoft Word file, with which I can do two things.

First, I use Microsoft Word to separate out all of the individual words in the document. I copy them into Excel, where I can extract just the unique words to save them in another file. This is the vocabulary I need to learn.

I have Google translate the file of words to be learned and create a table with Ukrainian in one column and English in the other.

Second, I put the unique Ukrainian words into a file and have a text-to-speech program converted into an MP3 in Ukrainian. The accent is perfect but the generated voice is speaking at a mile-a-minute pace and without enough volume. I open the file in my moviemaking software and double the volume and halve the speed of the readout.

I'm ready to learn! I load the MP3 into my handheld dictation device, plug in the headphones, and listen to the vocabulary as I read my translation list. It will take a while, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to master the vocabulary needed for the test.

Meanwhile, totally low-tech, I'm asking the family to speak to me in Ukrainian. Oksana is excited to do so. Zoriana finds it tedious and demands that I speak English. Eddie is helpful albeit overly picky about my pronunciation and declensions.

I am relearning a truth that I have discovered with every other language. It's little everyday words that you really need to master. I will learn those best by simply stumbling along until I get corrected often enough by my family that it starts to come naturally.

Here's another random note. In high school, back when we all wore Levis, I was a fat, out of shape kid. Mine were either a size 34 or a size 36. Length was 33 for my height of 5'10".

Those same 5'10", minus a bit of shrinkage due to age, render me now a "little old man." And that fat-boy 34 inches is now the smallest waist size that L.L. Bean offers for summer shorts. Their sizes run 34 to 46 inches.

I am happy to note that the new shirts I bought from Bean in my high school size, 15 1/2 – 33, fit perfectly and look great right off the drying rack, without ironing. Yes, we do not use clothes dryers here in Ukraine.

The springtime weather is absolutely gorgeous – approaching the 70s. There was still ice on the pond yesterday. The crocuses are just poking their heads up. We do not yet have croaking frogs or pollen.

I'll open the political news with my recollection of a telling experience back when I was new here. I got invited to a Democrats abroad picnic by guys I was working with at Jewish News One about 2009. The chair of the organization was a gregarious fellow from New Jersey named Reno Delmonico. There must have been 100 people there. Beer and bonhomie were in abundance.

I naïvely asked where the Republicans abroad had their picnic. There is no picnic. There is no Republicans abroad. The Democrats were a rich collection of journalists such as those from the Kyiv Post, embassy people, nongovernment organization people, and various contractors. It was a total Democratic bailiwick.

Reflecting back, it is obvious how the Ukrainians could be mistaken as they handicapped the last three American presidential elections. The Americans here represent only the one point of view in which Ukrainians have been bathed for decades. The oligarchs who control the media are closely aligned with worldwide media, which is also peopled primarily with creatures of the left. Ukrainians had been left totally unprepared for Trump.

Thus indoctrinated, Ukrainians are almost universally apprehensive of whatever Trump is doing to try to end the war. The media they read convinces them that they should be deathly afraid that Trump will give Russia everything it wants, all the while denying Ukraine the weaponry it needs to defend itself. This is the story that I hear from my fellow Toastmasters, people I talk to on the bus, my mother-in-law and my wife.

I suppose the bright side is that whatever Trump accomplishes will be exceeding expectations. I feel constrained to keep my mouth shut. If I express any doubt or reservations about Trump, some of which I have, these people will jump all over it. I may not want to take sides, but it is hard to avoid being forced into a pigeonhole.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where Marianna is vastly enjoying her Waldorf kindergarten. And as an extra bonus, the sometimes flaky but otherwise wonderful Marichka, who ran a three day a week kindergarten at Zoriana's school, can now take the girls all day on Sundays.

Graham