I Never Said Being An International Photographer Superstar Was Going To Be Easy: Part Two

Tuesday was a day of great change for me. I ended up getting my hair cut and it’s shorter then its been in years. I feel free in an odd, but amazing way. It is also quite the experience to have your hair cut by someone that speaks no English, but one of the girls at the hostel wrote down ruffly what I wanted, to give to him and and through limited communication it worked out great. I must say though getting your hair cut in a foreign land in not for the faint of heart. It could have gone horribly wrong. (New hair in photo, because I know you all want to see it)

I stopped on the way back to the hostel and get another 6 liter jug of water. When I got to the door one of the guys was working and just like last time I showed up with my water he insisted on carrying it to the kitchen for me. I started to give my feminist speech but quickly stopped and just handed it over. I’ve learned to pick and choose with my tough girl battles and everyone wins if I just let him carry the stupid water. Maybe next time I’ll just bring him with me to the store so I don’t have to carry it the five blocks home. I sat in reception that afternoon and talked to him about America and showed him Craig’s List and explained about the dangers of some of the categories. He is really set on moving to Chicago and being a gym teacher. I guess Chicago also has quite a big Ukrainian immigrant population so it makes since for him to choose that location.
Pizza sounded good for dinner that night, so I braved the cold and went out. I decided to go for pepperoni as I thought it was a safe bet, well I bet wrong. I was sitting there and I saw the girl walking towards me with a pizza covered with peppers. I just thought, shit that’s mine. Sure enough it was. Welcome to Ukraine. I should also probably stop and explain this “Welcome to Ukraine” phrase I keep using here. When anything goes wrong, for the most part instead of getting upset I just say it and laugh it off. They probably thought I was insane when they cleaned up after me and came and saw every single one of those peppers sitting on the tray after I had picked them off. I won’t be going back there incase they remember me. The pizza wasn’t that good either so I don’t mind.
I went back to my hostel and started to pretend to prepare for my Skype meeting with my teacher. I think I really was just finishing Harry Potter, same thing really. My friend Chad ended up calling me to ask if I wanted to go out and get coffee or something to eat, I said yes of course as I had a few hours to kill before my meeting and he’s pretty good company. Chad picked me up at the hostel and we quickly realized that a lot of places were about to close and it was really cold out. We ended up deciding to go get kebabs to take back to the hostel. On the way there Chad noticed that I didn’t have any gloves on.
Funny story about my lack of gloves, I lost one of them when I was out shooting in Lychakiv Cemetery, last friday because my teacher had warned me about my hands getting too cold. This cemetery is a massive, over grown, ill kept in some parts, hilly maze of crowded tomes. The cemetery started in 1787 for the upper class of the city for the most part. It eventually grew to include anyone who wanted to be burred there. For those of you who don’t know Lviv use to be a part of Poland (but for the love of God you probably should not mention that here) so the older tome stones are in none other then Polish and then it switches to Ukrainian, then Russian I believe and then back to Ukrainian. If I got any of that wrong please feel free to correct me.
The shooting Friday was less then ideal. It was snowing, sometimes just ever so lightly, but at one point it started coming down really heavily. I was cold by the time I got there and had already walked for about forty minuets to get there, for some reason I thought it was only a twenty minuet walk. When I got to the gate I went into the little hut and tried to buy my entrance ticket. (Yep, they charge you to see dead people.) I guess it was the wrong door and they pointed me to the next one over. I opened it and there were three doors leading off. I just thought, oh forget it and walked back outside. No one stopped me so I walked quickly to the left side and into the depths of the cemetery before anyone saw. I started shooting and got quickly overwhelmed and lost my focus, trying to capture anything and everything. I walked on the snow covered paths, trying to cover as much ground as I could, so I wouldn’t miss anything. My gloves were in my pockets and I would put them on every so often to warm up my hands and then take them off and put them away again. I had just climbed up a hill to get a picture of some angel grave stone and I reached for them and found that I was down to one. I was having a crappy day to start with so this was just the icing on the cake for me. Fuming I decided that I had, had enough of shooting for the day and retraced my steps trying to find my precious mitten. With no such luck I stomped off to the tram stop and got on the wrong one, that required me to walk through the city center instead of being dropped off one street from my hostel. I uploaded my pictures and went through them all and wrote them all off as crap, that wasn’t really the case but a funk had over taken me and wouldn’t let go so I just went with it.



By Sunday I had come to my senses and over analyzed what had worked and what didn’t and was ready to win over the cemetery this time. I had also noticed a way to get in that did not require me to pay, not that I did the last time. There is a path in the back that the locals seems to use so I just fallowed suit. This time I didn’t try to photograph the whole cemetery in one go and focused in on the smaller things. They also do this really cool thing over here where they put picture of the decided on the grave stones. (Someone take note that I want this on mine, but who are we kidding, I’m never going to die.)
I ended up walking around trying to find ones that looked like people I know, messed up I know but its not like I could find people with the same name as me. Pretty sure there aren’t too many Emilys over here.
In Sunday’s shoot I went through maybe a tenth of the grounds, if I was lucky, but I found it much more enjoyable and reminded me to keep my focus on the small things, not just the big picture. Its all those little oddities that make Lychakiv what it is, even if it could use a serious sprucing up.







So incase you forgot why I started talking about the cemetery it was because Chad noticed that I didn’t have any gloves on. He started to take his off to give to me, but this was one of those times I was going to fight chivalry. He’s from Athens and not use to the cold like me and as much as I really appreciated the gesture and thought it was incredibly sweet, I did not want him to have to deal with the freezing temperature. He then insisted on holding my hands until we got where we were going. Win.