My association with the Ukrainian Diaspora broke down completely after a group of young people I knew traveled to Ukraine. We talked a lot before the trip and I helped them prepare, telling them what to expect and how to get around.
When my friends came back from Ukraine, though, it became clear we weren’t going to be friends any longer.
“Why on Earth did you tell us that the situation is bad in Ukraine and that the economy is very problematic?” they asked me. “We bought a lot of great stuff very cheaply. Unlike what you said, life in Ukraine is very cheap. And everybody was super nice to us and very much into Ukrainian culture. We taught several families how to celebrate the traditional Ukrainian holidays correctly.”
Obviously, the deluded and self-congratulatory obliviousness of the tourists who think a country’s economy rocks if they can condescend to people after waving around a wad of dollar bills did not seem attractive to me.
The price of any collective identification, I have found, is always an amputation of a part of one’s cerebral function. You can be very happy as a member of a group if you agree to stupidify yourself to an extent.
Clarissa's Blog 
// We bought a lot of great stuff very cheaply.
And this shows exactly the opposite of what they think. Cheap prices are a sign people don’t have money. In Africa prices are probably cheap too for a Westerner, but not for super poor inhabitants. Btw, in Gaza food prices are much cheaper than in Israel exactly because the standard of living is low. Just yesterday I read an article about the issue.
// everybody was super nice to us and very much into Ukrainian culture. We taught several families how to celebrate the traditional Ukrainian holidays correctly
Everybody in Ukraine is into the country’s culture? Next they will discover people in US are very much into American culture. And they taught real Ukrainians (not born abroad) how to celebrate “correctly”? 🙂 That’s even not funny.
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“And this shows exactly the opposite of what they think. Cheap prices are a sign people don’t have money.”
– That’s my point exactly! How self-deluded does one have to be not to realize this?
“Everybody in Ukraine is into the country’s culture? Next they will discover people in US are very much into American culture. And they taught real Ukrainians (not born abroad) how to celebrate “correctly”? ”
– You know? And these were my fellow university students. The degree of self-involvement and cultural blindness was very scary.
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This guys should see Ukrainian roads this spring and also calculate how much average Ukrainian make money per hour and what he can buy for this money.
😀
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OMG, I have an actual Ukrainian person reading me! Yay!
I guess I have a wider audience than I believe I do.
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Here is something I wrote when I was irritable.
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