The Fall

It's surprising how many things can be so similar about so many different cultures. Take, for instance, Bahrain and Kiev. In these respective places, you will see women teetering around in shoes that are simply unimaginable. Vivid color, bling, skinny heels, and towering stilettos seem to be "in" in both places. After a while, though, you will start to wonder how these women are able to walk around without falling flat on their faces! (Two teachers from Al Raja saw me fall down the stairs in our apartment building last year, AND my mom had a huge fall in the street during her visit. Praise God that both of us are still functioning!)

Still, I have yet to witness only one fall here in Kiev. I was walking to the metro station near by, and saw this woman wearing ridiculously tall, skinny, AND blinged stilettos, and she was walking at a fast pace too! I thought to myself as we were crossing the street, how is this woman NOT falling over?! Then, as I was walking the same place as her, I saw her take a slip down the stairs, and she was wearing white pants. A range of thoughts popped into my mind: 1. That sucks, 2. See, there are some normal women here, 3. That's why you don't wear bling stilettos at 7am, 4. Oh, that's awful, now her white pants are ruined for the whole day, and 5. Maybe you should start wearing normal shoes. An after-thought also occurred: that's why Americans don't wear white shoes or pants after Labor day!

In all my smugness, I had the same fate coming to me. Fast-forward to this past week. As is normal, I am feeling slightly groggy as I start the walk towards my bus station, and I usually make sure that I put every thing in my hand bag in the same location, so that I know exactly where it is. Especially my apartment keys! As I was putting my apartment keys away and getting out my ipod for the morning commute, I couldn't be bothered to look out in front of me, which caused me to tumble into a pot-hole. A range of thoughts also popped into my head during this occasion: 1. S**t, 2. Of course, on the day that I am wearing a skirt so that my bare legs are visible and of course, my knee is skinned, 3. I don't have any hydrogen peroxide in my apartment yet!, 4. What kind of girl scout am I for not having hydrogen peroxide, 5. I don't know how to say or spell hydrogen peroxide in Russian, 6. I was even running early today, and 7. OUCH!

I ran back up the stairs and did the only thing I could really do without any big enough band-aids to cover the wound, and that is clean the wound out with soap and water. As soon as I got to school, I read my work email while applying pressure to stop the bleeding and just waited for the doctor to arrive. Now I have a cute little skinned knee and I look even more like one of the students.

The point is, what goes around comes around, and while I was only slightly commiserating with some poor stranger in the white pants, the inevitable fall was bound to happen to me at least once during my stay in Kiev.