Friday evening my wife and I planned to meet with some of the volunteers in Tent City.

To get in, we first had to get past a few volunteers doubling as bouncers. They were checking IDs, trying to keep strict tabs on the flow of people coming in and going out, in order to avoid problems that could be blamed on the protesters.

By that evening, the mish-mash included a total of about 2,000 camping tents. Most of the hardcore Pora supporters estimated that each tent housed 5-6 people, but I don't know how they managed to fit them all in. Perhaps the scattering of extra-large military tents was enough to bring the average up. We also saw tents with feet sticking out of them (in -14 C, 5 F weather), so they might just be that jammed full.

The cold has been really distracting all week. That night we'd come to talk with some of the camp organizers, but before doing so, we had to wait for 3-4 hours. By the end of that time we were already chattering--this despite the fact that Friday was a warm day in that it got above freezing. I can't image what's kept some of the Tent City residents going since Monday.

We tried to take our mind off the cold by watching over the shoulders of the Pora volunteers as a number of Ukrainian singers and political speakers got up on stage in Maidan. The lead singer of Haidamaky went on stage in nothing warmer than an (orange) t-shirt! I can't see how his coronet and trumpet player could keep their instruments in tune.

We were still cold, so we got hot food and drinks every once in a while. I felt bad taking food from the volunteers, until I asked one of the folks in charge if they needed anything. "We've got enough food to last us a year," he grunted.

When I started looking, I saw they did. There were mounds of bread, hundreds of thousands of tea bags, as well as a mountain of clothes and more. In the time Lesya and I were in the Tent City, we were constantly bombarded by questions from the protesters there: "You want some tea? Please tell me you'll take tea with lots of lemon, won't you? Hot meal? Why not take two, just leave the Tupperware when you're done. Vitamins? Sandwich? You sure you don't want tea?"

Lesya and I eventually went inside the big Pora tent to warm ourselves up a bit. While in the tent, we listened to the beautiful voice of Nina Matvienko, a distinguished "People's Artist" now in her fifties. Listening to her, muffled and distorted slightly by the thick tent canvas, lent an unreal feeling to the event. There might have been a million people outside the tent, but inside there was only us and one quiet wayfarer, amidst piles of sleeping bags and boxes of vitamins. Lesya went outside with the mobile phone to let her mom listen to Matvienko.

The majority of the residents of the tents were young, many in their teens, though I did hear about an 80-year-old man who was also living there. Walking around we encountered the kind of chaotic rush you'd expect from a newsroom in the movies. It was disorderly and fast, with people running in opposite directions all the time, and free newsletters and updates were passed out to everybody every hour.

One of the people we ran into had helped put up the first tent in the city.  He was a big fellow named Sasha from Rivne (in the west), and he was on security duty nearby.

"How long will you stay for?" my wife asked him, as the two of us hugged each other for warmth and shifted back and forth on our feet.

"We'll be here to the end," he answered.