We've been in Kamyanets-Podilsky (the city has an amazing 11th century castle) and the trading city of Khmelnytsky visiting with Lesya's family and celebrating Christmas.

One anecdote I picked up about the Orange Revolution along the way:

In Kamyanets-Podilsky we met with the Ukrainian Orthodox priest that oversaw our wedding. He talked about the 22nd of November.

He said: "So there was that election [on the 21st of November], and it was obviously fraudulent. Clearly it had been falsified. So that day a number of local opposition deputies came to my door, they were all in a flurry but didn't know what to do, you understand."

"They wanted to talk to me because I'd taken part in the activism even before independence in the late 1980's. I invited them in, we all started talking right there in the kitchen. 'What shoud we do?' they asked me. "

"'Well,' I said, standing there in front of them in a tracksuit with a knife in my hands, 'first I'm going to finish chopping this cabbage, then we'll go take this up with the mayor."

"We went by the mayor, and even though he's corrupt as they get, we talked with him, people started shouting outside the central government building, and the next day he joined L'viv in stating that Yushchenko had won the second round."

***

Later we went and spent the evening with the family in Khmelnitsky, all but one of whom (that means 14 of 15 people including all aunts and cousins and grandpa) voted for Yushchenko. The last one has gotten into lots of arguments with the family, not generally of the angry sort, about his views. The rest of folks believe that he is against Yushchenko because his superior at work is also against him, and Uncle Vanya is just too close to his work boss. He usually points out that Yushchenko is not a saint, he's not perfect either, so this whole movement is wrong in that it is exaggerating his goodness.

I find that people pointing out that Yushchenko isn't perfect often comes up in discussions with those who voted for Yanukovych. Again, here was a case in which the ostensible Yanukovych supporter was, in actuality, an anti-Yushchenko man. I attribute this to Yanukovych's clearly illiberal character - one must spend all of one's attention on the weaknesses of Yushchenko in order to avoid comparing the two candidates, in which case Yushchenko would be, comparatively, the obvious choice.

The funniest moment is trying to imagine the incredibly frustrating conversations he's had with grandpa. Grandpa is 88 years old already and still full of energy. His wife just recently died, and she was was a wonderful teacher and mother and everything that the whole family always adored. Grandpa and her used to disagree about Yushchenko, with Grandpa being against and her for. (They each watched different television stations, the family explained, Grandpa the more pro-government station and Grandma the less pro-government one.)

Well, something in these events finally won him over and now he's a huge proponent of Yushchenko. He's also a man that will take any opportunity to start into a speech.

Must have been tough for uncle Vanya.

Just a slice of life for all of you.