Vat ees thees box for moveez?

"Mr. Mike, I cannot find man with key," says Ivan, shrugging nonchalantly as I push the attendance sheet in front of his face.

I've been sitting here for 20 minutes, trying to keep the seminarians distracted while Ivan looks for the key to the video room. I don't even teach this course, but does it really take 20 minutes to find a key to a room everyone in the seminary has used at least once? Marian answers the call and bursts through the door, solution in hand.

Handing my copy of the The Scarlet and the Black to Ivan, I follow the black-cassocked future-priests as we vault through the white-washed walls of Khutirivka Seminary in L'viv. "The Video Room" is a pie-shaped glass-walled room at the end of a hallway with a few chairs, a TV and VCR, and a pimple-faced Ukrainian techie who leaves in disgust as soon as we enter.

Ivan whips the tape out of the box and shoves it into one of the VCRs sitting below the television. It burps and eats the tape like it was guzzling vodka.

"Ooo, nie dobry(not good)," says Ivan.

"Moze(maybe). . ." another seminary begins pushing buttons violently while another two run to get more chairs.

At this point, the high-pitched chatter of Ukrainian exceeded my comprehension and I filled in the dialog for myself.

"What's this cardboard thing?" says Marian, flipping open the cassette case and examining it. "Can we eat it?"

"No, no good," says another, "you would have terrible heartburn, worse than borscht."

"Da? Maybe salt . . ."

"Oh! I know, if I push all the buttons at once and you punch the VCR, then maybe we get the tape out, nie?"

"No, you have bad connection," says Stephen, chewing on a piece of exposed copper wiring. "I will fuse them with my teeth."

I point out that there's no UHC cable for video to the seven young men in black gathered around the VCR, so this is all pointless. We switch to english briefly as they give me puzzled looks, and then they dive back into Ukrainian.

"What the hell is he talking about?"

"I don't know, he doesn't have a full unibrow. He can't be man."

"Maybe he is Jew . . ."

"Just keep fiddling with this thing, and saying 'Toshiba' a lot. He will think we are fixing the problem."

Ivan comes crashing through the door and everyone stops what they are doing. There is no UHC cable. Period.

I finally succeed in ejecting the tape from one VCR by overriding the eject button, but it doesn't matter at this point. I abandon the attempt at my first movie and sound the retreat back to the classroom.

Continuing a previous class debate, the students split up into two groups: one for 'religious America' and one for 'secular America.' They like this activity, but I figure if you've spent the last few years studying latin, Thomas Aquinas, and philosophical dissertations, then debates on secularism are about as close to a field trip as you can get. The debate goes well until I ask them what kinds of religious groups we can find in America.

"Protestants!" yells Marian.

"Who are protestants?" I prod.

Our rough list includes baptists, presbyterians, evangelicals, 7th day adventists, scientologists(which was debatable) and mormons. I suggested the Amish, but they gave me blank stares when I tried to mime what it meant.

"Catholics! Muslims! Orthodox!" they yell. Da, da, da.

I explain the percentages of Americans that believe in each to the best of my knowledge(approx. 45% Protestant, 25% Catholic) and that Americans, on average, change churches every seven years. They whistle.

"And Jews? You have Jews?"

"Yes."

"What are they like? Do they behave?"

"Well, they're pretty much like everybody else," I say.

Knowing Ukrainian history(particularly volatile with respect to Judaism, more on that later) I patiently explain that I have family in Skokie, Illinois, which has a Hasidic Jewish population.

"They don't bother you?"

"Nope."

I change the topic and soon they are asking me if I would marry a Ukrainian girl. You'll have to wait for that post. I end class and explain I have to catch the bus in 10 minutes.

"You will be teaching us on Wednesday?" says Yaroslav after class.

"I don't know," I say, shrugging. "Maybe."

"What do you do in your free time?" he asks.

I explain my activities, and he nods approvingly.

"Maybe we can have english language discussion sometime? Like a group or something?" Yaroslav says.

"Yeah, maybe," I tell him. "It was great meeting you."

We shake hands and he turns out the light for me. I run to catch the bus.