Robert Rodriguez, of Lawrence, spent the past week in Ukraine, visiting his wife’s relatives and observing one of the world’s biggest, longest-running, post-election celebrations.

“It’s one big party in Kiev,” said Rodriguez, during a telephone interview Friday from his in-laws’ home in Kharkov.

Supporters of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko — mostly students — took to the streets last month to protest the Nov. 21 election of Viktor Yanukovych amid widespread reports of voter fraud. Days later, the Ukrainian supreme court annulled Yanukovych’s victory and ordered a second election.

Yushchenko won the second election, held Dec. 26. Between elections, protesters created a tent city in the main square of Kiev.

“We took a tour of the tent city the day after the election,” said Rodriguez, a doctoral student in political science at Kansas University. “It had makeshift fences all around it and guard shacks at entrances to keep people out. They let my in-laws and me in but not without some arguing and my mother-in-law telling the self-appointed guard that I was a journalist. Inside the tents, people were eating, drinking and resting inside sleeping bags. It looked like a hippy commune.”

Throughout Kiev, he said, people wore orange scarves, caps or arm bands to show support for Yushchenko.

Robert Rodriguez and his wife Irina, Lawrence, spent the past week in Ukraine, visiting their relatives and observing the post-election celebrations in the city of Kiev for opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko. Robert and Irina are pictured in Kiev Independent Square, where supporters for Yushchenko had created a tent city to protest the Nov. 21 election of Viktor Yanukovych.

“There were plenty of entrepreneurs selling orange-colored products to people,” he said. “People were drinking on the streets, uncorking bottles of champagne and cheering Yushenko’s name.”

But in Kharkov, Ukraine’s second largest city, Yushchenko supporters were few and far between.

“The mood here is quite different,” Rodriguez said. “People are openly angry about the results.”

He added: “Last night, while we were in a shop, a power outage occurred,” he said. “Immediately, someone yelled ‘Yushchenko!’ implying the new president was punishing his political opponents in the east.”

Rodriguez, 32, said he saw several Yushchenko posters with the former candidate’s “eyes, or entire face, scratched out.”

Neither Rodriguez nor his wife, Irina, felt threatened by the tension.

A large screen in Kiev Independent Square displays the images of Yula Timoschenko and opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko during a rally for Yushchenko, who won the Dec. 26 election in Ukraine.

“When you go out, you hear lots of arguing,” said Irina Rodriguez, 29. “But it’s very safe, very civilized.”

She expected the tent city to disband after today.

“The people we talked to there said they were in the mood to stay longer,” she said. “They’re there to celebrate the new year.”

Irina Rodriguez is an international public relations manager at Great Plains Laboratory in Lenexa. Her parents are professors at the University of the Arts conservatory in Kharkov.

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