Monday, July 24, 2006
I should consider renaming this blog my recounts of chance encounters of random similarities with people I have never met before. I was on the train back from some training in Kyiv, and I just happened to share a coupe with a guy who has a sister who lives and is a student (I think) in Eugene, Oregon. This is the first time I have found someone who had a strong idea where Oregon really is who isn’t from the U.S. And my Tillamook notoriety, well the cheese’s notoriety struck again as I met a volunteer who extolled the virtues of Tillamook Cheese.
As for the day-to-day activities, as I mentioned earlier I was in Kyiv for a week of Peace Corps training that gave us more information on technical skills as well as language. I haven’t always been real thrilled about previous trainings and found them marginally helpful, but I can’t say anything too bad about this most recent one, it offered pertinent classes and the language part, while it pointed out how much I screw up the, gave a lot of good pointers and correction assistance. Although I am dealing with one of the more complicated languages in the world, I have got to the point, that I am understanding large parts of daily conversation and most basic tasks I can achieve with only some difficulty now. I should be wiring the library where I have been working at pretty soon to network computer together in order to better teach some technical classes and internet classes to townspeople. This was a dream of the director of the library when I arrived and one of the tasks he gave me was to find a local person to help with the work, luckily I ran across a guy during a tour of a school who will be able to help. Once that happened things began moving pretty quickly and I picked up wire and tools to do the job in Lviv on Sunday. Let me tell you, people give you funny looks when you are walking through downtown with 80 meters of Ethernet wire and a staple gun. But I’m looking forward to getting to work and once I get that knocked out, I think I can begin teaching the classes that I keep getting questions about. August is shaping up to potentially be a big month and it will be interesting to actually feel like I am getting some work done, or at least see some fruit of the work that I have been chipping away at presently. I think one of the truest things I have heard about the Peace Corps experience is you will feel useless a majority of the time, but will be remembered for the times that you did something really good, and for the times that you never even knew you helped someone out. So even though I, and other volunteers may feel like they aren’t accomplishing anything, it isn’t necessarily true. It is encouraging to hear that, but doesn’t mean I can try any less hard, but only harder.
And on the recommendation of my mother, a quick account of my last Friday. I woke up at the regular time after returning from Kyiv the day before, hoping to catch up on what had been happening around town and maybe do a little catch up. The thought was in vain, we had an emergency consolidation drill. What that basically means is I get a phone call saying I need to drop everything and go to Lviv immediately bringing my “emergency kit”, which includes my passport, clothes, money food water and medicine. Obviously this is something that has the potential to be important since in the case of emergency it is helpful to think through some of the different contingencies if something did happen, political or natural. But it sure did put me in the frequent visitor category of Lviv and an honorary resident since I went back the next day for a birthday party in the city.
And finally thank you all who have been keeping up on the blog and leaving comments, I know I haven’t responded to all the comments personally, and apologize for that, but the encouragement is always appreciated. But I also want to allow all of you to help direct a little bit of what I write in future posts. If there are particular things you want to hear more about, tell me and I will try to go more in depth about them, either personally or in postings.
As for the day-to-day activities, as I mentioned earlier I was in Kyiv for a week of Peace Corps training that gave us more information on technical skills as well as language. I haven’t always been real thrilled about previous trainings and found them marginally helpful, but I can’t say anything too bad about this most recent one, it offered pertinent classes and the language part, while it pointed out how much I screw up the, gave a lot of good pointers and correction assistance. Although I am dealing with one of the more complicated languages in the world, I have got to the point, that I am understanding large parts of daily conversation and most basic tasks I can achieve with only some difficulty now. I should be wiring the library where I have been working at pretty soon to network computer together in order to better teach some technical classes and internet classes to townspeople. This was a dream of the director of the library when I arrived and one of the tasks he gave me was to find a local person to help with the work, luckily I ran across a guy during a tour of a school who will be able to help. Once that happened things began moving pretty quickly and I picked up wire and tools to do the job in Lviv on Sunday. Let me tell you, people give you funny looks when you are walking through downtown with 80 meters of Ethernet wire and a staple gun. But I’m looking forward to getting to work and once I get that knocked out, I think I can begin teaching the classes that I keep getting questions about. August is shaping up to potentially be a big month and it will be interesting to actually feel like I am getting some work done, or at least see some fruit of the work that I have been chipping away at presently. I think one of the truest things I have heard about the Peace Corps experience is you will feel useless a majority of the time, but will be remembered for the times that you did something really good, and for the times that you never even knew you helped someone out. So even though I, and other volunteers may feel like they aren’t accomplishing anything, it isn’t necessarily true. It is encouraging to hear that, but doesn’t mean I can try any less hard, but only harder.
And on the recommendation of my mother, a quick account of my last Friday. I woke up at the regular time after returning from Kyiv the day before, hoping to catch up on what had been happening around town and maybe do a little catch up. The thought was in vain, we had an emergency consolidation drill. What that basically means is I get a phone call saying I need to drop everything and go to Lviv immediately bringing my “emergency kit”, which includes my passport, clothes, money food water and medicine. Obviously this is something that has the potential to be important since in the case of emergency it is helpful to think through some of the different contingencies if something did happen, political or natural. But it sure did put me in the frequent visitor category of Lviv and an honorary resident since I went back the next day for a birthday party in the city.
And finally thank you all who have been keeping up on the blog and leaving comments, I know I haven’t responded to all the comments personally, and apologize for that, but the encouragement is always appreciated. But I also want to allow all of you to help direct a little bit of what I write in future posts. If there are particular things you want to hear more about, tell me and I will try to go more in depth about them, either personally or in postings.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Just a quick post during this time I am in Kyiv. I had to come in today for training and will be here for the next week or so, which takes me away from all my easy access to the internet during this time. But just two quick anecdotes, as Ukrainians love to tell. The first was this rather odd flash of home yesterday. I had heard stories of this pharmacy that was real cool and had good products. I wanted to at least check it out because my toothpaste supply was running low and wanted to at least see if I could get a replacement of the same stuff, not getting blend-a-med, which I have heard horror stories about.
So I walked into the aforementioned store and it was almost like walking into a western store, Walgreens or the equivalent. Plus, the best feature of all is you can take what you want off the shelves yourself. Most stores in this country require you to ask for nearly everything stored behind the counter. It was a great time.
The second anecdote is on my way here, by train, I got mistaken for a Ukrainian. While it might not seem like that big of a deal back home, it is a rather unusual occurrence to have that happen and I don't expect it to happen again any time soon. Of course the train was rather dark and I was listening more than speaking, but still I was rather elated at that moment after being tagged as an American so many times before. Of course then one of the guys in the coupe, a military doctor as was explained to me wanted to practice his English, not the first time it has happened, but always entertaining. Once again, the train ride went well and have to say people here never stop to amaze me.
So I walked into the aforementioned store and it was almost like walking into a western store, Walgreens or the equivalent. Plus, the best feature of all is you can take what you want off the shelves yourself. Most stores in this country require you to ask for nearly everything stored behind the counter. It was a great time.
The second anecdote is on my way here, by train, I got mistaken for a Ukrainian. While it might not seem like that big of a deal back home, it is a rather unusual occurrence to have that happen and I don't expect it to happen again any time soon. Of course the train was rather dark and I was listening more than speaking, but still I was rather elated at that moment after being tagged as an American so many times before. Of course then one of the guys in the coupe, a military doctor as was explained to me wanted to practice his English, not the first time it has happened, but always entertaining. Once again, the train ride went well and have to say people here never stop to amaze me.
Monday, July 10, 2006
I’m well into my month of travel now in July and the first trip I successfully completely without major catastrophes. I was able to visit a camp that another volunteer set up and help out at it. It was also one of my larger trips on my own where I got to do it on my own and required more than just jumping on one train or one marshrutka. But a little about travel in Ukraine, it might be hard to get a picture back in the U.S. but I will try to not exaggerate anything.
First of all, let me explain what exactly a marshrutka exactly is, in some approximation. Generally they are a full size van, maybe larger with a slightly raised roof, seats are located inside and if you are lucky you might actually get one. But once seats are filled up people still pile onto these things, filling up aisles and just about any other space inside of the van. There have been plenty of times that I didn’t think even a single person extra could fit, but multiple people still cram on. When you need to get somewhere you will always find a way I guess. I don’t want to go too in depth, but I know a Canadian I met while I was here wrote her final paper on travel in Ukraine. There is plenty to say, enough to fill a final paper, although it might be hard to keep it all serious because it can be pretty funny at times. On my way, I noticed the distinct smell of body odor and alcohol, at 9:30 in the morning. Although on the way back, I’m sure I contributed to the body odor since I had only bathed out of a bucket of cold water during the time I was at camp.
The trip in itself was a success however, All I had were rough ideas of where I needed to go to catch these marshrutkas and no idea what times they left but managed to get on them and make it all the way there. The only real adventure was when I was in the small town of Ckole and needed to find a new stop for my last jaunt. Much to my chagrin, I had a dickens of a time pronouncing the name of the town, resorting to writing it out on a piece of paper and wandering around the town for a little less than an hour before jumping on a marshrutka at the last moment after a man told me it would get me there. Once I arrived at the camp, I guess it was a bit of a feat to get there on my own, from what I hear, people were impressed. I just took it as no alternative; I wanted to get there and needed to figure out one way or another. But plenty of credit goes to the nationals that helped me out with initial directions and the plenty of people in the town of Ckole that put up with my poor Ukrainian and even got me on the right marshrutka.
The camp itself was dedicated to developing a film on drugs, alcohol and cigarettes by students from the city of Cokal. A lot of the work, well pretty much all of it was in Ukrainian way beyond my basic level so I did a lot of watching and more just entertaining the kids, but it was a good time and made some good friends. The most memorable part of the camp was a 15 km hike to the top of a mountain in some rather hot weather. I packed a good amount of water up the mountain, came back with none of it and was wiped out for the rest of that day and part of the next. The other memorable part of the camp was the Ukrainian holiday Ivana Kampala, forgive me if I butchered the spelling. It is an ancient pagan holiday here which involves making wreathes so girls can know who they’ll marry, jumping over campfires, running around looking for a mystical flower in the middle of the night while avoiding evil spirits and walking across dew in the morning for wealth and fortune. All I really did was the dew since I left early the next day and jumping over a fire, I couldn’t say “no”. Unfortunately I don’t have the photo of me jumping over the fire right now, someone took one, but not on my camera, but I have posted a couple of photos from the hike.
First of all, let me explain what exactly a marshrutka exactly is, in some approximation. Generally they are a full size van, maybe larger with a slightly raised roof, seats are located inside and if you are lucky you might actually get one. But once seats are filled up people still pile onto these things, filling up aisles and just about any other space inside of the van. There have been plenty of times that I didn’t think even a single person extra could fit, but multiple people still cram on. When you need to get somewhere you will always find a way I guess. I don’t want to go too in depth, but I know a Canadian I met while I was here wrote her final paper on travel in Ukraine. There is plenty to say, enough to fill a final paper, although it might be hard to keep it all serious because it can be pretty funny at times. On my way, I noticed the distinct smell of body odor and alcohol, at 9:30 in the morning. Although on the way back, I’m sure I contributed to the body odor since I had only bathed out of a bucket of cold water during the time I was at camp.
The trip in itself was a success however, All I had were rough ideas of where I needed to go to catch these marshrutkas and no idea what times they left but managed to get on them and make it all the way there. The only real adventure was when I was in the small town of Ckole and needed to find a new stop for my last jaunt. Much to my chagrin, I had a dickens of a time pronouncing the name of the town, resorting to writing it out on a piece of paper and wandering around the town for a little less than an hour before jumping on a marshrutka at the last moment after a man told me it would get me there. Once I arrived at the camp, I guess it was a bit of a feat to get there on my own, from what I hear, people were impressed. I just took it as no alternative; I wanted to get there and needed to figure out one way or another. But plenty of credit goes to the nationals that helped me out with initial directions and the plenty of people in the town of Ckole that put up with my poor Ukrainian and even got me on the right marshrutka.
The camp itself was dedicated to developing a film on drugs, alcohol and cigarettes by students from the city of Cokal. A lot of the work, well pretty much all of it was in Ukrainian way beyond my basic level so I did a lot of watching and more just entertaining the kids, but it was a good time and made some good friends. The most memorable part of the camp was a 15 km hike to the top of a mountain in some rather hot weather. I packed a good amount of water up the mountain, came back with none of it and was wiped out for the rest of that day and part of the next. The other memorable part of the camp was the Ukrainian holiday Ivana Kampala, forgive me if I butchered the spelling. It is an ancient pagan holiday here which involves making wreathes so girls can know who they’ll marry, jumping over campfires, running around looking for a mystical flower in the middle of the night while avoiding evil spirits and walking across dew in the morning for wealth and fortune. All I really did was the dew since I left early the next day and jumping over a fire, I couldn’t say “no”. Unfortunately I don’t have the photo of me jumping over the fire right now, someone took one, but not on my camera, but I have posted a couple of photos from the hike.
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