Tuesday, February 12, 2008
27.1.2008
January is almost over and the start of February will be starting with a conference for my entire group to signal the beginning of the end. The conference is signaling the end of service, which will actually happen sometime in April or May. But that doesn’t mean this past month hasn’t been at all just looking toward the end. I haven’t truly been able to think too much about that as I have been keeping as busy as possible with day-to-day activities and the full phalanx of holidays that started with New Years and continued through Orthodox Christmas and a second New Years based on the old calendar. This doesn’t include all of the smaller holidays. So it all boils down to me keeping plenty busy, but not in the general work centered way of thinking. I guess you could say I’ve been too busy to work.
Since New Years eve and my birthday coincide, I wanted to have a good time, so along with Ira and some of her friends we planned to stay in a hostel in Lviv. I had met the owner of the hostel during a party for Halloween and he was a good guy, originally from Australia. He was accommodating and it was a great time there. It was fun to see the mixture of the two styles of celebrating New Years since other Peace Corps Volunteers were celebrating in the same hostel, which was a surprise to me. Parties in general are a little bit different, Americans tend to have parties with people standing up more and walking around, they will carry their plates and drinks and eat standing up. Ukrainians have the party centered around a table, heaps of food is put on the table and they tend to sit around the table the entire time and often will watch the television shows that are on. There are shows in the U.S. too, of course, who hasn’t watched the ball fall in Times Square at least once on TV?
But the fun was to go to the center in Lviv by the Opera Theatre, a huge crowd of people had gathered around the central Christmas Tree, since Christmas had not come yet in Ukraine. A large screen showed a countdown, but what really showed the start of the new year was the near explosion of fireworks that happened. Growing up in Oregon was a tame experience since it was illegal to buy any truly exploding fireworks or rockets of any type. As far as I could tell, there is no limit on what people can buy beyond the amount they want to spend. Rockets were flying everywhere, M-80s and a variety of other fireworks were blowing up, it was absolute chaos, and a lot of fun. The best advice was to stay in crowded areas, because any open space was almost guaranteed to have a explosive of some sort thrown into it. I had no desire to visit a hospital that night, so I tried to stay as safe as possible.
After the actual turn of the new year, we headed back to the hostel, but it definitely didn’t signal the end of the night, we headed out again and didn’t actually head to sleep until somewhere around 4 a.m. All in all, I can’t complain about the night, it was a good time. But the festivities didn’t end that day because Ira’s brother has a birthday five days after me, which is followed by Christmas Eve and the holy supper and then by Christmas the next day, January 7.
Holy supper is almost considered more important than Christmas day itself. Although all of the days include quite a bit of eating. The supper itself traditionally consists of 12 different dishes, none of which have any meat in them. Although fish is in quite a few different dishes. The dishes are almost a menu of traditional Ukrainian cuisine, which consists of holybsi (cabbage rolls), vareniky (a kind of dumpling), rice, potatoes and fried different dishes. One of the dishes I only see around the holidays is called kutya, a mixture of poppy seeds, raisins, sugar and occasionally nuts. The dish is really sweet, but also quite tasty. I ate my fair share of it, and probably a bit more.
All that makes for a busy week, well at least a celebratory week. Of course the next couple days afterwards were also minor holidays or at least angel days. One of the early things I learned in Ukraine, is not only are there names that are quite common, basically every name has its own name day, most likely more than one. So the people named Tanya get to celebrate their day, Igor, Sasha. They all get their own days when people congratulate them for having that name and have a party.
I had a few days at home after that before.
I had a few days at home, before taking off to the next trip to visit another volunteer and then to Budapest, Hungary. At fellow volunteer’s site, there was going to be a wine festival. Why they hold a wine festival in the beginning of January is beyond me, but there is so I headed to Robert Henderson’s site and things just didn’t work out the way we expected. On the way, he was bit by a dog, in itself, it doesn’t seem like a big problem, although painful, but Peace Corps requires anyone bit by a dog to either quarantine it, or go to Kyiv for rabies shots. They wouldn’t believe his story of being able to contain the dog and it was only a small scratch, so he needed to go to Kyiv, which put a crimp in our plans to celebrate the festival with him. But he left us the key to his place and we had a good time, even without him and ended up meeting up with him in Budapest, rather than him traveling with us.
January is almost over and the start of February will be starting with a conference for my entire group to signal the beginning of the end. The conference is signaling the end of service, which will actually happen sometime in April or May. But that doesn’t mean this past month hasn’t been at all just looking toward the end. I haven’t truly been able to think too much about that as I have been keeping as busy as possible with day-to-day activities and the full phalanx of holidays that started with New Years and continued through Orthodox Christmas and a second New Years based on the old calendar. This doesn’t include all of the smaller holidays. So it all boils down to me keeping plenty busy, but not in the general work centered way of thinking. I guess you could say I’ve been too busy to work.
Since New Years eve and my birthday coincide, I wanted to have a good time, so along with Ira and some of her friends we planned to stay in a hostel in Lviv. I had met the owner of the hostel during a party for Halloween and he was a good guy, originally from Australia. He was accommodating and it was a great time there. It was fun to see the mixture of the two styles of celebrating New Years since other Peace Corps Volunteers were celebrating in the same hostel, which was a surprise to me. Parties in general are a little bit different, Americans tend to have parties with people standing up more and walking around, they will carry their plates and drinks and eat standing up. Ukrainians have the party centered around a table, heaps of food is put on the table and they tend to sit around the table the entire time and often will watch the television shows that are on. There are shows in the U.S. too, of course, who hasn’t watched the ball fall in Times Square at least once on TV?
But the fun was to go to the center in Lviv by the Opera Theatre, a huge crowd of people had gathered around the central Christmas Tree, since Christmas had not come yet in Ukraine. A large screen showed a countdown, but what really showed the start of the new year was the near explosion of fireworks that happened. Growing up in Oregon was a tame experience since it was illegal to buy any truly exploding fireworks or rockets of any type. As far as I could tell, there is no limit on what people can buy beyond the amount they want to spend. Rockets were flying everywhere, M-80s and a variety of other fireworks were blowing up, it was absolute chaos, and a lot of fun. The best advice was to stay in crowded areas, because any open space was almost guaranteed to have a explosive of some sort thrown into it. I had no desire to visit a hospital that night, so I tried to stay as safe as possible.
After the actual turn of the new year, we headed back to the hostel, but it definitely didn’t signal the end of the night, we headed out again and didn’t actually head to sleep until somewhere around 4 a.m. All in all, I can’t complain about the night, it was a good time. But the festivities didn’t end that day because Ira’s brother has a birthday five days after me, which is followed by Christmas Eve and the holy supper and then by Christmas the next day, January 7.
Holy supper is almost considered more important than Christmas day itself. Although all of the days include quite a bit of eating. The supper itself traditionally consists of 12 different dishes, none of which have any meat in them. Although fish is in quite a few different dishes. The dishes are almost a menu of traditional Ukrainian cuisine, which consists of holybsi (cabbage rolls), vareniky (a kind of dumpling), rice, potatoes and fried different dishes. One of the dishes I only see around the holidays is called kutya, a mixture of poppy seeds, raisins, sugar and occasionally nuts. The dish is really sweet, but also quite tasty. I ate my fair share of it, and probably a bit more.
All that makes for a busy week, well at least a celebratory week. Of course the next couple days afterwards were also minor holidays or at least angel days. One of the early things I learned in Ukraine, is not only are there names that are quite common, basically every name has its own name day, most likely more than one. So the people named Tanya get to celebrate their day, Igor, Sasha. They all get their own days when people congratulate them for having that name and have a party.
I had a few days at home after that before.
I had a few days at home, before taking off to the next trip to visit another volunteer and then to Budapest, Hungary. At fellow volunteer’s site, there was going to be a wine festival. Why they hold a wine festival in the beginning of January is beyond me, but there is so I headed to Robert Henderson’s site and things just didn’t work out the way we expected. On the way, he was bit by a dog, in itself, it doesn’t seem like a big problem, although painful, but Peace Corps requires anyone bit by a dog to either quarantine it, or go to Kyiv for rabies shots. They wouldn’t believe his story of being able to contain the dog and it was only a small scratch, so he needed to go to Kyiv, which put a crimp in our plans to celebrate the festival with him. But he left us the key to his place and we had a good time, even without him and ended up meeting up with him in Budapest, rather than him traveling with us.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Musings
I got to thinking about the Peace Corps motto the other day. “The hardest job you’ll ever love.” I guess it was because there have just been frustrations recently with how much good I can actually achieve here. I can’t compare to other countries, but there are many times it feels like the work I’m trying to do is not always appreciated or wanted, and have heard some of these feelings from other volunteers as well. Not all of them, some have wonderful jobs at their sites and love them. But as I was thinking about it (I was on a marshrutka going to a club) I remembered that is probably part of the challenge. I don’t know how my physical challenges stack up to someone serving in Africa or South America, but I deal with my own challenges here and struggles. Some of them are entrenched in the culture, and some are entrenched in me.
In less than three months will mark my being in the country for two years. I am not the same person I was when I came to Ukraine. Or maybe I am, but have been able to find parts of me that have been brought out by the circumstances here and challenged my true self to expose itself. One thing I have already begun to realize and start to plan for is how will I incorporate this experience into my future life. Peace Corps is great at helping people try out things and truly find what they like and are good at, at least it has been for me.
I came to Ukraine with a background in newspapers and little experience working with youth, despite what PC may have thought by putting me in a Youth Development program. I haven’t been able to “save” each kid I’ve worked with, and haven’t even been able to make friends with each student I’ve worked with, but I can hope I have at least influenced some of them to look at different options in their life and help expand their horizons. I came to Ukraine with conflicting ideas of what I wanted to accomplish here, I told myself if I can change at least one kid for the better I will consider it a success and then got caught up in the idea that somehow I should try and influence every student I encounter. The true goal should be somewhere in between, I can’t help, nor does every student want to work with me or want my help. But hopefully what I have been able to do thus far is help some students who have looked for experience to show them something new.
In the remaining months I have left here (it is counted in months now and not years), what I think I will try to focus on is that. There are students who want to work with me; I need to recommit myself to that.
So in closing, I struggled with the idea of if I truly love my job with PC. In the end, I think I do. There is no other job I would prefer to be doing now. There are struggles, but when I put them in context with other jobs I’ve held, they aren’t necessarily harder. And while I don’t always get daily satisfaction with what I do, I do have great days that I can look back and feel some sense of accomplishment, even if I don’t know the exact result of them. Peace Corps is unlike any job I think can be taken, as it is so flexible and dependent on the individual. This can be extremely stressful, because there is not much of a safety net to fall into. But it can be fulfilling in that part as well. It isn’t a permanent job (thankfully) and I will be ready for whatever step is next after Peace Corps. But yes, I do think this is by far the hardest job, and I do love it.
In less than three months will mark my being in the country for two years. I am not the same person I was when I came to Ukraine. Or maybe I am, but have been able to find parts of me that have been brought out by the circumstances here and challenged my true self to expose itself. One thing I have already begun to realize and start to plan for is how will I incorporate this experience into my future life. Peace Corps is great at helping people try out things and truly find what they like and are good at, at least it has been for me.
I came to Ukraine with a background in newspapers and little experience working with youth, despite what PC may have thought by putting me in a Youth Development program. I haven’t been able to “save” each kid I’ve worked with, and haven’t even been able to make friends with each student I’ve worked with, but I can hope I have at least influenced some of them to look at different options in their life and help expand their horizons. I came to Ukraine with conflicting ideas of what I wanted to accomplish here, I told myself if I can change at least one kid for the better I will consider it a success and then got caught up in the idea that somehow I should try and influence every student I encounter. The true goal should be somewhere in between, I can’t help, nor does every student want to work with me or want my help. But hopefully what I have been able to do thus far is help some students who have looked for experience to show them something new.
In the remaining months I have left here (it is counted in months now and not years), what I think I will try to focus on is that. There are students who want to work with me; I need to recommit myself to that.
So in closing, I struggled with the idea of if I truly love my job with PC. In the end, I think I do. There is no other job I would prefer to be doing now. There are struggles, but when I put them in context with other jobs I’ve held, they aren’t necessarily harder. And while I don’t always get daily satisfaction with what I do, I do have great days that I can look back and feel some sense of accomplishment, even if I don’t know the exact result of them. Peace Corps is unlike any job I think can be taken, as it is so flexible and dependent on the individual. This can be extremely stressful, because there is not much of a safety net to fall into. But it can be fulfilling in that part as well. It isn’t a permanent job (thankfully) and I will be ready for whatever step is next after Peace Corps. But yes, I do think this is by far the hardest job, and I do love it.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Winter has definitely come for those who have kept up looking at my photos over at Flickr. Although it is hard to tell exactly what kind of winter is coming. Today has seen a lot of weather that was not especially cold, but more along the lines of miserable with wind and rain most of the day. But there also was about a week where it snowed or there was at least snow on the ground and below freezing temperatures. It meant I was able to get out some of my cold weather gear and see how well it stored (it all was just fine). Got to test out a new scarf Ira got me and a new hat. I’m ready for a winter the babusyas are saying will be a cold one.
One other thing you may have noticed in the pictures is our celebration of Thanksgiving. While the holiday is being in America, there was the ironic part of our celebrating it on the same day that Ukraine was commemorating Holodimor, or the great famine that was forced upon the country during Stalin’s rule. So while we Americans were celebrating and feasting, Ukraine was remembering a time when thousands upon thousands were dying because they had no food. It was a fact that wasn’t lost on us as we cut up the turkey and shared what we brought. If anything there were some interesting parallels, because there is the history of so many Pilgrims dying the year before because they didn’t have enough food. We did light a candle that night to put on the windowsill in solidarity with others who had lit candles to remember that time. It is a sad fact that Ukraine suffered so much during that time, with horrific numbers of dead, and it was almost completely covered up at the time. At least it has been remembered in history. A famine completely caused by choice.
One other thing you may have noticed in the pictures is our celebration of Thanksgiving. While the holiday is being in America, there was the ironic part of our celebrating it on the same day that Ukraine was commemorating Holodimor, or the great famine that was forced upon the country during Stalin’s rule. So while we Americans were celebrating and feasting, Ukraine was remembering a time when thousands upon thousands were dying because they had no food. It was a fact that wasn’t lost on us as we cut up the turkey and shared what we brought. If anything there were some interesting parallels, because there is the history of so many Pilgrims dying the year before because they didn’t have enough food. We did light a candle that night to put on the windowsill in solidarity with others who had lit candles to remember that time. It is a sad fact that Ukraine suffered so much during that time, with horrific numbers of dead, and it was almost completely covered up at the time. At least it has been remembered in history. A famine completely caused by choice.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
13 November 2007
So it has been months since I actually got down and put something into my computer to detail what has been going on here. It isn’t that I’m absolutely swamped, or that I’m just lazy and bored, but I have been busy and at least a little lazy at points in keeping this updated.
But I did need to read what I had last read to catch up where I left off. Obviously I did short shrift to my summer, since I didn’t include much in the way of camps I participated in, one being a multi-cultural camp I helped with and a second being an environmental camp. You can find photos from both at Flickr, so go take a look, if you want more details send me a note and I can fill in holes.
More recently I got back from my first trip to Eastern Ukraine, and some of the fears I had of only hearing Russian and people from the east being meaner were unfounded. I took a weekend trip to celebrate Halloween in Kharkiv (Kharkov, Russian spelling) and had a good time, in and outside of the party. Pictures for that are also up. Probably the hardest part of all if it is just the sheer amount of time it takes to get there. I needed to board a train to Kharkiv from Lviv in the west Friday at 8 in the morning and we did not arrive until Saturday at about 4:30 in the morning, which made for a long day. Thankfully there was a 24-hour café; only problem was it closed at 8 in the morning. No one could figure out why it closed, especially since it was there was a sign written in English and Ukrainian stating it is “non-stop”. Oh the life.
The main reason going to Kharkiv was the party, however, Peace Corps was concerned about the potential for trouble and was trying to discourage people from attending, being said, there were still around 100 attendees and as far as I know, not a problem was reported. I had the idea ranging back a bit to try and acquire a military uniform, fortunately Ira’s father was willing to give me some of his old uniforms that were lying around so I was able to get as dressed up as you see in the photos for free. The only thing it cost was were the confused looks I got from people as I walked down the street. They weren’t really sure what to make of me, since I didn’t really look the military type, but had the full uniform to play the part. I didn’t go overboard while dressed up, was a little concerned it might attract attention, but most people I knew and who saw it thought it was a good job. I thought it was fun.
Going back a little further chronologically, my parents visited the first part of October for about 10 days. It was a good visit, nothing went exactly as I had planned it, but there was a general order to it. They had a chance to visit Europe, meet people I know and experience what life can be like in Ukraine, the good and not so good.
We started out when they flew into Kyiv and ended up leaving that night on the train to Lviv. I had hoped we would have a little time in Kyiv to start out with, but I was stuck with the unavailability of tickets. Once in Lviv, my parents got to meet Ira as she met us at the train station before we were whisked away to the bus station to go to my town. Once there, we were able to relax for a bit and my parents caught up on sleep they hadn’t been able to do earlier. Sleeping on a train that bumps around was a new experience, I think. We spent more time in Dobrotvir, than I expected, but it worked out in the end as they were able to adjust a bit to the time change and get some energy, attend teachers day with English teachers from my school and meet other people from my town.
From there we started to see a bit more of the touristy parts of Ukraine, mainly Lviv and later Kyiv. One of my only regrets was we were not able to meet up with my first host family Ira also came along with us for the trip to Kyiv, which was great and we even were able to get a little extra information by going to a graduate school fair that was held that evening, most conveniently. Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of schools that caught either of our attention. The fair was for schools worldwide. I’m still undecided if I will go back to school when I finish my Peace Corps service. Right now I am leaning towards waiting at least a bit so I can have a specific goal and degree in mind before I start.
So it has been months since I actually got down and put something into my computer to detail what has been going on here. It isn’t that I’m absolutely swamped, or that I’m just lazy and bored, but I have been busy and at least a little lazy at points in keeping this updated.
But I did need to read what I had last read to catch up where I left off. Obviously I did short shrift to my summer, since I didn’t include much in the way of camps I participated in, one being a multi-cultural camp I helped with and a second being an environmental camp. You can find photos from both at Flickr, so go take a look, if you want more details send me a note and I can fill in holes.
More recently I got back from my first trip to Eastern Ukraine, and some of the fears I had of only hearing Russian and people from the east being meaner were unfounded. I took a weekend trip to celebrate Halloween in Kharkiv (Kharkov, Russian spelling) and had a good time, in and outside of the party. Pictures for that are also up. Probably the hardest part of all if it is just the sheer amount of time it takes to get there. I needed to board a train to Kharkiv from Lviv in the west Friday at 8 in the morning and we did not arrive until Saturday at about 4:30 in the morning, which made for a long day. Thankfully there was a 24-hour café; only problem was it closed at 8 in the morning. No one could figure out why it closed, especially since it was there was a sign written in English and Ukrainian stating it is “non-stop”. Oh the life.
The main reason going to Kharkiv was the party, however, Peace Corps was concerned about the potential for trouble and was trying to discourage people from attending, being said, there were still around 100 attendees and as far as I know, not a problem was reported. I had the idea ranging back a bit to try and acquire a military uniform, fortunately Ira’s father was willing to give me some of his old uniforms that were lying around so I was able to get as dressed up as you see in the photos for free. The only thing it cost was were the confused looks I got from people as I walked down the street. They weren’t really sure what to make of me, since I didn’t really look the military type, but had the full uniform to play the part. I didn’t go overboard while dressed up, was a little concerned it might attract attention, but most people I knew and who saw it thought it was a good job. I thought it was fun.
Going back a little further chronologically, my parents visited the first part of October for about 10 days. It was a good visit, nothing went exactly as I had planned it, but there was a general order to it. They had a chance to visit Europe, meet people I know and experience what life can be like in Ukraine, the good and not so good.
We started out when they flew into Kyiv and ended up leaving that night on the train to Lviv. I had hoped we would have a little time in Kyiv to start out with, but I was stuck with the unavailability of tickets. Once in Lviv, my parents got to meet Ira as she met us at the train station before we were whisked away to the bus station to go to my town. Once there, we were able to relax for a bit and my parents caught up on sleep they hadn’t been able to do earlier. Sleeping on a train that bumps around was a new experience, I think. We spent more time in Dobrotvir, than I expected, but it worked out in the end as they were able to adjust a bit to the time change and get some energy, attend teachers day with English teachers from my school and meet other people from my town.
From there we started to see a bit more of the touristy parts of Ukraine, mainly Lviv and later Kyiv. One of my only regrets was we were not able to meet up with my first host family Ira also came along with us for the trip to Kyiv, which was great and we even were able to get a little extra information by going to a graduate school fair that was held that evening, most conveniently. Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of schools that caught either of our attention. The fair was for schools worldwide. I’m still undecided if I will go back to school when I finish my Peace Corps service. Right now I am leaning towards waiting at least a bit so I can have a specific goal and degree in mind before I start.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
21/8/2008
I left off at the part where we took the money and ran off to Poland. Yeah, sure this was the end of June when we did this and it is currently the end of August and I’m typing this on a place back to the U.S.A., but the story is good so read along, or just skip down a couple paragraphs.
After having the travel agency make a royal screwup in the visa process, we changed plans and looked at places to go in Poland, which Ira had the visa for already. I wanted a beach, so we headed north to the Blatic Sea city of Gdansk. There was a brief stopover in Warsaw to look around a bit, we had our first experience couchsurfing. For those who don’t know what couchsurfing is, it is a website that allows you to contact other individuals and meet up with them in cities you are traveling to or you to meet them traveling through your city. This can also be used to find places to stay. I had hosted one person at my own place before this experience and had met other people in Lviv before. But this was the first time I had traveled and especially stayed with people I hadn’t met beforehand.
The first experience was with a couple who had this small house on the outskirts of Gdansk and it was an experience just getting there. We made it onto a bus without a problem and rode it to the final shop taking us to this cement plant where they met us. We found it a little odd, but then we proceeded to walk straight through the plant and out the other side and into a wooded area. At this point it was getting interesting where exactly we were being taken, but we shortly came out and up to their newly built house. After a delicious vegan meal, we looked at going out and meeting up with some of their friends that evening. (Side note: I don’t think I could ever be fully vegetarian after the experience. While it was tasty, it never seemed as filling as I might prefer.) The evening ended at about 5 in the morning and included going to a club and fire shows, lots of fun stuff.
After several days of Gdansk, Ira and I planned on heading to Lublin, east of Warsaw and see a small town there that still has its medieval wall. The train was late and we made a split second decision to jump on a train and off we headed to Krakow. Original plan was either Gdasnk or Krakow. This way we got both. Fun times! You can see pictures I posted from Krakow at Flickr.
More on the summer and start of school soon!
I left off at the part where we took the money and ran off to Poland. Yeah, sure this was the end of June when we did this and it is currently the end of August and I’m typing this on a place back to the U.S.A., but the story is good so read along, or just skip down a couple paragraphs.
After having the travel agency make a royal screwup in the visa process, we changed plans and looked at places to go in Poland, which Ira had the visa for already. I wanted a beach, so we headed north to the Blatic Sea city of Gdansk. There was a brief stopover in Warsaw to look around a bit, we had our first experience couchsurfing. For those who don’t know what couchsurfing is, it is a website that allows you to contact other individuals and meet up with them in cities you are traveling to or you to meet them traveling through your city. This can also be used to find places to stay. I had hosted one person at my own place before this experience and had met other people in Lviv before. But this was the first time I had traveled and especially stayed with people I hadn’t met beforehand.
The first experience was with a couple who had this small house on the outskirts of Gdansk and it was an experience just getting there. We made it onto a bus without a problem and rode it to the final shop taking us to this cement plant where they met us. We found it a little odd, but then we proceeded to walk straight through the plant and out the other side and into a wooded area. At this point it was getting interesting where exactly we were being taken, but we shortly came out and up to their newly built house. After a delicious vegan meal, we looked at going out and meeting up with some of their friends that evening. (Side note: I don’t think I could ever be fully vegetarian after the experience. While it was tasty, it never seemed as filling as I might prefer.) The evening ended at about 5 in the morning and included going to a club and fire shows, lots of fun stuff.
After several days of Gdansk, Ira and I planned on heading to Lublin, east of Warsaw and see a small town there that still has its medieval wall. The train was late and we made a split second decision to jump on a train and off we headed to Krakow. Original plan was either Gdasnk or Krakow. This way we got both. Fun times! You can see pictures I posted from Krakow at Flickr.
More on the summer and start of school soon!
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
So wow, it’s August and it has been months since an entry showed up on these pages. Apologies to those who have wondered what happened to me, life has come at me pretty fast these past few months and it’s hard to believe it is almost time for school to start again already.
For those of you who follow international news and saw there was a Phosphorous spill in the oblast I live in, don’t worry I wasn’t around and although it was a pretty big mess, it was overblown. I’ve just been forbidden to swim in my local river for the rest of the summer. What was most disturbing and admittedly a little funny in retrospect was the specter given by an official that it may be the next Chernobyl event. Talk about doing nothing to assuage the public, that caused unnecessary panic and from what I heard he was a little drunk when he made the proclamation, he apologized later. The real situation was nowhere near that bad and although there was a cloud of phosphorous that sent people to the hospital, no one died that I heard about.
With that, here is a little bit of a fill-in on what I have been up to during this time. One of the original reasons I didn’t blog for a while was my hard drive crashed and I lost everything on it. That really sucked, since I lost about five months worth of pictures, documents and everything else on my computer. The good thing is that I had a lot of data backed up on an external drive so I didn’t lose as much as I might. Music and many documents were backed up, unfortunately I hadn’t backed up the most recent pictures, so some of those will only be found on Flickr now from those five months of service. At least I posted some from that time. That was a pretty rough patch, but ended on a positive note because I was able to find someone to fix my computer in the country, which meant replacing the hard drive and reinstalling all system hardware. All of that cost me only the cost of the drive, and I have a much larger drive now, hallelujah.
Shortly after my computer was repaired school ended, summer started and I began traveling, both for business and even a weeklong vacation. The first was a trip around Poland, which turned into an almost comprehensive look at the larger cities. The original plan was to visit Prague, which you may have heard of my plans, but the travel agency Ira and I were working through to simplify the visa process for her basically did no work and left us with no visa to go on the trip. At least they gave us the money back. So we both missed out on Prague, but took the money and spent a week in Poland.
Will try to catch this up more soon. Check back to find out how Poland was and assorted summer camps.
For those of you who follow international news and saw there was a Phosphorous spill in the oblast I live in, don’t worry I wasn’t around and although it was a pretty big mess, it was overblown. I’ve just been forbidden to swim in my local river for the rest of the summer. What was most disturbing and admittedly a little funny in retrospect was the specter given by an official that it may be the next Chernobyl event. Talk about doing nothing to assuage the public, that caused unnecessary panic and from what I heard he was a little drunk when he made the proclamation, he apologized later. The real situation was nowhere near that bad and although there was a cloud of phosphorous that sent people to the hospital, no one died that I heard about.
With that, here is a little bit of a fill-in on what I have been up to during this time. One of the original reasons I didn’t blog for a while was my hard drive crashed and I lost everything on it. That really sucked, since I lost about five months worth of pictures, documents and everything else on my computer. The good thing is that I had a lot of data backed up on an external drive so I didn’t lose as much as I might. Music and many documents were backed up, unfortunately I hadn’t backed up the most recent pictures, so some of those will only be found on Flickr now from those five months of service. At least I posted some from that time. That was a pretty rough patch, but ended on a positive note because I was able to find someone to fix my computer in the country, which meant replacing the hard drive and reinstalling all system hardware. All of that cost me only the cost of the drive, and I have a much larger drive now, hallelujah.
Shortly after my computer was repaired school ended, summer started and I began traveling, both for business and even a weeklong vacation. The first was a trip around Poland, which turned into an almost comprehensive look at the larger cities. The original plan was to visit Prague, which you may have heard of my plans, but the travel agency Ira and I were working through to simplify the visa process for her basically did no work and left us with no visa to go on the trip. At least they gave us the money back. So we both missed out on Prague, but took the money and spent a week in Poland.
Will try to catch this up more soon. Check back to find out how Poland was and assorted summer camps.
Monday, May 14, 2007
14 May 2007
It’s been a full month (wow) since I last posted, that isn’t saying I haven’t been up to stuff, it was more I was waiting until I had good news and then was swamped with other things and didn’t have a time to sit down and put something down as a post.
So yeah, that good news, I am now declaring April over and am quite happy about it. As you can see directly below this post, it didn’t start off all that great and the tree planting I was planning did happen, but on the schedule I planned, it was delayed two weeks and I did find out that rib I only thought was bruised was in fact cracked. Hooray! It was to the point I was almost wondering what good could come out of the month and was just waiting for May to come with the expectation things could start to work again. Obviously things can’t be that cut and dry and just the changing of the month can’t realistically change my fortunes, but it seems to do the trick for me as the tree planting didn’t get any easier, but did happen.
But first a few of what can now be considered at least a little funny now in retrospect. In addition to my tree planting being postponed due the fact the nursery I wanted to buy from wasn’t able to fill my order and told me it was impossible for the rest of the year, I got stuck in Kyiv for an extra day and had my iPod stolen at an opera (probably by my own stupidity). I had gone to Kyiv to help out a new group of trainees by basically giving them some perspective and reassuring them things will be fine. Even in a bad month good things happen and you can make it through, I’m here to testify to it. Story goes I come in with them to Kyiv and went to buy a ticket home only to discover there were only tickets in the luxury class to Lviv that day. All other tickets had been sold out. Lviv as you may know isn’t a small place in Ukraine, being as far as I know the largest city in the west and at least four trains go there daily I know of, but no seats. At that point I knew it was over. I came home on the first of May.
May had so far been a much better month since I can now declare success on the tree planting after putting over 300 trees in the ground (the iPod didn’t show up even though we went to the opera to ask later). Pictures of the day of can be seen at my Flickr site, which there is a link to from this site. I had a great group of volunteers come out to help me, so thanks a lot and also thanks to those in town that gave invaluable assistance. I didn’t know for sure if it would happen until the day before when I went with a truck to pick up the trees. Not a great feeling for me since I like to know a bit more in advance, but it all worked out ok. That has been by far the largest project I have undertaken in Ukraine thus far, and am glad I can write it off as not being a complete failure.
Another larger project I am working on is helping organize a summer camp focusing on ethnic and religious diversity in Ukraine. It is an exciting project for me as it has been a topic of interest to me for a while now. The primary organizer is an American who just recently finished her Fulbright Scholarship in Ukraine. To learn more about the camp go to www.happycampukraine.org. I made the website, that took up a lot of my time recently as well, but it is starting to look pretty good.
That also means summer is coming soon, which will change my schedule and with luck usher in some more traveling to places I haven’t seen yet. Well I hope this catches you up a little bit on the goings on here. Wish I could write more, but getting tired and need to catch some sleep. Thanks for visiting!
It’s been a full month (wow) since I last posted, that isn’t saying I haven’t been up to stuff, it was more I was waiting until I had good news and then was swamped with other things and didn’t have a time to sit down and put something down as a post.
So yeah, that good news, I am now declaring April over and am quite happy about it. As you can see directly below this post, it didn’t start off all that great and the tree planting I was planning did happen, but on the schedule I planned, it was delayed two weeks and I did find out that rib I only thought was bruised was in fact cracked. Hooray! It was to the point I was almost wondering what good could come out of the month and was just waiting for May to come with the expectation things could start to work again. Obviously things can’t be that cut and dry and just the changing of the month can’t realistically change my fortunes, but it seems to do the trick for me as the tree planting didn’t get any easier, but did happen.
But first a few of what can now be considered at least a little funny now in retrospect. In addition to my tree planting being postponed due the fact the nursery I wanted to buy from wasn’t able to fill my order and told me it was impossible for the rest of the year, I got stuck in Kyiv for an extra day and had my iPod stolen at an opera (probably by my own stupidity). I had gone to Kyiv to help out a new group of trainees by basically giving them some perspective and reassuring them things will be fine. Even in a bad month good things happen and you can make it through, I’m here to testify to it. Story goes I come in with them to Kyiv and went to buy a ticket home only to discover there were only tickets in the luxury class to Lviv that day. All other tickets had been sold out. Lviv as you may know isn’t a small place in Ukraine, being as far as I know the largest city in the west and at least four trains go there daily I know of, but no seats. At that point I knew it was over. I came home on the first of May.
May had so far been a much better month since I can now declare success on the tree planting after putting over 300 trees in the ground (the iPod didn’t show up even though we went to the opera to ask later). Pictures of the day of can be seen at my Flickr site, which there is a link to from this site. I had a great group of volunteers come out to help me, so thanks a lot and also thanks to those in town that gave invaluable assistance. I didn’t know for sure if it would happen until the day before when I went with a truck to pick up the trees. Not a great feeling for me since I like to know a bit more in advance, but it all worked out ok. That has been by far the largest project I have undertaken in Ukraine thus far, and am glad I can write it off as not being a complete failure.
Another larger project I am working on is helping organize a summer camp focusing on ethnic and religious diversity in Ukraine. It is an exciting project for me as it has been a topic of interest to me for a while now. The primary organizer is an American who just recently finished her Fulbright Scholarship in Ukraine. To learn more about the camp go to www.happycampukraine.org. I made the website, that took up a lot of my time recently as well, but it is starting to look pretty good.
That also means summer is coming soon, which will change my schedule and with luck usher in some more traveling to places I haven’t seen yet. Well I hope this catches you up a little bit on the goings on here. Wish I could write more, but getting tired and need to catch some sleep. Thanks for visiting!
Sunday, April 15, 2007
This may go down as one of the more eventful months in my Peace Corps service and I haven’t even had a major project yet to include in the reasoning. That is next Saturday. This isn’t even including the political on-goings in Kyiv either.
On the 8th was Easter; most of you probably already knew that, may have even celebrated it yourself. Here in Ukraine, at least in western Ukraine, it is a big deal. I had the pleasure of spending it with the director of my school and his family in a village. In order to get the best traditions, it is always better to visit the villages. This was no exception, except I did get a few extra little treats to experience as well. I’ll get into those later.
While Easter is Sunday, the celebrations start the day before, so my director, Vacil picked me up and took me to the village with his family. I got a chance meet the relatives and see a house he is in the process of developing there. Visited the church in the evening and was able to see a picture of Jesus in repose. I’ll post some pictures of that. After about an hour at church we came back and had a meal at the family’s house and then began to wait for midnight to come when a crowd gathers again in the church for the blessing of food. Each family brings a basket with a special round bread, meat, eggs and maybe sausage as well. All exquisitely decorated. The priest will then spray holy water on the basket and people, blessing the food. Only I kind of missed that part. We arrived at the church at about 1 in the morning and commenced to stand for about two hours. Walking out of the church into the courtyard was dark and people gathered around for the blessing. As I was walking with Vacil behind the crowd looking for his wife I found an open manhole, well, my foot found no ground and I fell into a pipe sticking out of it used to draw water. Let me remind you I was still in the courtyard of this church.
(Side note: This isn’t exactly the first time this has happened, but the first time I was in training and playing football (soccer) and on the field backed into one. Didn’t hurt myself, but did remind me there is no safe place. People stealing manhole covers is a widespread problem in Ukraine because they are then resold for cash as scrap metal. Go figure.)
I was wearing a heavy leather jacket, plus several other layers of clothing, but still got the wind knocked out of me pretty severely. For several second I couldn’t breath at all, but made it back to the house. I had a pretty nasty mark on my side even though there were no holes in my clothing. But as it hurt pretty bad, there was the decision to go to the hospital and get me checked out, at about 4 in the morning. Hospitals in Ukraine don’t have the best reputations and tend to look like there is a time warp straight to the 1950s. Well, I can tell you it does look pretty much like something straight out of the 50s after I had an x-ray at 5:30 in the morning as well as a sonogram about that time. However the people were all really nice. That is the part people here have a hard time believing. They say it is just because I’m the American. Well, whatever works for me I guess. Although I was checked out by about 5 different doctors, plus several other technicians and specialists. But after the end of it all, it ended up I didn’t break anything, I was concerned I may have broken a rib, but just was going to have a really bad bruise. It must be pretty bad, cause it is still giving me some problems, although it is better, just don’t touch it. So that was one weekend. I was hoping to get a feel of Ukrainians traditions over Easter and did have some of that, but also ended up seeing a part of Ukraine I had heard I would want to avoid, yeah, if you can I would recommend avoiding it.
After a long week at site I was hoping to relax this weekend a little bit and took off to spend the day Saturday with Ira and her mom, took apart a printer and declared it dead. Also helped picked out a new TV and microwave for them. But that wasn’t exactly the exciting part. On my bus ride back I was mostly asleep listening to music, believe Bush was playing at the moment when I was awoken by a huge crash. I thought maybe the bus had blown a tire, although it was a pretty large sound. No, a car had broadsided the bus right about where I was sitting. No one was going very fast so no one was hurt although the car looked like total loss. How could a car hit the side of a bus you might ask? Driver was drunk, as in really drunk and it was hard to get much of anything out of him, he ended up walking away and disappeared. That left the bus driver kind of in a spot so he took the license plate since the guy was too drunk to sign his name and we all signed a piece paper saying what happened. The bus wasn’t badly damaged, with a small dent in a baggage compartment. It just held us up for about 45 minutes. My day wasn’t even over yet when I finally arrived home I realized I had left my keys to my apartment on the desk at Ira’s parents, a good 2 hours away. So I ended up spending the night at my host families since my landlords and extra key were out of town.
What can I say, it just hasn’t been the best of months for me so far, I’m hoping it can only get better. Wish me luck on my tree-planting project this Friday. Have about eight PCVs showing up and who knows how many people from the town.
On the 8th was Easter; most of you probably already knew that, may have even celebrated it yourself. Here in Ukraine, at least in western Ukraine, it is a big deal. I had the pleasure of spending it with the director of my school and his family in a village. In order to get the best traditions, it is always better to visit the villages. This was no exception, except I did get a few extra little treats to experience as well. I’ll get into those later.
While Easter is Sunday, the celebrations start the day before, so my director, Vacil picked me up and took me to the village with his family. I got a chance meet the relatives and see a house he is in the process of developing there. Visited the church in the evening and was able to see a picture of Jesus in repose. I’ll post some pictures of that. After about an hour at church we came back and had a meal at the family’s house and then began to wait for midnight to come when a crowd gathers again in the church for the blessing of food. Each family brings a basket with a special round bread, meat, eggs and maybe sausage as well. All exquisitely decorated. The priest will then spray holy water on the basket and people, blessing the food. Only I kind of missed that part. We arrived at the church at about 1 in the morning and commenced to stand for about two hours. Walking out of the church into the courtyard was dark and people gathered around for the blessing. As I was walking with Vacil behind the crowd looking for his wife I found an open manhole, well, my foot found no ground and I fell into a pipe sticking out of it used to draw water. Let me remind you I was still in the courtyard of this church.
(Side note: This isn’t exactly the first time this has happened, but the first time I was in training and playing football (soccer) and on the field backed into one. Didn’t hurt myself, but did remind me there is no safe place. People stealing manhole covers is a widespread problem in Ukraine because they are then resold for cash as scrap metal. Go figure.)
I was wearing a heavy leather jacket, plus several other layers of clothing, but still got the wind knocked out of me pretty severely. For several second I couldn’t breath at all, but made it back to the house. I had a pretty nasty mark on my side even though there were no holes in my clothing. But as it hurt pretty bad, there was the decision to go to the hospital and get me checked out, at about 4 in the morning. Hospitals in Ukraine don’t have the best reputations and tend to look like there is a time warp straight to the 1950s. Well, I can tell you it does look pretty much like something straight out of the 50s after I had an x-ray at 5:30 in the morning as well as a sonogram about that time. However the people were all really nice. That is the part people here have a hard time believing. They say it is just because I’m the American. Well, whatever works for me I guess. Although I was checked out by about 5 different doctors, plus several other technicians and specialists. But after the end of it all, it ended up I didn’t break anything, I was concerned I may have broken a rib, but just was going to have a really bad bruise. It must be pretty bad, cause it is still giving me some problems, although it is better, just don’t touch it. So that was one weekend. I was hoping to get a feel of Ukrainians traditions over Easter and did have some of that, but also ended up seeing a part of Ukraine I had heard I would want to avoid, yeah, if you can I would recommend avoiding it.
After a long week at site I was hoping to relax this weekend a little bit and took off to spend the day Saturday with Ira and her mom, took apart a printer and declared it dead. Also helped picked out a new TV and microwave for them. But that wasn’t exactly the exciting part. On my bus ride back I was mostly asleep listening to music, believe Bush was playing at the moment when I was awoken by a huge crash. I thought maybe the bus had blown a tire, although it was a pretty large sound. No, a car had broadsided the bus right about where I was sitting. No one was going very fast so no one was hurt although the car looked like total loss. How could a car hit the side of a bus you might ask? Driver was drunk, as in really drunk and it was hard to get much of anything out of him, he ended up walking away and disappeared. That left the bus driver kind of in a spot so he took the license plate since the guy was too drunk to sign his name and we all signed a piece paper saying what happened. The bus wasn’t badly damaged, with a small dent in a baggage compartment. It just held us up for about 45 minutes. My day wasn’t even over yet when I finally arrived home I realized I had left my keys to my apartment on the desk at Ira’s parents, a good 2 hours away. So I ended up spending the night at my host families since my landlords and extra key were out of town.
What can I say, it just hasn’t been the best of months for me so far, I’m hoping it can only get better. Wish me luck on my tree-planting project this Friday. Have about eight PCVs showing up and who knows how many people from the town.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
I have a big project coming up that I’ve probably talked to death, but it can take over my life at times and can be a rather good reflection of my service here.
Last week there was a professor from the Lviv Technical Forestry University that came out to look at several of the sites we are wanting to plant trees. As seems to happen so often, things don’t go exactly as I would like, some of my counterparts here at site weren’t able to meet him, so I ended up meeting him with several students from my school and a woman I know who studies at the University Graduate program. She also helped translate some things for me when the language got above my head. I felt at a disadvantage because I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect when he showed up and wasn’t able to provide some of the materials he ended up wanting because of that. It ended with me feeling as though I had a heck of a lot of work ahead of me to keep on pace for the planned planting date of April 21, which is really soon.
But on the upside of the rollercoaster ride, is I had the final confirmation the money will be available and after the initial freaking out of the amount of work the professor wanted me to do (get precise measurements of a variety of different distances to plan for where to put trees) I realized I needed to simplify my plan and most of the work he had asked for is already basically done. So I was able to get a hold the required maps and I think I may be able to keep on track here. I guess I’m just feeling as if there is a knife-edge that I’m walking to keep this going and so far I’ve been able to keep moving forward. Will be looking at some different types of trees next week.
On a more personal or general note, at least, for those of you who pay attention to the news, the political situation in Ukraine is in upheaval again with some news organizations saying the biggest crisis since the Orange Revolution. I haven’t really seen much of any activity where I live and those of you with televisions probably know more about what is going on than I do. I just read what news reports I see. But otherwise life is continuing as normal here and I haven’t been affected by what is going on in Kyiv at all. Just makes life a little more interesting is all. No reason to worry at all.
Last week there was a professor from the Lviv Technical Forestry University that came out to look at several of the sites we are wanting to plant trees. As seems to happen so often, things don’t go exactly as I would like, some of my counterparts here at site weren’t able to meet him, so I ended up meeting him with several students from my school and a woman I know who studies at the University Graduate program. She also helped translate some things for me when the language got above my head. I felt at a disadvantage because I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect when he showed up and wasn’t able to provide some of the materials he ended up wanting because of that. It ended with me feeling as though I had a heck of a lot of work ahead of me to keep on pace for the planned planting date of April 21, which is really soon.
But on the upside of the rollercoaster ride, is I had the final confirmation the money will be available and after the initial freaking out of the amount of work the professor wanted me to do (get precise measurements of a variety of different distances to plan for where to put trees) I realized I needed to simplify my plan and most of the work he had asked for is already basically done. So I was able to get a hold the required maps and I think I may be able to keep on track here. I guess I’m just feeling as if there is a knife-edge that I’m walking to keep this going and so far I’ve been able to keep moving forward. Will be looking at some different types of trees next week.
On a more personal or general note, at least, for those of you who pay attention to the news, the political situation in Ukraine is in upheaval again with some news organizations saying the biggest crisis since the Orange Revolution. I haven’t really seen much of any activity where I live and those of you with televisions probably know more about what is going on than I do. I just read what news reports I see. But otherwise life is continuing as normal here and I haven’t been affected by what is going on in Kyiv at all. Just makes life a little more interesting is all. No reason to worry at all.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
I had recently posted a notice here that I would be updating soon. Here it is, hope it isn’t too late.
Over the past two weeks, I have had busy weekends and this one isn’t looking any quieter. A couple of weeks ago I needed to make a quick trip to Kyiv for the Environmental Group I am on. Quick means I slept on a train going to Kyiv Friday night, had meetings Saturday and Sunday and slept on the train back to be back in Lviv Monday morning. But that doesn’t mean the meetings weren’t fruitful. There are developing partnerships with local Ukrainian NGOs as well as the US Embassy and our working group, which is exciting, and some real forward momentum on a summer camp as well as organizing more material for PCVs to use during lessons and make it easy for them to incorporate it into the curriculum.
Another of the added perks was our meeting just happened to coincide with one of the Regional Manager’s band playing at the Marine House. Yes, the house where US Marines live who guard the embassy. It was a going away party for an embassy staffer and we got an invite. Met the ambassador and other staffers and had a great time and open bar. It was a somewhat surreal experience being surrounded by almost entirely Americans in what felt sort of like a college party atmosphere, just with older people. Anyway, we had a good time, probably stuck around for too long, but all was great.
A week later, volunteers gathered together in the Lviv'ska Oblast for some training in human trafficking (it’s a big problem in Ukraine). We got ideas for new training and how to better educate Ukrainians. But since it was also St. Patrick’s Day we all went out to celebrate the saint driving snakes out of Ireland and converting them all to Christianity. We celebrated with green beer. I know there have been questions about where we were able to find it. It was more a case of making it. There is a little confusion to who actually brought the food coloring, but it was a hit as the entire bar we were at ended up with green beer. They didn’t need to know us or even be in our group. They got green beer, or vodka in one case, too. It was good times all around and everyone was in high spirits.
So there you go, all of you who were asking about it, we made the beer turn green. It was kind of cool, mix in two drops of green food coloring and stir it in. Bam, green beer.
I’m sitting in the Kyiv office again; yes I know it is the second time in two weeks, after finishing the volunteer newspaper. It has got a little expensive, but I was able to spend time with my first host family for part of the weekend, so that was fun and saved me some money, now I can actually afford to pay for my way home. New month comes soon so I will have a little bit of cash, which will get me on a short vacation for spring break and prepare for a tree planting project scheduled for the middle of April. I’ll try to explain more of that as it gets closer.
Over the past two weeks, I have had busy weekends and this one isn’t looking any quieter. A couple of weeks ago I needed to make a quick trip to Kyiv for the Environmental Group I am on. Quick means I slept on a train going to Kyiv Friday night, had meetings Saturday and Sunday and slept on the train back to be back in Lviv Monday morning. But that doesn’t mean the meetings weren’t fruitful. There are developing partnerships with local Ukrainian NGOs as well as the US Embassy and our working group, which is exciting, and some real forward momentum on a summer camp as well as organizing more material for PCVs to use during lessons and make it easy for them to incorporate it into the curriculum.
Another of the added perks was our meeting just happened to coincide with one of the Regional Manager’s band playing at the Marine House. Yes, the house where US Marines live who guard the embassy. It was a going away party for an embassy staffer and we got an invite. Met the ambassador and other staffers and had a great time and open bar. It was a somewhat surreal experience being surrounded by almost entirely Americans in what felt sort of like a college party atmosphere, just with older people. Anyway, we had a good time, probably stuck around for too long, but all was great.
A week later, volunteers gathered together in the Lviv'ska Oblast for some training in human trafficking (it’s a big problem in Ukraine). We got ideas for new training and how to better educate Ukrainians. But since it was also St. Patrick’s Day we all went out to celebrate the saint driving snakes out of Ireland and converting them all to Christianity. We celebrated with green beer. I know there have been questions about where we were able to find it. It was more a case of making it. There is a little confusion to who actually brought the food coloring, but it was a hit as the entire bar we were at ended up with green beer. They didn’t need to know us or even be in our group. They got green beer, or vodka in one case, too. It was good times all around and everyone was in high spirits.
So there you go, all of you who were asking about it, we made the beer turn green. It was kind of cool, mix in two drops of green food coloring and stir it in. Bam, green beer.
I’m sitting in the Kyiv office again; yes I know it is the second time in two weeks, after finishing the volunteer newspaper. It has got a little expensive, but I was able to spend time with my first host family for part of the weekend, so that was fun and saved me some money, now I can actually afford to pay for my way home. New month comes soon so I will have a little bit of cash, which will get me on a short vacation for spring break and prepare for a tree planting project scheduled for the middle of April. I’ll try to explain more of that as it gets closer.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Thursday, March 08, 2007
My time in Ukraine has now surpassed one year and I guess I should give some reflections on what that time here has meant, because it has undoubtedly changed me in some ways and reinforced me in others. Obviously I won’t be able to consciously acknowledge all of them now, or maybe even never, but there are some changes that have been obvious and don’t know if I would even need to spell them out for those of you who do know me well.
First of all let me say I don’t regret for one moment coming to Ukraine, it has its daily frustrations and there are the rare times that I just want to quit and work with other Americans, because it is easier. But those are rare times and I have never felt more than I have here that what I do can make a difference, even if I don’t get a chance to see them immediately, although if I get to see immediate changes, it helps my self-esteem (joking). Coming to this country I wasn’t sure all what it would entail, we all knew it was supposed to be a cold place, lots of farming, formerly Soviet and in Europe. The only thing I wasn’t really excited about was the idea it was still in Europe. I had been to Europe. I wanted to be sent to some exotic locale, preferably some island in the Pacific where I could hone my surfing skills. Ukraine is not very near any ocean, ok, nearly the entire continent of Europe separates me from the closest ocean (the Black Sea doesn’t count). I was also nervous about the idea of “Youth Development”. I didn’t have a lot of previous experience with kids, but I was ready to take on whatever obstacles were thrown in front of me.
Those obstacles have been thrown in front of me. A few examples of how my life has changed from this time last year: New country (I already talked about that), new language that some days I feel as if I’m almost getting and in a second moment feeling completely lost, new job that is unlike anything I have ever done, living on my own without any other roommates and the end of a two-year relationship I didn’t expect to end and the start of a new one that was just as surprising. There have been plenty more, but these are some of the more major ones or just that have come to my head at this moment.
For whatever reason, none of those obstacles have been able to break me down enough to quit and go home. Not to say that they haven’t broken me down almost completely at one point or another, but I think I can honestly say I haven’t really wanted to go home since I became a volunteer and when I did visit home I was ready to come back here. Part of the reason is I truly have work here, obligations and responsibilities I don’t want to shirk from. The other thing is I don’t know exactly what I would do if I did return, I would only have a partial service in the Peace Corps to speak for and for me personally it would the cheapen the experience as a whole for me. I didn’t sign up for Peace Corps to not expect it to be hard and quit when it did. I came in expecting things to not be easy and to be frustrated at times. It’s happened, but I have also had the good times as well. A common saying I use here is PCVs need to measure their happiness in minutes rather than days. Have I had good days, yeah, but they usually have crappy stuff happen in them too. But good minutes, yeah, plenty.
Going along with that train of thought, and focusing on some of those other obstacles. Language is something that can have good and bad days. I have found ways I can improve it on a daily level with things as simple as eating properly and having rest. As for the studying part, I can always do more, and probably should, but I do get a lot of practical practice on a daily level. So that does help. That also goes along with feeling lost occasionally, just the other day I understood all the words someone told me, yet had no idea what they said when I put them all together. Obviously I had missed some contextual meaning or it was a joke, but I just nodded and said ‘ok’ completely clueless to what was said. Other times I have what they said down no problem. But I’m frequently learning new words and need to travel more in the east so I can pick up a bit more Russian, that’s what still throws me, although Polish is surprisingly coming at a slow rate (along with long forgotten Spanish words, occasionally).
Living on my own in theory isn’t entirely new, I’ve been in college, lived on my “own” after college for a while, but during all of those times there was always a roommate, having a place entirely to myself has been a change. I always come home to a dark, quiet place since I usually get home at night and have the entire place to myself, which means I need to cook for myself and clean and all that fun stuff. Of course it has grown on me. One thing I have heard multiple times coming into PC is that people can be a bit quieter at the end because of spending so much time alone. I can see that in some ways how that is so, but I do play my music kind of loud. I hope I’m being social enough. If anything what this experience has done is make me bolder in going after things I want or need. I noticed especially when I was back in the states that I am less shy than I used to be. It is imperative to be a bit more assertive here and I did like that part of me when I was back there, sure gets stuff done a lot faster. PC also teaches you a can-do attitude, although I think I brought a lot of that with me, it has helped me refine it here.
I also know have been able to reaffirm the fact that after Peace Corps I don’t want to be a teacher. I have always respected them, but do even more now, I don’t think I have the right temperament to deal with kids and just think in a different way. Although, it has helped me start figure out more about what I want to do later. I can see myself possibly heading back to school or looking into work abroad later on. The idea of living abroad has always appealed to me and this has reinforced it, although I do love going home to the U.S.
Well, on to the part you may or may not care about after reading my post, but yeah, my relationship status has changed several times over the past year. I came to Ukraine dating a wonderful girl and had been for over two years. After a valiant struggle, it became too much for the both of us is probably the best way I can explain it. After about six months of contemplation time and reflection, I started dating someone new (surprise!). It has been about two months now and things are going well. It is a girl that I have known for a while and things developed into more than a friendship, not what either of us was planning, but have both welcomed.
So there you go, my year (plus) of Peace Corps in a nutshell. Regrets, I’ve had a few, but I’m able to say I don’t think I would have done anything differently looking back. The whole line “Hardest job you’ll ever love” rings true, but this is also real good about teaching you patience as well. Here’s to a great second year and whatever the future holds.
First of all let me say I don’t regret for one moment coming to Ukraine, it has its daily frustrations and there are the rare times that I just want to quit and work with other Americans, because it is easier. But those are rare times and I have never felt more than I have here that what I do can make a difference, even if I don’t get a chance to see them immediately, although if I get to see immediate changes, it helps my self-esteem (joking). Coming to this country I wasn’t sure all what it would entail, we all knew it was supposed to be a cold place, lots of farming, formerly Soviet and in Europe. The only thing I wasn’t really excited about was the idea it was still in Europe. I had been to Europe. I wanted to be sent to some exotic locale, preferably some island in the Pacific where I could hone my surfing skills. Ukraine is not very near any ocean, ok, nearly the entire continent of Europe separates me from the closest ocean (the Black Sea doesn’t count). I was also nervous about the idea of “Youth Development”. I didn’t have a lot of previous experience with kids, but I was ready to take on whatever obstacles were thrown in front of me.
Those obstacles have been thrown in front of me. A few examples of how my life has changed from this time last year: New country (I already talked about that), new language that some days I feel as if I’m almost getting and in a second moment feeling completely lost, new job that is unlike anything I have ever done, living on my own without any other roommates and the end of a two-year relationship I didn’t expect to end and the start of a new one that was just as surprising. There have been plenty more, but these are some of the more major ones or just that have come to my head at this moment.
For whatever reason, none of those obstacles have been able to break me down enough to quit and go home. Not to say that they haven’t broken me down almost completely at one point or another, but I think I can honestly say I haven’t really wanted to go home since I became a volunteer and when I did visit home I was ready to come back here. Part of the reason is I truly have work here, obligations and responsibilities I don’t want to shirk from. The other thing is I don’t know exactly what I would do if I did return, I would only have a partial service in the Peace Corps to speak for and for me personally it would the cheapen the experience as a whole for me. I didn’t sign up for Peace Corps to not expect it to be hard and quit when it did. I came in expecting things to not be easy and to be frustrated at times. It’s happened, but I have also had the good times as well. A common saying I use here is PCVs need to measure their happiness in minutes rather than days. Have I had good days, yeah, but they usually have crappy stuff happen in them too. But good minutes, yeah, plenty.
Going along with that train of thought, and focusing on some of those other obstacles. Language is something that can have good and bad days. I have found ways I can improve it on a daily level with things as simple as eating properly and having rest. As for the studying part, I can always do more, and probably should, but I do get a lot of practical practice on a daily level. So that does help. That also goes along with feeling lost occasionally, just the other day I understood all the words someone told me, yet had no idea what they said when I put them all together. Obviously I had missed some contextual meaning or it was a joke, but I just nodded and said ‘ok’ completely clueless to what was said. Other times I have what they said down no problem. But I’m frequently learning new words and need to travel more in the east so I can pick up a bit more Russian, that’s what still throws me, although Polish is surprisingly coming at a slow rate (along with long forgotten Spanish words, occasionally).
Living on my own in theory isn’t entirely new, I’ve been in college, lived on my “own” after college for a while, but during all of those times there was always a roommate, having a place entirely to myself has been a change. I always come home to a dark, quiet place since I usually get home at night and have the entire place to myself, which means I need to cook for myself and clean and all that fun stuff. Of course it has grown on me. One thing I have heard multiple times coming into PC is that people can be a bit quieter at the end because of spending so much time alone. I can see that in some ways how that is so, but I do play my music kind of loud. I hope I’m being social enough. If anything what this experience has done is make me bolder in going after things I want or need. I noticed especially when I was back in the states that I am less shy than I used to be. It is imperative to be a bit more assertive here and I did like that part of me when I was back there, sure gets stuff done a lot faster. PC also teaches you a can-do attitude, although I think I brought a lot of that with me, it has helped me refine it here.
I also know have been able to reaffirm the fact that after Peace Corps I don’t want to be a teacher. I have always respected them, but do even more now, I don’t think I have the right temperament to deal with kids and just think in a different way. Although, it has helped me start figure out more about what I want to do later. I can see myself possibly heading back to school or looking into work abroad later on. The idea of living abroad has always appealed to me and this has reinforced it, although I do love going home to the U.S.
Well, on to the part you may or may not care about after reading my post, but yeah, my relationship status has changed several times over the past year. I came to Ukraine dating a wonderful girl and had been for over two years. After a valiant struggle, it became too much for the both of us is probably the best way I can explain it. After about six months of contemplation time and reflection, I started dating someone new (surprise!). It has been about two months now and things are going well. It is a girl that I have known for a while and things developed into more than a friendship, not what either of us was planning, but have both welcomed.
So there you go, my year (plus) of Peace Corps in a nutshell. Regrets, I’ve had a few, but I’m able to say I don’t think I would have done anything differently looking back. The whole line “Hardest job you’ll ever love” rings true, but this is also real good about teaching you patience as well. Here’s to a great second year and whatever the future holds.
Monday, March 05, 2007
First of all, let me admit that I spy on you. All of you in a little way. My counter, which you can all see at the left hand side records where people come from, you can look at it yourself, on a nifty map. It is cool, because it shows people from all of the world have stumbled upon my humble site and maybe even read a little bit. But the other parts that you don't all see is I can see how you ended up on my page. Which is what this post is about. From a little bit of research and looking at where people came from I discovered if people type "fish in the sea dating site" they can find my site and also a couple different dating sites. Don't know how my site became can make people think it is a dating site, but just for the record. This is NOT a dating site. Hope that clears things up.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
I started writing this a few days ago and didn’t get around to finishing it. Things have been busy, looking back over it, I don’t have any real odd or exciting stories to tell, more just some day-in-the-life stories that may be of interest to you. My big project I’m working on is coming along, preparing for a grant I’m hoping to get that will allow us to plant a lot of trees here in Dobrotvir. I have had meetings with students who are helping, several with the mayor and just had a meeting yesterday with a professor at a local forestry university in Lviv. There are times I feel as if it is almost getting out of my hands and taking on a life of its own, so I sure hope that it all works out and it happens, but it will be good for everyone involved to get better connected with each other and see what kind of work can be done in cooperation and compiling resources. If it happens, that is what I will view as my biggest success, not just the planting of trees in my town. So enjoy the collection of stories and as always, feel free to drop me an, email comment or sms through the Internet.
The past few weeks has been seen a flurry of activity here although at times I still have the feeling things don’t always move as fast as I like. A bit of older news I don’t know if I made real public is the fact that I now have Internet in my apartment. The installation process was a little interesting, since it involved running some network cable from my host family’s balcony where a router is stationed to my apartment and through my window. This involved coaxing the wire from the roof in order to get it to my apartment and didn’t end up being as difficult as one might expect. While it is run through a router I have my own account and will pay an amount each month, they (meaning someone) just haven’t decided exactly how much yet that amount will be. My Internet is allegedly unlimited, however. So you may see me online more often on MSN Messenger, AIM and Gmail, if you want to get in touch with me, leave me a comment or send me an email and I’ll forward that contact info to you.
It is already the 25th here, but since time just seems to always move so fast when it involves more than one day, Valentine’s Day wasn’t that long ago. That day found me running around getting the most recent edition of the student newspaper edited and printed that day so the students would be able to sell their Valentine’s Edition on Valentine’s Day. Later in the day I attended an English language program by younger students. It was a lot of fun to see how excited this country seems to get over Valentine’s Day; do Americans get this excited on Valentine’s Day? One thing that I noticed along with some other volunteers is it seemed as if everyone kind of got into the celebration of it and it wasn’t restricted quite as much to those who are in relationships. Students in sixth and seventh forms seemed just as excited. It was curious.
In case you hadn’t heard, Peace Corps Volunteers can occasionally be minor celebrities if they are in a small town. I am in a small town and had the opportunity to be a minor celebrity judge. Of a beauty contest. At the school. The contestants were in ninth or tenth grade. It was a little weird. It was funny. I had a good time, half of it joking with the other teacher/judges and when it came time to choose who should get which places what I said didn’t matter. I fought hard for one particular girl to be second; there wasn’t a complaint about who should be first. It didn’t matter what I said, although the next day talking to teachers they agreed with me. That felt like a little bit of satisfaction. So yes, here you have it; I was on the panel of judges to decide who would be “Miss School.” Next stop, a minor celebrity judge on Miss America or American Idol.
I also caught an act of opera last Sunday. Mind you it was in Russian and while there is similarities between Russian and Ukrainian and I can understand it a little bit sometimes, I was hopelessly lost when they start singing Russian in operatic style. I don’t know if I would be able to understand English all that well if they sang it in operatic style. I did read the program, in Ukrainian so I had a basic idea but all the dialogue didn’t happen. But, I saw the show with Ira and as she is Ukrainian and speaks Russian fluently, she did explain some of the jokes throughout the opera. The music was nice however. But about halfway through the second act we saw I started to get these images of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and instead of trying to actually listen to what they were saying was inserting my own dialogue. It was much funnier than what they were actually saying, I think, but I probably would have better paid attention. Oh well. It was fun.
After hearing stories of how freaking cold it was last winter, it was cold, this winter has been incredibly mild. There was some snow this week and it finally seemed to get around to seeming kind of cold, but I have yet really needed to pull out my warmest stuff or really layer up. I think it was kind of a bust and now it is time to start looking forward to the warm weather of summer.
Probably the last thing you’ll see if you take a gander at my photos is our celebration of Mardi Gras Ukrainian style. Another volunteer here is from New Orleans so we had authentic foods and had a generally good time. Now it is Lent or “Pict” is the best I can transliterate it. To be honest, haven’t seen a real big change in people’s attitudes, but there is supposed to be less partying, and I have noticed at least that much.
The past few weeks has been seen a flurry of activity here although at times I still have the feeling things don’t always move as fast as I like. A bit of older news I don’t know if I made real public is the fact that I now have Internet in my apartment. The installation process was a little interesting, since it involved running some network cable from my host family’s balcony where a router is stationed to my apartment and through my window. This involved coaxing the wire from the roof in order to get it to my apartment and didn’t end up being as difficult as one might expect. While it is run through a router I have my own account and will pay an amount each month, they (meaning someone) just haven’t decided exactly how much yet that amount will be. My Internet is allegedly unlimited, however. So you may see me online more often on MSN Messenger, AIM and Gmail, if you want to get in touch with me, leave me a comment or send me an email and I’ll forward that contact info to you.
It is already the 25th here, but since time just seems to always move so fast when it involves more than one day, Valentine’s Day wasn’t that long ago. That day found me running around getting the most recent edition of the student newspaper edited and printed that day so the students would be able to sell their Valentine’s Edition on Valentine’s Day. Later in the day I attended an English language program by younger students. It was a lot of fun to see how excited this country seems to get over Valentine’s Day; do Americans get this excited on Valentine’s Day? One thing that I noticed along with some other volunteers is it seemed as if everyone kind of got into the celebration of it and it wasn’t restricted quite as much to those who are in relationships. Students in sixth and seventh forms seemed just as excited. It was curious.
In case you hadn’t heard, Peace Corps Volunteers can occasionally be minor celebrities if they are in a small town. I am in a small town and had the opportunity to be a minor celebrity judge. Of a beauty contest. At the school. The contestants were in ninth or tenth grade. It was a little weird. It was funny. I had a good time, half of it joking with the other teacher/judges and when it came time to choose who should get which places what I said didn’t matter. I fought hard for one particular girl to be second; there wasn’t a complaint about who should be first. It didn’t matter what I said, although the next day talking to teachers they agreed with me. That felt like a little bit of satisfaction. So yes, here you have it; I was on the panel of judges to decide who would be “Miss School.” Next stop, a minor celebrity judge on Miss America or American Idol.
I also caught an act of opera last Sunday. Mind you it was in Russian and while there is similarities between Russian and Ukrainian and I can understand it a little bit sometimes, I was hopelessly lost when they start singing Russian in operatic style. I don’t know if I would be able to understand English all that well if they sang it in operatic style. I did read the program, in Ukrainian so I had a basic idea but all the dialogue didn’t happen. But, I saw the show with Ira and as she is Ukrainian and speaks Russian fluently, she did explain some of the jokes throughout the opera. The music was nice however. But about halfway through the second act we saw I started to get these images of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and instead of trying to actually listen to what they were saying was inserting my own dialogue. It was much funnier than what they were actually saying, I think, but I probably would have better paid attention. Oh well. It was fun.
After hearing stories of how freaking cold it was last winter, it was cold, this winter has been incredibly mild. There was some snow this week and it finally seemed to get around to seeming kind of cold, but I have yet really needed to pull out my warmest stuff or really layer up. I think it was kind of a bust and now it is time to start looking forward to the warm weather of summer.
Probably the last thing you’ll see if you take a gander at my photos is our celebration of Mardi Gras Ukrainian style. Another volunteer here is from New Orleans so we had authentic foods and had a generally good time. Now it is Lent or “Pict” is the best I can transliterate it. To be honest, haven’t seen a real big change in people’s attitudes, but there is supposed to be less partying, and I have noticed at least that much.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
First of all, I need to make a clarification on my last post. I am, in-fact, an adult and can fully decide whether I wear a hat and am able take care of myself adequately. I at least haven’t died after more than 26 years; I am in fact quite healthy. The last post was meant tongue-in-cheek and wasn’t meant to be taken too seriously. The last thing I want to do is make people worry about my well-being. Ira has been an invaluable help to me in this country and has nothing but my best interests in mind.
It is kind of funny and completely unrelated, but another thing I was planning on writing about is the absurdity of life in this country, for those who don’t live here or experience it, it can sometimes be hard to explain. Another volunteer Robert Henderson visited me last weekend and this was one topic that came up. We recently lost several group members who decided for different reasons to go home before the service was finished. I didn’t hear all of their reasons so I wont’ try to go into them. But one thing Rob and I talked about is the ability to accept some absurdities in life as we spend time in this country and not allow them to affect us so much we lose the ability to function. At the same time I think it is healthy to keep noticing them, which helps keep us sane as well. These absurdities can stretch from the extreme daily like riding on buses that were built and have been in service since way before either us were born as far as well can tell, to students cheating in school and the complete lack of ability to do anything about it to at first seeing people starting to drink at eight in the morning and think it completely crazy to coming to accept it is part of the country here.
If we get too tied up in worrying about these absurdities of life here, we won’t be able to handle it. The best thing we can do is recognize them for what they are and just allow it to be part of our experience. It is important to remember that as PCVs we are supposed to learn from other cultures as well as impart our knowledge on them as well. One thing I have seen before in other volunteer blogs of those who have been here longer than me is that they run out of the crazy stories to tell after awhile because it all just seems normal anymore. That hasn’t happened to me yet completely, but there are plenty of things I don’t worry about quite as much anymore as I used to.
Case in point is marshrutkas, there is almost always room for at least one more person on them and riding a half-hour half bent over to get to my destination is just an accepted part of travel here. I still laugh about it occasionally. If people were to visit it might seem crazy and possibly even completely uncoordinated. I, however, love them because they can get me almost anywhere in this country even though I don’t have a car and are relatively cheap and fast. Revel in the absurdities you can’t control, manage the ones you can and remember another PC goal is to impart knowledge when you can and people are willing. Just remember things are often the way they are because they do work best that way. A lesson I learned long ago is don’t touch stuff just cause you think you can make it work better; there is a good chance it is the way for a reason.
This is where I say again I am speaking only for myself and all opinions are my alone and do not represent Peace Corps or the United States Government. It’s time talk a little about religion. Last time I was Kyiv for a meeting I picked up a book titled “The Journey of Desire” by John Eldridge. I was first introduced to the author when I read another book of his titled “Wild at Heart.” I don’t often see books on religion in the office, most of the books are basic fiction paperbacks, yet even they still get read, any halfway good books get snatched up pretty quick to go back to sites and get read, and my faith here has admittedly been a bit of a roller coaster. Part of me has hidden behind the idea that PC is governmental so I need to be careful with how I display my faith and also the time I have used to really explore what faith truly means to me. I’m still early in the book so I will have more later, but what has spoken to me so far is this idea that Christianity is all about desire. It’s a little more complicated than that, but there is a basic idea that humans know there is something more than the life we have at the moment and desire something more and better.
What I have read so far has me with some success and some places that need more work. I still have that desire for things, I am not that complacent or I don’t think I would have taken the rather big step in joining the Peace Corps and leaving everything that was familiar. I still don’t know exactly what I desire, but I’m definitely not without desire. But it also pointed out some potential fallacies in how I pray. Part of praying is me wanting or needing things and expressing them. I had fallen into this idea that I shouldn’t be asking for things, but rather for just guidance. I think that the truth lies somewhere in between. The tough part is not going overboard in the desires and wrong directions in desires. But having weak and non-existent desires is just as dangerous. I still have a ways to go in the book, so I’ll see if it continues the way it is, so far I have enjoyed it. I just know already that my experience here will not allow me to just accept faith and religion as it has been back in the states. There is more out there and it is a much more exciting life and world that our traditions and self-imposed laws don’t allow us to explore and enjoy.
It is kind of funny and completely unrelated, but another thing I was planning on writing about is the absurdity of life in this country, for those who don’t live here or experience it, it can sometimes be hard to explain. Another volunteer Robert Henderson visited me last weekend and this was one topic that came up. We recently lost several group members who decided for different reasons to go home before the service was finished. I didn’t hear all of their reasons so I wont’ try to go into them. But one thing Rob and I talked about is the ability to accept some absurdities in life as we spend time in this country and not allow them to affect us so much we lose the ability to function. At the same time I think it is healthy to keep noticing them, which helps keep us sane as well. These absurdities can stretch from the extreme daily like riding on buses that were built and have been in service since way before either us were born as far as well can tell, to students cheating in school and the complete lack of ability to do anything about it to at first seeing people starting to drink at eight in the morning and think it completely crazy to coming to accept it is part of the country here.
If we get too tied up in worrying about these absurdities of life here, we won’t be able to handle it. The best thing we can do is recognize them for what they are and just allow it to be part of our experience. It is important to remember that as PCVs we are supposed to learn from other cultures as well as impart our knowledge on them as well. One thing I have seen before in other volunteer blogs of those who have been here longer than me is that they run out of the crazy stories to tell after awhile because it all just seems normal anymore. That hasn’t happened to me yet completely, but there are plenty of things I don’t worry about quite as much anymore as I used to.
Case in point is marshrutkas, there is almost always room for at least one more person on them and riding a half-hour half bent over to get to my destination is just an accepted part of travel here. I still laugh about it occasionally. If people were to visit it might seem crazy and possibly even completely uncoordinated. I, however, love them because they can get me almost anywhere in this country even though I don’t have a car and are relatively cheap and fast. Revel in the absurdities you can’t control, manage the ones you can and remember another PC goal is to impart knowledge when you can and people are willing. Just remember things are often the way they are because they do work best that way. A lesson I learned long ago is don’t touch stuff just cause you think you can make it work better; there is a good chance it is the way for a reason.
This is where I say again I am speaking only for myself and all opinions are my alone and do not represent Peace Corps or the United States Government. It’s time talk a little about religion. Last time I was Kyiv for a meeting I picked up a book titled “The Journey of Desire” by John Eldridge. I was first introduced to the author when I read another book of his titled “Wild at Heart.” I don’t often see books on religion in the office, most of the books are basic fiction paperbacks, yet even they still get read, any halfway good books get snatched up pretty quick to go back to sites and get read, and my faith here has admittedly been a bit of a roller coaster. Part of me has hidden behind the idea that PC is governmental so I need to be careful with how I display my faith and also the time I have used to really explore what faith truly means to me. I’m still early in the book so I will have more later, but what has spoken to me so far is this idea that Christianity is all about desire. It’s a little more complicated than that, but there is a basic idea that humans know there is something more than the life we have at the moment and desire something more and better.
What I have read so far has me with some success and some places that need more work. I still have that desire for things, I am not that complacent or I don’t think I would have taken the rather big step in joining the Peace Corps and leaving everything that was familiar. I still don’t know exactly what I desire, but I’m definitely not without desire. But it also pointed out some potential fallacies in how I pray. Part of praying is me wanting or needing things and expressing them. I had fallen into this idea that I shouldn’t be asking for things, but rather for just guidance. I think that the truth lies somewhere in between. The tough part is not going overboard in the desires and wrong directions in desires. But having weak and non-existent desires is just as dangerous. I still have a ways to go in the book, so I’ll see if it continues the way it is, so far I have enjoyed it. I just know already that my experience here will not allow me to just accept faith and religion as it has been back in the states. There is more out there and it is a much more exciting life and world that our traditions and self-imposed laws don’t allow us to explore and enjoy.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Ice. One thing it does do is keep you honest. Don’t pay attention or respect it enough and you will fall. I fell.
Winter as I heard it described has finally started to descend on Ukraine. After an unusually warm start here I didn’t even need my heavier coat, snow has started to fall. My feelings on the topic are mixed; on one hand the now whitewashes just about everything and gives it a clean look. Ukraine isn’t known for its beauty in winter when there’s no snow. Summers are nice, but once most of the plants die off, the brown season isn’t all that pleasant. On the other hand it is cold and that makes travel a lot more treacherous. This is one time of year I am happy to let other people drive. I have no real desire to have to drive on ice-caked roads I know are not that good to start with.
It also means I need to get serious about buying a hat. I brought a hat with me to Ukraine, but Ira recently vetoed it, saying it was completely unstylish. I would dare say I in general am unstylish, but I don’t think she wanted to be seen in public with me wearing that hat. That’s my personal conclusion, not her words, but she did veto it. She may just be trying to give me some style. However, my attempts at getting her to just buy me a hat has been rebuffed, something about the need for me to try it on.
While my bare head isn’t bothering me too much yet, it is the rest of the country, as I am asked why I don’t have a hat or told I need one. I can’t hold them off forever. I finally broke down today and bought one, but not before I was told by a man while I was looking at hats I needed to buy one, was mistaken for a Polish person and told by the woman selling hats I needed one. This follows last night a woman at the school basically commanding me to go to the bazaar today and buy a hat. I’m glad everyone cares so much about the condition of my head.
As for the day-to-day activities, I spent the entirety of last week either in Kyiv or close to it as I worked on the volunteer newspaper and attended additional language training. To read the newspaper, direct your browser to pcukraine.org and follow some links in volunteer life to download a PDF version of the entire newspaper.
The language training was also useful, but especially this time I felt stronger coming into it, but felt even more humbled as some of the basic grammar things I struggled with. It does give me some extra fire to go back and focus my studies more. The other fun part is seeing all the other volunteers who I don’t see too often, hear the gossip and see who has stuck it out so far.
But as with everything else in my service those times ended faster than I expected and I am back at site, but am now starting up an ecological club to plan a tree-planting project in the spring. I sure feel useless a lot of the time, but at least I tend to find something or another to keep me busy.
Winter as I heard it described has finally started to descend on Ukraine. After an unusually warm start here I didn’t even need my heavier coat, snow has started to fall. My feelings on the topic are mixed; on one hand the now whitewashes just about everything and gives it a clean look. Ukraine isn’t known for its beauty in winter when there’s no snow. Summers are nice, but once most of the plants die off, the brown season isn’t all that pleasant. On the other hand it is cold and that makes travel a lot more treacherous. This is one time of year I am happy to let other people drive. I have no real desire to have to drive on ice-caked roads I know are not that good to start with.
It also means I need to get serious about buying a hat. I brought a hat with me to Ukraine, but Ira recently vetoed it, saying it was completely unstylish. I would dare say I in general am unstylish, but I don’t think she wanted to be seen in public with me wearing that hat. That’s my personal conclusion, not her words, but she did veto it. She may just be trying to give me some style. However, my attempts at getting her to just buy me a hat has been rebuffed, something about the need for me to try it on.
While my bare head isn’t bothering me too much yet, it is the rest of the country, as I am asked why I don’t have a hat or told I need one. I can’t hold them off forever. I finally broke down today and bought one, but not before I was told by a man while I was looking at hats I needed to buy one, was mistaken for a Polish person and told by the woman selling hats I needed one. This follows last night a woman at the school basically commanding me to go to the bazaar today and buy a hat. I’m glad everyone cares so much about the condition of my head.
As for the day-to-day activities, I spent the entirety of last week either in Kyiv or close to it as I worked on the volunteer newspaper and attended additional language training. To read the newspaper, direct your browser to pcukraine.org and follow some links in volunteer life to download a PDF version of the entire newspaper.
The language training was also useful, but especially this time I felt stronger coming into it, but felt even more humbled as some of the basic grammar things I struggled with. It does give me some extra fire to go back and focus my studies more. The other fun part is seeing all the other volunteers who I don’t see too often, hear the gossip and see who has stuck it out so far.
But as with everything else in my service those times ended faster than I expected and I am back at site, but am now starting up an ecological club to plan a tree-planting project in the spring. I sure feel useless a lot of the time, but at least I tend to find something or another to keep me busy.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
I have been trying to get this typed up for weeks now and keep getting distracted, busy or a host of other rather lame excuses. But the basic idea is that Over about the past month I have been back in the states where I attended a wedding and visited home, came back to Ukraine and have had plenty of adventures along the way. What would have been digestible stories over time has basically merged into one massive tome I don’t want to dump on you all at once. So if you want to read anything more in depth, look into the supplemental materials section. Not that it isn’t a good story, I just think at the length it is now, it would be just too much.
Basic summary of it is I flew out of Warsaw back on Dec. 22, made it home finally on the 24 after a few days in Chicago. Flew out to Aaron Wirick’s wedding the 26th, which happened on the 30. Made it back to Oregon the 31st and was headed back to Ukraine the 6th of January. Didn’t actually make it back into the country until the 8th.
So there was my trip home, I felt like I was hardly there, or at least was so busy I hardly had time to realize where I was and end up not wanting to come back (I did want to come back to Ukraine).
Once I was back in the country, things have slowed down a little bit, I made it back while school was still on break and was able to celebrate Old New Year’s with my former host family here in Dobrotvir. School has started again now and that has put a bit more of a schedule to my life, although I am also trying to rearrange that schedule and it is being complicated due to the fact I am headed to Kyiv for the entire next week. One of the things that always amazes me is how fast times passes here. It is hard to believe that it is 2007 and January and I had hardly found out where I was going at this time last year. Yet here I am and conversing in a language I hardly knew about last year.
This promises to be an exciting year with plenty of new surprises and I am not sure what exactly will happen, but my main goal is to grow from it and help the community here grow as well. It will be my first full year here and I am hoping to take advantage of that. So wish me luck.
One of the most common questions I have received since returning is if I wanted to come back, or was at least happy at the thought of it. I have been able to honestly answer each of them with, yeah, I did want to come back, I have a full sense that there is more here I want to accomplish in my time here, which is slipping away faster than I would like. I think I can honestly say I have been happy with my decision to come here. There are bad days of course, and everything that has happened hasn’t always been pleasant, but for the most part it has been a good growing experience for me and a necessary step too. We’ll see where it takes me at the end of my two years here. That is starting to be another question I deal with alot, I can’t tell people for sure yet. The third question I get is if there was any snow while I was home. Weather here has been strange as there is not snow on the ground now, which is unusual for this time of year. Many people are having a hard time remembering the last time there was a Christmas with no snow on the ground, which happened this past year. So Happy New Year to all of you and best wishes as the year begins. I’ll try to get up those other recollections up as soon as I can.
Basic summary of it is I flew out of Warsaw back on Dec. 22, made it home finally on the 24 after a few days in Chicago. Flew out to Aaron Wirick’s wedding the 26th, which happened on the 30. Made it back to Oregon the 31st and was headed back to Ukraine the 6th of January. Didn’t actually make it back into the country until the 8th.
So there was my trip home, I felt like I was hardly there, or at least was so busy I hardly had time to realize where I was and end up not wanting to come back (I did want to come back to Ukraine).
Once I was back in the country, things have slowed down a little bit, I made it back while school was still on break and was able to celebrate Old New Year’s with my former host family here in Dobrotvir. School has started again now and that has put a bit more of a schedule to my life, although I am also trying to rearrange that schedule and it is being complicated due to the fact I am headed to Kyiv for the entire next week. One of the things that always amazes me is how fast times passes here. It is hard to believe that it is 2007 and January and I had hardly found out where I was going at this time last year. Yet here I am and conversing in a language I hardly knew about last year.
This promises to be an exciting year with plenty of new surprises and I am not sure what exactly will happen, but my main goal is to grow from it and help the community here grow as well. It will be my first full year here and I am hoping to take advantage of that. So wish me luck.
One of the most common questions I have received since returning is if I wanted to come back, or was at least happy at the thought of it. I have been able to honestly answer each of them with, yeah, I did want to come back, I have a full sense that there is more here I want to accomplish in my time here, which is slipping away faster than I would like. I think I can honestly say I have been happy with my decision to come here. There are bad days of course, and everything that has happened hasn’t always been pleasant, but for the most part it has been a good growing experience for me and a necessary step too. We’ll see where it takes me at the end of my two years here. That is starting to be another question I deal with alot, I can’t tell people for sure yet. The third question I get is if there was any snow while I was home. Weather here has been strange as there is not snow on the ground now, which is unusual for this time of year. Many people are having a hard time remembering the last time there was a Christmas with no snow on the ground, which happened this past year. So Happy New Year to all of you and best wishes as the year begins. I’ll try to get up those other recollections up as soon as I can.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
I'm currently sitting in a hotel room in Chicago. But I am too worn out to fill in the blanks, so expect it in the future. Enjoy what is here. I'll get more down later.
16 December
So while that name day is over it is high time for the next holiday this month, on the 18th-19th. Basically the Ukrainian St. Nicholas Day for those of you who celebrate it in the states. Otherwise commonly known as Santa Claus in many circles. The basic idea surrounding it is as I understand is you write a letter to St. Michael of what presents you want and it is a gift giving day. Christmas day itself in this country is Jan. 7 (which happens to be the day I get back in country) and is mostly a religious holiday and a day when people visit one another, other holidays surrounding it include the gift-giving aspect found in American Christmas. Like I said, Ukrainians just like to party!
This past Thursday I went with students from the eighth form to watch a play and look at a display of wax people. My Ukrainian language tutor invited me. While the wax museum was mildly interesting, it was the play I found more interesting, although I won’t dare say I understood all of it. From what I understood, it was a group from the Ivano Frankisk Oblast where the play was also set. Much of the language was also an older dialect familiar to the area, which probably contributed to the fact I wasn’t following it all, plus the fact a professional photographer with a really nice camera was there taking pictures, I was jealous.
The play centered around what I assumed was a small village and followed them as they celebrated several different celebrations, including Christmas, Easter and a marriage. The parts Although I didn’t always understand all of the language, it was well acted and I could follow along pretty well from just the actions. It was a really enjoyable night and I will put some photos I took on my Flickr site. I was seated in the front row plus (explanation: there was a front row of regular seats and then a row of chairs in front of that. I was seated in that row of chairs with other students, which meant I got a REAL good view of what was going on. But by the end of the night my head had about enough of Ukrainian and was ready for bed. Made for a long day.
But this past Friday found me in the old town of Zhovka where fellow PCV Shelley Swendiman works and was helping host an English Week capped with an English day. Four English speaking countries and Ukraine were presented during an “summit” for these different countries to explain a little about their cultures. Five of us volunteers made the trip to help her out and basically be the American guests for the summit. It’s always fun to see how Ukrainians view other cultures from their studies and is enlightening to me as well since I am sure we have some of the same stereotypes about other cultures that we try to study, but don’t always have a full idea of what is going on. One example was the American group dressed up in “cowboy” outfits that wouldn’t be very practical if they were actually out on the range. But it is how they view American culture, for better or worse, and put a lot of work into their presentation. Overall it was an interesting night and I learned more about other countries I hadn’t know very well before and other things I did. For instance Canada has a large automobile industry, I guess. But the kids seemed to have a good time at it and enjoyed having the Americans there. The highlight of the night was the Canada group’s choice of song. Each group had to perform a song from their country. Canada chose, wait for it, Celine Dione “My Heart Will Go On” and chose a guy to be the lead singer. Yes, a guy dressed up in a wig, short skirt and balloon boobs. It was extremely disturbing and hysterical at the same time. Oh, the performance was entirely performed by candlelight as well. Let’s just say it left all of us in shock, and awe of the guy who had guts to do that. He knew the words too. Team America’s representation of Britney Spears had nothing on him.
One of the places I have had the hardest time really adjusting is the lack of people my own age to hang out with in my own town. That is slowly adjusting as I’m meeting more people my own age and had the luck of meeting one guy early on in my service here playing basketball, but didn’t see for a while. A few weeks ago, maybe a month ago I ran into him again and he expressed an interest in playing again, we had stopped playing over the summer. I said I would try to find a place to play, but wasn’t having much luck so I guess he took matters into his own hands and called me saying he had arranged for the local professional school’s gym so we played last week and this week. It has also allowed me to meet about a half dozen other guys who are about my own age at least in that environment, haven’t really interacted much with them outside the gymnasium, but maybe that will happen later. Any way I look at it, it is an improvement and even fits into my role as a youth developer as far as I can tell. Just part of my 24 hour work day.
16 December
So while that name day is over it is high time for the next holiday this month, on the 18th-19th. Basically the Ukrainian St. Nicholas Day for those of you who celebrate it in the states. Otherwise commonly known as Santa Claus in many circles. The basic idea surrounding it is as I understand is you write a letter to St. Michael of what presents you want and it is a gift giving day. Christmas day itself in this country is Jan. 7 (which happens to be the day I get back in country) and is mostly a religious holiday and a day when people visit one another, other holidays surrounding it include the gift-giving aspect found in American Christmas. Like I said, Ukrainians just like to party!
This past Thursday I went with students from the eighth form to watch a play and look at a display of wax people. My Ukrainian language tutor invited me. While the wax museum was mildly interesting, it was the play I found more interesting, although I won’t dare say I understood all of it. From what I understood, it was a group from the Ivano Frankisk Oblast where the play was also set. Much of the language was also an older dialect familiar to the area, which probably contributed to the fact I wasn’t following it all, plus the fact a professional photographer with a really nice camera was there taking pictures, I was jealous.
The play centered around what I assumed was a small village and followed them as they celebrated several different celebrations, including Christmas, Easter and a marriage. The parts Although I didn’t always understand all of the language, it was well acted and I could follow along pretty well from just the actions. It was a really enjoyable night and I will put some photos I took on my Flickr site. I was seated in the front row plus (explanation: there was a front row of regular seats and then a row of chairs in front of that. I was seated in that row of chairs with other students, which meant I got a REAL good view of what was going on. But by the end of the night my head had about enough of Ukrainian and was ready for bed. Made for a long day.
But this past Friday found me in the old town of Zhovka where fellow PCV Shelley Swendiman works and was helping host an English Week capped with an English day. Four English speaking countries and Ukraine were presented during an “summit” for these different countries to explain a little about their cultures. Five of us volunteers made the trip to help her out and basically be the American guests for the summit. It’s always fun to see how Ukrainians view other cultures from their studies and is enlightening to me as well since I am sure we have some of the same stereotypes about other cultures that we try to study, but don’t always have a full idea of what is going on. One example was the American group dressed up in “cowboy” outfits that wouldn’t be very practical if they were actually out on the range. But it is how they view American culture, for better or worse, and put a lot of work into their presentation. Overall it was an interesting night and I learned more about other countries I hadn’t know very well before and other things I did. For instance Canada has a large automobile industry, I guess. But the kids seemed to have a good time at it and enjoyed having the Americans there. The highlight of the night was the Canada group’s choice of song. Each group had to perform a song from their country. Canada chose, wait for it, Celine Dione “My Heart Will Go On” and chose a guy to be the lead singer. Yes, a guy dressed up in a wig, short skirt and balloon boobs. It was extremely disturbing and hysterical at the same time. Oh, the performance was entirely performed by candlelight as well. Let’s just say it left all of us in shock, and awe of the guy who had guts to do that. He knew the words too. Team America’s representation of Britney Spears had nothing on him.
One of the places I have had the hardest time really adjusting is the lack of people my own age to hang out with in my own town. That is slowly adjusting as I’m meeting more people my own age and had the luck of meeting one guy early on in my service here playing basketball, but didn’t see for a while. A few weeks ago, maybe a month ago I ran into him again and he expressed an interest in playing again, we had stopped playing over the summer. I said I would try to find a place to play, but wasn’t having much luck so I guess he took matters into his own hands and called me saying he had arranged for the local professional school’s gym so we played last week and this week. It has also allowed me to meet about a half dozen other guys who are about my own age at least in that environment, haven’t really interacted much with them outside the gymnasium, but maybe that will happen later. Any way I look at it, it is an improvement and even fits into my role as a youth developer as far as I can tell. Just part of my 24 hour work day.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
(Note: I posted a partial packing list for potential Peace Corps Youth Development Volunteers in Ukraine in my supplemental materials section)
A couple unrelated stories for you:
I often say every day holds some new lesson for me in this country, whether it be cultural, professional or personal. Today one of those lessons was cultural, it is not entirely uncommon sight to see a funeral procession, but until today it had always been at a distance. I have always observed a lot of respect for the dead, cars will pull over and stop if they are going the opposite direction and we even stopped a football (soccer) game when one passed by at a distance. But today was the first day I was faced with one head on. Without a clue what exactly to do, I fell behind a woman who had also just gotten off a marshrutka. I observed her stop as the procession reached her.
(Quick description of a funeral procession – a banner bearer leads the procession while what I assume is the families follows immediately after accompanied by a priest. The coffin is what I have always seen to be an extremely old flatbed truck for viewing. The truck is followed by more mourners. I also assume that they all go from the church to the cemetery. All the assumptions are because I haven’t actually attended a funeral yet.)
She stood still until after the truck passed her by and started walking again. As she walked by me she told me to start walking again as well. With that I had my new lesson on how to hand a funeral procession I am not in.
Name Days
I swear it seems like there are constantly new holidays in this country, people laughed at me when I said it felt like every day is a holiday, but I swear every week must have some new holiday or celebration. There are what in English is called name days, Today is Andriy. Not sure of the exact origins of the celebrations, but most everyone in this country has names originating from the Bible (if they don’t, they’re weird) and holidays have been put aside to celebrate as far as I can tell, almost every name people are called here. It generally involves drinking and congratulating those with the same name as the day. For whatever reason, I noticed this one more; maybe because there is a little witchcraft thrown in I didn’t see in other ones. I had heard the holiday would be the next day but didn’t understand why girls were literally running around the school with pieces of paper and signatures on it. Still not sure of the exact reasons, but it has something to do with who their future husband will be. It looked close to chaos to me, plus boys seemed to be trying to steal these papers, for whatever reason that meant. I also heard of another bit of magic of throwing boots through doors and if it landed a certain way it would mean you were bound to get married that year. All of these were what girls did, don’t know if there is anything particular boys do on this day.
What I find funny, or at least interesting is how this country has in its own way combined old pagan traditions with the newer Christian traditions, yet still keeping them traditional and not completely overrun with commercialism. I say that because I know the west has fused pagan and Christian ideas as well, example, Christmas. But I love to see the two parts go together because there are the old traditions, jumping over fires last summer for Ivana Kampala and these superstitions of throwing boots. Funnily enough, they tend to include marriage in their plans.
A couple unrelated stories for you:
I often say every day holds some new lesson for me in this country, whether it be cultural, professional or personal. Today one of those lessons was cultural, it is not entirely uncommon sight to see a funeral procession, but until today it had always been at a distance. I have always observed a lot of respect for the dead, cars will pull over and stop if they are going the opposite direction and we even stopped a football (soccer) game when one passed by at a distance. But today was the first day I was faced with one head on. Without a clue what exactly to do, I fell behind a woman who had also just gotten off a marshrutka. I observed her stop as the procession reached her.
(Quick description of a funeral procession – a banner bearer leads the procession while what I assume is the families follows immediately after accompanied by a priest. The coffin is what I have always seen to be an extremely old flatbed truck for viewing. The truck is followed by more mourners. I also assume that they all go from the church to the cemetery. All the assumptions are because I haven’t actually attended a funeral yet.)
She stood still until after the truck passed her by and started walking again. As she walked by me she told me to start walking again as well. With that I had my new lesson on how to hand a funeral procession I am not in.
Name Days
I swear it seems like there are constantly new holidays in this country, people laughed at me when I said it felt like every day is a holiday, but I swear every week must have some new holiday or celebration. There are what in English is called name days, Today is Andriy. Not sure of the exact origins of the celebrations, but most everyone in this country has names originating from the Bible (if they don’t, they’re weird) and holidays have been put aside to celebrate as far as I can tell, almost every name people are called here. It generally involves drinking and congratulating those with the same name as the day. For whatever reason, I noticed this one more; maybe because there is a little witchcraft thrown in I didn’t see in other ones. I had heard the holiday would be the next day but didn’t understand why girls were literally running around the school with pieces of paper and signatures on it. Still not sure of the exact reasons, but it has something to do with who their future husband will be. It looked close to chaos to me, plus boys seemed to be trying to steal these papers, for whatever reason that meant. I also heard of another bit of magic of throwing boots through doors and if it landed a certain way it would mean you were bound to get married that year. All of these were what girls did, don’t know if there is anything particular boys do on this day.
What I find funny, or at least interesting is how this country has in its own way combined old pagan traditions with the newer Christian traditions, yet still keeping them traditional and not completely overrun with commercialism. I say that because I know the west has fused pagan and Christian ideas as well, example, Christmas. But I love to see the two parts go together because there are the old traditions, jumping over fires last summer for Ivana Kampala and these superstitions of throwing boots. Funnily enough, they tend to include marriage in their plans.
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