A quick, partial list of books I have read in Ukraine. Some of them make me look almost smart. Others are just fun super easy books to read. Enjoy it all in my supplemental materials. New Blog post should be up soon.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.