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.

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.

(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.

In religion and teaching I have never been a fan of preaching, sitting in front of the class or congregation and talking or sitting I the class and congregation and just listening. But at the same time in my work here I wonder if I am having any impact at all, or whether that impact is something I may just never be able to witness personally. In that same vein, is preaching more effective or just shows its results more quickly, whether they are lasting or not.

This past week has absolutely flown by and I don’t exactly know where it went, I know that I feel as if I have been busy, but maybe I’m being too impatient in wanting to see some sort of result from my work. That probably comes at least partially from working at a newspaper and being able to see my work in print every week. Or even when I was working in a warehouse where I could witness the boxes I packed multiple times every day. Teaching and development is a different beast I’m still figuring out how much I like or not. Results may be more profound but I may never actually see those results.

When I joined the Peace Corps, I tried to keep the mindset that if I was able to change one person’s life for the better I could count my service a success. Along the way, my expectations seemed to have inflated. I still try to convince myself of the goal of helping just one person, while at the same time trying to involve myself in as many people’s lives as I can. Is it because I am feeling insignificant, am I applying a scattergun philosophy to my original idea because I don’t know who I may end up influencing, or is this simply how working is ending up for me? Maybe somewhere along the way I got the crazy idea from looking at super volunteers and witnessing what wonderful projects other people were accomplishing I made the fatal mistake of trying to measure my success against other peoples’. I can’t become complacent in the work I’m doing, but at the same time, how far should I push myself and when are the standards too high, or not high enough?

In maybe a partially related subject, but not entirely, a volunteer who recently completed her service, she’s been referenced before in my blog, Liz Baltaro, had her grandmother (she’s 82 and came to Ukraine) visit her in the last two weeks of her service. I had the honor of being able to meet the genuinely interesting woman. She had been to Kyiv once before when it was still communist along with being a lot of other places in world, like I said, an amazing woman. But what she did help me do was start to crystallize what I may be interested in doing after service. I’m still holding that my experiences here will help mold what my future will hold, but suggestions she had, such as the Foreign Service rung true with previous ideas I had held, and helped with some positive reinforcement. So who knows exactly where I will end up at the end of these two years and doing what, but I’m sure she will have an impact on it even if it is just from the one meeting.

In completely unrelated news, in case you hadn’t heard, I will be making a trip back to the U.S. this month into early next month. I have tickets into Portland on the 22nd and back to Ukraine on the 6th of January. The main reason being Aaron Wirick is getting married. I told him to wait until I got back, but I guess he couldn’t wait, didn’t listen or just knew I would come back anyway (smiling yet Aaron?). So I will be in California from Dec 26 to Dec 31 for the wedding and the rest of the time in Oregon. What exactly I will be doing in Oregon is still up in the air, but if you’re around, I’d love to meet up with you. I want to celebrate well on my birthday too; it’s on Dec. 31, in case you forgot. So drop me an email, comment or call me at home if you know that number, I have a mobile phone in Ukraine, but will go back to no phone in the states, strange… So until next time, take care.

When I start getting comments that I haven’t updated in a while and it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago, I realize how time has flied, even if most of the time I don’t feel like I have accomplished all that much.

A big part of the reason for my rather tardy update is I have been at least a little bit busy, traveling to Kyiv last weekend to work on the Ukrainian Peace Corps newsletter that is sent to every volunteer in the country and other people in the country, not exactly sure all where it goes. There are three of us editors that met, although I didn’t write anything. It isn’t exactly as exciting as it sounds since we are little more than spell-checkers and page-designers, but it was a chance to do something different and feel as if I really do have at least a few skills in this country. The other big part of that was the meeting just happened to be convened on Thanksgiving. There was a flurry of SMSs between volunteers with the congratulations, but it definitely didn’t feel the same in this country, except all the staff at the Peace Corps office had the day off. We had our own little celebration by going out to TGI Friday’s and later that evening I went out with one of the other editors and we actually caught an American football game. The beers were ridiculously expensive, but watching Joey Harrington win a game on Thanksgiving was fun. We finished up by early that next afternoon and I took off for the weekend to visit my host family and get out of Kyiv, It is nice to visit, but I can’t stay there for very long because it is so prohibitively expensive on my budget. Plus it is much more fun to hang out with my host family.

While there I ended up in the church in town during a tour of the town I gave to the current LCF (Language and Cross-cultural Facilitator), who is teaching the new trainees in the town Ukrainian. I had seen the church plenty of times from the outside and I had just given her a pretty extensive tour of town. Inside felt Orthodox and I lit the first candles of my life in a church. While I tend to be hesitant of many of the traditions these follow, I found it to be a fulfilling experience. Understanding the traditions behind it and being able to worship in my own way while observing some of the Eastern traditions was good. These experiences will definitely influence my faith when I do return to the states. How and in what ways is hard to tell now, but I will be more aware of traditions and appreciate them. In some ways I wonder if America has tried to break away from some of these types of European traditions, it forgot the meaning behind them that can be so powerful. Not that I am going to endorse all the different parts, I am not all that comfortable with the amount of icons, but simple acts of lighting candles and the openness of the church that anyone can walk in during the day was appreciated. But in that same train of thought I will be looking forward to being able to have some of those deeper theological, religious and social discussions that I enjoyed back in the states, that is not a common occurrence for me here.

But my traveling brought me back to my site Monday morning, the overnight trains are a blessing and a curse, and we got to work trying to get the newspaper issue here ready to print. Things haven’t worked quite as smoothly and have reinforced my opinion that volunteers don’t always have good and bad days, but rather good and bad hours. How’s that for the ability to really screw with your head? Today was a combination of the two as I have been behind on the production, mainly because I’m allowing the students to do as much work as possible and that means things get done slower. At least it will be a lesson at the same time. At the English club I missed last week I was told when I arrived this week they missed me, but the same day I found out that the library containing all the files for the needed for the newspaper were locked away for the day. So is life here.

8 November

Since the last time I sat down, I have been through a Halloween party and visited a different country. Also stopped by an English class for Forest Institute grad students, met them at a party a week later, had no email (so sorry if I haven’t replied to any) and met a bunch of volunteers from my group. Put it that way and my time seems to be fairly busy. If I could only convince myself of that on a daily basis that my life is busy, at least I go to bed exhausted every night.

To try and organize it in a chronological order lets back up to Monday, still back in last month, with the forestry institute. I got a call from a fellow volunteer that he had been invited to speak at this institutes English class, basically to just allow them to hear some other English speakers and he saw it as a way to expand the tree planting project that I have been working on. It worked out well because the teacher, a senior Fulbright scholar got not one, not two, but three additional Americans to come and speak at the class. Since Cameron, a guy who trained with me was in town. It was a major jump forward with my grant project, since I had heard that they money would be available and now I had volunteers to help me with more of the technical information, it was a pretty darn cool.

So that Halloween party, I will have pictures on my Flickr site soon, so you can see a first-hand account there, but the basic story is my younger English club in Dobrotvir wanted to have a Halloween party, so I helped them organize it, they did most of the work and I made sure to support them. We had games, like bobbing for apples, a mummy wrap, pictures from that are hilarious, food and a lot of candy. Think there is quite a bit of it left over, not sure. But it seemed to be a hit and everyone walked away happy that night, I had two other volunteers there too, and they had just as much fun. I can’t complain.

The next big event was Cameron’s and my trip to Poland. It was classic Ukraine travel experience. To start it off, we knew that the bus left at 11 a.m. in a different town and the only way we could get there was to catch a bus from my town at 7:30 a.m. The next left about 10:30 and wouldn’t get there in time. So we got to Chervonograd. A charming (not so much) city constructed around coal mining and isn’t the safest or cleanest place. I enjoy comparing the bus station we waited in to the spaceport Luke Skywalker went to in the first movie. A dingy place with a lot of shady characters. Thankfully the cold weather kept most of the beggars at home. To add the adventure we tried to buy tickets for this bus not knowing how many people might be going and were told that we needed to come back later. So we did and were told the same thing. The last time we asked was about 10:30 and was told the same thing, yet again. My personal philosophy, which has served me well in about 90 percent of cases, just get on the bus and pay the driver. That way I know I am at least going. So Cameron and I walk out to the bus and are securing his luggage under the bus when I get asked if I have any cigarettes. My only reply was I don’t smoke, but my buddy has some. As Cameron tried to offer him a cigarette, he completely ignored it and was eager for me to take a box of cigarettes across the border for him. Only I didn’t figure this out until about 5 minutes later after about three other people had asked me the same question. I was getting to meet the (in) famous cigarette smuggles I had been warned about. So after I said I had already promised another guy I would carry some they lost interest until they heard we were Americans living in Ukraine and single. It gave a group of middle-aged ladies something to talk about for the entire trip. Not that I paid too much attention, mostly just caught snatches of my town name, my name and American. Probably trying to think of a good woman for me. Common problem.

So we take off and the bus is not full, maybe half full, but the excitement was just getting underway. I’m seeing piles of cigarettes and alcohol when people are only allowed to take across two boxes and a little bit of alcohol. Taxes are a lot lower in Ukraine so it can be profitable to carry stuff across the border and sell it again. People are hiding cigarettes in nooks and crannies in the bus, stuffing them into black nylon stockings and hiding them under seats when smoke starts pouring into the bus. We are sort of looking around in disbelief as the cabin is filling with smoke when Cameron pipes up with, “I think we have a problem.” That brings the place down and as we pull over to the side of the road windows are being opened to try and vent out the smoke. Our bus caught fire. As the driver gets out, the problems stems from the heater. We had boarded the bus still being able to see our breath and the heater was a nice touch to warm up my cold feet. Unfortunately it was too good to last, of course, and after the heater was turned off we got back on our way, the smoke eventually cleared.

Once we got to the border the pace of hiding cigarettes got really frenzied. After we all skated through the Ukrainian side without issue. The only question I didn’t understand was if I had any books. Then the only sound I heard was the ripping of scotch tape and people hurrying around the bus stashing their last bit of contraband. I was also handed my package of cigarettes and booze to carry across the border. So once we had our passports stamped we all bundled out of the bus for the Polish authorities to play the who has too many cigarettes and alcohol game. There was a cursory check through our bags (they didn’t bother us Americans too much, probably not smart enough to try and smuggle something), and then got to the real game of hide-and-seek on the bus while we all watched on the outside. The officials then came back with a bag of their seized contraband and we all re-boarded the bus. In a moment Cameron and I didn’t really understand the smugglers immediately started looking in their hiding places to see what had made it through. Cigarettes that had been hidden around us didn’t seem to do too well although other people did better. What we didn’t understand was here we were still parked in the Polish border check and people are running all over the bus to see what they were successful in hiding. Amazing…
After a trip like that, Poland itself had a lot to live up to for entertainment. Our running joke was Peace Corps volunteers look forward to vacationing in more developed countries. Poland was definitely that. One of the first things we noticed was better roads and better taken care of buildings on the whole. Another difference took a little longer to notice, but Polish people don’t use plastic bags as much to cart their stuff around. In Ukraine if you don’t have your packet with “Hugo Boss” emblazoned on the side or some other bag of a random company you stand out. I stand out because I use a backpack to cart my stuff around. In Poland people used backpacks and suitcases to carry their stuff. I even saw a garment bag, it was amazing. The transportation system where we were was a bus system running on Natural Gas, amazing, although I prefer the Ukrainian system of waving down an oversized van and piling in, they are easier to figure out, and I don’t have to try and figure out a payment system based on distance when I don’t know exactly where I am going or how to say much more than thank you, yes and no in Polish.

The other predominant thing I noticed in Poland was it was cold, although it was and is cold in Ukraine as well, I was hoping to spend more time outside, not running from one place to another. From the pictures you can see we visited two different castles and it was snowing. The second one we saw was in a town called Lancut (sp?). It was more of a mansion, from my guidebook it once was owned by one of the wealthiest people in Poland, who fled before the soviets in 1944 or so with a huge amount art to Liechtenstein. But there was enough left over to make it a museum. We planned to go inside until we found out it was 21 zloty per person. Or about $7. A little much for my budget. So we looked at the snow covered grounds and called it a day.

The trip back to Ukraine wasn’t nearly as interesting, but wasn’t completely normal. Shortly before the border we stopped to pick up a guy who hauled a lot of bags of something heavy on board and started stuffing it behind the driver’s seat and in some hidden compartments. To Poland the driver didn’t seem as involved but this time the driver was fully involved, but this time around we hardly blinked an eye, just curious what it was they were hiding. Cameron thought it might be clothing or shoes. I just saw plastic bags. But this time going across the border into Ukraine the entire search of the bus was a couple of soldiers walking down the aisle stopping to ask one woman if she had any products and tapping on panels. We all got to stay in the bus. I wasn’t very scared.

So there you go, international travel Peace Corps style, much more exciting than normal and really not any more stressful.