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.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
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.
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