Greetings from Northern Crimea...Life here is hot and sticky. I am mostly enjoying my new diggs but am definitely living a life more in step with what I, and most likely you, imagined the Peace Corps to be. Very small, very isolated, water and gas work when they feel like it and the language barier is all too real. While I feel like I am able to communicate and get basic ideas across I am more or less helpless to have any meaningful conversation. Yes I know it has only been 3 months and I know that I am doing well with Russian...blah blah blah...but that really isn't of any comfort when you go days without REALLY communicating with another person. My host Babushka is an extrmely warm and funny woman and I like her very much...but she keeps a running commentary going all day long...seriously...and it is probably the most exhausting thing I have ever dealt with. I understand none of what she says, which I know she knows, but she still keeps going. Eventually I am sure I will be grateful for this but for now its a little much to bear (bare?). Still I am happy even though this will easily be the most difficult two years of my life...past, present or future.
Today I went to the beach. I was told it was a little bit of a walk, which it would have been had we arrived after the first 3 miles. 2 miles later i asked if we were near and was told we were and sure enough, 3 miles later we were there. It was a nice little lake though and the 70 something year old babushkas in bikinis made the trek worthwhile...Thankfully we were able to hitch a ride 3/4 of the way home and even stopped for some lemonade at a friends doma which was welcomed. Played some ping pong afterwards...destroyed my babushka (that's right). From here on out its just me, a big bowl of borscht, some cookies if im a good malchick and whatever else the Peace Corps Gods decide to send my way today. Hoping for some cookies though...shortbread with some chocolate fudgy icing on the inside. Im enjoying the cookies here in Ukraine if you weren't aware. Alright...time to run. Just wanted to say hello. Miss you and love you....
Monday, June 23, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
It's Official...
So I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer. The swearing in ceremony took place on Tuesday afternoon following a not so fun two days of boring seminars and other bureaucratic BS. The ceremony itself was nothing special and to be honest, it didn't hold much meaning for me. I am pleased to be finished with the training portion of my Peace Corps service and very excited to be moving on to(actually already in) my new home, but the actual pomp and circumstance of it all is lost on me. We're not here to gloat about our accomplishments...we're here to make an impact on the lives of those we come in contact with and to do it with humility. Still...it feels good to have 3 hours of language classes and all of the other training behind me.
I received the results of my language interview a few days past and to my (and others) complete amazment I placed somewhere near the top of all of those who came into their service without prior langauge training. I scored an intermediate high on the scale and must say that I am pretty proud of myself. I may not be able to regurgitate sentences in a classroom setting, but when pressed to use my langauge in real world applicable situations I get the job done. This has definitely been evident in the past few days. I met with my counterpart from my new home (she is a Russian teacher at the school where I will be working and acts as both a friend and a liason between myself and the director) and found that she speaks ZERO english. I am one of the very, very few volunteers in this situation as most of their counterparts can at least make small talk in English, but so far we have had little trouble communicating. In fact, now that I am over my initial fear of being unable to fall back on English I am really happy because I know that my Russian will improve dramatically over these next two years.
As for the village itself...I would say small and quaint would nicely describe it. At the moment we are without running water and will be for the remainder of the summer and the gas isn't working currently either. While showering has been a chore and cooking as well, I really feel like I am getting the full Peace Corps experience for the first time. I didn't realize just how spoiled I was living in my training site in such a posh apartment with every ammenity I was accustomed to having as an American. Now I have to walk out to the spicket (sp?) to fetch water, sometimes having to wait in a line of 10+ people...and I have what seems like thousands of chickens running wild in my front yard. WHile very different from everything I have ever known I think I am already adjusting well and looking forward to the next two years.
I already have begun to work at the school (currently using the internet here) and feel really welcomed by all the teachers here. We have been able to communicate in Russian and some English and so far I haven't encountered any of the dirty looks or harsh words I was told that I might. The school itself seems to be in good condition and has an adjacent stadium where I can run and exercise. It will take some time for me to feel as comfortable here as I did in Nizhyn, but these first 24 hours have gone just about as well as I could have hoped for.
For those of you who looked up Crimea on the internet and saw pictures of palm trees, beautiful beaches and mountains just know that the Northern part of the peninsula where I live is nothing like that. It is very flat here and reminiscent parts of texas. That being said, I am still very lucky to be living here and will make sure to get down to the beautiful South of Crimea as often as possible. I am also lucky to have another cool volunteer serving less than 10 miles away from me and a good friend only 40 minutes away by train.
Nothing else too new or exciting to report. I will hopefully have a mailing address sometime soon for those of you who want to write me or send me care packages...hint hint. I also will be keeping the same cell phone number...011-38-063-140-9289...so feel free to drop me a line...but if you're poor like me I won't be offended it you don't. More than likely I will be able to write more here than I was able to previously but I am not sure how often I will be allowed into the school over the summer months...we'll see. Miss you and love you all and look forward to catching up with everyone in the coming weeks and months.
ps..Sorry I missed your calls yesterday Sheru, I was out exploring and forgot to bring my phone. Try me back when you can...
I received the results of my language interview a few days past and to my (and others) complete amazment I placed somewhere near the top of all of those who came into their service without prior langauge training. I scored an intermediate high on the scale and must say that I am pretty proud of myself. I may not be able to regurgitate sentences in a classroom setting, but when pressed to use my langauge in real world applicable situations I get the job done. This has definitely been evident in the past few days. I met with my counterpart from my new home (she is a Russian teacher at the school where I will be working and acts as both a friend and a liason between myself and the director) and found that she speaks ZERO english. I am one of the very, very few volunteers in this situation as most of their counterparts can at least make small talk in English, but so far we have had little trouble communicating. In fact, now that I am over my initial fear of being unable to fall back on English I am really happy because I know that my Russian will improve dramatically over these next two years.
As for the village itself...I would say small and quaint would nicely describe it. At the moment we are without running water and will be for the remainder of the summer and the gas isn't working currently either. While showering has been a chore and cooking as well, I really feel like I am getting the full Peace Corps experience for the first time. I didn't realize just how spoiled I was living in my training site in such a posh apartment with every ammenity I was accustomed to having as an American. Now I have to walk out to the spicket (sp?) to fetch water, sometimes having to wait in a line of 10+ people...and I have what seems like thousands of chickens running wild in my front yard. WHile very different from everything I have ever known I think I am already adjusting well and looking forward to the next two years.
I already have begun to work at the school (currently using the internet here) and feel really welcomed by all the teachers here. We have been able to communicate in Russian and some English and so far I haven't encountered any of the dirty looks or harsh words I was told that I might. The school itself seems to be in good condition and has an adjacent stadium where I can run and exercise. It will take some time for me to feel as comfortable here as I did in Nizhyn, but these first 24 hours have gone just about as well as I could have hoped for.
For those of you who looked up Crimea on the internet and saw pictures of palm trees, beautiful beaches and mountains just know that the Northern part of the peninsula where I live is nothing like that. It is very flat here and reminiscent parts of texas. That being said, I am still very lucky to be living here and will make sure to get down to the beautiful South of Crimea as often as possible. I am also lucky to have another cool volunteer serving less than 10 miles away from me and a good friend only 40 minutes away by train.
Nothing else too new or exciting to report. I will hopefully have a mailing address sometime soon for those of you who want to write me or send me care packages...hint hint. I also will be keeping the same cell phone number...011-38-063-140-9289...so feel free to drop me a line...but if you're poor like me I won't be offended it you don't. More than likely I will be able to write more here than I was able to previously but I am not sure how often I will be allowed into the school over the summer months...we'll see. Miss you and love you all and look forward to catching up with everyone in the coming weeks and months.
ps..Sorry I missed your calls yesterday Sheru, I was out exploring and forgot to bring my phone. Try me back when you can...
Saturday, June 14, 2008
No idea if my last entry posted...
Wrote a long entry...not showing up on my computer. My apologies if it posted 15 times. will try and fix the problem soon...if not i promise you'll hear from me in a week or so. miss and love you all!
Last Post from Nizhyn
Hello All...
Two days from now at this time I will be en route to the "resort" (in name only) where I will be officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer and a day or three later it's on to Crimea! It's bittersweet in that i have really enjoyed my time training here in Nizhyn. I could not have asked for a nicer, more supportive host family and was blessed with two outstanding teachers. Most of all i will miss the friends I have made in the other volunteers studying with me. We have spent nearly every waking hour of each day together since we arrived in ukraine and it will be strange to be apart from them...I can only hope to be as fortunate in making friends in my new crimean home. Time will tell...
I know a few of you have asked about the orphanage where my community project took place last week so i will give a quick overview of the place and what they do there. There are approximately 30 "youths" living there, most of whom were taken away from their parents due to poor living conditions or inadequate care. Most of the children are probably aged 12 and under but there are a few as old as 17. The facility itself is extremely nice, very clean and situated on a huge plot of land with a beautiful forest. The children all seem to be very happy there and are lucky to be somewhere that they are given the love and attention they deserve; still, it is sad to see a young child without a parent. As for the project...we brought students with us from local schools and formed 5 different teams so that the students and children from the orphanage could mix togther and get to know each other. We held all sorts of races (wheelbarrow, 3 legged, etc), had face painting, friendship bracelet stations and other field day type activities...the day ended with a candy filled pinata and water balloon fight. Good times indeed!
It took nearly 3 months to happen but I finally feel like i've had a pretty adeventurous few days. I spent most of Thursday and friday with my friend Emily in Kiev blindly searching for some computer store that had a charger she needed for her laptop. We tried unsuccessfully to find it on thursday but managed to navigate the subway system on our own and get all over the city. The friendliness of Ukrainians puts Americans to shame. Every person we asked (in russian of course) for help went out of their way to walk us where we needed to be or to another person who was able to help. Even though most of the day saw us walking around frustrated in a torrential downpour i still felt it was a success just based on our gaining confidence in talking with people and taking Ukrainian mass transit. On a slight downer I got pick pocketed (never felt it or saw the person) but fortunately for me they only got copies of meaningless peace corps documents! Must have been an unpleasant surprise for thief...
Friday was a far more successful day. We took a 7am train to kiev and our langauage teacher (and friend) Lena managed to get ahold of the computer store and get better dierections for us. Lucky for us she did because they were extremely complicated complete with an access code to the downstairs door and other details two novice russian speakers never would have been able to understand. Again we triumphed over the kiev metro system, made our way to the store, bought the charger and made it back to the train station with 45 minutes to spare....only to find out that all of the trains were sold out until 6pm. Turned out to be a blessing in disguise though...we walked around kiev all day talking and laughing....watched all of the people in town for tonights Paul Mccartney concert (which I wont be going to unfortunately)...ate a great meal at an outdoor cafe...did some more people watching in a beautiful park and made it back home before dark. My confidence in being able to make my way around this country has grown enormously and i had two of my best days in ukraine in the process. success.
Last but not least...i had my final exam of sorts this week for my language studies. I was required to have a 30 minute interview only in russian and will be graded based on what level of russian proficiency I achieve. Needless to say i was somewhat panicked, but once the interview began my language skills took over and had no problems. No one here would mistake me for a native speaker but i feel now that i have made a ton of progress in just 3 months and will be just fine when i get to my permanent home. They hand out the results of the exam on monday but i have no doubt that i scored at or above the predetermined level for trainees. I will pass on the info as soon as i can.
Ok...got to run. I really don't know when I will have internet access next. from what i have heard my new village is very close to a large city and i anticipate i will get there sometime next weekend to check in--no promises though. Also, thank you so much for the calls and emails this week...please know that i really appreciated it. Stay tuned...
Two days from now at this time I will be en route to the "resort" (in name only) where I will be officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer and a day or three later it's on to Crimea! It's bittersweet in that i have really enjoyed my time training here in Nizhyn. I could not have asked for a nicer, more supportive host family and was blessed with two outstanding teachers. Most of all i will miss the friends I have made in the other volunteers studying with me. We have spent nearly every waking hour of each day together since we arrived in ukraine and it will be strange to be apart from them...I can only hope to be as fortunate in making friends in my new crimean home. Time will tell...
I know a few of you have asked about the orphanage where my community project took place last week so i will give a quick overview of the place and what they do there. There are approximately 30 "youths" living there, most of whom were taken away from their parents due to poor living conditions or inadequate care. Most of the children are probably aged 12 and under but there are a few as old as 17. The facility itself is extremely nice, very clean and situated on a huge plot of land with a beautiful forest. The children all seem to be very happy there and are lucky to be somewhere that they are given the love and attention they deserve; still, it is sad to see a young child without a parent. As for the project...we brought students with us from local schools and formed 5 different teams so that the students and children from the orphanage could mix togther and get to know each other. We held all sorts of races (wheelbarrow, 3 legged, etc), had face painting, friendship bracelet stations and other field day type activities...the day ended with a candy filled pinata and water balloon fight. Good times indeed!
It took nearly 3 months to happen but I finally feel like i've had a pretty adeventurous few days. I spent most of Thursday and friday with my friend Emily in Kiev blindly searching for some computer store that had a charger she needed for her laptop. We tried unsuccessfully to find it on thursday but managed to navigate the subway system on our own and get all over the city. The friendliness of Ukrainians puts Americans to shame. Every person we asked (in russian of course) for help went out of their way to walk us where we needed to be or to another person who was able to help. Even though most of the day saw us walking around frustrated in a torrential downpour i still felt it was a success just based on our gaining confidence in talking with people and taking Ukrainian mass transit. On a slight downer I got pick pocketed (never felt it or saw the person) but fortunately for me they only got copies of meaningless peace corps documents! Must have been an unpleasant surprise for thief...
Friday was a far more successful day. We took a 7am train to kiev and our langauage teacher (and friend) Lena managed to get ahold of the computer store and get better dierections for us. Lucky for us she did because they were extremely complicated complete with an access code to the downstairs door and other details two novice russian speakers never would have been able to understand. Again we triumphed over the kiev metro system, made our way to the store, bought the charger and made it back to the train station with 45 minutes to spare....only to find out that all of the trains were sold out until 6pm. Turned out to be a blessing in disguise though...we walked around kiev all day talking and laughing....watched all of the people in town for tonights Paul Mccartney concert (which I wont be going to unfortunately)...ate a great meal at an outdoor cafe...did some more people watching in a beautiful park and made it back home before dark. My confidence in being able to make my way around this country has grown enormously and i had two of my best days in ukraine in the process. success.
Last but not least...i had my final exam of sorts this week for my language studies. I was required to have a 30 minute interview only in russian and will be graded based on what level of russian proficiency I achieve. Needless to say i was somewhat panicked, but once the interview began my language skills took over and had no problems. No one here would mistake me for a native speaker but i feel now that i have made a ton of progress in just 3 months and will be just fine when i get to my permanent home. They hand out the results of the exam on monday but i have no doubt that i scored at or above the predetermined level for trainees. I will pass on the info as soon as i can.
Ok...got to run. I really don't know when I will have internet access next. from what i have heard my new village is very close to a large city and i anticipate i will get there sometime next weekend to check in--no promises though. Also, thank you so much for the calls and emails this week...please know that i really appreciated it. Stay tuned...
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Short Entry
The internet here in the local cafe is giving me problems so I will post a quick entry...Overall I had a really good week. We successfully planned and ran a summer camp and I could really tell that the students enjoyed being there. The smiles, hugs and thank you's helped to reinforce that what I am doing over here is important and appreciated...definitely helped to recharge the batteries. We also held our event (field day) at the local orphanage this week and managed to pull off a great event. Despite the rains that necessitated that we completely change our plans at the last minute, everyone involved had fun and the officials from the Ukrainian Ministry of Education who came to watch told us that they were impressed. Good stuff.
Also was extremely happy that my Wings brought home the Cup. The last two games of the finals were actually shown live here (at 3am!) so I woke up in the middle of the night and managed to watch silently while my family slept 10 feet away. I almost lost it during game 5 but was never worried about the outcome of the series and my boys didn't let me down. It was kind of surreal to watch the celebration from Ukraine but very cool. Again...Championship DVD's and T's are welcomed.
Alright...thats all for now. I will try and blog one more time before I am sworn in as an offical volunteer next weekend. Miss you all...
Also was extremely happy that my Wings brought home the Cup. The last two games of the finals were actually shown live here (at 3am!) so I woke up in the middle of the night and managed to watch silently while my family slept 10 feet away. I almost lost it during game 5 but was never worried about the outcome of the series and my boys didn't let me down. It was kind of surreal to watch the celebration from Ukraine but very cool. Again...Championship DVD's and T's are welcomed.
Alright...thats all for now. I will try and blog one more time before I am sworn in as an offical volunteer next weekend. Miss you all...
Monday, June 2, 2008
Take 2
So I am pretty frustrated at the moment...just spent a loooong time writing out a detailed post of what y'all have missed out on over the past 2 weeks but somehow it got deleted just as I was about to publish. Oh well, no worries. Anyway...hello peoples! What's new? Enjoying the warm weather and the Wings I hope. The weather has cooled a bit in my hood of the Kraine over the last week and I am a much happier volunteer as a result. I'm savoring these last few weeks of relative mild weather as I don't think I will be able to keep so cool the rest of the summer...more on that in a bit.
First let me extended my deepest apologies for the long delay in between this post and the last. As my time in Nizhyn as a trainee is winding down I have been becoming increasingly busy. I have been planning, and now running, a summer camp at our school while simultaneously putting together a community project at the local orphanage (all with the other volunteers in my cluster). This is in addition to our normal language class workload and all of the other schtuffs we do as volunteers. It honestly hasn't been too bad but my time has been limited and I have valued sleep over the internet...nothing personal. I cannot promise that the next few weeks will be much better either but I am hopeful that there will be plenty of time for blogging this summer once I'm at my permanent home.
Speaking of which...I now know where I will be spending the next two years of my life! I am not sure how much any of you know about the geography of Ukraine (look at a map if you need to) but I will be living in a relatively small village in the North of the Crimean Peninsula. Crimea is in the South of the country and is surrounded by the Black Sea. From the looks of it, I will be about 15 minutes away from the Sea and feel like I lucked out big time with my site placement. I really don't know much about the specifics of my village or my job there so I am reserving judgement until I arrive but from what I know about the location I am very happy. I do know that my village has around 3,500 people and there is a good chance that my home will come complete with an outhouse and a shovel for all of the coal I will be loading into my furnace come winter. I cannot say that I am excited about the prospects of having an outdoor office, but it is the Peace Corps and I am willing to sacrafice a bit to be able to live in Crim.
My village also appears to be about 5 miles outside a fairly large town of maybe 75,000 people...also good news as I am sure there will be internet there along with anything else I may need. But wait...there's more. Another volunteer from the same group as mine (the group that left from Phili) is 15 miles from my site and two of my good friends are within 2 hours. There's always a chance I could get to my site and find something awful awaiting me, but as of this moment I am very much looking forward to the next two years.
Other than that big piece of news things are the same as they ever were...same as they ever were. Russian is still Russian. We get along more or less but I wouldn't say our home is a happy one. I will have plenty of time over the next two years to improve our relationship however and am looking forward to the process. I am sure living away from my American friends and without the luxury of having translators will speed up the learning curve. We'll see.
Miss you all...and looking forward to receiving lots of Wings Championship T's and DVD's just as soon as I get to my site. Also a happy belated B'day to Brad and Nicole if you're reading this...Lots of love.
First let me extended my deepest apologies for the long delay in between this post and the last. As my time in Nizhyn as a trainee is winding down I have been becoming increasingly busy. I have been planning, and now running, a summer camp at our school while simultaneously putting together a community project at the local orphanage (all with the other volunteers in my cluster). This is in addition to our normal language class workload and all of the other schtuffs we do as volunteers. It honestly hasn't been too bad but my time has been limited and I have valued sleep over the internet...nothing personal. I cannot promise that the next few weeks will be much better either but I am hopeful that there will be plenty of time for blogging this summer once I'm at my permanent home.
Speaking of which...I now know where I will be spending the next two years of my life! I am not sure how much any of you know about the geography of Ukraine (look at a map if you need to) but I will be living in a relatively small village in the North of the Crimean Peninsula. Crimea is in the South of the country and is surrounded by the Black Sea. From the looks of it, I will be about 15 minutes away from the Sea and feel like I lucked out big time with my site placement. I really don't know much about the specifics of my village or my job there so I am reserving judgement until I arrive but from what I know about the location I am very happy. I do know that my village has around 3,500 people and there is a good chance that my home will come complete with an outhouse and a shovel for all of the coal I will be loading into my furnace come winter. I cannot say that I am excited about the prospects of having an outdoor office, but it is the Peace Corps and I am willing to sacrafice a bit to be able to live in Crim.
My village also appears to be about 5 miles outside a fairly large town of maybe 75,000 people...also good news as I am sure there will be internet there along with anything else I may need. But wait...there's more. Another volunteer from the same group as mine (the group that left from Phili) is 15 miles from my site and two of my good friends are within 2 hours. There's always a chance I could get to my site and find something awful awaiting me, but as of this moment I am very much looking forward to the next two years.
Other than that big piece of news things are the same as they ever were...same as they ever were. Russian is still Russian. We get along more or less but I wouldn't say our home is a happy one. I will have plenty of time over the next two years to improve our relationship however and am looking forward to the process. I am sure living away from my American friends and without the luxury of having translators will speed up the learning curve. We'll see.
Miss you all...and looking forward to receiving lots of Wings Championship T's and DVD's just as soon as I get to my site. Also a happy belated B'day to Brad and Nicole if you're reading this...Lots of love.
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