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...

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...

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.

Quick Update

I only have a few minutes to post in between my Russian classes but here are the highlights of this past week:

-I have been living without hot water entirely and for the majority of the day yesterday had no water at all. It really isn't as bad as you would imagine and the experience has made me feel more like a real Peace Corps volunteer that I had previously. There is also a pretty good possibility that I will be living w/o hot water at my permament site so its better to get used to it now.

-I had my site placement interview last week and feel that it went very well. There really is no way to tell what kind of impact what I told them will have in the placement process but I am hoping that I will wind up in my own house on the Sea with wireless internet and a washing machine like I asked...In all seriousness though, I was able to tell them how I envisioned my next two years going, the type of community in which I would like to live and the housing situation for which I am hoping. I will be finding out next week where my permanent site will be and promise to pass it along.

-Paul McCartney is playing a free concert in Kiev on June 14th and barring some unforeseen problems I will definitely be going! They expect somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 peeps to be there so it should be a pretty exciting evening. Should make for an interesting blog entry...

-The weather here is hot and sticky...very uncomfortable. Yes, I know I am in the Peace Corps and have no right to complain about such things but you try sitting through a 3 hour Russian class in sticky, wet clothes in a room with no AC and tell me how you like it. That's what I thought...

Everything else is normalno. No major changes. I am following my Pistons and Wings as closely as possible...feel free to pass along any updates if/when you have the time. I will try and post something new before the end of the weekend. Miss y'all

Finally!

So I finally have a cross cultural gaff to report that is appropriate for readers of all ages and will pass through the censors at the FCC. As you know I am studying Russian and being inundated with new vocabularly words on a minute by minute basis. Some are easy for me to process and regurgitate on command but others get all jumbled together and on occasion I get them confused...usually with no negative or humurous consequence. This past Saturday however, was not one of those days.

So I am sitting in a cafe called "Prince" that is located in the town center with one of my fellow Peace Corps peeps. We go there at least once a week and hadn't really had any problem ordering because we mostly rely on just pointing to the pictures on the menu. On this day though I decided that having almost 2 months of Russian under my belt it was about time that I order for myself aloud. Standing miles outside of my comfort zone I told the waitress that i would like the ice cream with hot fudge while miming how i would like to eat the ice cream so she could get the point. Unfortuantely, the word for "ice cream" (at least in my head) sounds pretty similar to the word for "youth"....so yeah, pretty much i had just ordered a dish of youth with chocolate sauce and had showed my waitress just how i planned on eating said youth. I have never seen someone look so confused in my life and finally, after realizing that that I had asked for youth but still not knowing what the word for ice cream was, i resorted back to opening up the menu and pointing. I don't know how well the story will translate over the blogosphere but it was one of the funnier moments I have had since i have been "in country". And yes, the ice cream was delicious. Hopefully that story buys me a little time while i go out and embarrass myself again for your enjoyment.

As for the day to day details of my life...nothing to new or exciting to report. Last Friday was yet another holiday (victory day) and we were given the day off from classes. I spent my free day with my fam at their "Dacha" which translates in english to a cottage. Their cottage though is only a mile away from the apartment where we live and they use it mostly as a place to keep their chickens, to plant their crops (they also have 3 other large fields) and to just relax. Part of the day was spent getting the ground ready to plant tomatoes and potatoes which is actually pretty gratifying and enjoyable work, and the rest was spent preparing and then consuming a ginormous feast. The highlight of the meal were the kebabs (sashliki) that we prepared and then slow roasted over a giant pit of hot coals...ochin vacousny. The remainder of the day was spent playing chess (im still fairly awful but I won my first 2 games this week and am feeling pretty good about it), tossing around a football and listening to Sweet Dreams Are Made of these by the Eurythmics about 100 times on repeat (my host cousin like the song....a lot). Definitely one of the better days I have had.

Tomorrow I have my site placement interview and will hopefully have a better idea of where I will be spending the next two years afterwards. I will keep you all updated on the developments and by request, will try and give you, my loyal readers, an idea of what life is like in ukraine and what the people here are like. (I just have to be tactful as there may or may not be some Ukrainian readers among you...but there really isn't much negative to say!) Alright...that's all for now. Go Wings

Hello all...

I apologize for not having blogged in the past couple of weeks but my life here has been keeping me rather busy. From Birthday celebrations with my Ukrainian family(they're all impressed that I don't make a face when I am taking down Vodka and Cognac shots) to trying to make sense of one of the 38,000 prefixes and suffixes in the Russian language my time just flies by. I honestly wish that I could sit here and tell you some wonderfully entertaining story about a drunken night out or some funny cross cultural mishap that I stumbled into but I really don't have much to share. I spend the bulk of my time these days with my face in a Russian book, in front of my computer watching Arrested Development or with a fork full of food stuffed into it.

I did get to experience Orthodox Easter here in Ukraine which basically involved me getting woken up at 4am to have a massive feast with my fam, taking a 3 hour nap, having another epic meal, taking another nap and more or less alternating those two activities for the remainder of the day...I'm seriously thinking about converting! (I'm kidding--no emails dripping with guilt neccessary) There are a bunch more Ukrainian holidays coming up this month and I am hopeful that they take the same form as Easter...those of you who know me well know that sleep and food rank pretty highly on my all time top 10.

I also tilled some earth this past weekend with my peoples to prepare one of my family's plots for potato(e) (just in case you're reading this Dan) planting season...good times. It felt good to get dirty and I was rewarded afterwards by roasting kebabs over a pit of hot coals and with a glass of Crimean wine. Also got destroyed by my cousin in Chess...4 moves to check...I went out a bought a board this afternoon. Again...good times.

I am heading off tomorrow to the Oblast (essentially a state) center to catch up with a couple of friends that I haven't seen since we went to our respective sites and am very much looking forward to a days worth of relaxation and laughs. Maybe Chernigiv (where I'm going) will provide me with the anecdotes that I know you all are so craving...lets hope.

Alright, I've got to be going but first wanted to say a word or two about my friend Matt Lash who passed away earlier this week. Matt was one of the best human beings I have ever had the privillege of meeting. He was selfless, brave, fiercely loyal to his friends and had more charisma than any person I have ever met. To have lost him this early in life is beyond unfair and I will miss him every day. I love you Matt...