Sorry for the black out folks but I have been assigned to PST (pre-service Training) in a tiny town in Central Ukraine that has no internet so you will be getting the last three weeks of my blog in one glorious lump. I have had some emotional ups and downs and it is probably better that I have had time to reflect (and edit!) my blog material any way. This will probably be standard procedure for the next three months so don’t be alarmed it if appears that I have fallen off of the face of the earth. I’m still here they just don’t have internet accesses. I at least hope to have a cell phone by the 7th or so, so family and friends can reach me. I miss you guys, don’t think I don’t love you because I haven’t called!

March 27-28th - So I made it to Kyiv…Finally. It has taken us more the 5 extra hours to arrive at staging. Both of our flights were late and when we finally arrived at the airport in Kyiv over 30 of the volunteers, myself included, were missing one or more of our pieces of luggage. Apparently, our plane was too heavy and they left a large portion of our luggage in Frankfurt, those efficient Germans. We watched them load our plane with over 20 dogs but I guess all of our worldly belongings weren’t as important at Fido. I kind of agree but there were some volunteers who were a little alarmed. And the worst part was that once we made it to Kyiv the Lufthansa folks made us fill out a bunch of forms letting them know that they had lost our luggage BUT we had to wait in line for, not one, not two, but THREE hours before we could submit said forms. We all sat clustered in line leaning drunkenly against each other and finally gave up and we sat of the floor. Then we realized with revulsion that we were stuck to the floor and decided to stay there until the third world war because that the rate the line was moving we were going to be there until the U.S. Marine Corps came to get us out. Apparently everyone of us senseless Americans do not know how to properly fill out a customs form, because it is oh so self explanatory. As each person came up to them they would glance at our form and then, with a grand flourish, tear the labors of the last half hour, in half and make us fill it out again as they watched. Of course it would have been too easy for them to explain the form to all of us at once and we could make corrections but maybe the Germans aren’t that efficient after all. When I finally made it to staging, 5 hours late, having been up for 20 hours, and still missing a piece of luggage they let us know what language we would be learning. When I discovered I was learning Ukrainian I broke down and cried I was so disappointed (I was selfishly hoping for Russian). I am not normally a super emotional person but today has been pretty rough.

March 31st - I have made it through staging and am on my way to my host site. I will spend three months at this site living with a Ukrainian family and taking language and cultural classes. The town I am in is very small, with one school, a population of 2100 people and no internet ( I admit it, I am addicted to the internet, but the first step is admitting you have a problem. I had not expected to be so isolated from my family). My host family is very nice. There is a mother Nina(ніна), father Yura (юрій), and two sisters, Kristina (крістіиа) and Tamila (таміла). (you have no idea how long it just took me to write those in the Cyrillic alphabet, it’s gunna be a long two years!) Kristina speaks some French and Tamila knows some English so I am not totally lost but there is definitely a lot of charades going on. My host parents think I am far too skinny, they demonstrated this by pointing at me and pointing at a match and saying “Ni, Ni pohano” (ні ні погано) this means “no, no bad!” And at every point I am told to “Yeasty” (їсти) meaning eat! My new favorite and most necessary Ukrainian phrase is “Ni halodna” or Not hungry!

April 2nd – So the first day of classes is a little daunting. There was four hours of language class and one hour of technical training (meaning how to teach). We also walked around the town, it took an impressive 30 minutes, and made a map with the names of places on it. During hours 3-4 of the language lessons I just sat in the corner and drooled as my brain shut down to protect itself from the onslaught. I came home and took a nap, woke up, and realized that I had forgotten everything I had learned that day. I am foolishly hoping it will come back by tomorrow. We are expected to create a community development project in this town (something we can do to improve the town, so if you have any ideas, let me know) and I should be teaching classes in Ukrainian by week four. Am I a little doubtful that this will ever happen? Maybe, but I have two weeks left to find out and you never know, I certainly learned the Ukrainian word for bathroom real quick so maybe the pressure will be good for me.

I will be honest and admit that I am thinking about coming home. Ukraine is not what I expected. It is beautiful, and rough, and the people are wonderfully strange(in a good way). But it is very, very foreign. It is most certainly not home, and I really don’t know if I could live away from my family for 27 months. I am going to give it a few more weeks and we shall see.

April 6, 2007

I have had a very busy last few days. We are having language classes everyday for 4-5 hours. On top of that we have made a trip to the school in our town and the mayors office. We were able to have a meeting and visit with the school principal, vice principal and vice-vice principal and the mayor. That is one of the nice things about a community this small. Everyone knows everyone else and they are willing to bend over backwards for us. One of our little field trips today involved going into a store and asking how much milk, bread, butter, salt, and chocolate were. This may seem like a simple task to you but please remember that we had to ask this in Ukrainian and I have been studying the language for 5 whole days. The store keeper was super nice and patiently answered all of our questions, haltingly asked in broken Ukrainian. It still took us about 20 minutes and I think more this one Ukrainian got a laugh out of us trying to read the labels on products trying to figure out what was butter etc…Milk in Ukraine comes in a bag not a bottle so it is harder to locate things then you would think.

I did make my first language faux pas. We had a “parents night out” where all of the volunteers and their host families get together and have a little party. The bar provided the liquor and I learned several new things like
1. Men always pour the drinks. My host dad Yura came and since he was one of the few males he kept getting up to pour liquor for women at the other end of the table. He seemed to love the attention but it was hard having to ask the nearest male to pour me a soda.
2. If a bottle is empty it gets put on the floor. An empty bottle on a table is apparently bad luck.
3. My host Mom brought a whole bag of food. She produced the entire meal, except the salad, out of this little bag at her feet. It was like sitting next to Santa Claus. They even borrowed a cutting board and knife from the bar to cut sausage and cheese. Apparently this is often done to keep the costs of eating out down and isn’t that unusual.
4. When the music starts playing, everyone dances. Yes, EVERYONE. I was out there jamming with my and the other volunteers host parents. And some of the parents, especially the ones liberally doused in Vodka, really enjoyed the dancing. My host mom can really cut a rug. Sarah, one of my fellow volunteers said to me this was one of the weirdest parties she has ever been to but she was having a great time. I agreed in both cases.

Now here is where my little faux pas happened. In my defense, the Ukrainian word for hot is hotsuvate (Haatsyouvatte). I was hot from dancing and went to sit down, announcing proudly in what I thought was perfect Ukrainian, “Ya hotsuvate” or what I thought met “I’m hot”. Now, it does mean “I’m hot”, but in an entirely different way. As in,“ I’m a total hottie…” My host dad laughed so hard he had to sit down. Oops.

We have lost our first Cluster mate (cluster is the group of people you assigned to the same town with, there are/were five people in my cluster, Adam, Sarah, Jami, Jake and myself). Adam decided that the Peace Corps wasn’t working for him and he has decided to go home. He apparently has a lady friend he is missing quite a lot. I understand where he is coming from. I hope that his friends and family understand that it is harder to do this then most people realize and that there is no shame is deciding that it is not the right choice for you. I wish him the best of luck, I hope his is successful in whatever he decides to do. I imagine that it is almost harder to leave then it is to stay. The Peace Corps is quick and he was picked up this afternoon. The driver also told us that he is the third volunteer to leave from our original 73.

April 8, 2007 Eastern Orthodox Easter

I woke up at 2:30 am this morning to attend an Easter service with my host mom and sister. We bundled up in our warmest cloths and covered our heads with scarves. All done in silence so as to not wake my host father. My host mom brought out two baskets filled with dyed eggs, salt, and homemade bread. These are “real” Easter baskets. At 15 till 3 we headed to the church. As we got to the street I could see other women and men, bundled against the cold and carrying their baskets, trudging towards the tolling church bells. It was still dark and you could hear the mummer of voices as people greeted each other with “Cristos vos Creste” and replied “Voyesta nos vos creste”. There are not street lights in our town and people seemed to move like cats in the dark. We reached the church in our tiny little town, it is built to hold maybe 70 people if they all stand. There were at least three hundred people there. They had all formed a circle facing in, surrounding the little blue structure which was identifiable as a church only by the little white crosses painted by the door.. We placed out baskets in the circle and headed into the church. There was much crossing oneself in the orthodox fashion, meaning top, bottom, right, then left. The choir was singing something beautiful if a little out of key and the priest in his brilliant red and white would punctuate the singing with something chanted in Ukrainian to which all of the parishners would reply in unison or cross themselves. We only stayed in the church for a few minutes and then headed back outside so others could come in. As we took our place in the circle you could hear people greeting each other, checking the contents of each others baskets and in general waiting for something. Almost half of the population of the town was at the church in the middle of the night, waiting. A small boy darted out of the church and disappeared into the crowd and then the bells began to ring. They were so close you could feel them in your bones. The entire circle crossed themselves in unison and then lit candles to place into their Easter baskets. I couldn’t tell but I think they were symbolic offerings of some kind? For fifteen more minutes we waited in silence and then the bells rang again and the priest came out of the church. With a line of people following him with fresh loaves of bread and the little boy carrying a picture of Jesus the priest walked around the entire church blessing everyone with holy water. Little boys were recruited to run in and fill up the bucket because it kept getting empty. We weren’t sprinkled with holy water, we were doused. It was so cold that the water on my glasses began to frost up but people turned their faces to the priest to be blesses and then silently drifted off with their baskets to share their blessed food with their families. We returned home and went back to bed, just like the whole thing had been a dream.

April 13, 2007

Allow me to try and explain the Ukrainian bus system to you. In Ukraine there are busses that travel between towns. They are not very frequent because busses are in short supply and many are in various states of disrepair. All of them play loud music and are driven by people named Sergi. At least all of the ones I have been on. The busses are very popular because many people in Ukraine do not have a car and even if they did, gas is very expensive so it is cheaper to ride. To ride in a Ukrainian bus you need to have a linebackers training, a surfers balance, and no need for personal space. Picture this, you see the bus which is either 5 minutes early of half an hour late (I have never experienced a bus that has been on time but I have only been here for 3 weeks so it could happen). What was a crowd of 5 people has suddenly swelled to 30 people and all of them must get on that bus. The bus comes and it is full, but that does not matter, the driver stops anyway and the carnage commences. You use your linebacker training to dodge around every slower or less agile person to get a place near the front of the group, there are no lines in war! Next your elbows come in to play, and you push your way to the front of the group, trampling anyone foolish enough to get in your way and throwing elbows in all directions. You of course try and soften any blows you aim at the elderly or children because that would just be rude. You are finally stopped by a babuca (grandmother) who is clutching her purse like a weapon and has unconscious would be-riders scattered around her. She can go first of course because you respect your elders and you know she has a brick in her purse and she isn’t afraid to use it. Grandma totters on the bus and you scurry on behind her. You only make it to the stairs and your rear end is still sticking out of the bus door. That does not matter because someone you have never met before grabs your butt and pushes it in for you and an amazing 12 other people squish themselves on the bus. The bus door closes and pinches your tush, or maybe it was the person next to you. By next to you, I mean you are packed to tightly that you can tell who is Jewish and who is not. You yelp at the pinch and the bus driver, Sergi, winks at you and spits out of his window. The bus begins to move and you commence surfing. Surfing is necessary because the roads in Ukraine are not the best. If a vehicle is coming from the other direction they play chicken with the bus until one of them flinches. The loser must swerve off of the road because it is not wide enough for two vehicles. The result is some severe swerving and a little bus offroading. This can be fun if you close your eyes and imagine you are on a rollercoaster or Disney ride, anywhere but on a bus. At each stop the driver opens the door again in the vain hope that some one will get off, no one does(they couldn’t even if they wanted to) and miraculously, more people get on. At this point you are twisted into the less know yoga pose known as, iamtryingtobreathandgetawayfromthecreepyguy/girlnexttome.
The bus begins to reach destinations and people who have been trapped in the crowd on the bus since Stalin’s time try in vain to get of. A lucky few do. We reach the final stop and the bus driver gets out of the bus, opens the door, and begins to pry people out of the bus like sardines from a can. As the crowd thins you breath a sigh of relief, or gasp for air, depending on your position. You also get to realize whose hand that was…You get off of the bus and commence with your day. I rode the bus twice today and I fell like I should get a medal. Our ride home was so crowded that our teacher Natasha got up close and personal with a cute man she had never met before, Jami had to hug Jacob and accidentally groped him when she tried to catch her falling purse, Sara had to stand on one foot like a flamingo for a good portion of the 40 min. trip because there were so many other feet there was not place to put hers down and I got to get so close to a support pole I could imagine what some strippers felt like. We had a pretty good laugh about it.

April 19, 2007

Since my town is so small there is no barber or salon to speak of. Because of this, many of the town members come to my host dad to get their hair cut. Yesterday, this happened for the first time since I have been here. My host dad did two, very military like, haircuts for my host moms cousin and nephew. He then gave my host mom a trim. Then he comes up to me and say (I don’t really know what he said but I think it was something like this), “do you want me to take a little off the top, the military look is really in this year?” I politely declined and began to back slowly towards my room. Holding his WWII era hair clippers he followed me and must have said something like this, “it won’t hurt, you will look just like Demi Moore in GI Jane!”. At this I squealed like a little girl and began running around the apartment hiding behind various members of my host family. I was finally able to hold him off by threatening to paint him with my host sisters’ hot pink nail polish. It was a pretty funny evening.

Top 5 things I have learned so far about Ukraine.

In Ukraine it is considered bad luck to cross a persons path with an empty bucket. I have no idea why
In Ukraine it is unlucky to whistle indoors or outdoors, it invites bad luck. However, your host family really doesn’t mind it you sing “Rogers and Hammerstein” at the top of your lungs. You are American, they expect you to be a little weird.
When hand washing clothes it is vital to make sure you rinse out the soap thoroughly even though the water is ice cold. Clothes that are hung out to dry with detergent in them turn funny colors and take on new and interesting shapes more resembling modern art then your favorite sweater.
If you go jogging in Ukraine people will look to see what you are running from, not seeing anything they will check to see if you are on fire. Dogs in Ukraine do not understand joggers, what they do understand it that anything that is running should be chased. There are a lot of dogs in Ukraine.
There is more then one way to cook a potato, in fact there are hundreds of way to cook them and I am about halfway through trying all of them.
Nothing tops off a meal of Borsht like a good old American Snickers Bar.
If you thought a Latin Catholic mass was hard to follow, try a Latin Mass where the translations are in Ukrainian.
Ukrainian women do things in high heels that make tight rope artists look like total wusses.
Ukranian mothers will feed you, it doesn’t have to be your mother. If you are skinny and American they think you are starving and will feed you whether you want to eat or not.
The cats in Ukraine are super cute and fuzzy but they are not really domesticated. They will chase you just like the dogs do. But, unlike the dogs, they know what to do with you if they catch you so you should run really really fast or prepare to be shredded.

April 21, 2007

I taught my first class in Ukrainian yesterday. To say that it was not stellar is probably an understatement. I got to the front of the class and all of the words that I had painstakingly looked up and practiced flew out of my head. I was teaching healthy Lifestyles and I forgot the word for lifestyles. Not my most shining moment. Then I attempted to write it on the board and the chalkboards on Ukraine are ridiculous! I would have needed a jackhammer to leave a mark on this thing, chalk just wasn’t cutting it. I am trying to dwell on the fact that I have only been in Ukraine for 4 weeks and have only been learning Ukrainian for 3 so hopefully the teachers and students will give me some leeway. The Ukrainian students were very nice and actually seemed to enjoy correcting our pronunciation so it wasn’t all bad. I just have no idea how I am supposed to teach dental hygiene next week with my limited language skills. There are going to be some interesting charades going on. How does one act out “gingivitis”?

On a side note. I was “talking” with my host dad yesterday and, in order to ask a question involving what kind of animal I was currently eating, I ended up running around the kitchen with my index fingers pointing up from my ears like horns and saying moo. This lead to my host dad and I swapping the Ukrainian/English work for all of the common barnyard animals. We commenced with lots of barnyard noises and animal impressions. Apparently, I do a great chicken impression and my host dad does a killer duck quack. We both ended up in giggles at the kitchen table. While I don’t really remember any of the names I learned it was quite a fun time.