Remember how I was a little nervous last week about only having 24 hours between observing a class and teaching one? Turns out I was not quite so lucky! I got a call at 9 on Sunday night and found out that the teacher was sick. That meant me and another volunteer got to teach the class instead of observing it! It went pretty well, all things considered. The students seem to like us and we got them to practice some of their conversation skills. Their English is very good which is a good thing because my Ukrainian is terrible! We have to communicate somehow. The students we are working with are future English teachers. I am really happy about that because I think that means the work we do will have a much bigger impact.

Our own language training is going well, but right now we are still learning the basics. Because of budget cuts the amount of time we get for training is being reduced. Originally I thought we would be in training for three months, instead we will have 10 weeks. The next group to come to Ukraine will only have 8 weeks! It's a little intimidating to think that we are reaching the halfway point of our training. I'm not sure about everyone else, but I really have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I can't wait to finish training because, to be honest, it really is not a lot of fun. On the other hand, I'm not confident enough in my language skills to go off on my own. Oh well, we don't depart for our sites until December 7th so there is still some time.

All the volunteers in Chernihev went on a tour of some of the famous sites of the city yesterday. I had been to most of them before, but it was nice because this time we had an English-speaking guide. The other neat thing was there were a few volunteers from group 31 that went too. They have been in Ukraine for over two years and will be finishing their service in a few weeks. Chatting with them was encouraging because they told us that we would pick up a lot of our language skills once we get to our sites and also that life will improve dramatically at that point. Having a little free time and being able to communicate sounds really nice right now. It was also great just seeing how comfortable and well-adjusted they were to life in Ukraine. It was kind of like a window to where we might be in two years.

I have to admit that it was a little bit scary too though. Right now I'm still trying to adjust to living in Ukraine. Group 31 is going back in a few weeks! It was just a reminder that two years isn't such a long time and soon we will be counting how much longer we have left in Ukraine instead of how long we have been here. I'm just pushing that thought to the side right now because there are much more immediate things for me to worry about. But I know that I'll have to deal with it at some point. That's all I've got time for right now, catch up with you next week!