A New End and a New Beginning

Training is coming to an end. I taught my last classes this past week and said goodbye to the teachers and students I have been working with. This next week we have our exams - Language, Safety, Medical, and Policies and Procedures. After that I will be saying goodbye to my host family and friends and packing for my trip. I still don't know where I'm going to, but I will find out soon.

In a lot of ways what I'm going through right now is similar to what I was going through just before coming to Ukraine with the Peace Corps. I had to say my goodbyes, pack for a trip without knowing the destination, and prepare for a completely different life. All of that is just as true now as it was two months ago. My work, living conditions, and town will all probably be very different. The students at the University where I've been teaching speak English very well and even though they make mistakes they can communicate what they want to say and understand me very well. At some technical colleges where I may be teaching next the students may never have taken an English course before. That is a bit intimidating, but I'm sure I'll manage somehow.

Throughout training I have been very spoiled while living with my wonderful host family. Since coming here they have helped me with everything, from getting a haircut to showing me how to go places, to cooking for me etc. Their home is also very nice - computer, internet, hot water, etc. Very modern! My future living conditions will probably not be as nice. Odds are I will be living in the dorms with students. Internet and hot water in my room would both be luxuries. It won't be too bad, but definitely a change from my current situation.

Also, my next city will probably not be as big as the one I'm living in now. Chernigev is a city of about 350,000 people and is one of the larger ones in Ukraine. Most of the volunteers in the University teaching program will be in larger towns than volunteers in other programs, but we may still be in towns as small as 20,000 people. There are advantages to being in a smaller town, but it won't have all the things I've become accustomed to here. But these are things you adjust to.

There are many good things about leaving for my site though. I'm really looking forward to meeting new friends that I will have for the next two years. Besides that, I will finally get to start working in a community. I have been teaching and doing other things in Chernigev for the last two months, but mostly I have been the one learning how to teach, learning the language, learning how to live in Ukraine, etc. At site I will really be able to contribute which is the reason I joined Peace Corps in the first place.

It can be frusting to know that you've been in Ukraine with the Peace Corps for two months and really haven't done much yet. Really we've done a lot, we hardly even get any time to ourselves, but none of us came to Ukraine for the training. We are here for what comes next. It seems like training has been going on forever and we all thought it would never end, but now it is only a week away. Very exciting! I really can't wait to get to my new home. I'll post once more before I leave Chernigev, but after that the next time you will hear from me I will be at my new site!

PS

I have skype working now on my computer so if you'd like to chat with me send me an e-mail and we can set up a time. You can download skype for free at www.skype.com, all you need is a microphone and a webcam is a plus too.

I apologize for the lack of updates recently. Training has really been keeping us busy. The good news is we are starting to near the end of it, less than 4 weeks to go. When we came here, two months seemed like forever. The days were going in slow motion, I remember being here for a week and how it seemed like a month. Now it seems to be zipping by and in a few short weeks we will be taking our final training exams. If all goes well we will be sworn in as volunteers and be given our site assignments on December 7th. The day after that it’s off to site and the safety net we had during training will mostly disappear. It’s a little scary to think of being on my own with my very limited language ability, but it will force me to rely on my Ukrainian more which will encourage me to develop my language skills. Maybe it’s kind of like “encouraging” someone to learn how to swim by throwing them into a lake, but if it works it will all be worth it.

This last Sunday my cluster took a trip to Kiev. It’s only about two and a half hours from Chernigev by Mashrutka (sort of like a bus). We stayed for the day and saw some of the sites and also the Peace Corps office. That was all fun, but my main goal for the trip was to find a place in Kiev that had decent pizza. I was okay giving it up when I came here, but I’m starting to get some serious cravings. Anyway, I thought there might be a Sbarro or something like that somewhere in Kiev and I was going to find it. I walked some of the main streets and had no luck whatsoever. Then I found an underground shopping mall which got my hopes up. It was the closest thing to an American shopping mall that I have seen since coming to Ukraine and EVERY shopping mall in America has a pizza place. So I find the food court and to my utter disbelief there is a Papa John’s there. Except…wait a minute…something isn’t quite right. The first thing I notice is that Papa John is spelled with Cyrillic letters. Kind of strange, but we are in Ukraine, right? Then I notice a picture of a 60 year old black guy, who is supposed to be Papa John, smiling at me. This guy was clearly NOT Papa John. It was more than that, he was the anti-Papa John, the complete inverse. I still had one last shred of hope, but no, the pizza was definitely Ukrainian. I was telling this story to one of the Ukrainian language instructors over lunch yesterday and she asked me “How is Ukrainian pizza different from American pizza?” I honestly didn’t even know where to begin. First, there are the many things that go on Ukrainian pizzas that do NOT go on American pizzas. I’m talking about mayonnaise, hard-boiled eggs, ketchup, barbecue sauce, and so on. Then there are the things on American pizzas that I haven’t seen yet in Ukraine. To start, I don’t think mozzarella cheese exists in this country. I also haven’t found anything resembling tomato sauce like we have at home. And of course the crust is completely different. Really, there is very little about Ukrainian pizza that is anything like American pizza at all. Maybe from a hundred yards away they might look similar if you were completely blind. Okay, I got myself off on a tirade. I’ll try to let this go, I promise, but it is going to be tough.

Anyway, the rest of Kiev was great. I saw a few of the major churches which were spectacular. There was also a political rally going on. I didn’t know it was a political rally at first, it really just seemed like a celebration. There was some cultural entertainment like singing, dancing, traditional costumes, horses, etc. It took me a while to even figure out what it was. As Peace Corps volunteers we are supposed to steer clear of events like that. We are representatives of the US government and so we have explicit instructions to keep away from anything that is the least bit political. Still, I’m glad I stumbled on it and as far as I know there are no pictures of me waving one of those banners (our country director would have a seizure).

The only sad thing, besides the pizza was we had so little time to spend there. The good news is we will be returning to Kiev for our swearing in. That is going to be a huge party, let me tell you. I am sure that they will have lots meetings and events scheduled for us, but I still think the whole thing is going to be pretty wild. At that point we will have been in Ukraine for over two months and we have had very limited contact with each other. We talk to each other with the internet and cell phones, but many volunteers haven’t seen more than five Americans outside their cluster since they’ve been here. We all hung out and spent time together in Philadelphia and during our first few days in Ukraine and, for the most part, haven’t seen each other since. It is going to be a huge reunion, but it will be much more than that. Training is really brutal and this is the event that represents us moving past training and into our new roles as volunteers. During training we go from class to class, we teach, we work on our community project, we have special events to go to, and the whole time we are constantly being observed. By our language instructors, our technical trainers, our Ukrainian teachers at the University, more Peace Corps staff that comes down from Kiev, our host families who love us so much that they call us to ask where we are if we are not home by 5, etc. When we are sworn in as volunteers we are basically getting our freedom back. It’s like leaving kindergarten and going straight back to being adults again. So add to the reunion and the graduation the fact that we will finally get to find out where we will be living for the next two years and you’ve got quite a mix. It’s going to be one hell of a party!

Unfortunately that’s all I’ve got for now. We keep being told by current volunteers that we will have lots more free time when we get to site so hopefully I will be able to do a better job of updating the blog. In the mean time I am re-committing myself to updating it at least once a week. Bye for now!