Language Refresher

At the end of January Heather and I went to Western Ukraine for a language refresher. We stayed at a sanitarium with many other Peace Corps volunteers and had language classes with Peace Corps teachers. Unfortunately, there's not much sun this time of year but the area was very beautiful. We went for a little hike and took some pictures.


I haven't seen so many pine trees since I came to Ukraine. The sanitarium was in the middle of a forest which gave it a really nice atmosphere.

Temperatures around this time were -20 degrees Celsius and there was plenty of snow.






There is a lake nearby, but it was completely frozen over.


Heather really wanted to stand on the frozen lake. I was scared.




We made a new friend just outside the building where we were staying. We had fun, but I was happy to leave the north and get back to my warm apartment.

Christmas!

Christmas is on January 7th in Ukraine, but we still like to celebrate Christmas on December 25th. For Christmas we had some of our friends over. Even though most people still had classes they were able to get a day off to come down.


Here Heather and Martin are preparing some Christmas food in my very small kitchen (by American standards). Notice the hot sauce on the table. Thanks to all of my family for contributing some of those American foods that we miss so much. It's a real treat to have those things on holidays or just to bring a little excitement to a dreary day.



Here Martin sports his home made batman christmas hat and his frosty tie. I makes me think back to packing for Ukraine. Martin had a very different idea from the rest of us as to what he should bring.

Here is our Chuck eyeing our Christmas feast. Everyone worked real hard to make something special and we had a fantastic meal. The only rule we had for people coming was that they had to bring a dish as well as their own fork and plate. I don't think any volunteer in Ukraine has enough dishes by themself to host a party, but we all chip in to make a great party. It's idiosyncracies like this that make life in Ukraine interesting. We don't mind, it's just a little different from the way we usually do things back home.

This is our Christmas tree! We bought it downtown and had quite a time getting it home on the marshrutka (small bus), but nothing was going to deter our Christmas spirit. We didn't have any ornaments, so we decorated it with things from around the house. We also made popcorn and strung it. It may not be the prettiest tree I've ever had and it didn't have the most expensive ornaments, but we worked hard for it and it really made our Christmas special. We were so grateful to have it. This picture is credited to Heather.

My landlady has many of her things in the apartment and one of those things are these antlers. It has become a tradition that we always put the punch in antlers, like so. Why not?

Heather and I wish you Happy Holidays!

Our travels

I've added a little map at the bottom of Heather and my past and future travels. Check it out!

Summer Camp!

Heather and I spent three weeks at a summer camp in western Ukraine in August. Below are some pictures from the camp.

Here are some of the kids playing ping pong. I played a few games and the kids were very impressed by my mad ping pong skills!


This is how I spent most of my time at the camp. The kids didn't spend nearly as much time outdoors as kids do at camps in America. Mostly, we just hung out and played cards.

I really tried hard to convince this guy that vacuuming out the computer was not a good idea. For some reason, he didn't believe me.

Heather wrote our group's motto. Our group was different from the rest of the kids at the camp because they had English language classes (which is why Heather and I were there). It was really fun because they would recite this several times a day. Sometimes Heather and I would be in a different part of the camp, but we could still hear our kids yell out the last line, "Don't mess with Texas!"

Ukrainians usually play only one card game, called Durak (fool). We taught the kids a few other games and brought along these uno cards which some of the kids really loved.



Heather brought her guitar for the camp. One of our kids, Mischa, was a very talented guitar player. For one of the concerts he played a Metallica song which he practiced religiously. In my opinion it was the best performance of the camp.

This little belly dancer was pretty good too!

Costumes for another concert. I'm still not exactly sure what the theme was, but these girls were having fun!

This has to be the cutest little boy I've ever seen. He was the youngest in our group and spoke almost no English. I got to practice my Ukrainian with him because he loved hanging out with me and playing cards.

This is some art from the auditorium. Mickey looks very relaxed.

I really enjoyed playing sports with the kids. I could probably count on one hand the total number of times we played sports like this outside, but when we did it I had a blast!


There were two little puppies at the camp. They got so much attention from all the kids that they weren't even that interested in getting more.

That didn't stop me from playing with them though!

We went on an excursion to Chernivtsi, this is a policeman in the city.


On some of the days there were themes at the camp. On this day the theme was Native Americans. Unfortunately, it was obvious that no one at the camp had much idea what a Native American is and they didn't ask us either. They all ran around dressed as Pacific Islanders.

Shrunken head on a stick.


This is one of our language classes. Unfortunately, there wasn't that much for Heather and I to do. There were Ukrainian college students who were in charge during the classes. Heather and I hoped to teach the classes ourselves, but it didn't work out that way. Instead the kids spent most of their time doing word searches.

This is our friend Brandon who lived near the camp. He came to visit and hang out one day. We were really happy to have him visit after two weeks of playing cards.

This is the building where the kids and us stayed.

They came around to film the English lessons one day for advertising purposes. This was the only day that Heather and I were asked to teach the classes. We would have been happy to teach them throughout the camp, but only teaching for the camera made us feel kind of exploited. We refused.

These are some of the older kids. Although things weren't perfect at the camp, some of the kids were pretty cool and I really enjoyed hanging out with them.


Heather in Chernivtsi!



All pictures in this post are by Heather.