http://khachapurinights.wordpress.com/

In an effort to get around PC Ukraine's blog rules, we are moving to the above address. Password is on my facebook page, or you can send me a friendly email.

Password-protecting this blog is proving trickier than anticipated. Until I figure out how best to deal with PC Ukraine's blog rules, this is going to be a bit skimpy. In the meantime, Kiev pictures!

Here are some pictures for my favorite people:

It looks like I might have to password protect this blog. If that happens, the password will be on facebook. If you would like a mailing address or phone number, drop me a line.

Chernigiv is my training city, located in Northern Ukraine in comfortable proximity to Belarus and Pripyat', a town that became briefly famous in the late 80s for hosting the workers of the mighty Chernobyl nuclear plant. Chernigiv is totally sweet, vying with London, Berlin and Tbilisi for my world-city affection.

I am staying with a new host family, who I met two days ago; I have a host father and mother and a 13-year-old host brother, and they are wonderful human beings.

My camera currently lacks batteries, I shall acquire some and then post my pictures from Armenia and begin documenting Ukraine. After a week of ceaseless rain in Kostopil', Ukraine is conspiring to present me with absurdly beautiful weather, and the leaves are just starting to change. I am in what may be at present the smiliest city in Eastern Europe, and I am determined to document this trend while it lasts.

I like Ukraine; I feel increasingly comfortable with this conclusion.

I am spending this week with a volunteer in Kostopil', a mid-sized town in Western Ukraine. Unlike in Georgia, pretty near all PC Ukraine volunteers get their own apartments, so I am living in a guest bedroom and eating a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches and potatoes. It is pretty rad, actually. He's about to close service, having served his two years, so I am plying him for information and observing him as he doles out precious English-language lessons to Ukrainian youths. This week is probably at least as useful as training will be.

Ukrainians are less immediately sociable than Georgians are, but once you get past the public distance they seem very warm and hospitable. I like the Ukrainian food I've had so far, although things like salo and kholodets promise future hilarity. It's also pretty cold already, so I may have a pretty rough winter ahead. I am kind of looking forward to this in a weird way, as I have always wanted to have a snowball fight and have never had the opportunity. Clearly, this is the place for me.

I am cooking up big plans. I think this may be a really awesome place to develop my frontier housewife skills; apparently some volunteers get really into canning in the summer to have valuable tomatoes and fruit preserves for the winter. I'm a little late for that this year, but I can get things together to hit the ground running when strawberry season hits next Spring. I am also poring over the volunteer cookbook PC Ukraine hands out; there is a lot of tasty potential.

I am still working on the logistics of moving packages from the States to Ukraine, and still heartily encourage the idea (who has two thumbs and a birthday in mid-November? This guy!) I will put up hoped-for items and lovingly detailed shipping instructions ASAP.

Uneventful flight, night in the lovely hotel Bratislva, sitting now in Ukraine's Peace Corps lounge. I like Kyiv so far. I am eating some tasty borscht and mushroom potato cakes, which is more delicious than it sounds. I am going to live with a current volunteer for a week in the near future, and then I am going to hang out with prospective Ukrainian language teachers as they get trained up for PST. Things are good, research continues.

24 Hours to Ukraine, friends and comrades. This should be weird.

The pieces continue to fall into place. I believe all I am waiting on now is a visa; once the hardworking employees of Yerevan's Ukrainian embassy send me said document, I should be on a short flight to the Northwest.

I still know little to nothing about what exactly I'm going to do in Ukraine, but here is the situation as I understand it:

I am probably either going to hang out in Kiev or job-shadow current volunteers for the rest of September, after which Ukraine's Pre-Service Training (PST) starts. During the next three months, I am going to live in a Ukrainian village with a couple of other trainees, brush up on my Russian, and try to avoid death via wolves or ice. I removed the Georgia beard upon our evacuation from that green and pleasant land in solidarity, a new Ukraine beard should help me weather the harsh winter. Come January, I will swear-in as an English Teaching volunteer for PC Ukraine, and go to work.

I have heard welcome offers to send me wonderful things from America, and these offers I heartily encourage. There appears to be a minor rub in that as far as I can tell, Peace Corps Ukraine does not accept packages for trainees during PST. I'm sure that there is some way to transmit peanut butter and scarves between America and Ukraine, however, and I will commence research on the subject upon my arrival. This information, along most likely with a wistful list of desired items, should appear here in the coming month or so.

My bag has arrived from Georgia, so I once more have a camera and an external hard drive. I will put up pictures of our Armenian town in the coming days. Unfortunately, I do not have a lot of good pictures of Georgia, as I foolishly assumed I would have two years to accumulate them. I will try to be more diligent in documenting Ukraine.

It appears that I will not be spending any time in the States this year after all. I applied for and received a transfer to Peace Corps Ukraine, which has graciously spread its arms to refugees from Peace Corps Georgia. The post confirmed the availability of my spot today, and I accepted it, so unless I am deeply mistaken this should be pretty set in stone. Ukraine starts Pre-Service Training at the end of September, so I think what will happen is that I will live in an Armenian hotel for a month, and hopefully acquire some decent cold-weather clothes, before being shipped off to Kiev.

I'm pretty happy about this. I am philosophical about the prospect of an additional three months of training, as it will be in a language I already speak and will give me many opportunities to learn how to properly prepare borscht. I am sad to leave Georgia behind, but I am maintaining contacts with PC Georgia staff and fully intend to come back for a visit when things stabilize. I have nothing but high opinions of PC Georgia's staff, who have done and continue to do an exemplary job of taking care of us during a difficult time for their country. I am grateful to PC Ukraine for giving me an opportunity to complete my PC service, and am looking forward to the next two years.

Khachapuri nights is now a fairly absurd name for this blog, but I like it enough to keep it. Perhaps I can introduce this delicious foodstuff to my new friends in the North.

An update for you on my status: I am still living out of a plastic bazaar bag in an Armenian hotel, but things are going okay. I think I can pretty much confirm at this point that I will not be returning to Georgia as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and it looks like there are a couple of options opening up for me: Option 1: Peace Corps buys me a ticket home and I scramble furiously for employment. Option 2: Peace Corps gives me the cash equivalent of a ticket home and turns me loose on the unsuspecting citizens of Armenia. Option 3 (sill somewhat theoretical): Peace Corps finds me a spot with another country and sends me there in time to start Pre-Service Training again, I serve hopefully for two years. God willing, at some point my belongings in Georgia are gathered and sent to my new site. Considering my current unemployability and the fact that I planned to be out of the states until 2010, option three is seductive. I am not going to post the names of the posts I am looking at, so as not to jinx things, but if this materializes I will be pretty delighted. Further updates to follow. I am also working on getting my notes about our evacuation from Georgia into some kind of coherent narrative. This may have to go through some Peace Corps censorship before it can be shared with the world, but I would like to tell the story in some fashion. It looks like at the moment I have nothing but time. Stay tuned.

Bad news, friends and colleagues. As a glance at the BBC or CNN will hopefully communicate, Georgia is having a rough couple of weeks. This is a Peace Corps blog, so I can't get political here, but I'd be happy to share my opinions of the situation with anyone who knows me.

We have been relocated, and I am fine. All the Georgia volunteers are accounted for, and most of us are in a hotel in Armenia. We are waiting on official word for Washington to find out our status and where we are headed next. I probably shouldn't post rumors or speculation here, so I will let the internet know when I know what the deal is.

Again, if anyone out there is still worrying about me, please don't. I am totally fine and safe and in a robust state of mental health. If you're going to worry about anyone, worry about the several million people now located some distance to my north.

This blog, it proves, should have been more properly called Dolma Nights. I am bound for the Azeri town of Muganlo, population 5000 and located some 20 km from Tbilisi. I spent last weekend visiting, and things look good. The language is once again baffling, but Azeri food is delicious and my host family are very nice. I am going to live with the Izraev family, an Azeri couple of around 30, the husband's father and their two sons, Aikhan (10) and Irza (young). We have a nice garden and all the Turkish satellite channels I could ever desire. I will be teaching English to four forms of Azeri kids in a very soviet school.

My computer, unfortunately, is giving me some guff, so I cannot yet share pictures of Muganlo or the substantial progress my beard has made. In other bad beard news, Muganlo is entirely too hot for facial hair this time of year, so I think it will have to vanish at the end of training. Do not fear, however, it does eventually get cold in Kvemo Kartli, and Stanislav will rise once more from the ashes.

The Azeri language is currently crushing my brain after six weeks of nearly unadulterated Georgian, but I expect things to get easier. Aikhan is very keen on teaching me the names for things like chickens and dogs, and has an uncanny patience for going through my language textbook and fixing my terrible Azeri grammar.

It appears that our internet cafe patron is becoming restless, so I must away. Pictures and other wonderful surprises will appear in the coming months.

From left to right: Keti, Tsotne, Natia, Beka, Nanuli. Not pictured: Gia (host father), and Vakhtang (host grandfather)

God promises never to flood Kvenatkotsa again.

Beard, week one.

More to come, my friends and comrades.

Here is an attempt at some pictures:

Questionable internet access means that this will be a short one. I have arrived at my training site, a lovely village called Kvenatkotsa. I am living with a totally rad seven-member family which is feeding me vast amounts of delicious foods. My next internet moment will likely be in two weeks, at which time, with the will of heaven, I will be able to put up some pictures. Until then I will continue attempting to comprehend the Georgian language (me mk'avs didi ojakhi!), watching hideously depressing peace corps training videos, and consuming enough wonderful wine to float a small boat.

So I made it to Tbilisi, met the staff, started language lessons, etc. All of this news, however, is incidental to the fact that it appears I am going to end up in either the Azeri or Armenian region. Why is this important? For the following reason, posed here as a rhetorical question:

Do you realize the kind of beard I could grow in a Muslim or Armenian community?

These people are the Celtics and Lakers of the beard-growing world. Things are looking up.

The first leg of the trip has begun, I am spending three days in Philadelphia for Staging. It is so far a mix of very serious safety seminars and foolish amounts of time spent in local taverns, something I can only hope continues for the remainder of my service. I am making many friends and remembering up to half of their names. I shared my beard ambitions with my peers as we discussed our 'anxieties and aspirations,' and received warm encouragement. Onward and upward.

I recently received my invitation from the Peace Corps to serve as a volunteer in Georgia from June 2008 to August 2010. It's going to be sweet, and I am going to write about it here.

Georgia is here:

I will be leaving around mid-June, and my primary assignment will be teaching English. I don't know what internet access will be like, but I will try to keep this updated.