I’ve been in America for just a little over a month now, and it’s time for me to officially wrap up this blog. Eventually, I hope to take it off-line, but in the meantime I’m trying to figure out the most efficient way to put it in print. I imagine copying and pasting each of [...]
Please login first to post comments.
I am covered in dust. It is in my nose, in my mouth, floating on my hair. It sits on my keyboard and the screen of my netbook. It has stained my black pants and shirt into faded versions of their formal black selves and attached itself to the bottoms of my socks, despite the slippers I [...]
The short answer: Bribery. Exactly 2 years ago, I made a trip to the Chernigiv post office to mail Christmas presents to my family. Three hours later, I vowed I would never again step foot into a Ukrainian post office with more than a one-page letter. And I stuck to that vow, though not without [...]
Let the countdown begin (or continue, to be completely honest). I COS on November 17. My last day teaching is November 14. Today is November 3. O oo ooo my goodness, I’m almost done. Things are starting to get surreal, and even more so now that my last big school event has passed. A few [...]
Sometimes I latch on to an idea and can’t let it go until I let it out. Maybe it’d be better if I kept this opinion to myself, (it usually is) as posting it here won’t change anything, but putting my thoughts into words usually makes things clearer to me. Also, there’s something about having [...]
Ok, here’s me pulling myself out of self-pity—a quote from Tina Fey’s Bossypants that I finished reading last night: “One time my mom babysat a set of the Italian Rum Cake Kids while their parents went to a wedding reception. This was the first time this nice couple had gone out alone since their children [...]
On September 27 I will celebrate my 2 year anniversary in Ukraine. I will also be arriving to Kiev approximately 40 minutes after I am scheduled to take the GRE. Coincidence? You’d think that I would have learned how to avoid these kinds of situations by now, 2 years in, but no. This anniversary will [...]
As I cleaned my apartment this afternoon, spawning the peevish, apartment hating post below, I listened to a NPR Talk of the Nation podcast about American schools and the difficulties of their budget woes. If American schools solved their budget problems the Ukrainian way… there would be no lights on in the hallways. lights in [...]
I own two shower-worthy towels. One is the towel I brought from America. A quick-dry, REI towel, which I consider to be one of the top 5 items I brought with me to Ukraine. It is unfortunately sitting in Donetsk in my friend’s apartment at the moment, because I forgot I left it getting its [...]
Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen them in three months. Maybe it’s because I know I’ll be leaving them in two. Either way, I’ve had an inspiring first week of school reuniting with my students. I think this feeling can mostly be attributed to the fact that this is my 4th semester teaching. I have [...]
I’m at a point in my service that once seemed impossible to even think about: my COS conference–COS meaning Close of Service. Yes, that’s right, I’m almost done. This has been the longest 2 years of my life, but as I look back at it, it has somehow flown by. More than any other time [...]
Krakow is as beautiful as everyone told me it would be. I can see where the comparisons with Prague originate, and I can tell why it’s known as one of the more touristy cities in Poland. As a city, it looks like it’s doing very well with so many stores, malls and tourists. It was [...]
Let me start by saying that I knew I should have written this a few days ago. I’m on day 3 in Krakow, and already my Budapest memories have thinned out. I’ll give it a shot though. Budapest is great. It’s a big, beautiful city, and like most big, beautiful cities I’ve been to, pictures [...]
Quite simply, GO TO ROMANIA! I had only heard good things about this country before I came, and now I know that they were all justified. From my experience, the country is both beautiful and accessible. It’s certainly not Germany or Austria (and not really that close to those countries either), but looking out the [...]
Going from Turkey to Bulgaria was a lot like returning to the doldrums of home after a week in an exotic country. Despite Bulgaria being a new destination, it took a few hours to readjust to the reality of my return to Eastern Europe. While every country in this region certainly has its own culture [...]
I was only in Istanbul for 2 days, and in that time I didn’t get very far out of the historic tourist center; nevertheless, I really liked it. As I’ll explain a little later, Turkey holds a unique spot on my places-visited list, and I was intrigued by the culture, the architecture, the customs, the [...]
Selcuk is a small town on the Agean Sea, and I picked it because it seemed to offer a good ratio between tourist attractions, local culture, sea-side relaxation and other adventures. Our hostel was simply amazing. I have never stayed anywhere so nice. It’s called Attila’s Getaway, and although it was a few minutes out [...]
The following has been copied from the Push for Peace Corps website. Please visit this link to see the original text, or pushforpeacecorps.org for more info. “This Thursday, amidst fierce debate over the debt ceiling, the House State and Foreign Operations subcommittee will vote on next year’s Peace Corps budget. Because of your hard work, [...]
…a tanned, shirtless, middle-aged man with a cell phone clip on his ear, dark blue jean shorts held up under his pot belly by a thin, faded leather belt connected to the pistol cozily resting on his hip as he listens to an Abba-like Russian ballad loud enough for half the town to hear and [...]
Just to clue in any confused readers, the last 10 posts, which I’ve just deleted, weren’t by me. I was logged in to my WordPress account on a friend’s computer, and she posted them thinking she was logged in to her blog. Hope you enjoyed her stories though!
1: Yura, Sasha, and Babahalya next to the cement mixer in our backyard. 2: Sasha using the pully system to lower the cement into the cellar. 7-5 Every village house has what I like to call a fall out shelter. One opens a small door and descends about 20 steps into a small bunker. Only [...]
7-1 My Peace Corps friend Niza told me she was heading into the city of Cherkasy with her host sister (the sister of the family she lives with), Tanya, and invited me to come along. Always being down for an excuse to head into the city and have the opportunity to get a latte from [...]
What the usually torrential downpour looks like, right outside our front door 6-29 My week vacation with my host family has finally come to an end, and this morning I headed back to Lozuvatka. It was nice to finally be home with the grandparents after being gone for a week. It didn’t take long for [...]
6-28 I decided to stay for a full week with my host family so I could celebrate Aleena’s tenth birthday with them. Entering the double-digits is big no matter what country one is in, and in Ukraine, where birthdays are the second biggest holiday of the year next to New Years, Aleena’s birthday was of [...]
6-27 When one thinks of McDonalds, what is the typical demographic of people eating there? People traveling, people in a hurry, those with a sweet tooth, people with children (kids love those kids meals), college students, people who don’t like to cook, people jonesing for french fries, the lower-class, the middle-class, the upper-middle class. Who [...]
6-25 While explaining to my host mother, Yulia, how relieved I was to not have Tuberculosis, she told me she is not surprised that TB is so prevalent in this country. She told me that now it is not mandatory to get shots and most people opt out of getting shots. Her reasoning why was [...]
1: Kyiv, 2: a modern art park in Kyiv Sasha took me to 6-24 The good news of the morning was that I don’t have TB. The bad news was that I still needed to go get my cavity filled. As I dragged my feet towards the doctor’s office as a prisoner drags their feet [...]
6-23 I won’t know if I have TB until tomorrow when the doctor checks me (it needs 48 hours), but today I have other things to keep my mind preoccupied– a dentist visit. I have heard only horror stories from Volunteers about dentists out here, how they don’t use anesthetics, and how rough they are [...]
6-22 After being in-country and at site for one year, all Peace Corps Volunteers are required to have what is called our mid-service medical exam. Included in this examination is a test for Tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is pretty common in Ukraine, and a fair amount of volunteers contract it while they are in country. Almost all [...]
6-19 There are many things that Ukrainians can do that impress the average American, such as work in the fields when it is over 100 degrees outside and eat lunch in under five minutes. In turn there are many things Americans can do that impress the average Ukrainian, such as having naturally curly hair and [...]
Between my 3 camps, I was away from site for almost a month straight (June 15-July 15 minus 2 nights at site in transition from one camp to another), and I have to say that I am so happy to finally be home and have nothing to do for another 3 weeks. My homecomings in [...]
In my town, when school ends, it ends. Summer means the school is locked, there is no tutoring, no clubs and no immediate need for me, the PCV. This would be a horrible thing if it wasn’t for the very active camp culture that exists in Ukraine. Children here often spend weeks of their summer [...]
Out of all the camps I’ve done in Ukraine, Camp SLAM went the smoothest. Having been one of the people who helped organize and direct this camp, I’m not saying this to brag. I’m saying this as objectively as possible. Things went really well. We were lucky to have a group of 17 PCV’s who [...]
Camp HEAL was, without a doubt, the most sustainable thing I’ve been involved with in my entire Peace Corps service. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog, then you know that Camp HEAL was one of the 2 camps I had been trying to raise money for. We never did reach our Partnership Grant [...]
Camp 1: InterCamp InterCamp was a Ukrainian-led English language camp that took place in Yevpatoria, Crimea. The 30 participants, ages 7-13, are all students at a very specialized after-school language school in Krivyi Rhig (sp?) that teaches English, Spanish and German as a supplement to what students learn during the day. The director organized this [...]
My word associations for “cholera”: 1) Haiti. 2) the book Love in the Time of Cholera, which I’ve never read but I hear is good. The book is set a long, long time ago, and Haiti’s struggles with cholera are the result of massive earthquake damage, overcrowding and lack of proper sanitation, as is found in [...]
Today I discovered that I am incapable of discerning the difference between a soft and a hard Russian R. Rrrrrrrr. That’s the hard “R”. Rrrrrrrye. That’s the soft “R”. Ok, Jessica, you try. Rrrrrr. Rrrrr. Rrrr. Rrrrrrr. No, that was not it. Those sounds were exactly the same. Try this, when you make the soft sound, tighten your [...]
Did you know that strawberry plants like to make children, which is why they need to be planted far apart? Did you know that butternut squash seeds have to be gently set between a level bit of soil and a very thin top cover, or else they won’t grow? Did you know that chamomile keeps [...]
The best way to start this off is with a quote from my clustermate Kyle: “You know, when we were young we never heard anything about Prague.” I could not agree more. I don’t think I even heard the word until I was in college. I vaguely remember saying Czechoslovakia when I was younger, enjoying [...]
I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by Bratislava. The capital of Slovakia was almost an afterthought in what I thought of mostly as my Austria/Czech Republic trip, and I only stayed there for one night. But I’m glad I did. The city is a lot like Prague, but on a much smaller [...]
(written Wednesday, May 3 on a train from Vienna to Salzburg) If you look on a map, Austria and Ukraine aren’t that far apart from each other. And even now, as I look out the train window, I see what are, on paper, many similarities between Austria and Ukraine that are characteristically different from my [...]
(written on Tuesday, May 3 in Vienna) It’s official. I love big cities. Big western cities, that is. There is something so alluring about the busyness of them. The variety they offer. The implication that things, important or otherwise, are being accomplished. I love the convenience of public transportation in western cities. (The differences between [...]
Considering the way Easter went down last year (read the Easter post from last year), I was determined to do something culturally appreciative this time around. No getting stuck without a bus ticket this year…a mantra that came back to bite me in the butt in the last hours of the weekend, but I’ll explain [...]
This was one of the fist things we were taught during cross-cultural lessons a year and a half ago: the drastic differences between the way Americans and Ukrainians do business. We Americans, we go into a meeting with all the details to be discussed prepared and ready, we sit down, we talk about what needs [...]
fundraiser – n. someone who solicits financial contributions Just add that to my job description as a Peace Corps volunteer. I’ll admit, when I applied for the Peace Corps, I didn’t consider this portion of the job. The potential for only having access to an outhouse for 2 years overshadowed other less important job requirements. [...]
I’m working on grant #4. You’d think I’d have this down to an art by now, especially the Partnership grants, but I just about went crazy tonight trying to finish my close grant papers for the textbooks. I started the evening spending a few hours reworking a camp grant for a couple thousand $ along [...]
I am in awe of our new textbooks. They are A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. Absolutely perfect, as a matter of fact. The lessons are organized in ways I previously only dreamed of–vocabulary used and repeated in texts and grammar exercises for 10 straight lessons, activities like “Irregular Verb Bingo” and “Find someone who…,” lyrics and audio of popular [...]
It’s no secret that the past few weeks, or maybe months, have been rough on me. Ever since my arrival back to Ukraine from my trip home to the States, I’ve felt a little out of control of my life. Or more like, out of control of my emotions. There have been small upward hills over [...]
Fair warning, this post is written out of sheer, utter, complete, total, absolute, unmitigated, never-ending boredom. In fact, I suggest that you stop reading right now. Don’t waste the precious minutes of your purpose-oriented, busy life on the pointless verbal ramblings I’m about to unleash on…, well, on no one, because I did tell you [...]
This post is long overdue. Every Friday since the beginning of the school year I’ve thought to myself that I need to blog about this. Finally, here it is, the cutest class ever: The classroom is tiny, the equivalent of a classroom closet almost. It was the former teachers’ lounge and is about the same [...]
How many entries are we showing above?
For now, we are showing up to 50 entries on each page. Entries that
are too short are filtered out. For more entries, please use
archives.
|
Connect to Peace Corps Journals
About the Journal
Contact Us
Disclaimer:
| |
| Copyright (c) 2010 |
