The project’s two goals are to train students in basic journalism and computer skills, and to create a bilingual student-run newspaper published through the journalism club. To achieve these goals, the first objective is to hold a series of trainings on “Topics in Journalism” and “Computer Skills” for the students and the teacher supervisor, to be completed by March 2011. Local residents with experience in journalism and photography will conduct the trainings on a volunteer basis. Students in the journalism club will then create and publish the first edition of their newspaper by April 2011. A local English teacher will receive training and supervise the club to ensure sustainability after the volunteer departs. The equipment requested through the Partnership Program is essential to the project in order for the students to create and publish the newspaper. The printer will also aid the financial sustainability of the project by enabling students to produce copies of the newspaper for sale. This project builds the leadership capacity of student participants through their self-management of the journalism club; it transfers valuable skills and knowledge in writing and editing, graphic design and computer skills, as well as critical thinking, problem-solving, and teamwork; it also encourages changes in attitude and behavior by providing an outlet for active participation in civic society. In the Ukrainian educational system, creativity and individual initiative are not encouraged, and critical thinking and leadership skills are not taught or developed; this project heps address those needs.

Please consider making a tax deductible donation by clicking on the link below. Even $5 will help! The grant is not very large, but it needs to be funded quickly if the project is to be completed this semester. Thank you for your help!

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=343-214

After the usual marathon GAD meeting at the office in Kiev, Alia, Camille, Lauren, and I sat talking TEFL shop in the apartment for hours, drinking and laughing at our choice of entertainment. Finally we went out and got McDonalds for dinner (I swear, I’ve never eaten more McDonalds in my life!) went to a few bars, and ended up getting sushi at 4 am.

A year into my service, I finally got to attend Arrival Retreat at Desna to greet the new group of TEFL trainees (having missed the first three weeks of training myself, due to my Turkmen Reject status). I was there to represent GAD and talk about secondary projects, so it was nice to meet many of the new arrivals during meals and free time, and try to answer their questions and seem all wise and experienced, teehee.

The next weekend I headed west to Ternopil to celebrate Camille’s birthday with the Bilky/Borova crew and some local volunteers. We got pizza and then camped out in the nice apartment she had rented.

Back again to Kiev, this time to try my hand at flag football for the HIV/AIDS Working Group fundraiser. I pity the poor boys on my team, who had to deny their competitive spirit and accommodate my inability to catch the ball or care about winning. I kept thinking of the “Friends” Thanksgiving episode where Rachel’s job is to “go long.” In the end I actually did catch the ball, once. And made one tackle. Success! I enjoyed myself, but I was more excited for the trail mix than the football pitch. The international school where we played had us all in awe: it looked like AMERICA, shiny and new, with lockers and a real science lab and student projects on the walls and normal bathrooms and people speaking FRENCH!

Fall Break featured Kharkiv Halloween, the infamous, debaucherous, annual PCV extravaganza. It lived up to its name, so we’ll leave it at that. Meghan and I also ventured to another eastern stronghold, Dnipropetrovs’k, to see what all the mafia fuss was about. Downtown is shiny and commercial, like Kiev, flush with new money. We went to see a movie, and got candy, and ate McDonalds, and my consumer heart was happy! We also couchsurfed with a nice girl named Maria, who fed us and showed us around town and stood with us outside at a freezing cold playground drinking non-alcoholic beer with her pregnant friend, and later we watched some ridiculous old Russian comedy about a journalist on a hunting trip and missed our train so we had to take the bus to Kharkiv.

For Katy and Peter’s bon voyage party, a bunch of Vinnytsia volunteers met for a bowling alley extravaganza, featuring sushi (fried and served with ketchup?) and margaritas that cost me a day’s wages. I also saw the new Harry Potter in Ukrainian with Abbey, so it was a pretty fabulous day.

Thanksgiving was celebrated with a Bilky/Borova reunion of our training group at Meghan’s apartment, which impressively had sleeping space for everyone. Camille found a turkey at the Ternopil meat market (I had just baked two chickens for my English club’s celebration), and Meghan’s parents sent cranberry sauce, so we had the works. We also had fun making turkey handprints to decorate the apartment, honed by practice in our English clubs.

I’ve also had a lot of fun this fall with friends in Kozy-town: I went dancing once with Luda from my English club and her friend who studies languages in Kiev, so we spoke Spanish together! I also get to practice my Spanish with “Eduardo” from the center, who debuted his skills with Peter at the summer BBQ. Every so often I go to the center on a Sunday night, when they have gatherings and celebrate birthdays and eat and play charades. Occasionally I’ll have tea with my neighbor, and then there’s the requisite stop-to-chat-with-an-acquaintance-when-you-run-into-each-other-on-the-street phenomenon. I also hang out and chat with my friends after English club, when they switch into heavy Russian surjik and I am content to play Joey and laugh along. When Matt and Anya are in town we go out for a drink. And I’m such a frequent visitor of Kamilia’s apartment that her son Djora sometimes asks her, “De Ketlin?” We cook and bake and eat and watch movies and scheme about grand ideas.

I celebrated the 24th with Kamilia at her mother’s apartment, stuffing a giant fish that baked for 2 hours. I celebrated American Christmas with an epic 3.5 hour skype chat with my family, as a fly on the wall watching them unwrap their presents. Ukrainian Holy Supper was spent with Natasha at her mother’s, and Ukrainian Christmas at Marina’s playing with her adorable three-year-old daughter. Larissa came too, so I got to celebrate with almost all my work colleagues. By celebrate, I mean eat enormous quantities of food.

Transylvanian New Year: A Guide to Successful International Border Crossings During Holiday Weekends, When Public Transport Fails You:

Step 1: Assume Polish identity

Step 2: Keep walking till someone shouts at you, and then present passport (at which point sheepishly drop Polish identity in front of taxi driver who drove you to the border and said you could walk across, P.S. I’m AMERICAN, what?!)

Step 3: Hitchhike with deaf couple who gift guards with ballpoint pens; wonder what they’re talking about as you stare out the winder and wish you remembered more from 3rd grade sign-language club

Step 4: Find way to hostel where you are the only guest, therefore enjoy on the house traditional meatball soup, spicy cabbage rolls, a cake baked by the owner’s neighbor, and a bizarre Christmas film, Romanian man who had lived in Spain and Israel, Ukrainian-Romanian guy

Step 5: Wake up at 6 am the next day for an enchanting 8-hour bus ride through the snowcapped forests covering the somber slopes of the Transylvanian mountains, shrouded in white by the same blizzard that has made you lose feeling in your toes and fear for their survival.

Step 6: Stumble off the bus, starving (because during the lunch break the only things available for purchase were pretzels or chips) with a headache and non-functioning toes, and opt for a taxi instead of trying to figure out where the heck you are. This time, pretend you are Russian. Bask in the warmth and comfort of a private hostel room with TV and shower for the same price as a regular berth, and enjoy the English programs on Vikings and giant snakes showing on the Discovery Channel. Eat microwaveable food, because there is a microwave. Read “In Style” and drool over the pretty clothes.

Step 7: HEATHER AND ADAM ARRIVE, I GIFT THEM WITH GARLIC, AND WE BEGIN OUR OWN TRANSYLVANIAN ADVENTURE! This mostly consists of eating tasty foods and seeing the essential sites, because the poor madrileños aren’t used to the cold, and we’re all quite content to feast our stomachs more than our eyes. We stayed in Brasov and Cluj, and visited Dracula’s castle at Bran (Vlad Tepej never actually lived there, but the real castle is in ruins so this one gets the credit; the interior is actually quite cozy, redecorated by a queen who was gifted the estate for doing something admirable at some time or other of national strife and turmoil). We ate polenta with fried eggs and meat, and garlicky bean soup, and drank palinca (traditional plum brandy), which smelled awful but tasted nice mixed with peach juice. I impressed Adam with my ability to consume pasta at an Italian restaurant, and Heather impressed us with her ability to cook it (we made risotto in the freezing cold kitchen of the hostel, wearing our winter coats). Arpie the hostel reception guy was in love with Heather’s Spanish accent, so he begged us to come to the hostel’s New Year’s party, which consisted of an odd assortment of guests and international students from Columbia and Pakistan, respectively. We went out to the square at midnight for a beautiful fireworks display, and then danced our little hearts out at a club playing fabulous blasts from the past. We had a late brunch and took a short walk to the grocery store before polishing off the risotto, watching Shanghai Noon, and making grilled cheese, ham, and pineapple sandwiches (for which I specifically bought ketchup) before my midnight departure. Overnight trains without beds are decidedly less comfortable, and also I didn’t really like being shut in a compartment with two strangers. I arrived sleepily at Suceava to find that nothing was open, since it was a Sunday and the day after New Years. It’s at times like those that I miss America, where you can always buy something to eat, get from point A to point B, and go pee for free. Since there was no bus, I negotiated a taxi to the border and began my crossing in reverse. This time it was harder to hitch a ride; the first few cars didn’t stop (and some I didn’t hail, because the well-oiled occupants of the shiny black Mercedes looked like they might sell me into slavery), so I just started walking down the highway, and finally the owner of a suitably crappy car picked me up, and we settled on Spanish as he showed his ID cards from all the places he’s lived and worked, including Israel. He wasn’t going to Chernivtsi, so he dropped me off at an intersection and I continued my solitary march till the next car stopped; this Ukrainian-born Romanian drove me all the way to the bus station, and I managed to get a ticket to Vinnytsia and from there another marshrutka home, hours ahead of the overnight train. Success!

At least one student in each class told me I had a hole in my sweater and should sew it, very concerned for the state of my wardrobe.

7th grade Natasha: “Miss Kathleen, how you say ‘vahitna’ in English?”

Me: “Pregnant.”

Natasha: “Miss Kathleen, you, pregnant?”

Sasha from 8L ran out of class at the bell, I yelled after him because he hadn’t written down the homework; Roma said don’t worry, I’ll pass it on to him, he must run to escaping a beating (this was supposed to ease my mind about the homework).

Paper airplanes and spitballs and phone chargers and curses

I came to school during break wanting to talk to the Vice Principal/my landlady about next semester’s schedule (and how my ungrounded boiler might electrocute me and one wall of my apartment is black with mold and a cabinet in the kitchen is most decidedly not at a 90 degree angle…) but the teachers were nowhere to be found, and I only discovered later that they were in a meeting informing them that the school could not pay their salaries so they must agree to sign affirming they didn’t want to be paid for 2 weeks, or 5 teachers will be let go.

Quarantine right before break, meaning the students were off school nearly a month

Comedy of the absurd staff meetings during which teachers are given minute instructions how to make all the paperwork say what it needs to say (once I very nearly laughed out loud at how pointless it all was, but luckily refrained)

-Winter sunrises and sunsets on my walks to and from school

-Delicate frost lace on trees and weeds; snow on birch trees

-Shos doe chayoo (something to go with tea)

-Baked goods; measuring the warmth in my apartment by the quantity of baked goods

-A warm bed; staying in a warm bed hours after you’ve woken up, just because you can

-Plotting the romantic entanglement of my students to my advantage

-Red wine, dark chocolate with caramel, frozen pizza with broccoli on top, and all this from a trip to my supermarket, for which I did not have to bother with the formality of pants (a long coat, tall boots, and long underwear sufficed)

Environmental Clean-up: taught students project planning, helped them organize and hold disco-fundraiser, secured materials, transport, and volunteers for the cleanup, wrote article for local newspaper

*** School began with the usual flurry of chaos signaled by double-booked rooms, students and teachers with different versions of the schedule, no books or workbooks, etc., but things settled down into somewhat of a routine after the first few weeks. That’s the day job: teaching English for 18 hours a week, plus lesson planning. Everything else is extra. Incredible Ira administered her needs assessment that she had called me in Crimea to ask about, so I taught the basics of project design and management in English club, and the students organized and held a disco-fundraiser to support their environmental project. The actual cleanup was marred by the fact that all my students who had promised to come, save Awesome Ira, failed to show up. This was embarrassing, considering I had sweet-talked the mayor of Komsomolsk into providing a bus to transport 20 people from Kozyatyn, but it ended up being only 8 of my friends. But I still get to tell the story of when I took a marshrutka one Wednesday night to rendez-vous with the mayor of a village 30 minutes away (a man I had never met), near the reservoir that supplies our town’s water. I got to the café where he said to meet, but it was empty. When I asked for Anatoliy Heyorheyovitch, the waiter raised her eyes but told me to go down the hall to a back room. I knocked on the door, reflecting that this was a strange place for a mayor’s office, but it opened to reveal instead a table groaning under the weight of a traditional Ukrainian feast, with 8-9 revelers seated around it, celebrating the mayor’s birthday. They were all the important people in town, and without hesitation, I was entreated to join them. So that is how the meeting with the mayor went. After several more shots of samahon (keep in mind they’d already been celebrating before I arrived), I had regaled them with stories of America, they had informed me of the different industries the village is known for, and the major had agreed to send a bus to transport us and a tractor to remove the trash we collected. A few hours later, he paid for my taxi home. Mission, accomplished. Later I heard that the people of Komsomolsk were asking about the American. With another visit, this time to one of the candidates running for mayor of Kozyatyn (he had also been mayor before), I secured gloves and trash bags for the clean up. Even with only had a handful of volunteers, we still collected a mountain of trash in a few hours, drank some tea, and called it a good day’s work. I really appreciate that my Ukrainian friends came out to support me.

Kozyatyn Leadership Camp INCITE Vinnytsia: 27 kids, 8 PCVs, 6 Ukrainian teachers; directed and managed all aspects of two-day camp: food, lodging, transport, budget, materials, supplies, advertising, community contribution, lesson plans, schedule, time and resource management, overall concept and design, evaluation, newspaper article

***Professional highlight of my service to date!!! It was a great success, the kids didn’t want to go home, we had freakishly fabulous weather in mid-November, plus I think they learned something ; ) Lessons were on leadership, teamwork, and project planning, they had activities and games to reinforce the concepts presented, I showed “School of Rock” on Saturday night (with homemade cookies, plus brownies later for the counselors!) and led yoga on Sunday morning; the students had to plan and present a project idea in groups to pull it all together.

Counter-Trafficking project in conjunction with Ukraine-wide effort for December 2nd World Day to Abolish Human Trafficking: conducted a 3-part training seminar for 5 girls in 10th-11th grade, mentored peer educators through the teaching process as they prepared and then taught their classmates the same lessons

*** Sympathized with the girls as they learned how difficult their classmates are to teach.

10th grade American culture course: designed semester curriculum and created materials

***Earned a standing ovation for my sneak attack and capture of Ruslan’s phone.

Weekly Adult English Club: helped friend with TOEFL and grad school application; group discussions on everything including feminism, violence, the environment, education, politics, history, culture, and current events

***This also counts as my social hour, since we have tea and cookies and really it’s just a chance to hang out with my friends and have some fun conversation.

Weekly English Clubs for students: topics covered include domestic violence and self-defense, anti-smoking, HIV/AIDS, counter-trafficking, special needs, American holidays and culture, etc.

***Don’t worry, we do fun stuff too, like decorate cookies, play games, and sing songs! Five 10th and 11th grade girls meet on Fridays at my house for the older club; they are the ones I did the CT project with, but we also watch movies and bake or cook American foods.

The GADFly: editor and writer, moved to paperless printing and archiving through pcukraine.org, expanded to include Ukrainian contributions and readership, facilitated by discussions with my Adult English Club

***Check it out online! Search www.pcukraine.org for past issues.

PC Collaborative Vinnytska Oblast Facilitator: organize the exchange of skills and information between volunteers at regular meetings; pioneered region-wide weekend camp program based on successful model

***This is just a structured way for volunteers to problem-solve, bounce ideas off each other, and collaborate, hence the name. In September we went camping by a river in a village outside Vinnytsia. It rained, we cooked rice and beans, and we woke up surrounded by cows.

One of the things I’m most proud of and satisfied with is knowing that my friend Kamilia will keep doing awesome work even when I’m gone, fulfilling the dream of any volunteer that her work is sustainable. She wrote a PEPFAR grant for an HIV/AIDS peer educator program involving a two-day training for students from local schools, who will then teach the same lessons to their classmates, which I merely translated into English, and now we are getting ready to implement. She also inspired her 7th graders at the village school to complete a project that raised money through bake sales and donations to buy art supplies and fairy tales for HIV positive orphans in Vinnytsia. They were skeptical that they could have an impact, but she showed them how they could and they did!

To toot my horn just a little more, but really to explain what else I do besides teach English, I will be the Gender and Development Council’s Camp GLOW 2011 director for a Ukraine-wide girls’ leadership camp, which means I am personally responsible for the smooth sailing of this year’s girls’ camp in Kolomiya, but will write the grant for all three camps that GAD will host this year (look for it online soon, or check out last year’s camps at http://globeukraine.blogspot.com/ )!

I also recently started work as a SPA coach and reviewer, which means I read and peer-edit PCV applications for USAID Small Project Assistance grants, and then meet in Kiev with the group to make funding decisions.

Finally, I am writing a grant to start a journalism club and student newspaper at my school, and all the details will soon be posted online, but I would like to ask in advance that anyone who can contribute, please support this project. It’s something that’s never be done before at my school, and the students are really excited to participate.

PS Some of my students are now pen pals with my cousin Katie, brother Jack, and their friends, so I can add fostering cross-cultural understanding through student correspondence to my list! Ivanna asked for an American boy, and I said I knew just the one—now Jack is a celebrity!

In-Service Training was the usual combination of inspirational and daunting, to hear volunteers talk about their successful projects and brainstorm how I might achieve similar results. The two PCV facilitators both started “volunteerism schools” at their sites, with students creating and implementing their own service-learning projects and taking ownership of every step in the process. They had different approaches—one got the kids inspired with a successful project and then backtracked to help them see what they had learned, whereas the other started from a more formal training model, with students learning the theory first and then putting it into practice with their own ideas. I really want to start something like this at site, to teach my students about leadership, volunteerism, problem solving, creative thinking, and civic responsibility. The student I took to Camp IKNOW is all excited to work on an environmental project, and even called me while I was in Yalta to ask about the needs assessment questionnaire she was writing (I broke into uncontrollable laughter with my friends over the realization of how differently we all speak with our students, when I said “the Nature is very dirty,” with an exaggerated British accent to her on the phone). But, naturally, I am very excited to harness her enthusiasm, and then rope other students in too. Wish me luck. The conference was good, though it started on my birthday and I didn’t know anyone there (besides my counterpart Lena). It was mostly 38ers (newbies), so I got to meet a lot of people and we went out for drinks at a local bar after the day’s sessions. It was nice to meet the new group of Youth and Community Development volunteers, because they have the education and work experience that I want, so it’s always great to hear their stories. I asked Lena what was the most useful thing she got out of the conference and she said the English practice, but she also said that she understands a little more about Project Design and Management, and where I’m coming from when I talk about what I want to do at school (not just teach English). So I consider that worth it. At the conference I also met some girls from my group who I’ve never seen before (it happens a lot). One lives in Simferopol and offered us her apartment, so I’m glad I decided not to book any accommodations, and opted instead for flexibility in our trip to Crimea.

That choice served us well. We stayed for two nights at Adrianne’s (for the first night she wasn’t even there—she let another group of PCVs hand off her spare key to us!) We had a late, leisurely lunch, and then decided to spend the early evening in Sevastopol on the coast, to see the water and jump-start our vacation. We rode in the front of the bus, where the people without tickets go (Alia had to wait around the corner until the driver passed the check point). Sevastopol was as I had imagined—clean and white, a city on the sea. We strolled the boardwalk and had a glass of wine and some Tatar street food before heading back to Simferopol. The next day we ventured to Bakchysaray, to see the cave monasteries dug out of the cliff-side (reminded me of Mesa Verde), and then the Khan’s Palace. A local PCV and his Ukrainian friend were our guides, so we made sure to get the Tatar food they recommended at this great restaurant, where we lounged on pillows, eating soup with homemade noodles and a dish of giant, steamed meat dumplings. That night we shared a few bottles of wine with Adrianne and her friend, and traveled with them the next day to Stary Krym to see another volunteer for her birthday. The plan was to do some hiking, but we got there too late to do anything serious, so we just took a walk in the hills outside town and then hopped on the first bus we could—it took us to Koktebel, so there we went. I had written down numbers for apartments, but no one wanted to rent to us for less than 5 days, so we were heading somewhat dejectedly to check out the cheapest hotel when a guy offered us a place to stay, and he drove us there to check it out! He was embarrassed when he found out we were Americans, because there was an outhouse and summer shower, but we liked the rustic atmosphere and decided to stay for two nights. Our living/dining room was open-air with a view of the mountains, so it would have been awesome if the Ukrainian girls also staying there didn’t host a big party both nights—and use our space! The first night I asked them to move to their own space because we wanted to go to bed early, so they took our table up to their patio and didn’t return it till after we had breakfast, which was kind of annoying (as was the fact that the next night they just had their party on our patio, right outside my bedroom). They only spoke Russian, so there were several things lost in translation. I am going to miss being able to talk about people right in front of them though. It’s quite satisfying and convenient. The first night we had a picnic dinner on the beach and then walked along the boardwalk, gorging on giant slices of delicious cake. The next day we bought more food and wine for the beach, and went a little outside of town to find a nice spot—some people had built rock circles in the water for lounging, so we drank our wine there! It felt quite luxurious. Dinner was ridiculously overpriced, and I’m pretty sure the fatty, questionably cooked chicken made me sick to my stomach, because I was ill for the rest of the trip. We all got sick though (so maybe it wasn’t the chicken?), and kept vying for the title of “temporarily worst off.” Re-hydration salts taste nasty, I don’t care what Alia and Meagan say! Despite feeling like crap, we departed for Sudak to visit its really well preserved Genoese fortress, and proceeded on to Novy Svit to camp out on the beach. Our prospects were looking grim and night was falling, when we finally stumbled upon the other backpackers and staked out a pebbly section of our own. It was the first time I’ve ever slept under the stars without a tent, and it couldn’t have been a more perfect night: calm and warm, with a full moon and no wind. Of course, my bowels could have cooperated, but at least the weather was nice. I will tell you though that a night on the beach and 16 hours on the train with stomach problems is not much fun (especially when they lock the toilet near bigger stops). Our next stop was Yalta. We sprung for a nice apartment—Shower! Toilet! Hot water!—and it was only a 5-minute walk to the water. It was also a treat to just relax and watch television, even though they dubbed Gossip Girls in Russian. We had McDonalds for breakfast on the main square near the Lenin statue (he stares down the golden arches, creating perhaps the most ironic architectural juxtaposition ever), and I brought my own ketchup because they charge almost as much for a packet as for a hamburger. I had bought ketchup for our homemade Mac ‘n cheese, and was inspired to bring it to breakfast. We visited Livadia Palace, where the Yalta Conference was held, and saw several other palaces and beautiful gardens. They next day we got stranded at a poor excuse for a waterfall, and a harrowing taxi-ride later we were whizzing up a cable car to the top of Ay-Petri, with gorgeous views and obnoxious vendors (the whole trip it got progressively worse, till we couldn’t stand them any more). Meagan and Alia had an earlier train home, so I slept in and went to the beach by myself in Yalta before heading back to Simferopol. When I got back to Kozyatyn, it was 45 degrees colder than when I had left! WTF?!!

First Bell marks the Day of Knowledge on September 1st, and operates the same as Last Bell, so classes didn’t start till the 2nd. Of course, the schedule isn’t finalized, and there are no books or program for the 10th form, so it seems like institutionalized chaos will be standard for the next week or two. I was at Natasha’s to do my volunteer reporting form (it’s not Mac-compatible—boo), and we had an enlightening conversation about the need for educational reform in Ukraine. She helped me realize that the root of the problem lies in a lack of accountability or consequences. Students aren’t responsible for their own education (if a teacher fails a student, she must tutor him without pay all summer, and it is her fault if he receives bad marks—in theory therefore a student can complete his schooling without ever having absorbed a scrap of knowledge—a scary thought when the societal implications of such a future workforce are considered) or behavior (detention doesn’t exist); teachers are required to spend more time and effort filling out the official journal with detailed lesson plans (regardless of whether they are ever implemented, since more emphasis is given to the color of the pen and the quality of penmanship) than teaching their students. Demo lessons are rehearsed and answers memorized. Cheating is rampant and goes unpunished. These things she knows, but what can she do? She reasons that under communism, people learned to expect the state to give them things: education, a job, food. The idea that people themselves are responsible for their own well-being, and in turn that of their society, is what I hope to teach my kids. I think it will be much more useful than mastering the Present Perfect Continuous Tense.

In other news, I have already resorted to wool blankets; the days of sweating in my underwear seem so long ago. The Lone Mosquito still plagues me at night, however, buzzing brazenly in my ear, despite my entreaties to just bite me and be done with it.

I looked forward to it for so long, I can’t believe it’s already over. I met them (Paul, his girlfriend Amanda, and Peter) at the airport and let out a few jumps of joy before taking them back to Kiev and the most luxurious accommodation we’ve ever stayed in as a family. I had gotten the apartment earlier that day and just lounged around for a bit enjoying the (temporary) feeling of wealth. We took a nap because everyone was tired from traveling, and then ventured out for a walk in the sweltering city. We had weather in the high 90s the whole trip, and in both overnight trains, only our compartment’s window didn’t open. The second time we joked that it would be funny if the one compartment window we saw unopened was ours, but it really wasn’t (funny). Ok, it kind of was. In a sweaty, miserable sort of way. The whole trip we never stopped sweating (Amanda smartly carried around a sock to wipe her face, I was just gross); the heat made us lethargic and less willing to be tourists, but we soldiered on.

Day 2 we visited the Cave Monasteries (Amanda and I had to cover our heads and shoulders with scarves, which cancelled out the cool air in the caves) and the WWII Museum (where we posed for fun photos with the Soviet realist statues), and walked over to the Hydro Park to dip our feet in the Dnipro. We also had lunch at a swanky restaurant on a boat, which made us all uncomfortable with its prices. We compensated for the extravagance with dinner at a Ukrainian-style cafeteria, where the four of us ate for $13 (we went back two more times during the trip, it was more our style). We rounded out the night in Kiev with a shot of Ukrainian vodka to fortify ourselves for the visit to Chernobyl the following morning.

After a two-hour drive, we went through passport control at the entrance to the exclusion zone and met our guide, who had a funny habit of making jokes and then saying, “It’s a joke.” We passed by the Lenin statue and a boat graveyard before monitoring radioactive moss, feeding giant catfish (seriously, over 6 feet long!) and seeing the sarcophagus of the melted reactor, covered by a complex of concrete and scaffolding. Later, we visited the ghost town where the Chernobyl workers and their families used to live. The shells of buildings remain, but inside is rubble and chaos, eerily photogenic. Books scattered thickly on the floor of the library and school forced us to desecrate their pages, there was nowhere else to step. Nature is doing the demolition work with quiet efficiency.

Back in Kiev, we dipped our feet in a fountain at Independence Square to cool off before our overnight train to Ivano. We were traveling first class with our own private coupe, but the heat made privacy irrelevant, as we left our door open for a breeze from the window in the hall and lounged around in sports bras and boxers drinking beer. After an hour bus ride, we finally arrived in Kolomiya (I had liked the B&B from G.L.O.W. so much I booked it for this trip!) The owner picked us up at the station, commenting politely that we looked like we had been on an overnight train. True story. My friend Abbey and her friend were waiting for us to hike to Shepherd’s Valley and enjoy some tasty cheese, but all we wanted to do was immerse ourselves in some form of water, so we split the ride but bailed on the hike, opting to hang out a waterfall by the base of the mountains instead. It was a good choice, sitting in the rapids and exploring along the river. We also practiced our Dima-squatting, sunflower-shelling skills—Amanda wins for finding it a painless experience.

Dinner was family style at the B&B, and then Vitaliy gave us a ride to the rock bar I asked about (my friend Sean, who lives in Kolomiya, said it was a cool place). Eventually we got the bartender to understand that we girls wanted creative cocktails and the boys would have beer (Dad, it was your birthday, we drank to you). We just asked for something new each round. A local guy put a kink in the beer and cocktails plan by inviting us over to his friends’ table to share a bottle of vodka, so the boys and Amanda got to experience that side of Ukrainian hospitality. Good times ensued, and I miraculously remembered the way home.

We woke up on time for breakfast, (I think I was the only one who ate it all, and I also got to speak French with the other guests!) and then unanimously decided—in a wordless conference—to go back bed for several hours, rather than catching an early bus to explore the biggest bazaar in Europe at our next stop. Eventually we made it to Chernivtsi, where we chatted for a bit with the slightly bizarre British owner of our hostel (he mostly just seemed lonely), before waiting out the heat a little more. Once our hunger overcame our heat-induced comas, we ventured out for a walk and late lunch. The city is beautiful and reminds me architecturally of Lviv and Budapest, since all three were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The man at the next table over kept trying to get us to share his bottle of vodka, but we were not about to do that again. The waitress brought me the wrong soup and then made a fuss when I informed her of her mistake. Customer service is an American concept. I ate the soup. We saw the strange, redbrick, Arabic-influenced university building (I kept trying to walk into places where we weren’t allowed—my philosophy is keep walking till someone makes you stop), and hoolyatied (the verb “to walk” is synonymous with “to hang out” in Ukrainian) around the hilly, leafy city, calling it an early night to avoid drinks with the crazy Finnish guy (who talked real fast and his eyes were THIS BIG) and the hostel owner.

The next day we saw two castles! For the first, we packed a picnic lunch and grabbed a cab (it was $1.25). Its exterior was impressively well preserved, and we had fun clambering around and exploring every crevice that didn’t say “Life Danger.” We picnicked in the shadow of the castle; Amanda finally got to try beer cheese (it lived up to her expectations) and I made everyone try halva (which they decided looked like gray poop, but tasted pretty good). We explored the next castle just as thoroughly as the first, using photo flash exploration for the dark and scary bits. I was outvoted for swimming in the gorge afterwards (the castle is set dramatically on a river bend across from the old city), so we sat in the shade of some trees overlooking the river and the castle and worked on our bag of sunflower seeds before finding a place for dinner.

The overnight train rolled in to Kozyatyn at 4:30 in the morning, so we stumbled back to my apartment and crashed for a few more hours, until the sun made it uncomfortable to sleep. Then we field-tripped to the bazaar to test our sour cream on the backs of our hands and choose our favorite fresh cheese, along with everything else on our shopping list. My favorite part of the trip was hanging out in my apartment and making borscht and holubtsi for dinner, doing the Yaworsky side proud. We took a little walk in the evening to see the island, and then played a sampling of drinking games and watched Friends in Ukrainian just for fun.

The next day we went with Kamilia to another local place to swim, but it started to rain and there was trash everywhere so we didn’t stay long. On the ride home, Amanda and I formed a plan. We would all buy the most ridiculous Ukrainian outfit we could find for less than 100 UAH, and then go out our last night in Kiev. To that end, we scoured the second-hand shops in my town, coming up with a fancy number for her and a lacy see-through shirt for me.

Our last night in K-town we had a shashlik celebration at the rehab center for Andrei’s birthday (it was a couple other guys’ birthdays as well, so it was quite the spread). Kamilia and her son and Sasha from English club were also there (along with Slava, Pasha, Marina, and Andrei), so Amanda and the boys got to meet most of my friends (we also ran into Anya buying a watermelon the day before—she was getting ready to visit the U.S. with Matt!) It was even more fun than I could have hope for: Peter ended up speaking Spanish to some guy who learned it in prison, and Paul and Amanda were having an animated conversation with Pasha and Marina, so I turned back and forth and enjoyed both events.

On our last full day, we rode the electrishka to Bilky to visit Olha. There they finally got the full taste of Ukrainian hospitality, filling up on homemade borscht before potatoes and meat cutlets and fish and tomatoes and cucumbers and bread and crepes filled with sweet cheese and doused in sour cream…and then watermelon and apples and pears. Paul tried his hand at toasting, and Peter kept our glasses full, so they were good male guests. Her garden is amazing. She offered us use of the summer shower (the water is heated in a barrel by the sun), but we knew we would just keep sweating, so we opted for a brief cuddle (the boys on the couch in the living room and me and Amanda in my old bed) before heading back to Kiev.

Once there, we got another apartment from the same lady (this one with air conditioning and a fancy shower!!!) and set out to find the boys some proper clothes. It was late for shopping, but we actually had good luck in one of the stores in the underground mall beneath Independence Square (near our apartment). Peter got a rainbow striped, faded tee, and Paul bought one three sizes too small, rolling up his jeans to make man’pris. We had a fake dance party photo session in the living room, then went out to look for a club, but gave up and went to Potato House instead.

The last morning was filled with souvenir shopping (buying four bottles of vodka before 9 am), with McDonalds and Olha’s leftovers for breakfast back at the apartment, plus one more chance to snuggle with the boys before sending them off on a bus to the airport. I’m excited for all of them to begin new chapters in their lives: Paul and Amanda in their new apartment starting grad school at Binghamton (they’re getting a cat!), and Peter as a first year at Bowdoin!

I was really sad to see them go though, and just wanted to get out of Kiev. That was complicated by the fact that I had to transport three massive suitcases with me: the spoils of America. I combined the two duffels into one, but each step was arduous and the result painful. The escalator at the train station was broken. The station is also located uphill from the Peace Corps office. It was a million degrees outside, and the bags weighted the same as the atmosphere. I slowly dragged each suitcase up the stairs. Then I realized that my train was leaving from the local train station, to the right of the main Vokzal. I carried those blasted things up the stairs for no reason! I kept looking imploringly at strong men until one offered to help me carry the million pound duffle. He carried it all the way to the gate and asked for 5 hyrven, I happily obliged. A few more steps and I got it on the train. Two-and-a-half hours to Kozyatyn. Off the train. Into a taxi. Up three flights of stairs. Collapse. I have bruises on my arms, and my shoulders have been sore for three days, even after two sessions of yoga. But I got 5 lbs. of licorice and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!

I’ve been recovering ever since. The candy helps. So do episodes of Glee. Best is when the two are combined. I leave tomorrow for four days of In-Service Training in Kiev, and then nine days of vacation in Crimea. School starts two days later. I’m exhausted, but summer was great.

I was home for a week, just long enough to do lots of laundry, paperwork and planning, a bit of exercise, and sit around in my underwear in my apartment, sweating by day and being eaten alive by mosquitoes at night, since I have to leave my balcony door open to have any chance of a breeze, and windows don’t have screens here. I went with Matt and Anya to a place in the river where you can lounge in the rapids—it was worth the 3 hours public transport to get there, and the hour waiting to hitchhike back, to be able to immerse myself in a cool body of water. I also went with Kamilia and her son to another local watering hole, a little closer but more prosaic; it was a large pond with a sandy bottom and grassy banks, located on the grounds of a children’s camp. When I wasn’t home sitting around sweating in my underwear (which I seem to have done a lot of this ridiculously hot summer, including right now as I type this), my social engagements included sitting on a bench in the park with Pasha, Marina, and anyone else who happened to walk by, once it had cooled off enough in the evening to venture outdoors. I will need to channel “The Giver” and store these hot summer days in my memory, for use later when I am freezing in an unheated apartment come winter.

Camp IKNOW preparations were stressful, since I was supposed to bring two students, but the second one kept changing, as kids chicken out or parents changed their minds. Finally I called Kamilia and asked if her best student wanted to come. She is only entering 7th form, which made her the youngest student at camp and disadvantaged linguistically, because many students were in 9-11th forms and some had just graduated. But she earned herself a niche as a little fairy princess for being so cute and braiding all the counselors’ hair after day 3 or 4 with no shower. She is not shy and does what she wants no matter what you tell her, but I still think she got something out of camp so I’m satisfied. (I was worried on the train when I asked what she’d done at camp before, and she said “rested,” and on the first day when she said she had a headache and was laying in her tent once lessons started, but I let her rest for ten minutes and she got up by herself.)

My other student was a gem, all the counselors agreed. Her tent leaked, she slept in a cold wet sleeping bag, her favorite shirt got a stain from another wet shirt whose color bled onto it—I came up with the brilliant solution for her to tie-dye that shirt instead of a white one, so no one would notice the stain—but she never complained. She filled up buckets from the well several times a day, volunteered to wash dishes even when her team wasn’t on duty, confided in me that she learned at camp many things she had unknowingly done before to hurt the environment that she wanted to change (which she put into practice the day we saw her carrying all her candies from town in her hands, having politely declined a plastic bag), and was a rock star bouncer/money collector/public relations representative on the night of our eco-disco fundraiser.

I headed up Team Blue with Ashley, another volunteer, and our four girls were so sweet and hard-working, even when we made them peel and chop vegetables for an hour, or mop the floor by hand, or go talk to everyone they saw on the day we did community needs assessment. That makes it sound like camp was horrible, but actually it was really fun. We started each day with morning wake-up call (the anthem for which became this ridiculous song called “Running on the Beach” that is an inside joke with Peter and Katy’s family) and mandatory exercise (students could choice between running or another activity, usually games, except I did yoga on the last day). Teams had different cooking duties each day, but Team Blue distinguished itself with tasty dishes, especially “Mexican Night” (for which the beans were delivered pre-cooked by the director of the Center who we ran into at the bazaar), and I was proud of our inventive use of leftovers. We slept in tents and had to lug water from a neighbor’s well for cooking and washing, but we had the Eco Center building for classes, so it was a pretty nice set-up.

Classes were on leadership, Project Design and Management (we went through all the steps and the students actually completed a project of their own design, an eco-disco to raise money to install trash cans on the beach; at the disco they also organized a trivia game with prizes to educate participants), and specific problems related to the environment in Ukraine. We also had morning and evening games, campfires on the nights it didn’t rain, and an excursion to a local castle.

On the last night we had a shashlik celebration with real s’mores (I demonstrated proper marshmallow roasting technique)! The meat wasn’t ready till 10 pm (at which point I busted out my handy headlamp to see my food), so we ate Peter’s birthday cake first and did affirmations, taping a piece of paper to everyone’s back and writing nice things about them.

Quite apart from the kids having a good time, the counselors had a lot of fun too, adopting orphan kittens and reminiscing about Little House on the Prairie, and getting caught in a downpour on our way back from a grocery run at the bazaar. A FLEX alum came and talked to the students about opportunities to study in America, and their enthusiasm was catching (she also taught them cheerleading, for which they got equally excited). One morning we were awoken at 6 am by two boys who had climbed to the balcony of the eco-center to remove the flag and run around singing the Ukrainian national anthem. That was an interesting cultural difference being out west—students rebuked me for using Russian words! I countered by saying Surjik is a cultural reality where I live in Ukraine. My girls and I were the last group to leave—besides the leaders Katy and Peter—so we helped clean up camp and then had a Ukrainian-style farewell with the directors: tea and chocolates and fruit on the front lawn.

Camp G.L.O.W. was one of the highlights of my Peace Corps service to date. I felt we really made a difference in the lives of the 17 girls who participated, pushing them to work hard each day and have fun too. I also enjoyed my first experience as a real camp counselor. I was constantly amazed at the discussions the girls led on the topics we presented: candid responses showed critical thinking and creativity, which are my greatest priorities as a teacher in Ukraine.

Our schedule left little time for sleep, but the B&B we stayed at was so nice, and the owners so accommodating, that we couldn’t have asked for better conditions for a “camp.” We had to remind the girls that they only needed one shower a day, they should eat all their delicious home-cooked food, and they shouldn’t take advantage of the free internet to check the Ukrainian version of Facebook every ten seconds, but we had no serious discipline issues, and whenever we asked more of the girls they gave it.

I taught yoga for the first time, which was quite empowering for myself, realizing I could teach other people something that I love, and it could be useful to them. Camille and I switched off running and doing yoga with the girls, so I got to lead a few girls on their first run ever! Apart from morning exercise, we had 2-3 lessons each morning, and a few more after lunch. A guest speaker from an counter-human-trafficking organization came, and a PEPFAR trainer had an HIV/AIDS session with the girls in which he kicked out the PCVs and Ukrainian counterparts so they wouldn’t be afraid to ask questions (bananas were involved in that lesson, and I think the message was well-received, judging from the animated voices emanating from behind the closed door).

Project Design and Management lessons throughout the week culminated in poster presentations of potential projects the girls could do at site. Themed lessons addressed Leadership, Counter-Trafficking, HIV/AIDS, Domestic Violence and Self-Defense (Camille taught the girls punches and kicks and they all got to throw her, which was a highlight for many!) We also had a field day with games including toilet paper mummy wrap, a water balloon toss (Natasha and I were masters, thanks to my skills developed with Brigid over many Yaworsky Campouts), and an anti-climactic tug-of-war, which end abruptly when the rope snapped.

Excursions included Kolomiya, to visit the Pysanky (Painted Easter Egg) Museum—which was shaped like a giant egg itself—and the Hutsul Culture Museum, and then to the Carpathians, to hike to Shepherd’s Valley through the woods and mountains and mud, to see where farmers live for several months at a time without electricity or running water, making brinza (cheese that tastes like feta) the same way it has been made for generations (the wheels of cheese age in the rafters, naturally smoked by the wood fire in the cabin). We had a delicious meal of cheese with tomatoes and cucumbers and a special local polenta dish at the mountaintop meadow, frolicked a bit, Sound of Music style, and then stripped down to essentials to cool off in a mountain stream.

On the last night, teams put on an imaginative variety show that featured an excellent extraterrestrial. We got the girls autograph books and they stayed up the entire last night, taking advantage of every moment with their new friends before the tearful goodbyes in the morning. For some, it was the first time they had ever been away from home without their families, and the first time they met girls from other parts of Ukraine.

My trip back was equally smooth. Once across the border, I decided on a whim to take an overnight train to Lviv, and visit the city for a day with 2 other volunteer friends who happened to be in town. On the train I met a young Ukrainian who works abroad in Italy and only comes home once every few years, so naturally he was excited to speak Ukrainian! He even paid for me to doze in the chairs of the first class lounge for a few hours after he continued on his journey home, until it was a decent hour for me to visit the city. I explored by myself in the morning, and visited a beautiful cemetery later, with Heather and David (we also had liquid chocolate at a cafe--yum). We spent the night at Suzanne’s, who lives an hour from Lviv. All of us in GAD want to be Suzanne when we grow up; she’s 60 going on 25 and one of the coolest people I know. I was exhausted from my travels, and it was cold and rainy out, so I stayed in her apartment all day and got treated to gourmet meals from Suzanne and Heather’s boyfriend, both superb chefs. Suzanne and I were supposed to go to Ivano-Frankivsk to meet another volunteer and learn how to use a special publishing program for the GADFly, but we ended up using Microsoft Publisher on Suzanne’s computer, so I helped a bit with the layout, but the brunt of the work fell on her, and I finally made it back home.

I’ve been away from site a lot this summer, but each time I finish a trip, I can’t wait to turn the keys to the door in my apartment (at the same time holding my breath, in case I find a fruit fly infestation or a toilet situation). Traveling makes me appreciate home more and more, wherever “home” might be!

I was home for less than a week, and caught up immediately in the whirlwind surrounding the imminent arrival of Miss Jessica. I finally got the chance to meet my predecessor face to face, but it felt more like greeting an old friend, since I’ve heard so much about her. We made (correction: burned) brownies at Kamilia’s, and ate around the burnt bits and foil as we sipped tea and had a slumber party. The next day, Larissa hosted an English teacher luncheon (though Lena wasn’t there, Natasha and her daughter Dasha were), and Jessica managed a nap in her bedroom while I went home to nap too before going to Slava’s birthday shashlik picnic on the island and then to Jessica’s favorite bar with Matt and Anya. I’m tired again just thinking about it! I planned a picnic on the 4th to meet the new volunteers, and we took a ferry on the river in Vinnytsia to a really nice spot.

Ukrainian Language Refresher was sort of like a summer camp for PCVs. The days they put out Kit-Kats for snack were infinitely better than the days when gross giant Ukrainian marshmallows showed up. We had morning games and team activities and each team was “on duty” one night. Optional activities included Ukrainian folk dancing, canning and conserving (I managed to shatter the glass jar we were using to practice sealing, but putting our blueberry jam on everything at dinner sufficiently made up for it). I sold GAD merchandise at meals and was the captain of Team Bandit Bears (Vedmedykiy Banditiy), so I was more visible than usual at these kinds of events, but I still hung out mostly with Lauren and Meghan. I did meet several other 37ers that I’ve never seen before, including my roommate Jordan, who I went running with a few mornings. I enjoyed the chance to formally study Ukrainian again, with elective classes on prickly topics that constantly give volunteers grief. I also forced myself to take the Language Proficiency Exam again, in hopes that personal shame would later make me more willing to study. The personal shame part proved right (I guessed correctly that I had only marginally improved my entire time at site), but so far no studying has resulted; we’ll see what happens in the fall.

This summer has alternated between weeks of blistering heat with unfortunately timed patches of cold and rainy reprieve. The whole week at Refresher was chilly when we could have been swimming in the river, but it’s a bazillion degrees whenever I’m home near my polluted river; it also rained at baseball camp and environmental camp, when we slept in tents. True to form, the weather heated things up in time for my overnight train to Kolomiya for G.L.O.W. Before that though, I spent a nice afternoon walking around Lutsk with the volunteers who live there.

I left baseball camp on an overnight train to the border (met a rich student from Nigeria who studies in Kharkiv and travels the world in the summer), waited a few hours to go through passport control, and took a little two-wagon train to the neighboring Hungarian town. I didn’t have any forint on me and had to reserve a seat to Budapest, but a kind American man bought my ticket and helped me orient myself on the train. He lives in Ukraine with his Russian wife and they were flying with their children to visit family in the States. I was amazed at the ease with which each part of the trip was completed, considering I had booked no tickets in advance.

I got to the hostel and found out that Heather wasn’t getting in till much later that night, so I did my usual exploratory walk, had delicious goulash at a cafeteria-style restaurant in a giant covered market, took a nap and woke up to French (some guys from Montreal were staying in our room!) and checked out the other side of the Danube on a glorious sunset stroll. Budapest is beautiful! Its architecture has dark details, giving the city a mysterious appeal; you can sense its tortured past in the statues that labor to hold up balconies and buildings, supporting the weight of the stones through the centuries. Actually though, much of the architecture currently visible in Budapest dates only to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with some concrete communist beauties mixed in, and bullet-holes peppering various buildings for a dash of local flavor.

When Heather walked through the door, it was like no time had passed! I love the security of a steady friendship. We stayed up late drinking tea and eating cookies in the hostel courtyard, and were eventually joined by two of the Montreal boys; one was drunk, so the rest of us amused ourselves outwitting him. He would say inappropriate things in French, forgetting that Heather and I both speak it. We had a week to leisurely explore the city, so we joined a few free walking tours (regular, communist, and Jewish—the last they paired with a pub crawl to lighten the mood after visiting the old ghetto), went on a failed quest, and ate our weight in goulash. Most travelers stayed for only 2 nights on whirlwind Euro tours; Brazilians therefore quickly replaced the French Canadians. We taught them “Cheers, Gov’na!” and they caught on quickly. Our last day we went on a field trip to the “countryside” and drooled over local delicacies, then indulged in several hours at one of Budapest’s most renowned spas, where we alternately lounged in naturally heated thermal springs, a steam room, and a cold pool. Heather also treated me to a massage for my birthday, so we both had fun experiences with terse Hungarian ladies. The indulgences continued at a ruined bar (a brilliant Hungarian invention to recycle dilapidated buildings they can’t afford to renovate into partially open-air bars with creatively used junk for seating and decoration), where we had a sampling of tasty cocktails and chatted for a long time with a pair of Dartmouth grads.

Immediately after my camp I headed to Ujgorod in Zakarpattia to celebrate Lauren and Sean’s birthdays. We had shashlik at a river with a bunch of PCVs and Ukrainians (the Zakarpatska crew are so close they get to see each other all the time, so it’s a solid group). There was an old mill on the river, so we jumped off the concrete embankment into a deep channel for some thrills. Later we watched a bit of the World Cup in a bar and played Catch-Phrase (wild and crazy party!) in the apartment they rented. Alia and I went on a quest for “Supersnacks” around 3, and convinced Lauren to join us on a sunrise stroll when we returned. On Sunday we walked around town and saw the castle and a cute open-air museum with period housing. It reminded me again of Laura Ingalls, and I stand fast to the belief that rural Ukraine bears a striking similarity to “Little House on the Prairie.”

That night, Sean, Alia, and I took the train to Ternopil for Camilla’s baseball camp. Matvi, Nikita, and Ian joined us there, so the camp was well staffed by PCVs. We stayed at a “hotel” that cost $2.50 a night (the toilet was at the end of the hall, and there were no showers). My baseball experience consists of years of watching my brothers advance through Little League. Baseball has a lot of weird rules that don’t make much sense, especially if you’re a Ukrainian kid who has never seen the game before. It made me realize that Americans like complicated sports. We had kids running the wrong way, lapping their slower teammates around the bases, chasing after people to make outs…it was amusing. The fun continued as we tried to explain pop flies and forced outs and automatic walks. The 4th graders were so cute though, and Camilla is trying to get them ready for Little League in Ukraine, which has a championship tournament in Odessa in May. We went to a sauna one night (personally I find it somewhat masochistic, because it’s borderline unbearable and yet I try to convince myself that I enjoy the sweat). We alternated between skin-prickling dry heat and an ice-cold tub—which my days in Maine prepared me well for. Another day we packed a picnic (after shopping in a giant Wal-Mart-esque store—so exciting!) and ate by the lake in the center of Ternopil, a lovely, leafy green city, under whose waters lies buried a railway depot destroyed during WWII. We also had time to hang out in Camilla’s gorgeous house—her host parents work in Moscow for months at a time, and they make good money in an unidentified business.

On the last Saturday in May, I went to the citywide graduation ceremony on the square, and it poured right before the start. The girls wore evening gowns, doves were released into the sky, Patricia Kaas blared from the loudspeakers, ceremonial bread was gifted—due pomp and circumstance were observed. I stood with Sasha, whose niece was graduating, and marveled at how American his friend looked: a casual t-shirt over an ample belly, flip-flops, neatly buzzed hair and a baseball cap. Afterwards, I went to the concert for School #5, which consisted of everything I have come to expect in a Ukrainian concert: song, dance, flowers, skits, and speeches, with the whole shebang lasting several hours.

The first week after classes ended I went to school until noon each day, like the other teachers. I prepared for camp, and typed up test questions for the 9th form exam. Kamilia let me do laundry at her place. I also tried on jeans in the back of an unmarked van at the bazaar. Huzzah for impromptu and slightly inappropriate changing rooms! Stalker boy (the one who tricked me into the interview-date) struck 5 times in the night, with consecutive calls and mysterious texts: “Ketlin! Your very buatiful nise and big head GIRL.” I do not appreciate multiple calls at 3 am, and if I ever run into this kid again, I will tell him so. I’ve made friends with the water lady at the bazaar, who likes to chat when I come to fill up my 6 liter bottles. On the way to work I saw frogs plop into the pond, taking me back to the days when my brothers and I would catch them with butterfly nets in the ponds we named Mike and Ike. In the middle of yoga I got fed up and took a pair of craft scissors to my bangs—they survived the assault. My carpets took a worse beating, when I decided finally to drag them out on the balcony and take a stick (which was actually the hose of my non-functioning vacuum cleaner—how’s that for irony?) to them. Beating carpets is hard work! I’m also pretty sure I broke all the laws of carpet-beating etiquette, by raining dust down on my neighbors from the 3rd floor.

The second week of June I had my own English Camp at site, with a solid crew of about 20 kids, mostly 7th formers. A PCV friend stayed for the week to help me, and Kamilia was able to come for a few days also. I stole the format and content from other volunteers, who adapted it from the old volunteer at my site, so it’s a tried-and-true formula! We played games and solved riddles and had contests in English, and on the last day we had a picnic feast and played their favorite games. They gave me an entire smoked fish as a thank you present and begged me to do an extra week next year, so I’ll count that as a success!

I am a recent devotee of the health food blog Kath Eats Real Food (so much so that I’m giving her a free plug here, so go check out her Tribute to Oatmeal and be amazed). Homemade whipped banana oatmeal with walnuts and domashniy syr, plus any combo of dried or fresh fruit, honey and poppy seeds, fruit preserves, or peanut butter is the most satisfying breakfast I have ever had. Today I used up my last spoonful of peanut butter, and am looking forward to what she calls “Oatmeal In A Jar” to catch the dregs of peanut buttery goodness clinging to its sides. (Less exciting is the prospect of several months without peanut butter, before my brothers show up with a magical suitcase full of goodies). Next was a glorious meandering run through the pleasant grid of Ukrainian small town life. I resolved to go up and down every dirt road I had passed, as soon I had finished surveying the perimeter (i.e. running till there was nowhere left to run, where houses give way to endless fields, and babuysias stoop to pay homage to the earth). I have seen some interesting gardening outfits—an old lady in capris and a bra, an old man in a Speedo—it reminded me of how sometimes girls wear bikinis while they ride the lawnmower and work on their tan.

My Earth Day Concert was typical chaos; I couldn’t find the key to the auditorium, students were piling up in the stairwell, girls were changing into their garbage bag skirts in the bathroom when they were supposed to be onstage reading their essays, none of the 5th formers understood anything the 6th formers were saying…but at least a handful of kids at School #5 can tell you now that Den Zemli is on April 22nd. The tech teacher came after school to fix my electricity, and joked that if he shocked himself I should give him mouth to mouth. Haha—awkward laughter—pretend to be confused.

I arrived at school one Wednesday to find out that all the students were leaving after 4th period to travel en masse to an “aesthetics lesson” in town, meaning an excursion to hear the Vinnytsia Symphony Orchestra. So I taught 2 lessons, had two tutoring lessons, went home for lunch and headed off to enrich my aesthetic. It turned out to be perfect for me since it was geared toward young children: a woman onstage introduced the instruments and partially narrated the fairy tale, and then the music told the story, so I was able to follow along better. After the concert, Pasha came over to watch “Moulin Rouge,” but the quality was bad so we started a Russian version of “The Others” before I went to dinner at Larissa’s, the youngest English teacher at my school—she lives down the street from me but I had yet to go to her house. I had invited her to lunch but she couldn’t come, so kind of by default she invited me to dinner. I baked an awesome poppy-seed cake because I remembered she likes poppy-seeds, and I sat in her kitchen while she got dinner ready. I felt rude speaking in English in front of her husband at the table, but she always prefers to speak English with me so I oblige. She cracked each egg onto a plate before adding it to the syrnikiy mix to check if it was spoiled. I also learned that the domashniy syr that I love can be made by leaving fresh milk on the counter for a few days until it turns into kefir and then heating it on a low flame until magically it morphs further into delicious homemade cheese. I will have to try it, but I don’t know where I can get milk straight from a cow in the U.S. We did the obligatory first visit photo album inventory, and I didn’t get home till 11 pm.

Last week has been taken up with exams at school; for the oral they must memorize and recite a text, so I helped grade those. Today I got to school for my first lesson at noon, showed “School of Rock” to the 8th formers, and was then informed that I was going to a concert at the Music School in town. Ironic. So my 7A class and 11th form club were canceled and I headed back into town with the only 3 other teachers who were invited. I was still confused as to why I was there if not everyone was, but I had a vague idea it might have been envisioned as an honor/special treat for me, so I rolled with it. Open Heart had organized a blood-testing tent on the square in town, with health professionals from the HIV center in Vinnytsia, so I stopped by after the concert to see how it went, and then had peach juice and vareniky with liver (why do I like these things?) with Andriy and Pasha. They reported that 40 people came to get tested, and not just former drug users, but average adults and some young people too, which is a big step forward because very few people in Ukraine get tested, due to the stigma surrounding HIV as a drug-users’ problem, which is unfortunately long out-dated. The biggest risk group now is people aged 15-25, and the most common path of infection is through unprotected sex, so the fact that so few people know their status contributes to the spiraling epidemic.

I also recently found out that it’s alarmingly common for kids to try cigarettes or alcohol between the tender ages of 5-7, since I asked my friends about it after one 5th former told me another 5th former smoked. Two days later that was confirmed when I decided to take a walk to the island and read. I had just pulled my book out of my bag when some 6th formers from my school came up to say hello. I talked with them for a while—mostly in Ukrainian but a little in English—and we even played a few rounds of cards. But then one pulled out a cigarette and lit up in front of me! He was 14 and still in 6th grade, but his friend from another school who was only 10 was smoking with him. I asked them if they knew smoking was bad and what it could do to them; I tried the scare tactics, saying my grandfather was a smoker who died of lung cancer, and asking if their parents knew (his did, but didn’t care), and finally I said I couldn’t play with them if they were smoking, so I took my leave, shaken by the experience but also thinking about what I could do at school to shake them up as well.

The only reason anyone is still in school the last week of May is so that it can be properly recorded in the class journals, the sacred texts of the Ukrainian school system. I sit in fascination in the teachers’ room, watching my colleagues chase each other down for the different class books. Grades, absences, lesson plans, and homework must be recorded for each school day, and no cross-outs are tolerated. Conditioned from Soviet times, it is hard to erase from the national mentality, so that official documentation bears little resemblance to reality, and no one thinks anything of it. This is why many volunteers have a hard time cooperating on grant projects, because it is the norm to write was is needed and then do whatever you want. Lena didn’t show up for our lesson, and Natasha sat in the back frantically entering grades into the journal for our two lessons together; another teacher asked Larissa if she could excuse our 6th formers from their lesson to return books to the library, and our 7th form was still reciting their oral exams, but the class was so noisy Larissa called in their class mistress to yell at them and then sent everyone who hadn’t studied home (half the class does no work and shamelessly accepts 2s—graded on a 12 point scale—but they will still progress to the 8th form). At the teachers’ meeting during break we learned that the students would have two hours of lessons with their class mistresses on Thursday, then we would have another meeting and the kids would go home. Friday we just have the Last Bell concert at 9. Monday we had off for Pentecost. Then for almost all of June there are no real classes, but both teachers and students alike must come to school.

Compare/Contrast: What do you think are the biggest problems facing schools and society in America today?

On the last Thursday and Friday of April, I went to Vinnytsia to volunteer at the Special Olympics, which basically entailed us setting up plastic darts, bowling (the pins kept blowing away), and mini-basketball as entertainment for the kids who weren’t playing, and then sitting around in the sun eating the McDonalds hamburgers and pies the event coordinator kept bringing to us (Micky-Ds was a sponsor). Not ideal—we would have liked to be more useful and less ornamental—but as a volunteer you learn you can’t change everything right away, so we’re hoping for better things next year. The most disheartening part was that kids who lived in orphanages or had learning/mental disabilities could play too, so the teams were mostly filled by able-bodied kids, who shouldn’t really have been playing in Special Olympics, and the kids with more limited abilities sat on the sidelines. Unfortunately competition took over the spirit of the games, and I heard one kid who got a ribbon for 5th place shout in frustration, “This isn’t worth celebrating.” On Thursday my marshrutka home broke down, and we sat for half an hour waiting for a different one to take us back to Kozyatyn, while I chatted with an English teacher from School #3 who I had met in December at the Olympiad, but hadn’t seen since (she had gone to Vinnytsia to Mike and Matt’s English club, so she got a lot of practice that day!)

On Friday Megan came with me to site after the SA and before GAD the next morning in Kiev, so we ate peanut butter and chocolate frosting and watched/exchanged movies. We watched another movie on her laptop on the morning train ride to Kiev, fascinating all the people around us, especially a little girl who kept peeking around the corner but not saying anything. GAD was epically long but inspiring and productive as usual. I worked on the GADFly newspaper and helped figure out Camp G.L.O.W. logistics. Afterwards a bunch of us went to a Middle Eastern restaurant for dinner, and I reveled in the wonders of chickpeas. I took the train home that night, making for an exhausting weekend of travel where nonetheless every night was spent at home.

The first Thursday in May, my friends Andriy and Pasha came to my school to give their HIV/AIDS lectures to the 9th-11th forms, and I sat in on a few to observe. Both are very charismatic speakers, but I objected to a few of the stereotypes that got a good laugh from students and teachers alike, about boys wanting girls who haven’t slept around (the metaphors used were the ideal fairy tale princess and a pair of old shoes, plus a jab at homosexuality by referencing the absurdity of a prince wanting to marry another prince). The teachers were in a meeting during the big break, but Natasha had locked the English classroom so I couldn’t get in to give the 8th formers the exam I had written, and the meeting continued for almost the entire lesson, so I was stuck in the hall with the kiddies, improvising. Then, unexpectedly, three boys from School #1 showed up for my English club, so I rearranged things there as well.

Thursday the 13th we held an all-day HIV/AIDS training for 15 school psychologists and health teachers, facilitated by a PEPFAR trainer I invited from Kiev. Open Heart, the local NGO Kamilia and I work with, provided lunch and technical support, and Kamilia organized the whole thing. In the morning I had my doubts: we had a last minute room change, things people promised would be done weren’t done, many people couldn’t come because of poor timing (at the end of the year, when everyone has to prepare for exams)…but somehow it all came together, and the participants even delayed going to lunch because they were asking us questions about how we could work together, and discussing specific points from the lecture! Yay enthusiasm!

After the Botanical Gardens, I got off the train, went to bed, woke up, and got back on the train the next day to the town of Bar. To get there I had to catch a bus from Vinnytsia, and I’m not used to buying tickets in advance for buses, so I just sat down until someone informed me I was in her seat. Luckily there were two seats near the driver for stand-bys, and I almost bounced out of mine a couple of times as we careened over epic bumps and potholes. The volunteer in Bar had organized a baseball weekend for her students. She worked in a lesson on HIV, which we then jokingly tied to baseball metaphors for our own amusement. Ten volunteers showed up to help, and we taught the kids how to throw, catch, and bat, plus what the heck you’re supposed to do when you put all those things together and make a game. We were supposed to give a demonstration in front of the mayor, so we lugged all the equipment rented from Peace Corps (who knew the office had batting helmets?) through the streets of town, wearing most of it to lighten the giant babuysia bags the stuff came in. Abbey and Grace made stir-fry for dinner in Abbey’s awesome host family house, and then we played Catch-Phrase all night. Oh how I’ve missed being a dork with other dorky Americans! I hadn’t planned to spend the night (in fact I thought it was a one-day event), but there was an extra bed and I borrowed a contact case and solution, so I figured Chomoo nee? The answer might have been furnished by my fellow marshrutka-riders on the way home the next day, after wearing the same clothes for 48 hours straight, including overnight and several hours of baseball in the rain on Sunday.

What do YOU think the role of a TEFL volunteer should be in her local community and host country?

For at least a week I had salo cravings—we’re talking slices of cured pig’s fat, eaten on bread with garlic. My fellow volunteers were appalled by my treason of our unspoken American understanding (we don’t eat chunks of fat if we know it’s fat, only when it’s melted and disguised in all our other foods), but what’s the difference from spreading butter on bread, or eating a slice of bacon?

Sunday May 2nd was my first shashlik experience, and the food was well worth not-so-subtly inviting myself to my counterpart’s daughter’s 15th birthday party. (“So, Natasha, what are you doing on Sunday?” “Oh, it’s Dasha’s birthday, so we are probably going to our dacha to celebrate. If you are around, you should ask her if you can come.”…next day in class…“Dasha, I hear it’s your birthday on Sunday; am I invited to your party?” I’m her English teacher, poor girl, what could she say?) But it was a gorgeous day: all the flowers and fruit trees were in bloom, the alcohol was chilling in buckets of ice cold water drawn from the well, and the shish-kebabs were rotating on their skewers over the campfire in the woods. We had consecutive rounds of tender juicy meat, heavenly whole fish stuffed with onion and garlic and tomato, eaten by breaking it in half (to answer the age old question WWJD), plus a special soup that had stewed for hours in a cast-iron cauldron over the fire. My neighbors were also there. Luda and I went on a walk around the block and talked about corruption in Ukraine; even though in theory they have free national health care, you must pay for even the smallest service in hospitals (and elsewhere), such as ensuring a nurse goes on her rounds to check on your sick daughter. I sat at the grown-up table, though I didn’t contribute much to the adult conversation. Every so often a train would be visible/audible through the thin strip of woods, and the adults would remark, “There goes the 5:15 to Moscow.” I earned my keep by helping Natasha wash the dishes with a weed she pulled from the lawn; it has soap-like, fat-dissolving properties, which makes it a totally bad-ass plant! The kids attempted s’mores after dinner (introduced as a novel American dessert, but here they don’t have the right marshmallows or graham crackers, and they forgot the chocolate!)

The next day at the bazaar I went crazy and bought every green thing in sight, so excited after a winter where the only green vegetables were pickles. I made super salads for a week: chervil (why have I never discovered this before?—it’s amazing!), lettuce, tomato, cucumber, onion, green onion, parsley, dill, salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, garlic, hardboiled eggs, chicken, raisins, apples, domashniy syr, carrots, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, buckwheat…and then sat on my balcony and ate them out of the giant mixing bowl. I also did some laundry (sigh, moan, sigh) and other chores around the house that I tend to let slide. My run was fantastic, partly because I stumbled upon another hour-long loop that took me down dirt roads with quaint cottages and beautiful gardens, through a few fields, and past a little lake.

On Friday April 23rd, I made enchiladas (homemade tortillas and everything—as Sebastian the crab says, “If you want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself!”) with Kamilia at my house, and then later watched “Forest Gump” and slept over at her house. She had to take her son to the doctor’s in another town early in the morning, so she left the keys with me and I slept in and had her house to myself for a bit (I put a few things a right angles and did the dishes) before walking home, running into Sasha in a tux on his way to a friend’s wedding, and taking the train to Vinnytsia for The Collaborative, since the bus had no more seats. Abbey gave some good tips on teaching writing, and we talked about organizing summer camps before heading to an Italian restaurant to get pizza for dinner. I was going to the theatre with Matt and Anya though, so by the time my pizza came I had 5 minutes to eat it—I gave it a valiant effort and shoved as much down my throat as I could before running to catch “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in Ukrainian, about 10% of which I understood. It was still really cool to be in a theatre at a cultural performance, since PCVs usually “slum” it, so to speak.

On Sunday I made Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake (intrigued by the recipe’s title, I had to try it out, and it was surprisingly moist and delicious) and hosted my friends for a planning session on their HIV/AIDS prevention lectures; my contribution was limited to cooking, as I had a very difficult time following the rapid, technical conversation in mixed Russian and Ukrainian (in brief: “AIDS prevention=yay—ok now eat cake!) I also skyped with my family and found out my brother was going to Bowdoin!

Last week, I made green borshch according to the Babuysia’s Cookbook, but mine turned out red. Tasty, but not quite right. This week I tried again, but added so much rice (substituting for potatoes) that the wooden spoon actually stood up in the pot. It’s a work in progress.

Saturday I went to a café with Luda and Anya, a friend of hers who came to English club for the first time this week. They had bought a liter of orange juice and sunflower seeds, which I thought an interesting combo for a bar, but I diligently worked each individual seed free from its shell as we talked about wedding traditions. I also managed to stick my elbow into the birthday cake sitting on the bar, getting yellow frosting all over my sleeve. I loaded up on vegetables the next day at the bazaar, and had only just walked in the door when it started to pour. So I did some afternoon yoga, enjoying the sounds of the storm. Then I met up with Anya and Matt, and Anya’s friend Sasha from Kiev joined us as well. At the entrance to the café we ran into Lena’s sister and her husband, who I haven’t seen in forever, but I keep hoping they will invite me back to their house (eventually I’ll just invite myself over, as I resort to from time to time). The conversation covered world religions, American attitudes toward food, and growing up in the 90s (which meant something very different in Ukraine than in America). We walked by the town square later, and a religious “concert” was just finishing, so I said hello to all my Nazarene friends (and detected strong judgment on their part for my having been in a café, which I shrugged off but did not appreciate, since it goes back to my earlier discussion on issues of tolerance). I went home to have a salad, and then hung out on a park bench with Pasha and a bunch of teenage girls for a bit (a drunk man who had clearly spent the day fishing asked us for cigarettes, and kept repeating, “There are no more fish in Kozyatyn,” which perhaps in and of itself is not that amusing, but the delivery was hilarious). Later I wanted to make hot milk to dip my chocolate bar into while I watched “Love in the Time of Cholera,” but I ended up making cheese. Or so I thought, since the milk turned all lumpy, but Larissa said that meant it wasn’t fresh, because no matter how long you heat really fresh milk it won’t curdle, whereas to make domashniy syr you have to start from kefir. And if you want sour cream, you just let fresh milk sit out for a few days and scoop the fat off the top. Then you use the sour milk to make cheese! Brilliant. It keeps bringing Laura Ingalls to my mind.

Monday was lasagna day! Luda’s relatives work in Italy, and they sent her lasagna noodles (which you can’t find in Ukraine, except if you want to spend a lot of money in Kiev). We also substituted a type of cream cheese for mozzarella, but the end resulted tasted good to me (then again, when it comes to food, I’m pretty easy to please—I even ate some of that lumpy milk I heated the other day)! Luda’s mother is the music teacher at my school, but it didn’t feel odd to be friends with my colleague’s daughter and hang out in their apartment. They made delicious tea from berry bush leaves they themselves had gathered and dried. Anya and Luda had gone to the village to visit Luda’s boyfriend, and they were still marveling over how much nicer and more attentive village boys were to the “city girls,” so we decided next time we’d kick it up a notch with an American girl.

Food for thought: Tell me about your wildest food adventure.

The first week in April I dedicated English Club to April Fool’s Day, and we had a great session comparing American and Ukrainian humor and telling anecdotes. Pasha told of when he sold his grandma’s cow for drug money (“No, Babuysia, I haven’t seen Bessie this morning.”) We had many of the same categories of jokes, but Ukrainians also enjoyed self-effacing jokes about salo, beets, and vodka, with a wry appreciation for life’s hardships, whereas American self-effacing humor I think focuses more on life’s excesses.

I was having tea with some friends at my apartment, and I commented that I used to be afraid of the gas stove; my friend replied, yeah, when we used to make our own drugs, one of my friends almost blew herself up accidentally. Normalno.

I love that my Ukrainian friends love “Friends,” or “Droozie,” as it’s known here, because both they and my brothers can quote it with ease. We watched some episodes together at club and during tea.

Once during the week I had Italian night with Luda from my adult English club—we made a pasta dish with olives and meat and drank wine and listened to Italian music and talked about our shared interest in Mediterranean men.

The first week of May, club was “travel” themed: where we would like to both visit and live. Topping the list for travel were India, Brazil (Ukrainians don’t need a visa), and Australia, whereas England ranked high for resettlement (due mostly to football allegiances).

Kamilia came over to help me cook on Friday, and we invited the English club over for dinner. The pastor’s wife and three kids came with another girl from the church who helps with the healthy lifestyles trainings as well. My oven was so inadequate they had to leave before the food was fully cooked. I had a nice conversation with some neighbors on Saturday after taking out the trash.

On Tuesday the 11th we started school 3 hours later because the 11th formers had an exam, so I was under the impression I would be at school till 6 pm. We made plans to hold the English club at Kamilia’s and cook dinner there, since I would be done so late, but instead I finished an hour early, because Larissa was just giving exams to our co-taught 6th and 7th formers. It was sunny out, so I decided to read on a park bench while I waited for Kamilia; a somewhat intoxicated man sat down across from me and started trying to guess my name, listing off Ukrainian women’s names—I told him like that he would never manage. The topic was war, so everyone recounted family history; Andriy’s grandfather was a Soviet war hero (but Andriy sold his medals for drug money once upon a time), Pasha’s great-grandmother was a rebel, and Luda told stories of cannibalism during the Holodomor. My favorite comment though was when Pasha said I reminded him of Joey from “Friends,” because I often laugh at things other people say in Ukrainian or Russian, even when I have no idea what they’re talking about.

My blog is monitored by my Peace Corps Regional Manager, since it is accessible to the public, (yay free speech!) and she asked for clarification when I made some comments about my friends selling cows and war medals for drug money. I am including my response, in case any of you were also wondering what the heck I was talking about:

I am sorry that you were confused by the content of my blog, so please allow me to clarify. Pasha and Andriy are indeed my friends, and they are certainly not drug users. They were, many years ago, but they have since successfully gone through rehab, and are now active members of the Church that runs the local rehab center, as well as an NGO called "Open Heart." As volunteers working for Open Heart, they regularly visit local schools to give lectures on healthy lifestyles and HIV/AIDS prevention, run youth groups, and organize other events such as the testing I also wrote about. I admire their hard work and good example, and I hope you can see (as I do) that they are good people despite their past. I also make a point to publicly support them, because I think it sets a good example for my community. As to my comments, they are all true statements, and since my blog attempts to address the 3rd goal of Peace Corps (namely, to inform Americans--my friends and family--about the host country), I value my Ukrainian friends' insights as a fascinating look at some of the difficulties of living in Ukraine in the 90s.

This past weekend I went with Pasha to the Botanical Gardens in Kiev to see the lilacs in bloom. It’s a huge park and we explored a lot of it, as I explained my constant desire to see what is around the next bend, or at the end of the horizon (ask friends I have traveled with or brothers I have biked with). It was awesome to speak Ukrainian all day, but it definitely tired me out, and I’m still not able to express everything I want.

I saw my first movie in theatre in Ukraine after more than 7 months in country! I went to Vinnytsia to see “Robin Hood,” essentially with a church group, because most of my friends in Kozyatyn happen to be members of the Church of the Nazarene. It is fascinating to me how religion and drugs, both extremes of which I do not approve, have been a part of the lives of my friends. I don’t know if in America I would have the courage to get to know people like that, so I am happy to think it reflects my philosophy of stepping beyond one’s comfort zone, which for me is somehow easier to do abroad, in a place where everything theoretically is uncomfortable. And the people I’ve met are good people, which I would never have known if I had judged them on my regular standards. I have mixed feelings about religion, considering myself more spiritual than religious, and yet having been raised Catholic (for which I consider myself culturally Catholic). Basically I’ve come to the conclusion that all belief systems are equally valid, so long as they don’t infringe on the rights of others, and I enjoy learning about them in a cultural context, but strongly dislike when they come in conflict, which happens more than it should considering the ideas people profess. Anyway, I’ll stop philosophizing and get back to the film, which wasn’t that good. I didn’t understand all the Ukrainian, but the action didn’t seem very logical either. I did, however, enjoy the theatrical experience, which reminded me of America, since we walked through a mall with things I couldn’t afford, brought popcorn and chips and soda into the theatre, made snarky comments about the previews, and had Big Macs and fries and McSundaes for dinner (it was so surreal to be hanging out with a group of Ukrainians in McDonalds). Pasha and his friend Yura and I walked around town a bit afterwards, and they indulgenced my penchant for exploring unknown quarters of the city as we took a very roundabout way back to the train station. Yura said I had beautiful hands, and I was flattered by the unusual complement (I wanted to type that so I’d remember it when I’m old and wrinkly). I was so tired when I got home at 11:30, but I had to stay up to type and send Ira’s application for camp, since I had walked an hour to and from school that morning just to get, because somehow in the craziness of leaving for the concert yesterday I had managed to misplace it and I felt guilty.

Ponder this, por favor: How do you judge the people you care about, and is there anything that would preclude you being friends with someone?

In mid-April I ventured to Zacarpatska (Beyond the Carpathians), ostensibly to run a half-marathon, but really to enjoy the wine festival and the company of other volunteers. Alia and Megan got on a train at midnight only to discover people asleep in their assigned bunks; then they realized the ticket lady had sold them the wrong ticket, so they had to get off the train! Beregovo is a gorgeous town on the Hungarian border that feels much more like Eastern Europe (it even has a different time zone!) than the rest of Ukraine, ethnically, linguistically, architecturally, and culturally (the fact that there even was a wine festival is telling). The day of the race was so beautiful that I momentarily contemplated running the half just to continue admiring the scenery (the route followed the rolling foothills of the distantly visible snow-capped Carpathians, with vineyards and flowers blooming, green buds on the trees and a blueblue sky), but then I decided that drunk pasta dinner wasn’t the best pre-race prep, and opted instead for the 10K. I was in awe of the volunteer who organized the event: 40 runners got bibs and breakfast and dinner tickets for two nights at registration, we had a walking tour of the town and were set loose to sample the wines before the pre-race pasta dinner, on the course there were water stations and at the finish a beer tent (with PB&J sandwiches!), and a celebration dinner/wine tasting/award ceremony concluded the festivities. I consider it a good day when my kids hand in their homework or correctly formulate a question. Erin, on the other hand, has half a million in grant money from the EU. Still, there were the usual last-minute changes and minor glitches (it took 3 hours to feed everyone at the award dinner, and our 5 star hotel had only 2 beds for 3 people, so we made one big bed and had a slumber party) that reminded us this was Ukraine. Alia and I had a picnic by the riverbank in Mukachevo (smoked fish and pickled peppers on fresh bread) before heading to the station. On the train ride back, we said goodbye to vacationland as it slipped past the window and we returned to the “real” heartland Ukraine we know and love: cold, wet, gray post-Soviet industrial home sweet home. Spring still had not sprung at that point, so the difference was marked. As I stared out the window I saw haystacks with big wooden poles stuck in them, goats and cow herders, burning fields, and a golden sunset over the misty mountains Dracula once called home. A word of advice: don’t use your fancy expensive sleeping bag in steerage—it’s unbearably hot since the trains are always sweltering, and too much of a curiosity to avoid a conversation with your traveling neighbors, who are drinking beers and saying some things you don’t understand and some things you pretend not to understand as you burrow into your self-imposed sauna and ignore the occasional pat on the feet as they carry on carousing in the compartment around you—keep in mind it’s only 9 pm, but your train is getting in at 6 am and you have work at 8.

What is your favorite landscape and why?

Prepare yourselves for the latest onslaught. It's coming. In the interests of everyone's sanity, however, I have tried to break up my posts into something resembling categories. I have also blatantly stolen Lindsay's format of posing a question at the end of each post, in the hopes that you fine folks will comment and make my life worth while. Get to it.

Hoping for quotes for the GADFly’s new column, “Ukrainians Speak,” I asked my Adult English Club what they thought about feminism in Ukraine. An 11th form girl asked what that was. That does seem to be the question here. Everyone has heard of it, but no one can say what it means. Many people—men and women, Americans and Ukrainians—mention something to the effect of “a notion conjured up by a mob of angry bra-burning lesbian man-haters.” The men in my club—people I consider my friends, and generally rational human beings—gave the following responses: “It’s a female disease”—Pasha. “I think feminism is when unlucky women try to guilt men with their problems”—Slava. “It’s not a problem in our country”—Andrei. All of them adamantly denied the possibility that men could be feminists, seemed insulted, even, by the suggestion.

When I defined feminism as “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes,” the 11th form girl said it was an issue in Ukraine, because employers assume women will want children, and may therefore be less likely to hire them, since maternity leave is so long here. Even that fact illustrates the peculiarities of the status quo in Ukraine. I think Soviet influence and economic necessity made it less revolutionary for women to go to work than it was at the same time in America (or maybe it was just as revolutionary, but Soviets were in the business of being radical), but domestic responsibilities did not keep pace with the changes in the working world. Often women now have two full time jobs, one at work and one at home, which is reflected in the global statistic that, “Women do two-thirds of the world's work but receive only 10% of the world's income.” To pass the time while my school’s technology teacher was fixing my electricity, I asked his opinion. He replied, “If a man isn’t married, is he a feminist?”—Eduoard. Granted this was in Ukrainian, but what I think he meant was, if that single man has to do all the household chores that wives usually do for men in Ukraine, by necessity he believes in the equality of the sexes, or at least is begrudgingly forced to submit to such a reality.

One of my 9th formers, in her application to attend GAD’s summer leadership camp, wrote, “In my opinion, young modern women should be independent and can do a lot by themselves. I know a lot of young women who want to get by in this life without anyone’s help.” And yet when I go to my Adult English Club, the same Pasha who said feminism is a disease insists on helping me take off my coat, and all three of them walk me the five blocks back to my apartment after the club. Chivalry or chauvinism, endearing or annoying, neither or both? Iryna Krupska (our Training Coordinator) finds feminism in Ukraine perfectly compatible with such courtesies, and I remember an article in our Cross-Cultural Reader stating something to that effect as well. I like how Krupska moves away from formal rights and talks instead of the “possibility for self-realization,” because she also points out that laws, as well as formal gestures that have lost their meaning (I loved getting flowers and chocolate on Woman’s Day, but my friend noted bitterly that many men prioritize liquid celebration over the congratulation of their womenfolk), can coexist with ingrained attitudes that prevent their full realization.

My first two-hour run was awesome! I went way the heck out of town but somehow found a highway that looped back, ran past my school, and all over the place. The wind out in the fields was ridiculously strong. My second two-hour run was accidental, and afterwards I was pretty sure I gave myself Achilles tendonitis. My heel had been hurting for a week since that run. I took a gamble on another loop road that didn’t pay off, finally asked for directions in a cemetery (I was informed that I was very far away from where I wanted to be), and had to turn back past all the tractors and trains and empty stretches of windswept fields with babuysias on bicycles I had seen before. (PCMO text update: I did inflame my tendon, but it was the “Tibialis Posterior” rather than the “Achilles,” thank you very much).

Palm Sunday is actually Willow Sunday in Ukraine, because willow branches are blessed instead. I went to the Catholic mass upon Lena’s invitation, but didn’t actually see her there till halfway through the service, so I sat in the choir with Kamilia. We both went for “Religion, Round 2” at our friends’ church (of the Nazarene), which was in Russian (but I understood some metaphors about girls in miniskirts and coaches in boxing rings). Several of my friends stood to speak at different points. I enjoyed the informality of the service, which was held in the same basement room where we have our English club. We all met up at Kamilia’s later, and Nadia came from Vinnystia! Dinner was followed by karaoke, and on the way home, Pasha said he could tell I was American by the way I walked, which oddly offended me (I like to pretend I keep the neon “Obvious American” sign to a dull glow). Then he explained it was because I don’t wear heels everywhere, and I couldn’t argue with that. As much as I admire pretty shoes, I’m not enough of a masochist to actually wear them on a daily basis.

I took the bus to school on Tuesday, an indicator of how much my foot was hurting. I sat next to my director and used the opportunity for some detective work on the Internet mystery (Financial or technical problem? Status: unresolved). On Wednesday in Kiev I scored a free shirt from the drop box, got my heel checked out by a PC doc since I was in the office anyway (he said nothing serious, just overworked), and explored headquarters, but the office was eerily empty, as all had gone to welcome the new group of volunteers arriving that day. I did chat a bit with the director, his wife, and the #2 guy on their way out, and had pelmeni with squash sauce for lunch with the HIV project coordinator. I then ambled through Kiev for 2 hours on my way to an embassy-sponsored training on using blogs and wikis in the classroom, most of which wasn’t new to me, but I’m still glad I went. I called Olga (the pregnant girl who gave me her coat in December) and waited for an hour to rendez-vous at the metro for an hour’s stroll through the botanical gardens. Her son is now one month old.

Next stop: Odessa! I found my way to the couchsurfing address, Susanna let me in to her apartment at 6 a.m., and then we both went back to sleep. Later we compared life philosophies before her friend came with precisely half an outfit, and then we strolled around the streets laughing at the looks she got. City of humor, indeed. I bought a ridiculous sparkly cowboy hat to avoid being totally eclipsed, but it kept flying off my head. We met up with more of Susanna’s friends and went to a basement practice room with dusty cement walls, floor, ceiling, and pillars; some played cards while others rocked out and I marveled at the serendipity of my life. Back at Susanna’s, we watched “South Park” in Russian, drank, and ate sunflower seeds. I am constantly in awe of the patience Ukrainians exhibit for gnawing at the shells to extract the tiny seed, over and over again, for endless hours of entertainment. I was also the only one not taking straight shots. Substances flowed free and pure. The next day I waited till 1 p.m. and she was still not up, so I left a note and went for a liberating solo stroll about town and along the Black Sea, and had a photo sesh at the Potemkin steps. I didn’t feel like being too touristy though, so I called Susanna on a whim and asked if she would cut my hair (she had mentioned before that she was a part-time hairdresser, so now I have bangs for the first time since kindergarten) and then I listened to another jam session before baking an apple crisp and rushing to my train. The pregnant daughter and her mother in my compartment were wearing matching sweatsuits for the journey. I’m pretty sure my feel smelled bad, but I’m sadly ok with being a smelly kid in Ukraine. Laundry especially is overrated.

I sought out flowers in Kiev for Olha before taking the elektrishka to Bilky and helping with the tail end of Pasca (Easter bread) baking. Olha and I caught up and made vareniky before I went to bed at 8 p.m., got up at 1 a.m., walked half an hour to Borova in the dark with our basket, placed it in the queue around the church, and went inside to stand for the (short) 3 hour version (some people come at midnight and stand all night). Orthodox interior design was what I’d call “divine chaos,” icons covering every inch of the walls with no apparent logic, and newcomers pushing forward to light candles and bump chins with a fancy icon on an altar in the front. The priests circled and prayed in a front room, occasionally popping out to throw a blessing at the crowd, which exclaimed and prostrated itself in unison (me doing everything backwards, Catholic style from left to right), and likewise whenever the chorus repeated, well…the chorus. There was communion for the really devout, and the rest got to kiss the cross. I welcomed the bowing as a covert forward bend (stretch and shake it out, hallelujah). The structure wasn’t as clear as a Catholic mass, but there did appear to be some kind of gospel, during which the priest entreated the congregation to understand their faith.

The blessing of the baskets was the most beautiful thing I have seen in Ukraine. As we stood in the dark cold and a light drizzle, a line of baskets lit by candles snaked around the church, and the priestly procession perambulated thrice before liberally dousing us all with holy water. We ate the main Easter meal at 6 a.m. (first the blessed things, beating our eggs, cutting with the holy knife, and saving the holy crumbs) and went to bed till noon. Ate, slept, ate. I hung out in pajamas with 2 old ladies all day, complaining about aches and pains and eating some more. It was a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend the holiday. Andrei the history guy/octogenarian and his wife came for a late afternoon visit, and then I caught the last train home.

On Easter Monday I went on a walk with Pasha, Slava, and Marina. In Ukrainian, the verb “to walk” is equivalent with the concept of “to hang out with,” but it also usually quite literally entails walking around town. I also formulated a theory on American obesity as opposed to the infuriatingly fatless European physique; it states that Ukrainians work harder for their food, so it takes longer and therefore they eat less. Case in point: symuchkiy, or sunflower seeds, are something of a national obsession here. Ukrainians keep handfuls in their pockets at all times, and expertly extract each individual nut from its shell with their teeth, one after another, without end. As an American who values convenience and quantity, I haven’t yet accepted symuchkiy as suitable snackage—it’s way too much work for way too little food. My friends drank juice and ate dried fish (to get at the meat of which you have to peel off the skin as well) and cheese, whereas I opted for prepackaged ice cream. Theory, confirmed. We sat in the park, walked around the island where the stadium is, and proceeded to get the song “Running, Running” stuck in each other’s heads.

April Fools! Instead of the witty, insightful personal commentary you so silently associate with your furtive forays onto this blog (joke's on me there), today you will find a sincere request for financial contributions to help fund our youth leadership camps in Ukraine. Kindly look at a calendar, and you'll notice that in exactly one week we land on April 15th. What better time than now to make a tax-deductible gift that not only helps spiff up the figures in your household budgetary records, but also brings joy and peace to the world? Am I exaggerating?

Probably, but allow me to elaborate...

In addition to my primary TEFL assignment as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kozyatyn, I have become involved with a working group of volunteers called the Gender and Development Council (GAD).

Every summer, GAD, in partnership with local Ukrainian organizations, organizes two summer camps for Ukrainian youth, ages 14-17. Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) and Camp TOBE (Teaching Our Boys Excellence) provide a unique opportunity to gather 40 girls and 20 boys from different parts of Ukraine to participate in a camp dedicated to learning about gender issues, leadership, and team building. Camp topics include “Project Design and Management,” “Counter-Trafficking and Domestic Violence,” “Healthy Lifestyles and Body Image,” “HIV/AIDS Awareness,” “Human Rights,” and “How to GLOW/Excel,” in combination with fun leadership and team building exercises and excursions.

This year, in order to include more youth and increase the sustainability of the camps, GAD and our partnering organizations are planning two GLOW and one TOBE camps. Two camps will take place in the eastern town of Kreminna, and the other camp will be held in the western town of Kolomiya. Holding camps in both regions of the country will make traveling easier for campers and will give us the opportunity to work with more Ukrainian organizations.

We are lucky to be working with Ukrainian partners who are eager to help make these camps a success, but we are still in need of funds to help make these camps a reality. Through the Peace Corps Partnership Program, we are asking friends, family, and local businesses back home to help us cover costs for these camps.

In order to make these camps a reality, we need to raise $6,601. Only $110 sends one Ukrainian student to camp for the entire week! Please consider making a tax-deductible donation in order to help empower Ukrainian youth to become the future leaders their country needs. Every little bit counts!

You can make a donation at the following website:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=343-170

Please let me know if you have any questions, and thank you for helping to empower Ukraine's youth!

Sincerely,

Kathleen (on behalf of the GAD Council)

P.S. If you do choose to donate, please shoot me an e-mail to let me know so I can thank you personally. As the website is currently set up, we are not able to see our donors' names until after the grant closes. Thanks again!!

After a winter of icy roads and bitter winds, I’ve gone on my first few runs of the season! It was pretty glorious to be able to run again, though after a false start at spring we got more snow, and my 3rd attempt to run left me slipping, sliding, and dodging vehicles as I tried to pick my way down the middle of the road. All winter long I’d been “going in for” yoga, and I think it’s definitely made me stronger, because picking up running after such a long break wasn’t as painful as it normally is. My hope is to run a half-marathon organized by another volunteer on April 17th in the Carpathians, although with my level of training that may be a foolhardy goal. It’s something to work toward though, and at the very least I’ll run the 10K. At any rate, a trip over the mountains and a hearty frolic through the hills is in order. I ran for 100 minutes last week, which is longer than I’ve ever run in my life, and I was pretty pumped. I got plenty of strange looks too, which always amuses me. I stare back and smile until they look away.

Anya and Matt came over one Saturday, and we made the first brownies she’d ever had in her life! Then she fell asleep while we were watching “Wedding Crashers.” It was nice to have them over to my house and not just go out to a café.

I can’t possibly convey in words how much the sunshine has put a spring in my step (as well as on my doorstep). I walk around with a smile on my face, commenting on the weather to anyone who will listen. One nice day I set out to find the stadium—I knew we had one, but I hadn’t seen it yet. I found it on an island in the middle of the river—which I also hadn’t seen before—and my counterpart said it used to be the old Jewish cemetery (I didn’t ask why it was turned into a stadium).

International Women’s Day is a national holiday (March 8th) in all the countries of the former Soviet bloc. I don’t know why we don’t celebrate it, because it started as a female garment workers’ protest in New York City 100 years ago. (Maybe its socialist origin made it an undesirable event in the states?) On Thursday, students came up to me between lessons, speeding through the well-used phrase, “We congratulate you on the [insert special occasion here], wish you happiness, health, etc. etc.…” and presented me with flowers, chocolate, and other nice things. I spent the actual holiday baking in the kitchen and cleaning in the house, the irony of which was not lost on me. But it was by choice, since I invited Andrei, Pasha, and Kamilia over for tea and homemade cookies. Pasha recounted how in his dream Arnold Schwarzenegger killed him, and then we had an honest conversation about drug use and fabrication (many drug users in Ukraine also know how to produce their own drugs). An interesting afternoon altogether.

On Wednesday I visited Katia and Co. in an attempt to reconnect with them (Lena’s extended family, who I haven't seen since Winter Break), and we made fresh salads for dinner—I had more green vegetables that meal than I’d had all winter! She bought broccoli in Poland and asked me what to do with it, since people don’t really eat it here. All our toasts were to women, since the men of the house were absent.

I’ve discovered a new “секoнд гeнд” store near my school, which is a dangerous development given my love of thrift stores—but you can’t really argue with dress pants, a dress shirt, and a skirt for $8, right? (Except if you remember that’s almost twice what I make in one day, but shhh!)

I invited another volunteer from GAD to hold a self-defense seminar for my 9th form girls in honor of Women’s Day, and it worked out great! We took them out of English and PE, and set up mats on the stage in the auditorium, and they learned about domestic violence and how to protect themselves. They were really enthusiastic about practicing the punches, kicks, and blocks, and as a grand finale Jean taught them how to throw an attacker and they practiced on her. The girls all wanted to know when she could come back, and the boys were very interested in what we were doing (they kept trying to peek into the auditorium), so I hope to build on that enthusiasm for future projects! We stayed at Kamilia’s the night before, since Jean went to her village school in the morning and then my school in the afternoon. Jean’s puppy came too (she terrified Djora at first, until he realized he was bigger). The second night they stayed at my apartment and she whipped up a spicy meat sauce with macaroni while I pretended to lesson plan, and then we watched a movie and had a half-night’s sleep before she had to wake up to catch her train at 5 am.

That night I smelled smoke in my apartment and found my fuse box fuming. Mr. Fix-it came to the rescue, and I will live another day. I also had to consult my brother on an urgent matter of technical support. He advised me to restart my computer. Brilliant! Also brilliant: Russian Vegetable Pie! Thank you, Babuysia’s Cookbook.

Another personal victory I’m rather proud of: I finally finagled the downstairs neighbors for tea and cookies! They are very elusive, so I ambushed the husband while we waited for the garbage truck, and asked when I could bring them the cookies I had baked (I’d been slowly eating them and soon there would be none left for the intended recipients, but like I said, they’re hard to track down, and cookies sitting on your counter are just asking to be eaten). But we finally got acquainted, and I made them suffer through my photo album while their 5 year old played with his trains.

This past weekend I was supposed to meet my cluster for a reunion to celebrate Alia’s birthday, but plans fell through and I ended up having a bizarrely impromptu yet satisfying weekend at home. On Friday, Kamilia, Slavic, and I met with someone important to get the go-ahead to inform vice principals of our project. He was very friendly and Polish and liked my last name; he said to stop by for tea sometime, and did I prefer muscular or intellectual men? I said intellectual, and he said he’d work on it. Note to self: good person to go to if I need something done in town. Afterwards, Slavic and I ended up going to a beauty pageant that Kamilia had prepared one of her students for. I have never seen an audience more excited for a non-sporting event. They were wild, and it was hilarious. There was an evening gown contest, as well as an improvised song-and-dance talent portion. Out to coffee later, I discovered Korean carrots (spicy, garlicky, delicious) and a Frenchman (choose your own adjectives) in town. I was pretty excited about both.

On Saturday I invited Kamilia, Slavic, and Andrei over to bake apple pie. We added walnuts and rounded it out with vanilla ice cream for a satisfying culinary experience. Djora came too, and I set up “Hercules” on my computer for him to watch, because I promote Disney at every opportunity. Slavic kept retreating into the kitchen to do the dishes, protesting that he hadn’t helped cook. I wasn’t going to stop him! Later I went to Polish language class, just because. There I saw everyone I knew in town: my neighbors, my counterpart and her sister, a teacher I’d met at Olympiad, and one of the girls that comes to my “Adult English Club,” who I ran into as I was walking there, and who was also going for the first time just to check it out. I didn’t really learn very much (they’ve had several weeks of lessons already, and not knowing the alphabet or the proper pronunciation slightly limited my understanding) but I had a good time. At the end, the teacher asked if I would be joining the Polish folk dancing group for a concert in May. Why not? So I went to rehearsal on Sunday, and blundered my way through a waltz-y folk number before going out to drink milkshakes and talk about boys and more serious things with Luda, the girl from my club who is enamored with all things Italian. I rounded out the night watching a Reese Witherspoon film in Russian. Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian in one day? Why not?

On Monday I had a nice chat with my counterpart, going over all the things we’re supposed to talk about. Our “meeting” occurred during the 45 minutes we were waiting for the bus, which is all the proof I need that I can get to school faster on my own two feet.

Tuesday after Adult English Club (is it just me or does that name sound slightly risqué?) I walked with Kamilia back to her house (we picked Djora up from her mother’s on the way) and we prepared a power point to present our project to the vice principals of extra-curricular activities on Friday at the lyceum. The presentation accomplished what it needed to, and the two Slavics joined Andrei, Kamilia and I to visit Pasha and Sasha at work, and then bum around town for a bit. I like these Friday afternoons, when I never know what will happen.

The second to last Saturday in January, my coworker Lena and her daughter came to my apartment and we made pizza, Ukrainian style. This involves lots and lots of mayo, as well as hardboiled eggs, chicken, and canned corn. It took about 3 times longer than it should have to bake, because my oven doesn’t ever go above 200 degrees. Its only functional setting is “flame.” In the meantime we played bananagrams, which the 21-year-old daughter really got into.

My Regional Manager came for a site visit one Friday. We met in the library at my school and talked for over an hour about how everything was going, then we had a rather awkward meeting with the English teachers because they got yelled at for not giving me class lists, not having regular meetings to discuss issues and ideas, and making it known the to kids that my lessons are considered supplementary and not obligatory. Natalia Frantsivna has been on edge lately because she’s up for observation this year, so anyone can come at any time to see her classes and the town administration never gives her any notice. My RM was surprised because Natalia Frantsivna usually likes to laugh and joke, but that day she was at her breaking point. After a quick chat with the landlady/VP about the high electricity bill due to heating costs, we rode in the Peace Corps Vehicle to my apartment so Natasha could check it out before leaving.

After she left, I had one hour before meeting Slavic and Pasha for tea and pizza at “The Cube” near my apartment, a fast food restaurant/café/bar whose cubical façade is constructed of some multicolored semi-transparent material that makes it a convenient landmark and meeting place. I had a great time chatting with them for a few hours in Ukrainian/Russian/English, about American films and music (Pasha is a devoted Natalie Portman fan) as well as religion, because they are both active members of an American-based Protestant denomination church that meets in the Community Center in town, whereas I describe myself as a “Cultural Catholic” who is spiritual but not religious, because I think any way that you choose to manifest your faith or worldview is equally valid as any other. My adult English club meets in the same place as their church, because the club’s members are drawn from the church parishioners who want to learn or practice their English. It was a little difficult to navigate at first, due to their varying levels of English proficiency (one guy worked in England for a few years picking fruit and now has a British accent, whereas the pastor knows only a few words in English and stopped me every few seconds to write a new one down), but I asked them to think about their expectations and what we can all get out of the club, and so far it’s been going well just conversing. I’m glad Slavic asked me to start it because I always enjoy it, even though I drag my feet on the way to yet another commitment during the busiest part of my week. They’re all interesting people and I’m looking forward to hanging out with them more in the future, as well as developing future projects and partnerships. In fact, they were the main reason I invited Kamilia to the PEPFAR conference with me, because knowing a group of former drug users who go around to local schools giving presentations on healthy lifestyles seemed like a great resource to draw on for a future HIV/AIDS project. I also hope to draw on their youth group connections to maybe spark an interest in some kind of organized volunteerism at my site.

That Saturday I went with Kamilia to Vinnytsia; we were going to go skating because she has never been, but it was really cold and we weren’t sure it would be open before English club, so we settled for tea at Nadia’s. I left the club early to report to Region 3’s designated Consolidation Point for a test of the Peace Corp Emergency Action Plan, i.e. What To Do If Something Really Bad Happens. Then we all went out for pizza and had a meeting of The Collaborative, which is basically a chance for volunteers near each other to gather on a semi-regular basis and exchange ideas, compare notes, offer support and advice, etc. “Near each other” is a relative term in Peace Corps Ukraine, however; two girls spent the night at my house since it was too far for them to get back home that same day. I sent them off to the train station the next morning, ran to the bazaar, and met up with Kamilia and the guys to do some PEPFAR project planning in a mix of Russian/English/Ukrainian at a pizzeria.

Since my last post, I’ve had several sleepovers and cooking adventures at Kamilia’s apartment—once on a weekday when I went to her house after school and didn’t go home again till after school the next day. Together we’ve baked carrot cake and cinnamon buns, and then chicken, cheese, and mushroom blinchiki (crêpes) with Andrei, a great cook who lives with Slavic and Pasha in a dormitory owned by their church, which also runs the adjacent rehab center that they went through a few years ago.

Cooking has become my new hobby (mainly to facilitate my principal hobby of eating, but also as a productive means of procrastination), so I’m slowly making my way through the Babuysia’s Cookbook, and have resolved to make at least one new dish each week. (For an up-to-date accounting of my culinary exploits, check out the tally I’m keeping in the sidebar.) Then there are the days when I eat strange combos from my fridge that I find appetizing but few others would, I’m afraid. I have very low standards for edibility, and I get a weird thrill from efficiently ingesting leftovers. I also can’t throw any food away, even if it’s other peoples’ food and even when I’m not hungry. My dad earned the nickname of garbage disposer in college for the same trait, and my mom used to guilt me into finishing my plate by saying there were starving children in Africa. The food would probably be better off feeding stray dogs from the trash than adding to my own fat stores, but my mouth just won’t listen to reason. Today in Vinnytsia the Country Director (sitting next to me in the Italian restaurant we went to after our Meet Your Neighbors Meeting, and several times offering me his leftover slices of pizza, none of which I refused) remarked that I ate quite a lot. I nodded in simple agreement. It’s true.

I was visited once more by Lena, this time accompanied by her falcon-taming husband, who fixed the broken door on one of my cabinets while Lena helped me translate my newly minted “Rules of the Classroom” into Ukrainian. Later, over tea, I got to hear about her husband’s fascinating profession: apparently he trains falcons, and they’re really valuable (or they would be, if there was a market for them in Ukraine); he loves all animals, so their house sounds like a menagerie.

I invited my neighbor over for tea and she brought beer and fish, so we had a good time. We’ve since gone through a couple more rounds of blitzkrieg food battles: I hand her a plate with something, turn around and she’s gone and filled it up with something tastier. We haven’t had time for tea again, but she did stop by to show me some new pictures of her mischievous granddaughter.

The next weekend I went to Ivano-Frankivsk for the Tourism working group meeting on Saturday. We discussed project ideas to promote tourism in Ukraine, and talked about the website of travel information we’re putting together for volunteers. Alia was there and Sean lives only an hour away, so he came up after the meeting to hang out. It was great to catch up with him, and then everyone went to a nice restaurant for dinner and another café for dessert or beer (I opted for chocolate over malt beverages). Saturday night 10 volunteers slept at one guy’s apartment, and miraculously almost everyone had some kind of cushiony surface. John, the volunteer who hosted us, is 65 and used to be a ski instructor for the Army, brought a waffle iron to Ukraine, and was wearing Euro-trash teenager jeans. We woke up the next morning to the flash of a camera, as he documented the most volunteers he has ever squeezed into his apartment. To get to Ivano I was really excited for my first overnight train, but didn’t know how anything worked. The conductor handed me a plastic-wrapped package with two sheets, a pillowcase, and a towel. I asked the lady across from me what to do, and instead of just explaining she jumped up and made my bed for me (you grab a mattress from the top shelf, fold the sheet over it, and get a blanket and pillow from the stack at the front of the compartment). Other interesting observations: you can get hot water from the samovar, so most people bring their own mugs with all their other picnic supplies; they also change into pajamas—you can ask people of the opposite gender to leave the vicinity while you do this—and have slippers for the train. Traveling platzcart is the train equivalent of steerage on the Titanic, and it’s just as fun as the scene when they’re all dancing and drinking beer (I haven’t seen any dancing yet, but I’ve seen plenty of beer drinking). People are very friendly and willing to strike up a conversation. On the way back, Pete and I hung out with a young couple from Fastiv; they shared their hardboiled eggs, sausage, butter, and bread, we got off at a long stop to buy beer, and played cards till it was time for bed. The tricky bit is vaulting into the top bunk, if that is where you’re sleeping, because there’s no obvious way up. It’s always funny when you get on an overnight train in the morning, because everyone riding it for the long haul is still passed out. Two overnight trains and 27 travel hours later, I was back in Kozyatyn by 4:30 a.m. Monday morning, and back at work 4 hours after that.

I went on an accidental date the other day, accidental because I thought it was an interview and he was under different illusions. A guy had come to my school looking for the American (the third person to seek me out at school) and I was busy preparing for my next lesson during the break, so I asked him quickly what he wanted. From what I understood (this was all in Ukrainian/Russian), he was writing a thesis on the psychology of teachers and wanted to get an American perspective. I consider it part of my job to talk about America, so I asked how much time he needed and said I could meet him next week. Unfortunately I couldn’t set a time then so I had to give him my number. When we sat down at the café I turned to him and asked, “So, how can I help you? What do you want to know?” He replied laughingly, “Oh, right down to business! Why don’t we just sit and chat?” So we talked for a while and sometimes he seemed to be asking legitimate questions, but I don’t think he is writing a paper on the psychology of teachers. When I tried to leave, he begged for 10 more minutes, and I obliged but finally stood up to go. He walked me most of the way home (which is normal in Ukraine, because girls can’t be expected to walk anywhere by themselves), but I stopped him on the corner to say goodbye so he wouldn’t know exactly where I live. He asked if he could see me again and I mumbled something vague before walking away. I complain about my lack of dating prospects, but then I turn away seemingly nice guys for tricking me into dating them.

A week or two later I got a call from an unknown number (in America I don’t answer those, but in Ukraine if someone is calling my phone I usually need to answer), so I did—and it was Accidental Date Guy. He wanted to invite me—not to an interview this time—but to tea or even borshch. I told him if he wanted to invite me to hang out with his friends in a group I would be perfectly happy to do that, but I wouldn’t hang out with just him (in Ukraine if you’re alone with a guy in public, you’re assumed to be on a date, even if you’re just walking somewhere—more on that later). He thought I was shy and promised to behave, but I tried to make it clear that I simply did not want to go on a date with him. Finally I just hung up, and 3 missed calls and 2 hilarious English text messages later, he’s even farther than he was before from getting me to go out with him. (Exhibit A: “Please a telefone. Im bad speak english. Im have a speak. You no anderstand me. Im apologize.”)

The main reason to avoid casual dating in my town is the strength of the gossip chain. Almost 30,000 people live in Kozyatyn, but everyone says it’s really just a big village, and here’s a case in point: when I went to grab the key to the English room from the Vice Principal (who is also my landlady), she smiled knowingly at me and asked who I went out with last night. I knew instantly what that meant: either she or someone she knew had seen me walking with Pasha to our Tuesday night English club. I laughed and clarified that he was technically my student and definitely not my boyfriend.

A teacher I met at Olympiad back in December called to invite me to tea with her students at School #1 to celebrate their English Week, so I brought my pictures and chatted with a group of 8th-11th formers for 3 hours, eating pierozhky plus all the chocolate and cookies within reach. I asked them for recommendations of Ukrainian bands and we had a photo shoot afterward.

When you make plans to meet someone, they invariably call you 5 minutes before you’re supposed to meet them, to make sure you’re still coming. I find this both mildly insulting, because it implies that you’ll back out on your word, and counterproductive, because at that point I’m usually walking toward the designated meeting point, and then I have to stop to find and answer my phone.

I went to my first GAD meeting in Kiev over Valentine’s weekend. On Friday I took the electritchka from Kozyatyn to (almost) Bilky, but got caught up in a conversation with two old ladies and so lost track of the stops, accidentally exiting at the village before my training site. Unfortunately it was cold and snowy and there were no buses or trains, but I reasoned that if I walked along the tracks I would eventually get to Bilky. I did—pride slightly wounded, but sense of humor intact—and Olha and I baked and ate and chatted for a few hours before I headed on to Kiev for the night with Lauren and Camille, who are both also in GAD and had come back to Bilky to visit their host families as well. The next morning we treated ourselves to delicious cappuccino and cake for breakfast before 8 hours worth of Gender and Development in Ukraine. It was a grueling but inspiring day and I had trouble narrowing down my subcommittee options before deciding on the newspaper, summer camps, and Women in Development. I was nominated for President but the bid for power was short-lived. After dinner with the Bilky crew, we made our way to the disco for a PCV Valentine’s Day party. We had to pay a cover to get in, and then realized how frumpy we looked in our cardigans and jeans compared to everything that is stereotypical about European nightclub fashion (ie tight and glittery with short skirts and long heels and nothing but skin in between), so we went to the bathroom to assess the situation. We had paid, we were committed, we were going to make it work. Logical or not, we decided the best way to be less underdressed was to take off more clothes, so off went the jeans, and the long underwear was reborn as “sexy” leggings tucked into our winter boots. Parading around a disco in my underwear necessitated a quick succession of drinks to justify the decision, and then I was at peace with my degradation and ready to dance. We slept in our winter coats on the floor of an apartment rented by PCVs we’d never met because we didn’t want to wake up someone to let us into the GAD apartment that late. I woke up surprisingly refreshed the next morning, stopped in Bilky to collect my laundry and several days’ worth of rations, and then it was home sweet kozy-town.

Two weeks later I went to the PEPFAR training conference with Kamilia at a Soviet resort in the woods outside Kiev. We had sessions on the biology and transmission of HIV, stigma and discrimination (a huge problem in Ukraine where people won’t go for treatment because their neighbors will see them entering the HIV clinic, and many still believe that AIDS is only a drug-users disease), project planning, implementation, and evaluation, a practicum, and a panel of people living with AIDS. I got a lot of great ideas and hopefully we’ll be able to start our series of lectures traveling to local schools, with contests to be judged at a concert in May. It was also great to meet volunteers from older groups and get to know them better. The Sunday after we got back, Kamilia and I went to Andrei’s to project plan over chai.

At a teachers’ meeting on Wednesday, I learned that anyone who wanted to go to the town concert for Women’s Day had only to say the word and they could leave after 6th period to make it in time. I felt bad cutting my last lesson short, but I had to miss our school concert and teachers’ party on Friday for “Meet Your Neighbors” in Vinnytsia, and I wanted to see at least a little of how the holiday is celebrated. On Thursday in school my students kept coming up to me with chocolates and flowers and congratulating me with the 8th of March. I love Women’s Day—thank you, female garment workers in New York, for inspiring the International Socialist Party!

Last week it warmed up to 40 degrees for a few days in a row and a lot of snow melted. I was able to see Kozyatyn from a whole new perspective—what lies beneath! It was fascinating to see what I’ve been walking on this whole time without even realizing it.

Imagine my consternation one day after ingesting coffee and grabbing hold of the door handle to the little girls’ room (true tale, students and teachers pee together) to find it locked. I checked back a little later. Still locked. Slightly worried about when I would be able to empty my bladder (identifying opportunities to pee is always a top priority for me), I asked the Vice Principal about the bathroom situation. She said, “Oh, there’s no water in school today, so the bathroom is closed.” I eventually learned that there was one outside, but that one had open stalls with no doors. My long Ukrainian coat came in handy when girls from my next class joined me in the latrine. Yay for the Ukrainian outhouse equivalent of the towel-wrap trick at the beach, when you can change in the middle of a crowd and not get cited for public exhibitionism!

I finally ventured to our school canteen, hoping to buy a bun like I see my students with all the time, but instead I got sat down by the ladies in the kitchen and served a plate of food, just like the first formers. The older grades don’t get lunch, but the American gets fed like the children.

The last time I bought water at the bazaar, the water lady invited me into her shack for tea. Didn’t go yet, and she hasn’t mentioned it again. Bummer.

Memo to the guest of honor: for birthdays in Ukraine, the tab is on you. Mum’s the word when my birthday rolls around—this system does not give you incentive to celebrate and sing yourself. I went to a bar with Anya and Matt for her birthday, and instead of letting me buy her a drink, she bought me a whole meal.

The scene: a quiet apartment, rug folded back and yoga mat spread out, my arms and legs striving for a graceful expression of Warrior Two, when the calm voice guiding me in the pose is replaced by the terse foreign commands of a railway worker. My computer speakers have an un-zen-like tendency to pick up somehow on the local frequency of the railway station, which I wager would make anyone fall out of tree pose.

After our Meet Your Neighbors “zoostrich” the whole group went out to an Italian restaurant for dinner with the Regional Manager and the new Country Director, and then Safefy and Security Director Papa Serhiy kidnapped us all in fancy Peace Corps Vehicles and took us back to a rented apartment to film a party scene for a safety video that future generations of trainees will watch to discuss how to avoid similar situations. I find it pretty hilarious that I will be forever immortalized in a film about what not to do. Papa Serhiy graciously dropped me off at the train station afterward, smooth-talking his way out of a speeding ticket on the way by kindly requesting the officer to check out his diplomatic plates.

The actual teaching part of my job has so far been a bit of a rollercoaster. I’m embarrassed to still be learning student’s names, but I’ve manufactured at least a half dozen excuses as to why it has taken me so long: they don’t always find it necessary to come to “individualnie urok” (when I have students on my own it is not the whole class, so it is an extra lesson for those who do come), so I can’t keep track of who’s who, plus I didn’t have class lists for the first two months, and on average 20 % or so of students were absent with the flu (or in my case slept in late or went home early or had to go to the music school or got detention for writing bad words in the bathroom), and then the final problem is distinguishing between chubby and tiny Max, redheaded and blonde Katia, and all the triples and quadruples of recurring first names in each class. There are moments when I love it (when a 5th former hands me a valentine’s card, or when a 6th former bashfully asks if he can join my class too, or when they GET it and the lesson works) but more often than not I’m stressing out about creating balanced lessons from scratch each week: drawing half on the current topics and half on issues I want to cover, searching out or creating audio and visual materials, deciding how to incorporate speaking, listening, reading, and writing and at what level, as well as how much to focus on vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation for 9 groups of students from 5th-9th form takes a lot of time for someone who’s never taught before.

I’ve learned to hate the system of daily grading, because after every activity and especially at the end of the lesson they swarm on me and ask if they have marks, and I’m supposed to instantly rank them on a 12 point scale based on every little thing they did during the lesson, which I don’t usually remember because I’ve been concentrating on teaching the lesson and getting everyone to participate, not taking notes on mispronounced words and incorrect grammatical constructions. I can tell by the students’ reactions if I’ve marked them too high or too low, based on if they’ve jumping up and down and asking me to sign their daybooks or if they go all quiet and walk away looking like they want to sulk or cry—or worst of all, try to convince me to give them a higher grade. That boggles my mind, since my idea of a teacher’s authority and the respect it should engender does not seem to prevail here in Ukraine. This is especially true when it comes to homework, which they simply don’t do. Maybe I was unusual, but as a child the idea of not doing my homework was inconceivable. When a student gives a presentation in class, the other students call out suggestions for his grade at the end, and if it’s too low he whines to the teacher. At our last Collaborative meeting, another volunteer shared the idea for a classroom activity called Messenger and Scribe, in which a text is divided into sentences placed around the room, and student pairs must alternate reading and remembering each sentence to retell to their partner, who then writes it down as dictated. I tried this with my 8th form, but they were so focused on getting the right answer that they completely disregarded the purpose of the activity (to rely on memory) in favor of taking pictures of the text with their cell phones, writing on their arms, shouting the sentences to their partner across the room, etc.

Also, our current system of team teaching needs work: half of my weekly lessons I co-teach with three of the four English teachers at my school, but we do not sit down together and co-plan like we did for team teaching during training. With Lena and Larissa we usually look at the lesson in the 10 minute break before class and decide who will do what from the book; sometimes I call Natalia to see what she wants, or she asks me to plan some specific activity, but then she will often ask in class what else I’ve planned, and seem surprised when I say nothing. And yet I wouldn’t presume to plan more when I don’t know what else she wants to do with them, since technically they are her students and she meets with them without me so I never know where she’s left off. Sometimes I teach the whole lesson and she sits in the back and does her own paperwork, asking me at the end what grades I have assigned, and sometimes we haven’t talked before the lesson so I haven’t planned anything and she says, “Not to worry, I will do everything,” leaving me sitting uselessly at the computer table off to the side, feeling somehow chastised. My biggest problem with this system is that the purpose of team teaching is to combine efforts, exchange ideas, and learn from each other, and it seems like little of that is happening here. I try my best to use the communicative method, but with so little planning, much comes straight from the book, and my positive example is limited to NOT calling children stupid and lazy to their faces, and trying to get everyone to participate fully. They are all more experienced teachers than I am anyway, so in terms of skills transfer, I don’t know how much I can offer yet.

I am the third volunteer at my site, and I sometimes wonder if applying for a volunteer has become a habit rather than a need for my school. I don’t mind providing free English lessons to students, but I hate the little voice in my head that sometimes whispers that’s the only reason I’m here, to ease the teaching burden of the other English teachers. I’m being overly cynical here, but it is an important thing to think about. On the other hand, I’m inviting another volunteer to do a Self-Defense/Domestic Violence seminar for the 9th form girls next week, and both my counterpart and the vice principal are excited about it and support the idea, so I think I’m the one who needs to take a step back and see what is important for my site. But a remark my counterpart made in passing again gave me cause for concern. She wasn’t interested in PEPFAR (which is fine, because it’s not her job to teach kids about HIV/AIDS), but she thinks an HIV/AIDS project is unnecessary at our school since the kids are “bored with it,” and making copies one day she turned to me and said, “If you want to know what you can do to help, see how this copier doesn’t work very well, and the computer is very old? That’s what we really need!” This is what I personally struggle with as a PCV in Ukraine: how necessary am I, when a replacement computer is the highest priority? I wanted to go where I thought the need was greatest, but Africa twice fell through, Turkmenistan turned me down, Latin America didn’t work out, and now I’m in Eastern Europe. Yet Peace Corps is in Ukraine because there IS a need.

At the same time, I recognize the great potential PCVs here have to make an even bigger difference, precisely because Ukraine is more developed than most Peace Corps countries. We have more resources at our disposal, and we can do more with them, but the desire has to come from the community. So while I don’t think getting a new computer by itself is a Peace Corps worthy endeavor (when we already have one that usually functions), if I can get the English teachers comfortable with and committed to using technology in the classroom, then it suddenly becomes sustainable and oh-so-worth-it. Our classroom used to have access to the internet, and I would love to get it back. With the internet, a computer, and a projector (which my school acquired through a grant written by the last volunteer), our students’ English learning opportunities would be almost without limits. One future project idea I have is to start a journalism club with an online school newspaper, exploring topics like democracy, citizenship, domestic violence, and environmentalism. To be honest, it could be any topic, I just want my students to learn to think critically about what is important to them. I also really want them to get involved in volunteerism, so I’m hoping to do something small for Earth Day this year and look into longer term more regular activities, maybe with the orphanage or rehab center that I’ve been told are both in town. But all of these things are my ideas, and if I want anything to be sustainable I need to spend more time talking to teachers, administrators, and students at school to see what they want and are willing to support. And for that I need better Ukrainian skills, but unfortunately studying is the last thing I want to do in my rare and therefore precious moments of free time! The only thing less likely to get done than studying is my laundry.

As a TEFL volunteer I struggle to reconcile myself to the fact that I live my life here in English. I skyped with Meredith the other day and we laughed at the irony of our mutual resentment of speaking English with people who know other languages—we would much rather be learning theirs than teaching ours! This is not an immersion program; as much as I love learning and speaking foreign languages, I’m here to teach my native tongue. With my students, coworkers, and friends I speak English. I plan my lessons and projects in English. I have a few friends and acquaintances who don’t speak any English, but I don’t see them on a regular basis, much less a daily one. In fact, I’ve been recently trying to reconnect with all the families I spent time with over the holidays, because I haven’t seen or heard from them since then. I went so far as to show up on my neighbor’s door (though of course armed with an apple crisp!) two nights ago, hoping to have tea and catch up. We did, and it was great, though it lasted three hours (which, on a side note, I’ve found to be the minimum amount of time I can respectably spend as a guest at someone’s home). We watched the video of Zlata dancing in the town concert for Women’s Day that I had gone to on Wednesday (I hadn’t realized she was in it), toasted to women and crazy love with homemade wine (those are traditional toasts, I’m not making this up), and played with their adorably obliging tabby cat. They also showed me their efforts to digitally re-record and preserve Lida’s old family home videos that her father had made in soundless black and white, like films from the 1920s. It was really fascinating to see films originally recorded on old reels, and I admired her father’s knack for capturing poignant childhood images, as well as some great historical clips from the Soviet era.

It takes me forever to write these updates so please comment; think of it as signing the summit log of a really tall mountain that you just climbed to the top of, and your reward is the eternal glory of an electronic signature. It also proves your superior reading skills, by being able to get through such a disjointed set of observations and musings.

Rule # 1: Pace yourself. If dinner were a track event, the best analogy would be a really long relay (the only caveat being you hand the baton off to yourself and start over). You’re expected to keep up a steady pace for a long time, but there are times when the pace quickens for a handoff as a new round of guests arrive, and times when you can respectably set down your fork for a breather…or another toast.

Ukraine has 2 Christmases and 2 New Years, and people celebrate both the night before and the night of. My favorite is “Old New Years,” if only because the name is so ridiculous. Catherine the Great changed the calendar, but the peasants saw no reason to stop celebrating on the old date, and instead just welcomed the addition of another holiday.

On December 24, I went to school in the morning to work with the students preparing for Olympiad. That night I went to Olena’s sister’s house for dinner with her family. Houses in Ukraine usually don’t have enough chairs for a party, so the table is moved next to the couches in the living room, and then chairs and benches are added as needed (I’ve seen people sit on the arms of the couch too). This is convenient after the meal when you recline to digest and wait for tea. Of course, you never go “guesting” empty-handed, so I’ve baked a lot of cookies and apple crisps these past few weeks (the apple crisps because people keep giving me apples from their orchards and I can’t eat them fast enough before they go bad, and the cookies to spread American love of baked goods). On Christmas Eve the meal is meatless, and there are 12 dishes to represent the 12 apostles. Kutya is a special Ukrainian dish eaten only on Christmas, and traditionally it is the first dish served (since the Orthodox do everything three times, they have to eat three spoonfuls before they can have any other food—by contrast the Catholics don’t count, they just scoop it out). “It” is made of buckwheat or semolina sweetened with honey, poppy-seeds, grapes and walnuts, and each woman has her own unique way of preparing it. A lot of fish is also served (whole baked fish, fried fish, slices of smoked fish with lemon layered between the slices and raw onions on the side), and mayonnaise salads abound: salat olivie is a crowd-pleaser with carrots, potatoes, hardboiled eggs, kielbasa, pickles, and peas held together by mayonnaise; salat shuba is an interesting concoction known as a “fur coat,” with a bottom layer of salted smoked fish and diced onions, and subsequent layers of grated potatoes, mayonnaise, grated carrots, and grated beets; I’ve also had mayonnaise salads with such diverse ingredients as pineapple, fresh cheese, and krab sticks with a “k.” Varenyky with mashed potatoes or cabbage is common, as are individual vegetable sides of mushrooms, cabbage, beets, pickled tomatoes and cucumbers. Red caviar is spread on thinly sliced bread, cushioned by a layer of cream-cheesy stuff. The next day meat appears on the table: liver tort with layers of mayonnaise and grated hardboiled eggs, kholodets (fish or meat jelly, served cold, and so far the dish with the dubious honor of being the only thing I’ve tried once and will not eat again)…

Sorry if I get a little carried away talking about food, but those who know me well know I make it a point of honor to try any food once, and since I love trying new foods, these feasts require stamina (both to imbibe and to describe). So, back to the actual holiday. Lena’s two-year-old nephew showed me the family photos, her brother-in-law practiced his new favorite toast (“To the childrens!”), and general merriment was had by all. The next day was even better. I had to go to school, because one kid said he would be there to work on Olympiad and I guilted myself into going, but I got there late and he had already gone home, so that was a waste of time (plus Olena asked me why I didn’t just tell him not to come. Nobody told me “no” was an option)! Anyway, I went to Lena’s other sister’s house for Christmas dinner (the two houses are on the same property, and their mother lives with Olha and her family, but Katia’s house is the nice big new one) and got there early to help out. The meal was pretty much the same, with the addition of meat as well as a soup cooked over a wood fire in a cauldron outside, and I split my time between talking to the dad while he cooked the soup and I threw a ball to their giant scary dog, helping Liza, their nine year old daughter, grate hardboiled eggs and spread mayo for the liver tort (which sounds gross but is actually really tasty : ), and chatting with Katia and her guests. After several rounds of food and toasts, we sang Christmas carols in Ukrainian, Polish, and English (I even sang “Silent Night” for them at their behest, though I warned them it would not lull any small children to sleep), and then we had a wild dance party in front of the fireplace. The adults lingered around the table to chat, and the chatting gradually gave way to dancing (after drinks), as the kids played on the computer and ignored their crazy relatives—I was reminded so much of McKeever family parties that I smiled (to myself), since I had no one to share the joke with (it often amuses me that I continue to willfully spin around the globe and insert myself into other peoples’ lives in situations where I can’t fully communicate with them).

On New Year’s Eve I went to my other counterpart’s sister’s apartment and celebrated with their family. I came prepared with my photo album to pass the time till dinner, and a Russian holiday special was on in the background as we sat down to eat at 10 pm. Apparently midnight signals the beginning rather than the end of the festivities in Ukraine, because after the meal, Natalia Frantsivna’s brother-in-law donned a green velvet suit to dress as Deed-Moroz or Father Frost, the Ukrainian equivalent of Santa Claus, and we all headed to the Christmas tree in the center of town, much to the delight of wandering groups of intoxicated youth, who begged to pose for photos with Deed-Moroz. At 2 am we decided to make a “quick stop” at the apartment of the godparents of one of Natalia Frantsivna’s daughters. On New Year’s it is acceptable to call on your friends and family at any time of night, and they must be ready to ply you with food and drink. Our host and hostess were clad in nightgowns, but they willingly obliged. Sasha and Dasha went home to bed, and I would have given anything to follow suit, but instead I followed the rest of the family back to the sister’s apartment for tea and cake. I finally crawled into bed at 6 am and slept till 2 pm the next day. I was looking forward to not getting out of my pajamas when I got a call asking if I wanted to go back to the sister’s house and eat the leftovers. Since I never say no to an invitation, I suited up and headed out. There was still no running water in the apartment (the faucet had also been dry the day before, which made preparing the meal difficult), the brother-in-law grabbed snow off the balcony and melted it for tea. I taught Sasha and her 10-year-old cousin how to play Egyptian Rat Screw.

After New Years comes Orthodox Christmas on January 7th, and I was invited this time to Natalia Frantsivna’s mother’s house for Christmas Eve. Sasha and Dasha played the piano and everyone sang more carols, while I applauded the collective musical talent of the family. At the head of the table was an empty place setting with a slice of bread covering the shot glass—I asked about it and learned that a place is set in memory of family members who have died. Natalia Frantsivna asked when I was going to my student Katia’s house the next day, and when she learned it wasn’t until 5, she said that left me time to come back to her mother’s house for lunch! So I baked two apple crisps for Christmas, Take Two, and played some more cards with the kiddies before heading off to Katia’s house in the village. She is a 9th form student of mine and the best English student at school, but her sister is slightly less interested in her studies. Theirs is another nice big house conspicuously contrasted by the modest cottages surrounding it. Once again, I was warmly welcomed into the midst of another family’s holiday celebrations. The food was delicious, with some slightly fancier takes on the holiday staples. Sour apples preserved in alcohol seem like an acquired taste, but the honey cake was divine. Katia’s father sat next to me and periodically tried to persuade me to take vodka shots—they even wanted me to try the grandfather’s homebrew, but I left that for another day. His surname is Yavorski, so he and his wife took an instant liking to me. Although, everyone here insists that my last name is Polish and not Ukrainian, which throws our family mythology for a loop. I was persuade to join the children as they knocked on doors in the neighborhood and asked to sing a song about Christ being born, in return for which their neighbors were expected to give them candy and money. I dutifully learned the first verse and mouthed along to the rest; the neighbors gave me crooked glances, but tossed a few kopecks and candies my way. The older male cousins stood a cool distance away in the street and smoked, while I pretended to be 5 years old and extorted money from strangers. Katia also showed me her grandparent’s barnyard animals, and explained that there used to be two pigs before they set the homemade sausage on the table. Back at the house we sang for the adults and got more candy and cash, before counting our loot with the glee my brothers and I used to tally up Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on Halloween. Then we all watched the home video of the parent’s 25th wedding anniversary, and Katia demystified the traditions: my favorite is that the groom must wash his new mother-in-law’s feet in the most expensive vodka he can afford, and then replace her symbolic old pair of shoes with a nice new pair. I was sent home with my empty apple crisp dish refilled with leftovers, plus my pseudo-Halloween stash and a ceramic souvenir of a Cossack country celebration to remember the occasion. I think I was most excited about the leftovers. I used the turkey leg to make borscht later that week. I love figuring out how to use everything in my fridge and pantry. The other week I gingerly opened a jar of preserves of unknown origin that had been in my apartment when I arrived—it turned out to be whole strawberries floating in tasty sweet liquid that I’ve been using to flavor my oatmeal.

I didn’t do anything for Old New Year’s, which was fine by me, although some boys did knock on my door and sing me a song. They didn’t throw seeds of grain on my floor like they did on my friend’s. I gave them candy but no money, and then speculated, when I heard one spit in the hallway, if they symbolically spit at stingy people. Spitting in public is not uncommon in Ukraine though, and I think he probably just had an excess of phlegm.

I was exhausted with the holiday guesting schedule, but the first time it let up and I was home alone with no need to bake an apple crisp, I wondered what to do with myself. I like living in my own space, but I also like being around other people. So I’ve made it a point to introduce myself to my neighbors by knocking on their doors and offering cookies, which usually elicits an invitation to tea from anyone over age 12 (when kids answered the door they just took my cookies). I really like the older woman who lives right next to me with her husband (and they have the most adorable little granddaughter, who they were watching during the holidays). I had dinner and then tea with her and we chatted for 3 hours. I am in a sporadic food war with her though, because when I gave her cookies, she returned my plate with garlic cakes, and a few days later knocked on my door with fresh homemade doughnuts and scones, and later a jar of leftover kutya, which I returned filled with my homemade chili, but she is still up by one. I haven’t had time to make her an apple crisp. The other two apartments upstairs house an old Russian lady whose husband was in the hospital when I called on her, and a widower whose poor health means he rarely leaves his apartment. Both spoke mostly Russian, but I still had a good time. The old lady apologized that she could only offer me candy, and the old man gave me apples (you are never supposed to return a dish empty). She was employed here under the Soviets and never left (which is the case with a lot of people, I’ve found). The guy used to drive trucks across Siberia, I think.

I love hearing peoples’ life stories! Natalia Frantsivna’s husband was born in Baku, and he was some kind of local administrator under the Soviets, but I like to imagine his mustache belonged to the KGB. And Andrei—the Bilky historian—when he was 4 the Nazis burned his village, and after the war his mother rebuilt their house. The couple downstairs worked for 2 years in Italy, and together we reminisce about Italian food and toss around words from various Romance Languages. They served me real coffee, and I ran into the woman the other day and said they should come for tea sometime; she said when, I said not today, and we parted ways with me 90 % sure I had invited them on Sunday at 5. Sure enough, she rang my doorbell on Sunday and said they’d run and get some wine and then be right up. I showed them my pictures and we talked about gas prices and travel in Ukraine and America, an impressive feat, since I don’t actually know how much gas costs in America, nor how many liters there are in a gallon, which made comparisons difficult.

I also went back to Lena’s sister Katia’s house, played chess and checkers with their kids, and watched “Prince Caspian” on their flat screen TV. Katia and her husband’s kuum and kuma (the godparents of their child), whom I met at their house on Christmas, actually live in the building next to mine, so Lida has sent her daughter to me with fresh food on occasion, and one day when I could hear music coming from the town center, they knocked on my door and invited me to check it out. It was a concert sponsored by Yulia Timoshenko as part of her election campaign, so I went home with a free poster of the blond-braided lady holding a bunch of wheat. Lida invited me to her house for lunch after I hitched a taxi ride with the food-war neighbor and her husband to the train station (they were heading to Kiev to return their grandchildren to their parents, and I needed to buy my ticket to visit Alia); lunch lasted till 8 pm, since we looked at all their pictures of trips to Poland and videos of their daughter’s folk dance concerts, and then watched “Ratatouille” in Ukrainian.

For a few weeks my only social engagements were with children or older adults, and I was entirely missing the 20-30 year age bracket. Jessica’s friends graciously stepped in to fill the gap. First, my visit to Alia in Starokonstantiniv was brief, but a welcome change of pace. I had to wake up at 4 am to catch the train at 5, and when I got on it was dark and there were bodies passed out on benches all over the place. I had to walk through the whole train to get to my compartment (which is frowned upon, since Ukrainians magically know where on the platform to stand in order to be right in front of their compartment when the train stops), and then I stretched out on a bench, pulled my hood over my head, set my alarm for 3 hours, and passed out myself. I awoke to find an old man drinking tea and doing a crossword puzzle across from me. The conductor ladies on the train befriended me because I kept anxiously asking if we were at my stop yet, and we chatted a bit before realizing they would also be on my return train the next day. Once I got to Alia’s apartment, I didn’t leave for the duration of my visit (Alia went to an accordion concert with her counterpart while I took a nap), except to pick up another PCV who lives near her and was also visiting. She made us both jealous with stories of her puppy, and we made tacos with homemade tortillas, substituting carrots and cabbage for lettuce and tomato. Chicken, onion, sour cream, and spicy ketchup rounded out the experience. The next day the other volunteer left early and we watched a movie in Alia’s bed, since we didn’t want to get out of our pjs but we couldn’t go back to sleep. Then the volunteer came back because the bus to her village couldn’t run due to poor road conditions. She ended up taking my train.

When I got back home, I found a sticky note in my door, written in English from someone named Kamilia; it said she knew the old volunteer and supposed I lived here now, she wanted to practice her English, plus she was a good cook so I should give her a call. Then I got an e-mail from Jessica’s best friend Anya, who lives in Kiev but grew up in Kozyatyn, and is dating an RPCV who returned to Ukraine after COSing and is now working in Vinnytsia. They sometimes come to Kozyatyn on weekends, and Anya invited me to go out with them last Saturday. We went to a few cafes and had wine and chocolate, then tea, and then beer and French-fries. First though, I went to Matt’s Vinnytsia English Club in the morning with Kamilia, and since we got there a few hours early, we passed the time at her best friend Nadia’s apartment drinking tea. Kamilia had turned out to be the one English teacher who faithfully attended Jessica’s English Club, and she showed up at my school one day to introduce herself, post-sticky note. I was sitting in the teacher’s room the next day when a guy poked his head in and asked where he could find the American. The teachers silently pointed to me. He introduced himself and wanted to know if I would have a club for adult learners. I said I’d get back to him but first I needed to find a space where we could meet.

On Monday I had to go to Vinnytsia again for a Peace Corps mandated swine-flu vaccine; I’d been there twice before, both times leaving from the same track on the same platform. This time around, the same train (I thought) was waiting on its usual track ready to go, so I hopped on and sat down. It lurched to life a little earlier than the two other times, but I wasn’t worried till it began to lurch in the wrong direction. Then I got worried. A babuysia confirmed my suspicion that I was not in fact on the train to Vinnytsia I had purchased a ticket for. Luckily she, like so many other people I’ve met here, went out of her way to help me. It so happens that she lives in a village one stop away from Kozyatyn, so I got off with her at 8:15 am on a bitterly cold Ukrainian morning and we together crossed the tracks and stopped at a desolate, snow-covered country road to wait for the bus back into town—or rather, to wait and see if the bus might come. For that is what you do in Ukraine, where there’s never a printed schedule, and even if there is, it more often than not goes unheeded. “They’re more like guidelines, anyway,” as Captain Jack Sparrow would say. The bus did in fact come, but the driver waved his hands apologetically to indicate that it was already stuffed to standing room capacity, and so neglected to stop. We were left alone again on the country road, this time with no hope of a bus, and a good chance of losing the ability to count to ten on my fingers if I continued to stand in the cold (this whole week the temperature has hovered in the 0-10 degree range—both on the street and at school. Most people keep their coats on. I have also adapted the rice crispy cereal slogan to suit my wallpaper, since “snap, crackle, sparkle” pretty much sums up its activities at the moment, as it is cracking from the cold.) A girl about my age also had to get to the center, so she called a cab and we split it (the babuysia went home after several times ensuring that the girl would help the American get back to the train station). The girl got out without paying and I thought, oh well, she took advantage of me having further to go and got a free ride, but at least the babuysia was nice, but then when I tried to pay the driver he said not to worry about it, so it turns out everyone was nice! I had to buy a new ticket on a more expensive faster train, but all in all my little misadventure could have gone much worse. Once in Vinnytsia the shot took all of 5 minutes, and since there were no other volunteers around (I had hoped to run into people and go out to lunch), I called Nadia and asked if she wanted to meet up. We had lunch and she wanted to show me a museum, but it was closed since it was Monday (we still ended up talking to her curator friend for a good half-hour). Then she helped me find the restaurant where Miranda had called to say she was eating lunch (Georgian cuisine—the country, not the state!) with another volunteer, so I hung out with them for a few hours before catching a marshrutka back home.

On Wednesday I started my French Club—next week will be Spanish—and on Thursday I was supposed to have Film Club, but I couldn’t get the ancient computer to play the movie from my flash. Only Kamilia and Slava (the guy who wanted me to start an English Club for adults) had shown up anyway, so I went to Kamilia’s house and we baked a blueberry tart, watched the episode of “Friends” I had planned to show at Film Club on her computer while we ate dinner, and then I played with her 2 year old son and had tea with her husband and his best friend while she tutored the pupil who unexpectedly showed up at her doorstep (who happened to be one of my 5th formers, since she lives near my school). We watched “Legends of the Fall” and she asked if I would stay the night and go to her village school on Friday; since it was cold and dark and I didn’t want to walk the 40 minutes past the railway station to my house, I said yes (plus I though it would be interesting to see the village school). Her husband works as a security guard in Kiev, a few days on and then a few days off, so he left for work that night.

Her son Djora’s bare bum took a liking to the pullout couch where I was going to sleep, so he decided to hang out there without any pants on while I looked at pictures with Kamilia. I got over it. Just like I got over the fact that I’ve worn my long underwear pretty consistently for the past 2 weeks without washing it. Besides, it was pretty convenient to just take off my shirt and pants and have another shirt and pants already on to use as pajamas. And my finger worked just fine as a toothbrush, so I’ll have you keep your snarky comments about my slipping standards of hygiene to yourself. You try doing yoga in a t-shirt with the space heater unplugged so the boiler can heat up and then realizing that the water isn’t going to get any warmer so you shiver through a shower before gratefully donning that long underwear once again. I like baking because the oven functions as another space heater.

I hung out with the kids at Kamilia’s school on Friday morning, playing ping-pong on the table in the hallway and eating mashed peas in a broth with a sausage thrown on top from the cafeteria, and trying to get them to ask me questions. One girl knew all about me and I was wondering how till she said she read an article in the paper; a local reporter came to the school and interviewed me the other day, but I didn’t know the story had already run. Then Kamilia and I and Slava’s friend went to the local history museum and had an exhaustive guided tour of its three rooms, and later polished off some tea in the multi-colored cube building near my apartment. I got home 33 hours from the time I had left my apartment the day before. These last few weeks have been just as busy, but I'll have to cover them another time. This weekend I'll be in Ivano-Frankivsk for approximately 24 hours, but to get there and back I'll spend 27 hours on a train (all that for a two hour meeting--stretching even my love of travel to the breaking point).

Love to all and a special thanks to Lisbeth for the postcard and Mrs. Rand for a lovely letter; both got held up in Kiev but eventually followed me to site and were my first mail here in Kozyatyn!

The last weeks of training were very busy. We successfully conducted our teacher seminar and I co-taught a lesson on the royal family with more observers than pupils, but miraculously was not nervous and actually enjoyed it. We sang “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” and played “Hot Crown” to practice prepositions using royal commands. The teachers all received packets with the resources Bilky/Borova created, including a guide to lesson planning using the communicative method, audio CDs with recorded textbook dialogues and fairy-tales, and pictures of famous sites in the U.S. and Britain with written English descriptions. I went on a day-trip to Kiev with Sean and Alia, and we ended up hanging out with some volunteers we met that day at Peace Corps office, an exercise in spontaneity I thoroughly enjoyed. I love when opportunities for adventures big and small present themselves. We also ran into a PCV who married a Ukrainian and was in Kiev to obtain his green card before they fly to the States. Later that week we had another fieldtrip to Kiev, this one a Peace Corps sponsored visit to the English Resource Center maintained by the U.S. Embassy at the University. Our teacher left us at the wrong metro and never bothered to apologize or admit to her mistake, which was slightly infuriating. More information on the finer points of that lady is available upon request. This is not the proper place for such carryings-on. After our LPI we enjoyed our last night at Next, the Internet café we know and love. I even thanked the waitress for putting up with us for the past 2 months, and said we wouldn’t be coming back. So she laughed when I walked in the door the next day with Lauren, who had to send a quick e-mail—clearly we just couldn’t get enough of the place! Right before that, a total stranger turned around on the middle of the stairs in the “department store” and handed Lauren a bejeweled plant for no reason. We were still standing confused on the corner as she waved good-bye. Strange things happen in Ukraine.

My goodbye luncheon on Sunday was so nice—the local historian was there, even though it was his 80th birthday, 2 of Olya’s friends whom I had never met were also there, and they brought Olya’s grandson with them. Everyone made long toasts to my health and happiness and success, and we sat at the table all afternoon…a few hours into the meal, one of the woman’s daughters showed up, pregnant, with her husband, because the woman called them and told them to come meet the American. They were a young couple and very nice, so we chatted about the American health system and Ukrainian politics. Right before they left, Olya called them back in so they could all have a good laugh together over what I insisted was my winter coat. The girl promised to meet me in Kiev the next day and give me her old coat. Peoples’ generosity never ceases to amaze me. On my saint’s day, Andrei and his wife stopped by to bring me flowers and stayed for dinner. My full name in Ukrainian, following the system of patronymics, is pronounced Katerina Pavlivna Yavorski.

On Monday morning, Olya enlisted a neighbor to help us carry my stuff down to the school to meet the bus that didn’t quite take us to Kiev. It broke down every 5 minutes because it was too cold out, so we had to commandeer a marshrutka driver to take our stuff and us to the Swearing In Conference; but the marshrutka was half the size of the previous bus, so I ended up sitting on a pile of precariously shifting luggage for the rest of the trip. Monday after lunch was site announcement: all 112 trainees gathered in the conference hall and Peace Corps unveiled a map of Ukraine, listing off the future volunteers in each region. The rest of the conference was organized by region, so Bilky as a collective ceased to be. We still ate all our meals together though, and it seemed to me that most people stuck with their training groups. I met a few new people, but I’ve yet to formally meet the majority of Group 37. At night we hung out in our pjs and speculated on our new lives. Sara is not far from Russia, Sean landed in a beautiful resort city known for its proud maintenance of Ukrainian culture, Lauren is across the Carpathians and off the map as the first volunteer in a small town—I imagine a braided Heidi carrying well-water with the help of a wooden yoke to a cabin in the mountains—and Alia and I are in mid-sized towns in the western central part of the country. All anyone could tell me about Kozyatyn was that it is a major railway hub, which bodes well for future travel, but kept conjuring images of post-Soviet industrial sprawl to mind. I just liked that it starts off with “kozy,” and that my counterpart’s last name was “Mocha-lova.”

The next day we met our counterparts, although mine has been at a sanatorium with her daughter for a month (at first my regional manager said in rehab, which prompted some interesting speculation on my part, but then she clarified that it was a rest for health reasons) so another English teacher from my school came to the conference instead. She has bright red hair, which I liked, because for the rest of the conference she was easy to spot. I also took an immediate liking to her, which was a relief. We were all nervous to meet our future co-workers, since a willing counterpart can be such a great help during a volunteer’s service. During the next few days, we had sessions on teaching about HIV/AIDS, applying for grants for community projects, and dealing with the reality—and paperwork—involved with living on a stipend that averages to about $5 a day for all expenses other than housing. It was bitterly cold all week, so I was actually quite glad that the coat drop-off worked out.

The Swearing-In Ceremony itself elicited more emotion from me than I thought it would. My friend Sara sang the National Anthem, new volunteers gave speeches in Ukrainian and Russian, the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and the Minister of Education both spoke, we stood and collectively gave our oath of service (swearing, among other things, to faithfully uphold the Constitution of the United States of America), and at that moment I officially became a Peace Corps Volunteer. After dealing with (insert impolite epithet) Ed, and the T-stan fiasco, and every other bump in the road, it felt good to have finally made it…to the starting point. There was a reception afterwards, and Olya took off work to come, which was so sweet of her. Then the PCVs began unceremoniously heading off to site.

Of course, the bus I was on got stuck in standstill traffic, and we watched the time tick away until, one by one, everyone missed his or her respective train. Four hours later, we got back to where we started, and had to spend another night in the dormitory, in the same rooms we had been in for the conference, the sheets still rumpled from our hasty departure. Honestly, the worst part was knowing that I’d have to go through the whole luggage loading and unloading process again the next day—that and the fact that I could have been to my site and back in the time we spent stuck in Kiev traffic. Lauren, Sean, and Nikita had also been stuck on unlucky buses, so after expensive, disappointing Chinese food we watched “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” and went to bed. I played Bananagrams in the train station the next day with other PCVs as we waited for our trains—Peace Corps was taking no chances this time and had sent everyone hours ahead of schedule. A porter loaded up a cart with all my bags and I breathed a small sigh of relief when I took my seat on the train next to my counterpart—at first the conductor didn’t want to let us on, because Peace Corps paid for only two tickets (on the train that we missed the day before, they had bought four to fit my luggage as well, but they tried to save money on everyone the second time around). I played Christmas music on my i-Pod and shared the headphones with Olena. The next hurdle would be to successfully exit the train with all my bags—now including a giant babuysia bag with the Peace Corps-issued space heater—in the two minute stop at my station. Luckily people are nice, and handed my stuff to me on the platform. My school director and Aleksiy Oleksiyovich, the Physics teacher, met us at the station, and we took a taxi to my apartment. The heat had been turned off for three days, and it was freezing. The building itself has no central heat, so even with the space heater and a small wall-mounted heater plugged in, I still resorted to long underwear, wool socks, and my new down sleeping bag for the next week. Mr. Fix-it, as he will later come to be known, showed me how the gas and hot water worked, and I was left alone in my new apartment at 10 pm. I did a little happy dance for my newfound freedom, admired the sparkly wallpaper, and went to bed.

The first week was full of interesting mishaps as I gradually dealt with one new problem after another in my apartment. I’ve had a lingering, but mostly mild, cold pretty much all winter, which cycles through varying phases of severity. It didn’t help that the first week I had very little need of my ancient refrigerator (I’m pretty sure it was manufactured in the 1950s, maybe it’s even the original model, and it makes a noise like a freight train every 20 minutes), as my entire apartment functioned like a giant fridge. What I was in need of, however, as my counterpart Olena informed me, was spreading mustard paste on the bottoms of my feet to cure my cold. She even bought it for me so I obliged. It yielded a slight tingling sensation, so no harm done. Then she decided to bring me berries from the snowball tree—yes, it does exist!—to make a curative tea, but when she knocked on my door I couldn’t open it. I heard a small tinkling as a little brass bit from my lock fell to the floor, and the key refused to enter the lock. I was trapped in my freezing cold apartment, and she was stuck in the dark hallway bearing snowball berries. What to do but lower my key out the 3rd storey window for her to try from the other side? Luckily I had decided not to throw away that ball of twine I found in my apartment when unpacking and had doubted I would ever need. Unfortunately, though, someone had something magnetic on a 2nd floor balcony, because the key kept getting sucked into it, so I finally just yelled “Oberezhno” and tossed it in the snow with string attached. She couldn’t open the door either though, so Mr. Fix-it came and open-sesamed the stupid thing, but the lock was definitely broken. The next day I had to close the top lock with the help of a screwdriver to twist the skeleton key in place until he came after school to install a new lock. I carried the screwdriver in my purse all day. Mr. Fix-it had earlier been called to my apartment to make the boiler work (though that was just me being stupid, because faucets in Ukraine do not always yield hot water when turned to the left where the little red symbol is, but sometimes inexplicably switch things up and have hot water emerge from the faucet with the blue mark that clearly indicates “cold” in the rest of the world), although I did not tell him that and instead decided to pretend that he was magical and could fix anything.

In my apartment I can have either hot air or hot water, because I must unplug the heater in order to turn on the boiler and keep things from blowing up, i.e. not use too much electricity at one time. Then I wait an hour and magically have hot water till it runs out. Sometimes it’s not very hot, or sometimes there’s no water at all, like the time I had just gotten in the shower (which by the way has wallpaper instead of tiles lining the sides, which just seems like a bad idea) and the water turned off, and I was left wet and cold and grumpily decided to heat up water on the stove for a bucket bath, but then right as I was about to use it, the water came back on, so I finished my shower and then used the boiled water to soak my feet with another packet of the mustard paste as I sipped snowball berry tea and thoroughly enjoyed the vagaries of life. I also learned to make a frying pan out of some odds’n’ends in the kitchen, and that a broom handle and some gymnastics can successfully retrieve the metal wrench-like bit that turns on the gas for the stove, when it unexpectedly falls behind said stove. It is not uncommon for water or electricity to go off in Ukrainian apartments, so I spent one night without heat (my heater is electric) in every pair of long underwear and wool socks that I own, under all the wool blankets in my apartment plus my sleeping bag, and thus conquered my fear of dying from the cold. I also cooked vareniky using the light from my headlamp when the power went out. Who needs electricity? Ukraine is the land of milk and honey—or at least the place where I’ve learned to appreciate a glass of freshly boiled milk sweetened with honey to sooth a sore throat.

My apartment (usually) has running water and electricity and a functioning indoor toilet. I’ve seen several wells at houses near the center of town though, so not everyone in Kozyatyn has running water. I get hot water in the bathroom by turning on the boiler, but the hot water faucet in the kitchen is dry, and some people don’t have hot water at all. Visible discrepancies in wealth seen at close quarters are always interesting to me. Even within families whose houses are in the same complex or within walking distance, one might have no running water or an outhouse, whereas the other has a Jacuzzi, microwave, and flat screen TV. I’m still debating the relative merits of using boiled tap water, since Olena says she even cooks with clean drinking water that is sold in 6 liter bottles, and I’ve read that boiling can concentrate some trace heavy metals in the water supply to unsafe percentages--but maybe a dash of arsenic, beryllium, and mercury will make up for the spices I wasn’t able to add to the chili I made today. Kozyatyn has roughly 25,000 residents, 3 supermarkets, at least 2 streets with Soviet names like Lenin and Red Army, a small daily bazaar and a big bazaar on the weekends, a park, and various other stores and administrative buildings in its relatively compact center. Perhaps my favorite observation to date has been the daily sighting of parents dragging small children, groceries, and sundry items through the snow on wooden toboggans, a preferred method of transport in a town with no snowplows and plenty of snow. I also saw a woman exit the bazaar via horse and buggy today. The most unnerving bazaar purchase for me is always eggs, which are sold loose in a plastic bag, to which you then add your other purchases and navigate the crowd and make it home and marvel that none have cracked. Everyday activities take longer here: cooking, cleaning, getting to where you need to go... I’m never bored because I rarely finish all the things on my to-do list. I live in the center but my school is in the burbs, so I can either walk 40 minutes through ice and snow and bitter wind—or slush and giant puddles after a thaw—or take a 20-minute bus ride. The bus almost never comes when it is supposed to, however, and it is not fun waiting for it in the cold, so I may try to start walking soon. One early morning as I waited for the bus it was so cold the air was clouded with a weird sort of haze, but the sunrise seen through it was breathtaking.

My first week at site my oblast had another quarantine, so instead of observing lessons I prepared the top students for Olympiad, an English competition. I spent 9 hours on Sunday helping the local English teachers with Olympiad, which took place at School #1, which I can see out my window. I read the listening portion for the 11th graders, made the answer key with the teachers, corrected all the student essays, and listened to their speaking portion as well. That was all well and good, except that it seemed more arbitrary and less impartial than a competition should be, especially designing the answer key, because there was definitely room for ambiguity in some of the more poorly worded questions. I networked a little with teachers from other schools and then literally sat for hours while they tabulated the results. That part was less fun. My second week was the last week before winter break. Classes only went until Wednesday, and the teachers were frantically entering grades in the class journals, which were also due by that date, so I still didn’t get to observe any regular lessons, but I did get to know the students a little through some activities we did while the teachers worked. I also ended up teaching an entire class when my counterpart never came back after a meeting during the break. The bell rang, all the students stared at me expectantly since I was in the front of the room, and I silently debated for a minute or two whether or not I could feasibly ignore them, before deciding it was better if I pretended like I knew what was going on. On the last day I showed “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” on the new projector using my flash drive hooked up to the school computer, demonstrating a pretty snazzy confluence of technologies for a PCV.

Coming soon: a Christmas story!

Training ended today! We had our last Ukrainian class Thursday morning, and today was the LPI (Language Proficiency Interview), plus one more official thank-you visit to the local administration—and now we’re free! The LPI was a 10-minute conversation, kind of anti-climactic after 2 months of training (but I did feel satisfied when she said my conversation skills were especially impressive since I arrived 3 weeks late), and then we had tea with the mayor. On Monday, a bus comes to take us to Kiev for the 3-day Swearing-In Conference, and we also find out then where we’ll be living for the next two years. Next Thursday I’ll officially be a Peace Corps Volunteer, after swearing to uphold the U.S. Constitution to the best of my ability in front of the Ambassador. Then all 100+ new volunteers head off to our various permanent sites, cut off from the crutch of our cluster-mates, together with whom we’ve spent every day of training. Just in time to be alone for Christmas! Good thing I came to Ukraine armed with digital copies of my favorite clay-mation Christmas videos! Maybe I’ll make my students watch them, since December 25 is a regular workday here and I’ll probably be teaching.

I still as yet have no idea what the particulars of my site-placement will be, so future internet access is TBD, but a little note about this blog and why I’m writing it: part of Peace Corps service is to provide asked-for technical skills to further the development of the host country, but another goal of Peace Corps is to facilitate cross-cultural understanding—both at home and abroad. So I envision this blog as an interactive forum, where my friends and family can learn about Ukraine and help me introduce Ukrainians to American culture, rather than a space for me to send thoughts off into the ether. To that end, I ask you all to contribute to this online conversation. I can keep a journal for myself, so I’ll only write online if this information is interesting and useful for you—let me know what you want to hear!

Thank you all for being in my life. I could wax poetic about what it means to me to have the family and friends that I do, but then I would cry, and I'd rather make you laugh instead. So here is a list of titles that describe moments of my life and impressions of these experiences in Ukraine. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to write stories to accompany these titles. Some of you have heard sneak peaks from me, but you must decide what to do with the power of your information (creativity and misdirection are encouraged):

The man coat and hysterical laughter;

slumber parties with 60 some-things;

Squirrels (capitalized);

stockings;

Hansel and Gretel and the wicked witch of hair-drying;

social life lamer than 16 year olds (ok, you can probably figure that one out yourself);

Sara and the (red, knock-off, Armani) purse;

History man: a lisp, 9 fingers, and a pumpkin;

steaming jeans and boiling water;

The Tragedy of Olga’s son (this one's actually not funny at all, but provides a sobering reminder of the everyday lives of Ukrainians);

The Arch of Friendship and a couple of beers

Love and a vodka toast to your health!

I tried to think of the best way to share photos with anyone who wants a visual representation of my Peace Corps experience. Here's the link:

http://yaworsky.shutterfly.com/

Let me know what you think!

Happy Halloween everyone! I’ve successfully survived two weeks in Ukraine and have started to establish some routines and wrap my head around training.

Then again, my training is anything but routine. The Minister of Ukraine mandated a three-week closure of all schools and universities due to H1N1, so we are officially in “quarantine.” Peace Corps Headquarters even called each volunteer to announce the “Alert” stage of EAP (Emergency Action Plan), which is just a fancy way of saying, “Pay attention to the news and don’t use public transport/go far from your site.” Last week schools were also closed for fall break. So after a month in Ukraine (7 weeks for everyone else), I will have observed two lessons and taught none. Yet the technical aspect of my training is supposed to consist of observing at least 10 classes taught by Ukrainian English Teachers and my fellow trainees, in addition to planning and teaching 15 of my own lessons. Even though we won’t be teaching for a while, Peace Corps has decided that we will plan lessons anyway, since we may be able to use them at site (and it’s good practice).

Despite the quarantine, we still have 4 hours of Ukrainian every day, on top of which I have 3 hours of individual tutoring each week (everyone else has 1). We have a coffee break halfway through, and go to the store (one of two in Bilky) after the lesson to buy food for lunch, which we cook at our LCF’s house (we almost invariably eat bread, kielbasa, cheese, and vareniky—aka pierogi—with sour cream and tea). On top of language training we have technical training, so even though we aren’t teaching, we have lesson planning, sessions with our TCF (basically seminars on predetermined topics twice a week, once being Saturday morning). Then each week there is usually a special session, which alternates between health and safety training and visits from Peace Corps staff to evaluate training—next week we have our Site Placement Interviews!!! We are also working on a Community Project together with the Borova group: we will be recording dialogues from the English books the school uses, conducting a demo lesson at a seminar for the English teachers in the community, and compiling a guidebook with examples for each stage in lesson planning using the communicative approach.

Olya leaves breakfast out for me, which I heat on the stove, and we eat dinner and do the dishes together (though she always give me more food). I live 2 minutes from my LCF’s house, so those who know me as Pokey will be happy to hear that I am never late, nor early, but arrive precisely when I mean to. Even without a lengthy commute (everyone else has between a 15-30 minute walk) I feel like every minute gets used for work, so I allow myself only a few minutes before bed to read, and I do yoga once a week. I haven’t gone running yet, but yesterday we didn’t start till noon, so I went for a walk around the village, since I haven’t really explored it yet. I noticed a lot of half-built houses, or ones with projects underway. Every house has a fence and at least a small garden. There are lots of dogs in the street, and they are not nice. Only the main road is paved. The landscape reminds me of Auburn, which is funny because that’s where my Ukrainian great-grandmother ended up after emigrating. The town center has a “department store,” several other shops, library, bazaar, post office, and a few pharmacies.

Two Sundays ago was chore day. Olya and I made liver’n’lung pies with fresh dough, pinching the edges and spreading egg yolks on top with broken bits of cloth (no pastry brush), and then it took her a few tries to start the gas for the oven, but we baked them along with a tray of cherry pies (which, not surprisingly, I prefer). Next we beat the rugs outside, swept and mopped the floors (with a rag wrapped around a stick—no Swiffer here), and harvested cabbages/weeded the garden for the winter. Yulka (the chained dog that I walk by on my way to the outhouse) and I share the same diet—she gets whatever I don’t eat. Everything else gets composted behind the outhouse.

On Halloween we had a morning session with a PCV about to COS from Lviv (aka advice from a volunteer just finishing his service), and I found it really inspiring. He told us his mistakes and what he would have done differently, and I appreciated the concrete advice. Later, to mark the holiday, I asked Olya if I could invite people over to watch a movie. I waited till the last minute so she couldn’t go out and buy stuff to play hostess, which was a good idea because she still put out tea and fruit and chocolates. Then we watched “El Orfanato” on my bed, which was appropriately terrifying.

Last Sunday Olya and I went to Fastiv, a city half an hour in the other direction (from Kiev). We bought grain for Yulka at the bazaar and walked around a bit, past a giant statue of Lenin. On the train and in the market a lot of people had scarves over their mouth and nose (myself included, since Olya made me—and it was cold). Then back at home I made holubtsi!

It snowed this morning. The first snow—light and fluffy, that melts when it hits the ground, and that you’re excited to see because it’s not February. But I’m unreasonably afraid of the coming winter, considering I’ve lived in Upstate New York and Maine.

The best way I can describe my environment in Ukraine so far would be 1850s meets 1950s meets today: we wash dishes in the bathroom sink and get water from the tub, garden vegetables and preserves are stored in the cellar of the outdoor kitchen, which also has a brick oven for baking bread, I pee in a bucket…but then I go back to watching “Ukraine’s Got Talent,” or Russian soaps, or Ukrainian MTV on cable television, or I sit in the wireless internet café drinking Stella, or Olya’s grandson tells me he plays internet games, wants to be a computer programmer, and listens to Papa Roach. Be-scarved babushkas share the sidewalk with women in high-heels, tight pants, make-up, and trendy tops (our Country Director calls them brick and stick ladies, respectively, and I find the description apt). Also, apparently sniffing hot salt cures the sniffles—any theories on that one? Since I continue to have a stuffy/runny nose, Olya heated salt on the stove and wrapped it in a cloth, which she made me hold against my nostrils, alternating back and forth.

Yesterday the group piled into two vans, said a quick goodbye (we won't see each other till the Swearing In ceremony in two months), and shipped out to our training sites. I was the first drop-off. The driver kept turning onto smaller roads, past vast flat fields of black earth, down a dirt road...I sensed we were getting close. He stopped to ask for directions. "Bilky? Never heard of it."

We picked up my LCF, though I didn't realize who she was till we stopped and I pointed out my luggage to the driver, who left me and my mountain of luggage to the tender mercies of my very own babushka. My LCF spent a few minutes translating "Do you have any special food needs, etc. etc." and then left me alone with Olya. We spend most of our time pointing at words in the dictionary. Then she feeds me massive amounts of food and I rub my belly to assure her it is tasty, even though I can only manage--with heroic effort--to down half of it.

Highlights: I got locked in the outhouse and had to bang on the door and yell for Olya to rescue me. There is a block of wood that swings over the door on the outside, probably to keep it from flapping in the wind during the winter or something, but it swung over the door when I was inside, and that was not good. And of course I couldn't explain it so she thought I didn't know how to use the door. While unpacking last night, I discovered my face wash had become unlocked and unloaded half its contents into my toiletry bag, drenching the bottom of my hiking backpack and everything nearby. I'm still trying to scrub the suds out of the fabric, but at least it will be very clean! Right now it's still sticky though, and Olya hung the entire pack on the clothes line, which amuses me. I'm sure she thinks I'm crazy, since I spent a good hour trying to scrub the soap out (it's still not gone). Last night I also peed in a bucket. That was not a mistake. Before going to bed, she pointed to the bucket and said "tooalet," so apparently we don't use the outhouse at night. I made sure she had used it for the intended purpose before I did, in case I had misunderstood. I don't know, however, if the bucket is the proper place for other nighttime bathroom visits, and I don't know how I'm going to figure that out either, without some interesting miming/broken Ukrainian.

The house has running/hot water and electricity. The entryway is part mudroom/part hallway (perpendicular to the door, if that makes sense?), then straight ahead is the kitchen, to the left is the bathroom with sink and tub (and bucket), to the right is her bedroom (with a tv), and through a door off the front hallway slightly to the left is the dining room, left off of that is the living room (with another tv, and a wardrobe where I put all my clothes and suitcases and miscellaneous stuff), and straight through the dining room is my bedroom (minus a door). At night she shuts the dining room door and that acts like my bedroom door, so I essentially have dining room, living room, and bedroom to myself at that point. I have to walk past a chained dog on my way to the outhouse, but she seems nice so I pet her on the head and hope for the best each time. Olya has a big garden (pretty typical for Ukrainians, I'm told--they grow a lot of their own food if they can, since the hyperinflation of the 90s hit incomes hard).

Yesterday after lunch and a quick nap, my LCF (teacher), Svitlana, picked me up and we walked to another trainee's house for a party. I was tired, but I wanted to meet my cluster. We walked past a new neighborhood, and I was shocked by the contrast: the houses were double, triple, quadruple the size of Olya's house, and very elegant. Don't get me wrong, I think Olya's house is lovely, but these houses were nice in a different sort of way. It always surprises me when such contrasts exist in adjacent neighborhoods, but I don't know why I'm so taken aback, since it seems to happen everywhere in the U. S. too. We went to Alia's house and I met her host family (a very jolly--yes, I would describe them as jolly--couple with a 16-year-old daughter and a son somewhere in the 8-12 year range) and the 4 other volunteers I will be training with. We sat around the table and worked our way through a big meal (I had eaten two hours ago), chatting mostly in English, with Svitlana occasionally asking one of them to translate into Ukrainian for the host family. They all seemed to understand most of the Ukrainian spoken and be comfortable responding, so I'm anxious to get started. The tv on the counter was showing a marathon of Ukrainian "So You Think You Can Dance," and everyone was entranced.

Lauren has 9 host siblings, Sean lives with host parents, grand parents, and a 3 year old grandchild, and Sarah's host grandparents live in the next town and happen to host one of the trainees in that cluster, so there's a lot of back and forth visiting between their host families. Borova (sp?) is the "big" town and host to another cluster that together with ours makes a "link." I am sitting in an internet cafe in Borova right now with my LCF and three trainees: it has free wifi and we are all silently typing away at our computers. All of my cluster mates have indoor flush toilets, so they were a little shocked to learn that I did not. Frankly, I was too. I don't mind it, but it would be nice if everyone had similar living conditions, whether rustic or modern. In a perfect world, I would also have a bigger host family, with some host siblings, but I didn't have any say in the matter and I like Olya, so as soon as I can figure out what she's saying I'm sure we'll have a grand old time!

Tomorrow I start language class--I'll go in an hour early to start catching up, and everyone else will come at 10. We meet at Svitlana's house, which is just down the street from mine. The school is also very close. The other trainees all taught their first lessons on Friday and will be teaching more this week. We are also going to Kyiv on Thursday. They have never been! Orientation for the main group took place at an old Soviet resort outside the city. My group had a (very) abbreviated orientation right at Peace Corps Headquarters. Peace Corps only lifted the travel ban for trainees yesterday, so no one has left their training villages since they arrived.

That's all for now; I've got my work cut out for me in the next few weeks, so I doubt I'll have much free time, but I'll post when I do!

I'm sitting in Peace Corps headquarters, 5 needles deep in vaccinations, but I wanted to let people know my training site! I will be in Bilky, a small village to the southwest of Kyiv, and I will study Ukrainian!

You may have heard already, but if not: surprise! I will not be going to Turkmenistan with the Peace Corps. As I wrote earlier, our trip was canceled due to the Turkmen government's apparent affliction with bipolar disorder (they issued visas but then said they didn't want any volunteers this year).

So I had a nice 24 hour trip to Philadelphia and met 47 really cool people, most of whom I will never see again. I also got a delightful sushi dinner out of the ordeal, but as one volunteer remarked, "I think I over-packed for one night."

I called Placement from the airport, leaving a message that I was still interested in Peace Corps service, and that I looked forward to a call once they had more information. 24 hours later I was offered a spot in the Ukraine. I had gotten all excited again about the possibility of Africa, so I was a little hesitant at first, but took 20 minutes to think about it and called back to accept the post. Bottom line: I still want to do Peace Corps, and I want to do it now. I don't want to wait till next year, because my options for short-term employment stateside are frankly more frightening than life in any developing country (though I know my mom is happy I did not get placed in Rwanda, I would take that over Walmart anyday).

Peace Corps has been working overtime trying to place me and my fellow Turkmen rejects (former T-18s), and I'm quite impressed at the results. Through the modern marvels of Facebook, I was able to follow every update, and within 48 hours of leaving Philly, nearly half the group had been offered new assignments. Unfortunately, health volunteers have fewer options than TEFL this time of year, but hopefully they will be placed between January and March. At last count, I think there were 7-9 for Ukraine, about the same for Azerbaijan, 3 to Mozambique, a married couple to Ethiopia, 2 to Tonga, and 1 for The Gambia before the end of the year.

There are 146 people in the Facebook group for volunteers leaving this year for Ukraine, and I read somewhere that the Ukraine actually operates the largest Peace Corps program in the world. The group already left though, so I will be about 3 weeks behind in training by the time I arrive. Hopefully they will put the Turkmen rejects in a "slow kids" training group together, but right now Peace Corps is not sure how training will work. Volunteers in Ukraine learn either Ukrainian or Russian. Although Ukrainian is the official language for the whole country, Russian is more widely spoken in the industrial cities of the east.

Ukraine is a huge country with a large population and a varied geography (from freezing-cold steppes in the north, to a mediterranean climate on the Black Sea, industrial wasteland in the east, and green forests to the west). Living conditions also vary widely between urban and rural areas, with 80 % of volunteers posted to villages that may lack running water, electricity, plumbing, and central heat. I am very glad I have a down sleeping bag.

Peace Corps hopes to have us on a plane by the end of next week/beginning of the week after.