I am switching blogs! The new blog address is:

http://easterneuropewhatjusthappened.wordpress.com/

If you want the password, please send me an email and I would be happy to give it to you:

rose.cheyette@gmail.com

It's been fun blogger, but I need some password protection!!

Do you ever have moments where you completely forget where you are, what you are doing and what is going on? This did not happen to me very much in the states, but it happens to me fairly often in Ukraine, usually when I am traveling. This happened to me a couple Fridays ago. I was on a marshrutka traveling to another town to see a volunteer. I was looking out the window and I saw something that looked just like a baseball field. For a second, I thought, wow, there is a baseball field and I thought I was back in the states. And then I was like, wait, there are not baseball fields in Ukraine. Then I was like, wait, I am in Ukraine. Then I was like, wait, hold on, why am I in Ukraine?! And for a split second I completely forgot what I was doing and why I was in Ukraine. But then I came back to reality. It was a very strange moment.

Two weeks ago I participated in a teacher’s camp in Sumy, which is the capitol of my Oblast. Sumy is about 2 hours by marshrutka from Konotop and about 300,000 people live there. The camp was for English teachers, and there were about 9 of us volunteers there to teach the teachers about different things they can bring into their classrooms—ideas for activities, how to hold debates in their classes, information about HIV/AIDS, as well as other lessons about teaching and leadership. There were about 25 teachers there. It was SO much fun. The teachers were really enthusiastic, excited to share their knowledge with us as well as learn from us, and I made some new Ukrainian friends who are excited to show me around Sumy some weekend soon. It’s really nice meeting wonderful Ukrainian people and making connections, especially with people who are my age.

The camp was on a Saturday and Sunday, and on Sunday after camp, one of the other volunteers who were there said that she had found online that there was a synagogue in Sumy that she wanted to try to find, so a whole bunch of us set out on an adventure to find this synagogue. (It also happened to be Purim on that Sunday, which was a nice coincidence.) Well we got lost, but then we asked a nice man pushing a baby carriage where it was, and he led us through Sumy to the street we were looking for. Suddenly before we knew it, we were washing our hands, saying a blessing, and stumbled into a huge Purim celebration. The synagogue was full of Ukrainian Jewish people, and the rabbi there is actually from California. At first we stood and watched as he read from the torah (probably the fastest I have ever heard Hebrew being read. Maybe the fastest I have heard any language. It was amazing!) And then we were given seats at the tables. Before we knew it, we were eating, listening to kids sing songs in Russian and Hebrew, drinking vodka and watching a man juggle bottles lit on fire! It was such a fun, interesting and amazing experience. Hearing Russian and Hebrew being mixed together, speaking with other Ukrainian Jewish people, just the whole experience was awesome. The rabbi and another man who was speaking a bunch talked a bit about Peace Corps and that we were American volunteers, and everyone clapped, which was nice. I am going to try to go there for Passover, and the rabbi gave me the phone number of someone in my town who works at a Jewish Community Center! Apparently there is a somewhat active Jewish life in my town, which I had no idea about, nor did my site mate. So I will give him a call soon.

You know it is interesting. For much of, I am not sure about most of, but for much of my life, Judaism is something that I felt not much of a connection to. I mean, I have always loved many of the holidays and certain traditions. But I am somewhat of a rebellious person and much of my life, for instance when I went to Hebrew school and went to temple, I wasn’t really going because I enjoyed the services or felt a connection. Yes I loved the temple I used to go to, but I loved it more for the people and the activities (when I was a child) that we would do there. Recently I was speaking to an English teacher at my school, and he said that his parents were Atheists and so that was how he was raised. And now as an adult, he is starting to find an interest in learning more about religion and finding out about what is out there on his own, without his parents telling him that religion is bad. I think this is the same for me. I am not saying that my family ever told me what to believe, but being the rebellious child/teenager I was, and the rebellious adult I still feel I am at times, I think that I would rather figure out and experience things on my own. I think I feel more free to do what I want when it comes to Judaism and decide how I want it to be in my life. Additionally, Ukraine has an interesting though quite sad history of Jewish people, so I think it would be interesting to learn more about it here first hand.

Last week I went to a 4 day PEPFAR conference in Kyiv. The purpose was to educate us-- the American volunteers and our Ukrainian counterparts so that we can go back to our site and know how to apply for a PEPFAR grant and go about implementing a project, related to HIV/AIDS prevention. The days were full of seminars, lessons panels and activities all related to HIV/AIDS. It was 25 Peace Corps Volunteers and each volunteer brought a Ukrainian colleague, and we were split into two groups. The Ukrainian colleagues did pretty much exactly what we did, but in Ukrianian/Russian and we learned in English. But every day we did have an hour- long language lesson, learning HIV/AIDS terminology in Ukrainian/Russian. We learned about the history and biology of HIV/AIDS. Learned about transmission of the disease, about stigma and discrimination, as well as the situation in Ukraine. Two HIV positive Ukrainian women came and told us their stories of living with the virus. It was a great week, and I am excited about the prospect of applying for a grant and doing some work within my school and community related to HIV/AIDS.

The weekend after the PEPFAR training I went to see my host family for the first time since training ended. It was so much fun. I ate so much borsch, vareniki and golubtsi. It was crazy. The 8th of March was International Women’s Day, which is an official holiday in Ukraine, and my host mom’s nephew and his daughter were in town, so we had a big women’s day celebration. It was me, my host brother, host mom, my host mom’s sister, her two sons and granddaughter and the neighbor and her son. We ate a lot, toasted many times and gave little presents to each woman. It was really nice to be back where I had training. I also went to visit another host mom from training, and it was fun to see her. It was a great 4 days of speaking lots of Russian, relaxing and eating amazing food. My host mom and I had fun watching “Ukraine’s Got Talent” as well as a Ukrainian version of “America’s funniest home videos”. I am planning to go back there for Easter. Easter in Ukraine is apparently an amazing time, so that should be fun. Also my host mom’s granddaughter will be there for Easter, so we will finally be reunited and have some crazy times!

I have SO much laundry to do. I don’t know how it all piled up, but I really really don’t want to do it. Ultimately, I don’t mind hand washing, but when there is so much, that’s the worst. Plus I feel like nothing ever really gets that clean. Grrrr. Okay, enough complaining, I am gonna go tackle the laundry situation.

Miss everyone back home lots. Bye bye!

I swear, Ukraine is bringing out a new clumsy side of me. Between slipping on ice, breaking dishes in my apartment and getting chalk all over me everyday at school, I am a mess. Was I always this clumsy? I have no idea. It’s a mystery to me. Last week I started Russian tutoring. I will have tutoring twice a week and I like my tutor a lot. She teaches literature at a different school in Konotop, and she also tutored the previous volunteer that was in Konotop, who left about a year ago. She does not speak any English, and I think that will be a good thing overall. It will force us to speak only in Russian. If everyone spoke as slowly and clearly as my tutor did, life would be a lot easier here! And she gives me a lot of homework, which is great. We are going to go through my Peace Corps Russian books that I used during training, and she is assigning me other written work, and the newest and scariest task is to learn Russian cursive. Russian cursive is SO confusing. It is not hard to write, it is just hard to remember which letter in cursive is what letter, and there are some tricky things about it. Example: the Russian alphabet has the letter M. The uppercase version is M and the lower case is just a smaller version--м, still angular, not curvy and lowercase like this “m”. Make sense? Okay, so in Russian, there is also the letter T. BUT the cursive version of T is a lowercase “m” (in the Latin alphabet). So basically whenever I see an “m” I think it means the letter M as in Mary, but no, it means the letter T as in Tom. Maybe this does not make sense if you are not learning the language. But it is so confusing. I always like to pretend that it is in fact a lowercase M and not a T, so for instance the word “torte” I like to pronounce as “morm”. Yeah. I’m weird. Last week I went into my school psychologist’s room for the first time. My school has two psychologists, one who works with the younger grades, and one with the older grades. Myself and the psychologist that who works with the younger children are applying to attend a 4-day PEPFAR (U.S. Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) training in Kyiv that will take place the beginning of March. I really hope that we got a spot. She is very interested in learning about HIV/AIDS and working on projects at our school, as am I, and I feel that there are definite gaps within my knowledge. Mostly, I want to learn more about HIV/AIDS in Ukraine and learn the skills necessary to educate others in this country about the problem here. This past weekend I experienced my first camp. It was here in Konotop, and was organized by Dan, the other volunteer in my town. It was a two-day camp focusing on leadership and public speaking, and there were about 20 or so students from a number of different schools in Konotop. It was SO much fun. I was incredibly impressed by the student’s ability to use their English to really think and have original thoughts about what it means to be a leader and how to speak in public. It is always an exciting thing seeing students break out of their shells and as we used to say at Citizen Schools, take positive risks. I can’t wait to work at more camps! At the end of this month we will be having a camp for English teachers in Sumy, and there will be another public speaking camp in Konotop in April, which will be a blast I am sure. Right now it is snowing, again! I can’t believe it. Will it ever end?! The other day there were snowflakes the size of my hand. I am not kidding. I was teaching my 9th formers and I suddenly looked out the window and made a crazy noise when I saw how huge they were. My students all laughed. I think they think I am nuts. I was recently listening to this new podcast that I am obsessed with called “Stuff You Should Know.” It’s really good—I suggest you subscribe to it. They had one called “What’s Up with Competitive Eating”. In it, they discussed competitive eating, and they mentioned a famous Ukrainian competitive eater named Oleg Zhornitskiy who ate four 32-ounce bowls of mayonnaise. I can’t even eat a spoonful of mayonnaise. I did not expect Ukrainians to eat and cook with so much mayonnaise. Although I guess it is a very European thing. Don’t Germans dip their French fries in mayonnaise instead of ketchup? I decided to fill out one of these survey thingys. I stole it from someone else’s blog (thanks Julia!) I don’t usually fill these things out but was in a procrastinating mood and decided, what the hey! I added in a couple things, to give it a Ukrainian twist. 1. How many piercings do you have?7—3 in each ear and one nose ring. 2. What are you eating right now? Nothing! But I just made dinner—kasha and cabbage carrot salad. It was delicious. Welcome to my life as a Ukrainian. 3. I love the sound of... The ocean. Babies giggling. Terrible karaoke singers. 4. Most annoying sound? When Tillie and Juan used to make pigeon noises at me. 5. Favorite city? Oy. Top cities would probably be San Francisco, Capetown, DC, and Seattle. 6. Most frequently read publication? The Onion News. 7. Colts, Saints, or could care less? Care less! Usually I pretend to care at least a little bit about the Superbowl, but this year I didn’t even pretend. 8. Cats or dogs? Cats that think they are dogs. 9. Frozen Yogurt or Ice Cream? FROYO 10. Longest flight ever taken? 11 hours—Capetown to London (immediately followed by 7 hours back to Boston). My hands and feet got all puffy and weird since I hadn’t moved for hours. Even though the stewardess suggested that we walk around to get the blood flowing, I insisted on staying seated and silently freaking out about being on an airplane. 11. Favorite appetizer? Spicy calamari. Or at least that’s what I want right now. 12. What item in your closet currently makes you happiest? Long underwear! 13. What current trend do you hate the most? Showering is so overrated. 14. Favorite facial moisturizer? I prefer throwing water on my face and hoping for the best. 15. What song is constantly on repeat right now? I heard this song on a Podcast—the group is called Manooghi Hi and the song is called Kismet. Check it out. It’s really good. Seriously. Do. 16. Favorite Ukrainian food? So many! Blinchky, Golubtsy and Borsch. Also the bread here is the freshest and most amazing bread I have ever had. 17. Favorite Russian word? Students I meet are always asking me this question and I never know what to say. If I had to choose now, with my somewhat limited vocabulary I would say the following three are up there as my favorite Russian words: чуть- чуть (pronounced choot-choot) and means “a little”. хорошо (pronounced horosho) and means “good” or “all right”. And since, I am 5 years old, I gotta say that I love the word пуп (pronounced poop!!) and means belly button. Haha, I know I know. I need to grow up.

Well that is all for now. Thank for reading! I am sure many of you have seen this, but I will leave you with it anyways: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzLtF_PxbYw

Two years ago, my friend Tillie was visiting me in Boston in February. We were sitting in the Boston Common, chatting and people watching. It was a really cold day, and this father and son walked past us. The father was dressed very appropriately for winter, but the son was not. As they walked past us, the little boy said to his dad in a sad, shivering voice "Daddy, I'm freeeeeeeezing!" We could not stop laughing. Okay maybe you had to be there and that is really cruel, but hey, it was funny at the moment. And now in Ukraine, I perpetually feel like that little boy. Freezing. No matter how many layers I wear of long underwear, wool socks, sweaters, mittens, it is SO DAMN COLD. So, little freezing Boston boy, wherever you are, I feel your pain.This winter, Ukrainians are completely shocked at the amount of snow that Ukraine has been getting and how cold it has been, at least in my part of the country. One teacher at my school said that he thinks it has been about 10 years or so since it was this cold, this early in the year. He said maybe February can reach such lows, but usually not in January, and usually not this cold. And one older teacher in my school said that he does not remember Ukraine having this much snow since he was a child. I would call myself a winter person. I really do enjoy winter, but at the same time, this is getting kind of old. And I am fully aware that there will still be a couple more months of winter. So... that's nice.I think that I have become impervious to embarrassment. I have fallen on the ice 4 times in public in my town. I would say generally I am not someone who gets embarrassed easily. But I think we all know, there is something just so mortifying about falling down or tripping in public. But I can say that at this point, after it happening so much in town, I just don’t even really get embarrassed about this anymore.So the marshrutka drivers in my town keep thinking that I am a student, and keep charging me the student price. I have been correcting them and giving them the full amount for an adult, but should I just start paying the student price if they think I am a student? Or do I continue to insist that I pay the full price, since I am, in fact, an adult? I think I will keep paying the full price, since it is insanely cheap. But I always feel kind of weird when they stare at me, trying to figure out if I am an adult or a child. Sigh. So, much has happened these last few weeks. First off, I have had some of my first experiences traveling alone. Not anything far away, but still, my first time navigating trains and marshrutkas alone. For the most part, they have been good. There have been some interesting occurrences and confusion along the, but in each case I arrived at my destination in one piece, and that is all that matters! I think it helps that I am not too shy when it comes to asking people for directions and help finding where to go. Even if I end up sounding like a crazy person, I would rather be a crazy person on the correct bus than a crazy person on the wrong bus. When it comes to asking people for directions in Russian, I have begun to learn who is the most helpful when it comes to getting help. So here goes. Lesson 101: Asking for directions with a language barrier. Best scenario is a woman with a child. They tend to be a bit more patient and helpful, even when I totally butcher the Russian language. If a woman with a child is not available to answer questions, then I would say a middle aged woman. But not one who looks like they are in a rush. Slowly approach and say “excuse me” and attempt to straight forwardly ask your question. If neither of those are available, I would ask a middle aged man. Of course, asking someone who is working at the bus or train station is best, but sometimes that person cannot be found, or they are busy, or they are just unapproachable. And word of advice, asking a police officer might seem like a good idea, but not always. They may want to flirt with you instead of telling you where your train platform is (although this particular police officer did point me in the right direction, only after flirting and being just a wee bit skeezy). Something else I have learned. Sometimes it is necessary to have a Russian translator when trying to speak Russian. What do I mean by this? Sometimes I butcher Russian so badly that another Ukrainian person needs to translate exactly what I said, in Russian, to another Russian speaking person. When this happens, I just laugh and feel like a big dummy. This happened when my friend Cait and I were trying to buy bus tickets to a town just 40 minutes from her town. It was the most confusing interaction in Russian I have ever had, and it was going terribly until a nice Ukrainian girl came over and helped translate--in Russian--to the woman behind the ticket counter. Oy. I am enjoying Ukraine. I really am. But sometimes I just feel so silly and so confused with what is going on. I don’t know exactly how to explain this, but there seem to be these unspoken rules of things that just happen. Many times when I walk into town, or get onto a marshrutka, or go into school there just seem to be these things that happen and I have absolutely no idea what is going on, but everyone else seems to know what is happening! I feel like a little lost baby, walking around aimlessly, just completely disoriented. Usually I just laugh off these moments. I can usually find the humor in these situations. But sometimes I just wish I could just leave my apartment and not feel so lost and confused and 2 years old. I know that this will get easier, and it doesn’t bother me that much. Just sometimes I wish that I felt less crazy! One good thing though is that I tend to find one person, or they find me, who takes on the role of making sure that I am okay and that I am not totally lost. Well not always, but some of my travel experiences have been much better because there was one person who made sure that I got off at my stop, or showed me where my bus was, or protected me from drunk men who tried to feed me fish and then got into a fist fight practically on top of me. (That was a fun day…) I mean, even if these nice people had not been there, I could’ve handled it myself (at least I like to think that I could!) but having them there was nice. Ukraine is big on nicknames. When I was in training, my host family and my host mom’s friends called me Rose, but in my site, from the minute I got here, I have gotten many nicknames. My favorite nickname is pronounced Rose-ech-ka. Many teachers call me this, and just today, I ran into a babushka that lives in my apartment building. We have only spoken once and that was about 3 weeks ago, but she greeted me with “Hello Rose-ech-ka!” I really like it. So, surprise! I’m a teacher! Well, I guess it’s not a surprise, but I have to admit it was kind of a surprise for me. I mean, obviously I have known since August that I was going to be a teacher, but it didn’t quite hit me until I walked into my first classes, the Ukrainian teacher left and there were my students, staring at me, waiting for something to happen! I am teaching 9 different groups of students. One 7th grade class, three 8th grade classes, two 9th grade classes, one 10th grade class and two 11th grade classes. I am teaching 18 hours a week, which from what I have heard is average for Ukrainian teachers. I like my students a lot. They have character, are funny, kind and for the most part, interested in learning English. And the teachers at my school are great too. They are friendly and helpful, and the teachers that I attempt to speak with in Russian are patient with me and actually praise my Russian! I did not think I was very good, but so many teachers have said that I speak good Russian and understand a lot. Starting soon I will have Russian tutoring 1-2 times a week. I have not met my tutor yet, but she teaches Russian and Ukrainian literature at one of the other schools in Konotop. I am really looking forward to starting tutoring. I hope that it is something that I will be able to stick with. I made my first Borscht last Thursday. It was very exciting and very delicious. It lasted me 6 days—I just finished it tonight. Next time I make it, I am gonna try to make a spicy version. I think the next Ukrainian recipe that I attempt will either be Varenyky or maybe Golubtsy. I'll let you know how that goes... Bye!

So so SO much has happened since I left my training site. To go back a few weeks, the Saturday before we left, we had a wonderful host family goodbye party. It was a blast. Lots of delicious food, fun conversation and the families surprised us with some interesting Ukrainian traditions. This included something where we rode around on a broom, pretending it was a horse, and then had to run in circles, and then they hung a piece of bread from a stick and without using our hands, we had to try to get bites of the bread, and if we laughed, smiled, or could not successfully get a bite of bread, they put ash on our faces. It was hilarious. It was a fun last weekend in training. It was sad saying goodbye to my host family and other people I had become close with, but I will definitely see them again, hopefully in the near future. On Monday we all had a big goodbye at the bus stop and we were off to Kyiv for 4 days. While in Kyiv the four days, we had many info sessions, seminars, were given a ton of information and then on Thursday we had our swearing-in ceremony. It was very cool. Many important Ukrainian people were there—people in charge of education, the new US Ambassador to Ukraine was there, as well as local media. The ceremony was only about an hour, but it was pretty neat. I am no longer just a trainee—now I am an actual volunteer. Hooray! After the ceremony, we all began departing to our sites. Things got a bit crazy at this point. A big bus full of us volunteers and counterparts departed from where we were staying. It should have only taken us about half an hour to get to the train station, but we left two hours early. Alas, this was not enough time. We got stuck in the worst traffic jam I have ever seen. For 3 hours we were stuck in traffic just blocks from the train station. But we could not get out and grab our bags because we were surrounded by cars, and also it was in the negative degrees outside, so it was just way too frigid. So all together about 40 people missed their trains and we had to head back to the place we were staying. On Friday, they were able to book us new tickets—although when we left on Friday, some people were still waiting to leave because much of Ukraine was getting hit by bad snowstorms. We got to the train station—3 hours early of course, but that was fine. The train station is really beautiful in Kyiv, and a bunch of us sat in the magnificent café in the station, which was fun. Finally, it was time for my train to leave, and myself and my counterpart were off to Konotop! Konotop is a big-ish city—about 100,000 people (just a little bigger then my training site of 8000 people!) in Northeast Ukraine. By train, I am only 2.5 hours from Kyiv. I am so thankful to be so close. It is so convenient, and super cheap to get to. My Ukrainian counterpart is Elena and this is her second time being a counterpart. Last year, her school had a volunteer, so she has had some experience in this role. She is AMAZING. So kind, so funny, speaks incredible English and has been teaching English for 15 years. She is married with two children, one of whom attends our school. I feel really fortunate to have such a caring, funny and helpful counterpart. I really like her, as well as the other English teachers at my school. They are all incredibly kind and helpful, so I think it is going to go very well. I am living in an apartment pretty much right in the center of town. My apartment has one big living room with a couch that turns into my bed. And then a small but cute kitchen and a bathroom with… drumroll please… hot running water. I am really lucky to have this. The only real downside of the apartment is the non functioning oven, but I think once I get a bit more settled, I might look into seeing if it can be repaired, or maybe buying some sort of toaster oven that is big enough to bake in. But it is cozy, warm and convenient. I have met a couple of the neighbors, and they are really nice, and one really sweet pensioner has checked on me and when I was locked out of my apartment the first weekend (long story) she invited me in, made me some food and patiently attempted conversation with me. Konotop is a really great town. It’s beautiful and has a lot of places to go and things to do. It has a few supermarkets, a few nice café’s, an internet club, and many other great places. It has a marshrutka (mini-bus) system, as well as a tram! Konotop is one of the smallest towns in Ukraine to have a tram. A tram is an above the ground subway system. Kind of like the green line in Boston. They go really slow, but they are fun and inexpensive, like most of the transportation in this part of the country. The origin of the word Konotop is kind of cool. Legend has it that centuries ago, Catherine the Great and her army attempted to attack this area, but since Konotop is on a swamp, the horses got stuck and they drowned. And that is why it is called Konotop—which literally means drowning horse. My school is great. It is an intensive English and Mathematics school. It has about 700 or so students and 13 English teachers. I will work with the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th forms. Last week I observed classes and chatted a lot with my students. I am very impressed with the English level of many of the students. I met every student and class that I will be working with, and I did a little interview session with each class. They asked me a lot of questions; we talked about Ukraine, the states, school and all kinds of topics. Even though I love little kids, I am pretty excited to work with older grades. I think I will have a lot of opportunities to work with students in many different ways, not just as their English teacher. My school is already asking me to brainstorm ideas for outside projects and different kinds of funding we can get. Now the school is on winter vacation, so I have a little over a week free to get to know my town, maybe do a bit of local traveling, and begin preparing for teaching.I am starting to feel more at ease, at home and comfortable in Ukraine. There was a period during training, to be honest much of training where everyday I was asking myself, why am I here? I felt very torn and confused about my role as a volunteer in Ukraine, teaching English. I saw all these things going on in my training community—insane amounts of drinking, underage drinking, trash everywhere and learning about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country. I was seeing all these things and asking myself, why am I here teaching students about holidays, and colors, and the present perfect tense when these other issues seem SO much more important? I was feeling pretty negative, and it sucked. It downright sucked. But then some friends gave me some positive advice, some real solid advice, which really, really helped me. Since these pep talks I got, and trying to just be more positive in general, I have been feeling much better. I was definitely sad to see training end, love my host family, love my cluster and love my training site. But I was ready for training to end and ready to embark on this new adventure, of actually being a PCV. Additionally, many of the problems that I see, I am looking forward to finding ways to get involved to address these within my school, and in other ways. I feel good now. Looking forward for school to start but having this extended time off is allowing me to explore Konotop, get to know some local people and get settled into my apartment. I have said this before, but I am constantly amazed at the friendliness, kindness and hospitableness of Ukrainian people. I don’t know, maybe it is just because I am a foreigner in a new place, maybe not, but I have already made some strong connections with Ukrainians in Konotop, and I feel really thankful for them. I had a great New Years. I went to my landlord’s house and spent the evening with her and her husband. It was really enjoyable. We ate, chatted, ate more, watched TV, knitted, looked at photos, ate more, drank wine, ate more, and then finally went to sleep at 2:30 in the morning. It’s funny how now that I have been living on my own, cooking food for myself, I forget that Ukrainians know how to eat. Especially on holidays. I forgot about the whole pacing yourself thing, since you pretty much sit for five hours straight eating. But it was delicious—my landlord is a great cook. The next morning we got up, had breakfast, and my landlord had me drink cognac… at 10 AM to help get rid of my cold. That was interesting… but yeah, it was a really great New Years. I cannot believe it is 2010. I mean really, it’s kind of insane. Well that's all for now! I got internet this past week, so I will update this thing fairly regularly. Until next time...До свиданья!!

I can't say much now, just wanted to say that I am safe, happy and living in wonderful Konotop in the Northeast of Ukraine. Below I have posted my permanent address, and soon I will hopefully get internet in my apartment.

That's all for now. But I promise, there will be more to come in the near future.

Cheers from snowy, beautiful Konotop.

Rose

So this past week, my town’s coolness level was raised—by a lot. We found out some very neat things. First off, we just now found a place in town that prints for you—and of course it is on my street. Like basically next to my house. All you have to do is hand this nice girl a flash drive and she prints every document you need. That could’ve saved us a lot of time when we were handwriting lesson plans for hours. Secondly, our town has a library with very sweet librarians who love visitors. Very cool. And lastly, the best thing of all, is that our town has a cookie factory in it!! Yes—a cookie factory! We had heard rumors of this mysterious cookie factory but no one could confirm this, so we just figured it was a myth. Then on Wednesday night we went to dinner at the home of an awesome Scottish and Polish couple that lives in our town, and as we walked to their house, we passed this building we had always wondered about. The lights were on and we could see women in white hats working. We asked the Scottish man what it was and he said—it’s a cookie factory! And we could smell the cookies later on that night. It was amazing. They called their friend who works there to see if we can get a tour of it. She said that she was not sure because there are “many secrets there” but she is going to ask her boss. Seriously, this is straight out of Willy Wonka. I really hope we can get a tour in before we leave. I feel like as soon as you get comfortable in a place and find your groove, you have to leave, and that is what is happening here. It’s like—all these amazing things are happening here, and we leave in a week. Ah well—that’s life I guess. I obtained some awesome Ukrainian souvenirs this week. We have a neighbor who spends a lot of time at our house and is a good friend to my host mom. We have gone over to her house a few times for dinner, and earlier this week we went there. I was admiring a hat she had—one of those traditional giant Ukrainian/ Russian fur hats. I told her that I wanted to buy one of these in Ukraine at some point and she told me that I could have hers! I was so surprised and didn’t know how to say in Russian “Really? Are you sure? I can’t possible take this!” But she said that she doesn’t wear it because it doesn’t fit her head, so she wanted me to have it. It’s so great. Then she gave me an Orange Scarf, commemorating the Orange Revolution that took place in 2004. It says “Our Ukraine” on it in Ukrainian. Then when I got home the other day, my host mom had bought me all of these souvenirs in town. A magnet of Kyiv, a really nice mug with chickens on it and a typical Ukrainian home on it. And another AMAZING thing—In Ukrainian history, there are these soldiers way back in the day called Cossacks and she got me a little figure of one of these (they wear these big hats and have crazy moustaches) and he is attached to a little cup which has the name of my town on it. It’s amazing. Yay for Ukrainian souvenirs. Then I remembered that I had two Obama magnets, so I gave one to my host mom and the neighbor. They love them and kept shouting “Obama!” loudly. On Saturday we went to Kyiv with the Scottish and Polish couple we know, and met up with our friend from New Zealand there. It was a really fun, relaxing day, and we finally got to see some of the beauty that Kyiv has to offer. The marshutkra drive was terrible though. I felt so car sick and almost lost it. And by lost it I mean I almost lost my breakfast. That would’ve been bad… throwing up on the marshrutka. I need to find a way to not get car sick on them, since they will be the main form of travel I will use while I am in Ukraine. I think the mixture of how fast they drive, how bumpy the roads are, my fear of car crashes, and then on top of that, the fact that I then get worried I am gonna throw up right there and then adds to my nausea. Yeah, it’s a mess. If you have any anti-nausea suggestions, they are more then welcome. So we arrived in Kiev and met up with our friends. We took the metro to the edge of Khreshchatyk—the main downtown area. The first time we took the metro in Kyiv a little over a month ago, I think I was just so overwhelmed that I didn’t realize how far underground the metro is. Okay first of all—the escalators go fast—like scary fast. We saw a woman attempt to get on it and her heel broke off. it’s jumping onto a moving vehicle—crazy. And some of the escalator rides are a full 5-8 minutes. Seriously—these stations are SO far underground. For all of you in Boston, imagine the escalator in Porter Square times 5. Maybe more. It’s crazy. Anyways, we walked a bunch around—checked out some stores, and then hopped on the metro again to the outskirts of the city to a major second-hand shopping area. If you’re familiar with the stores Dollar-a-Pound and the Garment District in Cambridge, it was basically those two stores spread out over a huge crazy stretch of land. It was amazing. I bought one thing—a white cardigan. I tried to haggle with the sales women—it was originally 60 UAH, I tried to get it down to 40, but she said I could pay 50. Not bad—my host mom said that was a good price and was glad that I tried to get it lower. We spent a little over an hour there. There were a lot of good things there, but it was overwhelming. I think I would like to go back there in the near future, once my language skills are better so I can really bargain with them and try to get some good deals. We hopped back on the metro and got back to the center of the city. We finally made it to Independence Square, which even on the grey chilly day was quite beautiful. We walked around a bunch and then climbed a large hill to go to St. Sophia’s Cathedral. We didn’t go into the actual cathedral—it was a little expensive (although I think next time I go to Kyiv I would like to shell out the money and just do it). It is the oldest cathedral in Kyiv—some of the artwork there dates back to 1017. We climbed to the top of the bell tower—which was built in the 18th century. It was a beautiful view of much of the city. After, we went to St. Michaels Cathedral, which was also beautiful. The original St. Michael’s church was torn down by the soviets in the 1930s—the original was built in 1108. All women must cover their heads inside churches, which is the respectful thing to do, so we put our scarves over our heads and went in. It was so beautiful—there were candles everywhere, and many visitors were buying candles and putting them in the many candle holders placed all throughout the church. It was really neat. Then we went to an art gallery, and then we went to an Irish Pub to watch a rugby match. It was a neat place—very international—Scotts, Brits, Ukrainians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Americans—a whole mix. It was fun. Then we quickly went to a grocery store and bought some things, and then headed back home. It was a really fun day—we saw a lot of Kyiv, and I feel like now I have a much more accurate idea of what the city is like. Next time, I would love to hit up some museums, especially the Chernobyl museum. So, we are in the home stretch now. Monday—Russian class, Tuesday—Russian class, then back to Kyiv for a excursion to some teaching English resource center, Wednesday—Russian class and a goodbye/thank you meeting with the teachers and principal at our school, Thursday—language proficiency test (yikes!) Friday—I have no idea, Saturday—host family goodbye party, Sunday—packing and hanging with my host family, and then Monday we leave our town, our families and are off to Kyiv. I feel ready to leave but I am sad to leave my town and my family. By Monday afternoon, I will know where my site is, by Wednesday I will have met my Ukrainian counterpart, and by Friday I will most likely be at my new site. CRAZY!!! Not sure when the next time I will write will be. It could be in a week. Could be in a few weeks. We shall see. But if it is not till after all the holidays, well then—Happy Holidays and all that good stuff! Much love, Rose

Hello everyone! Life in good old Ukraine is about the same. Only two weeks left of training and then we head to Kyiv for a few days to wrap up our training, have our swearing in ceremony, meet our Ukrainian counterpart, and then with our counterpart, we depart by bus or by train to our permanent site. And oh yeah, we don’t find out our actual site until we arrive in Kyiv. It’s gonna be exciting! Well after a month of no school, the flu epidemic is over (well maybe not over, but not as bad as before), and we are teaching again. On Wednesday schools reopened throughout the country so we are back in our school. When we went to meet with the English teacher we have primarily been working with, she said “the students have forgotten everything!” Oh joy. On Thursday, Yeri and I taught a 7th grade class about the correct usage of the words “both”, “either” and “neither”. It went well. The kids were awesome. After the class, as we were about to leave, a student said to his friends in Russian that he would miss us. I think it took him by surprise when he realized we understood what he had said. We said we would miss him too. It was funny. We are doing a small community project at our school about HIV/AIDs. We made tons of posters and hung them up in the school on Thursday. Then next week we will teach a seminar to high school students about HIV/AIDS and give out red ribbons for them to wear on World AIDS Day. We are also going to compile resources and lesson plans about HIV/AIDS to give to the school and other people in town who might be able to spread the info in the future. It feels nice to do something for our school and for the community. Hopefully we will also be able to show a movie afterschool about HIV/AIDS for interested students. The principal and some teachers said they really liked the posters we had made and hung up—they added a lot of color to the stairwell where we hung them, and many students were reading them and were interested in them. Last weekend was my host mom’s second birthday party with her family. I met one of her other sons, and his wife (the parents of the granddaughter who had been staying with us for a month.) I also met her nephew and her daughter in law’s parents. My host mom’s son and nephew were hilarious. They knew some English, which was kind of nice and funny because they knew a lot of random words and phrases. Sometimes they would remember a word they knew in English and would shout it out at random moments. A few things they shouted out in English: “Hot dog!” “Okay!” “I am a pig, this is my baby kitten!” And her nephew knew about the Red Sox, so that was cool. Also her son said then when I go back to Boston, I should say hello to Boston from him. It was a great night. The next morning, they all boarded a bus back to Kyiv. I was so sad to say goodbye my host mom’s granddaughter. I hope I can see her again some day! The other night, myself, my host mom, her sister and the neighbor were over having dinner. Recently, a Peace Corps volunteer came to visit our town to give us advice and talk about his experience being a volunteer in Ukraine. He finished his service last week and is already back in the states at this point, but when he left Ukraine, he brought his host mom with him back to the states and she will be in the states for a month with him! It’s very cool. So I told my host mom about this, and she said that in two years, maybe she will come back with me to Boston. I said maybe, but then she said that she can’t fly, so I said we could take a boat, and then she said that she doesn’t like being on the ocean. She suggested we ride bicycles to Boston, and I said sure! She said we would have very good figures after this long bike ride. That same night, after dinner, I went to my room to do my Russian homework. Then the neighbor knocked on my door and said that she was going to show us a film of her son’s wedding, which took place over the summer. I have never met him, but I said sure, I’ll watch the video. So we all sit down to watch the wedding video. It was interesting and funny at times. Weddings in Ukraine last the entire day and are quite a big deal. There are many interesting traditions. The only thing was the video was THREE HOURS LONG. I am not even kidding you. Three hours long. I knew something was fishy when the disc finished and suddenly it said “Insert disc 2”. It became a party—suddenly the wine was out and we were all clinking glasses, watching this wedding video. It was a very interesting night. The chickens at the house where we have our Russian class have suddenly become crazy. I think that now that the woman at the house is back to teaching, they feel neglected. The other day when I went out to use the outhouse, I got to the gate, and suddenly they rushed at the gate making crazy noises and staring at me, just waiting for me to open the gate so they could rush at my legs and peck me to death. This was the day after Jacob said that one of them attacked him. I chose not to go to the bathroom that time. And then on Friday, Kathleen went to the bathroom and when she came back, she said “Didn’t you guys hear me screaming?!?” We hadn’t. The chickens had rushed at her and three of them had attacked her. Now we are all scared of using the bathroom. Cait lives next door, so I used her outhouse on Friday after class, but the chickens at her house started rushing towards me as well. I think all the chickens in the neighborhood are devising some terrible plan to peck us all to death. Yikes. We took an amazing walk on Friday after class to a part of town we had never been to before. We walked up a big hill, which led to a huge grassy field, and from there we could see the whole town, forests and the river. It was so cool to see a whole other part of town. We kept walking and we passed a couple of graveyards, which were really beautiful as well. Let the two week countdown begin!

The other day, all of these stuffed animals suddenly appeared in my room. One of them is a Garfield stuffed animal. One of the eyeballs has fallen off and then my host mother’s granddaughter colored in the eye that is actually missing the eyeball. It is the creepiest thing ever. Above is a picture. I keep meaning to do something about it because whenever I go to sleep I can feel it staring at me.

When was little, maybe 2 or 3, I went to New Jersey to visit my grandmother. In the bedroom we were staying in was a painting of my grandmother’s mother. It was a really frightening painting. I was terrified of it and could not stop crying and freaking out, so my mom covered the painting with a scarf. My grandmother was so offended, and I guess I understand why. But hey, I was just a little kid, and frankly, she looked like a creepy mean witch. When I went back when I was older, I looked at that same painting. It still gave me the creeps. So maybe this is another situation to bring out the old scarf and cover Garfield’s face! Seriously. It gives me the chills.

On Wednesday it was my host mother’s 60th birthday. Birthdays are interesting in this culture. Basically whoever’s birthday it is is responsible for hosting an elaborate party, where they provide everything. The guests do bring gifts, cards, flowers, chocolates and such, but my host mom put her son to work cleaning the entire house, fixing things, and she began cooking 3 days before the actual party. Every morning when I left for Russian, she was up to her elbows (is that an expression? I am seriously losing my English) in meat. There was one morning I left and there were huge bowls of ground pork, two whole giant fish, two whole chickens and all sorts of other thing all over the place. It looked like she had invited the entire town to her birthday party. The entire town did not come. About 15 of her friends did, and on Saturday, some of her family is coming into town and I am very excited to meet more of her family.

The party was SO much fun. It started at 3PM and ended at 10PM. We ate, we drank, we toasted, we sang, we danced, we chatted. It was really fun. I think my host mom had a great time and was happy with how everything went. I really wish I could’ve understood the toasts that people made for her. Some of them were really long and I could tell she was touched by them! I was able to have a few conversations that I actually understood with people. One woman told me that she has family in San Francisco, and that they live in a big house, have three cars and are always on their computers. (That sounds about right). Another man told me that he was in the army in Germany sometime in the 80s. I learned that if you clink glasses and then rest your shot class on the table before you drink, you have to clink again and then drink. It was a fun party and I met some really nice people. Ukrainian birthdays are a good time.

Even though we are not teaching, we are still developing lesson plans for future lessons we might teach. One of the ones we are supposed to develop is a “Country studies” lesson plan about the USA. So I of course chose to focus on baseball. I know, I am so predictable. It was either that or talk to them about my love of hot sauce for 45 minutes. And hey, baseball is pretty American, right? One of my activities is for the students to make their own baseball cards, choose the name of their team and what position they would like to play. I hope I can actually do this activity with some of my future students. I would love to teach them about baseball. On the example baseball card I made, I said that I played first base on the Ukrainian team the Lviv Lions, and that I had a batting average of .345. Yeah, I’m pretty good in my imaginary baseball playing world. ☺

I know I have said this in previous blogs, but I am so sad to leave my host family. The other morning, my host mom was like, “Soon my granddaughter will go back to Kyiv, and my son will go back to work in Kyiv, and you will leave. Everyone is leaving!” and then she made a crying face. I made a crying face too. I think it is going to be a big cry fest when I leave. But she made me promise I will call. Calling will be interesting. Even though my language skills are somewhat decent (at least I like to think they are decent), I still heavily rely on gestures, expressions and pointing. On the phone, I can’t do any of those things. That will be an adventure.

Okay that is all for now. Supposedly Wednesday the quarantine will be over and we will be able to begin teaching again. Hooray!Till next time...

Hello everyone! I have not written in a while! Internet has been scarce lately. Our most recent way to obtain internet is to sit in a pagoda in the yard of this nice Australian man we met. He has wireless internet in his house, and the internet (on good days) reaches the pagoda. So we sit there and freeze and check emails and such. It’s great. It’s so funny sitting here in this random pagoda, using wireless internet and hearing roosters and chickens clucking and cockadoodle-do-ing in the background. It is such a strange paradox. And these babushkas just came over to the pagoda and were like, “Why are you here?!?! We said we are friends with the Australian man and we attempted to chat with them for a minute. It’s gotta be kind of weird for them to see these strange foreigners sitting outside with laptops. If I saw this and was them, I would also walk over and be like “Ummmm who are you and why are sitting in the freezing cold with a computer?!?” Not much has been happening lately. Schools are still closed and we are still not teaching because of the flu epidemic. Supposedly we have this next week as the last week that this “quarantine” will be in place. But the landlady whose house we have Russian class in is a teacher, and she said that there is talk about just cancelling school until the New Year. I asked my host mom about this because she works in a school as well, but she said she did not know. That would be pretty bad if we were not going to be able to teach anymore before we got to our site. Additionally, we are developing a Community Project focusing on educating high school students at our school about HIV/AIDS, and most of the success of this project revolves around school actually being in session. So, we will wait and see what happens. People in my town are so nice. I think at first it was maybe frustrating for the store clerks (as well as for us) because we did not really know how to buy things, so we would just sort of point and say “I want this.” It felt terrible being so abrupt, but we had no idea how to say anything. Still sometimes, I have to point at something if I do not know the name, but now I can be friendlier. It’s a good feeling—knowing how to do things without relying on my language teacher or my dictionary to complete tasks. Hooray doing simple things! Now whenever we walk into the store near our language teachers house, the store clerks smile and ask if we are back to buy cookies (we have a weak spot for their cookies) and whenever we walk into the office supply store in town, the woman laughs and helps us with everything we need. Oh a funny Russian term I learned on Friday—our language teacher asked us what it is called when there are people sitting around and no one is talking—an awkward silence in English. There are a couple of terms for this in Russian. One of them is, in Russian, милиция родились which translates into “A policeman was just born.” We all thought that was hilarious. So whenever there are any awkward silences that take place, I can say in Russian that a policeman was just born. Hooray. My host mother's granddaughter is still living with us, and we are still having a blast. I am teaching her colors in English and she is teaching me colors in Russian. She is a very good and patient teacher for being only 7 years old. But there is one word that every day she is trying to teach me, it is the Russian word for “napkin holder”. For whatever reason, I cannot pronounce this word in Russian. She keeps saying that i am pronouncing the “L” incorrectly in the word, and I know that there are two different ways to pronounce L’s. One way you put your tongue on your teeth, the other way you put your tongue on the roof of your mouth. So whenever I try to say this word, she smooshes my mouth together to try to get me to say it right. But alas, I cannot. So now she likes to taunt me at the dinner table and make me say it. And every single time, I cannot. The other day there was some other word that I just could not pronounce, and she and my host mom were trying to teach me, but I again could not pronounce the “L” sound. My host mom was literally on the floor laughing hysterically at my inability to say it. It was pretty funny, I will admit. I am thankful that my family enjoys trying to teach me words, even if I butcher every single one. It’s fun when my terrible pronunciation leads to so much laughing in my house! I have recently begun to think about how I must sound so ridiculous to people when I speak Russian. Yes I am often making full sentences, and they are usually understandable, but they sound so absurd sometimes. Like the other today, I asked my host mom if my friends could come over after our lesson. I think what I said translated into “After lesson my friends house. This good? This bad?” I mean she totally knew what I was asking, but I just feel so silly all the time. I can’t believe there are only 4 more weeks left of training. Next Friday, we have our site placement interviews. This is the time that we discuss with one of the training managers about our preferences about where we might want to live the next two years—bigger town, small village, host family, alone, etc. Sometimes I forget that this is not the Peace Corps what I am doing now. I have two more years after this. I have come to really like my town and I love my host family. It will be hard to leave. My host mom keeps saying she doesn’t want me to leave and she squeezes and hugs me, and I don’t want to leave either! Hopefully I will be able to come back and visit at some point. So my efforts to do NanoWrimo (the novel writing thing) have pretty much come to a halt. I was doing SO well the first week, writing every day, and now I have not worked on my novel in over a week. Even though we are not teaching at the moment, we are still developing lesson plans, so it’s hard to squeeze in time to also work on the novel. Oh well. Sorry NanoWrimo! Maybe next year will be easier. During our technical session this week, (we have two technical sessions a week, focusing on teaching and Ukrainian culture in the schools) my friend Michelle and I were adapting a lesson plan in a textbook for 9th graders. We decided to adapt a lesson about Americans’ Food. In the textbook, there was a text about American’s and their love for food, especially fast food. My favorite lines from this text were “Many fast food restaurants have a drive-in section. Here you can order and pick up food without even getting out of your car!” and “Americans eat out a lot, and when they go to a restaurant, they don’t expect to be hungry afterwards!” It made us laugh. Oh lazy Americans who love their food. I never really talked about the trip to Kyiv we took a few weeks ago. The trip was fun, but I would say that in general, this trip was not really an accurate representation of what Kyiv is actually like, just because we did not see too much of the city. We got up early and went to catch the bus to Kyiv. It took about an hour and a half. The bus dropped us off at the outskirts of Kyiv. The main goals of the trip were to find out how to navigate the metro, go to the Peace Corps office and ask strangers for directions to different places. So we got to the metro station. Our language teacher went with us, and her role was to pretend that this was also her first time here and that she was to not really help us much. In fact, she had only been to Kyiv like 3 times in her life, so this was all pretty new for her as well. So we figured out how to buy the token, we paid and we went down to the trains. We started asking some people about which train to take to where we were going, people looked at us kind of funny, but we got some directions. The trains arrived like every 2 minutes, which was great. BUT, they were all packed. And I am not talking about the kind of packed where you groan and squeeze in, I mean I have never in my life, in any city I have ever been to, not NYC, not Boston, not London, not anywhere seen or been on a train that had so many people squeezed in as these trains did. So basically about 7 trains went by, and we did not get on any. And finally another one came, and we decided okay, we’re just gonna squeeze in. So Luda, me, Yeri, Cait and Kathleen all squeeze in, and suddenly the doors begin closing on Jacob. We tried to pry the doors open, but they closed and we waved to Jacob as the train pulled away and he was left on the platform. It was so funny. Luda was so nervous he was going to get lost in the train station, but we figured he would find his way to the correct station. Okay so we are on this packed train. Honestly, I cannot explain to you how packed this was. I mean there is no personal space. I was not holding on to anything, but I didn’t need to since I was pressed into so many people that just their bodies held me perfectly still. Even when the train lurched forward, I basically didn’t move at all. We got to our stop, got off the train, and waited, hoping Jacob would show up. A couple minutes later Jacob got off of a train and we were very relieved. After switching trains again, we got to our stop, which is the main train station in Kyiv. Can you guess what the very first thing was that I saw when I exited the metro station? I bet you can’t. The very first thing I saw in Kyiv was a McDonalds. It was so absurd. We went into the main train station, which was amazing. I have to say that this was my favorite part of the day. It was very cool. The train station was beautiful, and we looked at the train schedule. There are trains there that go to all different parts of Ukraine—Odessa, Crimea, Lviv, and there are trains that go other places—Moscow, Berlin, Minsk, Prague, Budapest, Krakow. It was really, really incredible to see how many amazing countries and cities are just a train ride away. I can’t wait to travel and see more of this country and other nearby countries. So then we went to find the Peace Corps office. We found it, spoke with some PC staff, met some current volunteers, used the computers. It’s a really nice office, so that was fun. Then we went off to find the city center. Unfortunately we never quite found the main downtown part, because it was getting late and we had to get lunch. I am looking forward to going back again, seeing some of the cathedrals and going to some museums. But I have to say, it was so comforting being back in my small town after being in Kyiv. Even though I did like Kyiv and I know it has a lot to offer, being there made me appreciate my town and how nice it can be to live life a little slower. I think I am still a city girl (that sounds weird) at heart, but maybe in Ukraine, I am not. We shall see… Thank you to everyone who sent me mail! It is the best feeling in the world getting mail. Seriously. Peace Corps recommends that people do not send mail from the states after November 30th, since I will be moving mid-December. As soon as I find out my permanent address, I will certainly pass that along. And then I can finally have packages sent to me. Like all the hot sauce I know you are going to send me. Okay last thing I will share. No one will think this is funny unless you are learning Russian, but I will share it anyways! On Friday we were at Russian. Jacob went out to use the outhouse, and when he came back, he said that when he went out there, the dog that the landlady owns was barking at a chicken that had escaped from the chicken coop. He said to the landlady: “Курица на улица” which transliterated is pronounced “Kooreetsa na ooleetsa”, so it rhymes. It just means, “chicken outside”. We thought it was the funnies thing ever, and then the landlady barges into our lesson and starts shouting “Kooreetsa na ooleetsa! Kooreetsa na ooleetsa!” It was hilarious. Okay. That is all for now. Until next time! (or at least until the next time I come to the pagoda) Much love, Rose

Hello all,

Well there is no teaching for at least three weeks because of swine flu. Lame!!! My host mom was making her own face masks yesterday because they are sold out at the local pharmacy. Other then that, everything is fine here. Yesterday we had our first snow! Very exciting. My host mother's grandaughter is staying with us until she goes back to school. We are having fun. I taught her how to play Uno and she really likes taking pictures with the Photobooth thing on my computer.

I am attempting to do NanoWrimo--the thing where you write a 50,000 word novel in a month. Since I have done it the last 2 years, I really want to do it this year too. So far I am on track, but it's gonna be hard. We shall see how it works out.

There is SOO much more to say, but I just wanted to give a quick update. Miss you very much.

Much love,

Rose

Hello— What I previously posted is more or less a summary of the last few weeks. Now this is updated for today, the 24th of October. I have never been so happy to use the internet. Seriously, I had an actual dream a couple nights ago about using wireless internet. How pathetic is that? It’s kind of nice being disconnected from the world and not be completely dependent on technology. But I gotta say, I am loving me some internet right now. Life in Ukraine is great/stressful/fun/crazy… every emotion and feeling. I have been here for pretty much a month. This has been a good week. I co-taught a lesson in the local school to 7th graders, and it was great. While the topic was hard for us to teach (Present Perfect Tense) it was still fun and definitely made me feel more confident about teaching here. But I have only taught two lessons so far in my school. After school vacation, which is next week, I will begin teaching 2-3 lessons a week, and will stop co-teaching. Everytime we teach, we are observed by the actual Ukrainian English teacher for that class, our fellow volunteers in our town, and our Peace Corps technical trainer, so after every class we teach we debrief and get suggestions and comments from everyone. It is incredibly helpful. At our school there is a woman who is in charge of extracurricular activities and other things, and she has asked us to assist in an event they are having on December 1st for World AIDS days. We will do a presentation for about 80 high school students at the school about HIV/AIDS information, safe sex practices, testing and information about HIV/AIDS in Ukraine. I think it is going to be a really important event and I am glad that the school asked us to help out. Ukraine has named HIV/AIDS as an epidemic, with the infection rate as high as some African nations. I only wish we could present this to the entire high school population at our school, and not just a portion of them. So if anyone has any useful info/resources about HIV/AIDS, email them to me! Over the weekend, I made Vareniki with my host mom and her sister. Vareniki are basically dumplings filled with nearly anything, and it is a Ukrainian tradition. We filled half of them with mashed potatoes and the other half with a cabbage/carrot/onion mixture. It was delicious and really fun to make. I am glad that my host mom lets me help with the cooking, because I love to cook and I am enjoying learning how to make some new things, especially Ukrainian specialties! I am also really happy she likes vegetables and she seriously makes the most amazing salads. Actually, both of my moms (American mom and Ukrainian mom) are fabulous cooks. J Last night my host mother’s granddaughter spent the night. She is 7 (same age as Rafael!) and we had so much fun. She is a total goofball, just like me, so we spent the whole evening laughing, doing origami and watching the Ukrainian dance show which everyone in this country seems to be totally obsessed with (and now I am too!) I have already found a couple of shows that I like to watch with my host mom-mostly Ukrainian soap operas. Amazing. The dancing show is good. Plus I enjoy watching American shows and movies dubbed over. The other night me, my host brother and host mother watched some terrible Tom Cruise movie I had never seen dubbed over in Russian it was great. Also House is on all the time, and that’s also a good one to watch dubbed over. I am looking forward to going to Kyiv (hopefully next week). I don’t know what we will do when we get there, but I have heard it is a beautiful and fascinating city, and I can’t wait. Last week for one of our cross-cultural sessions, we received a really interesting history lesson about Ukraine. One of the things I had heard prior to my arrival here, and that I experience here every day, is that nothing is wasted (mostly in regards to food). I had heard that bread is sacred and is never thrown away. This is something that I think is really great about this culture, and something Americans could learn from. We are all so wasteful in the states, including myself. Between wasting perfectly good food, to wasting electricity, to water... the list goes on. Here, nothing is wasted or taken for granted. Showers or bathes are quick and not usually taken for enjoyment, just to quickly get clean and get out. People are so efficient about only turning on lights if it is necessary, and turning it off as soon as you leave the room. Same with food, nothing is wasted. If we--for instance--eat fish, my host mom puts out all of the bones and leftover little bits of fish that were not eaten for stray cats to come and eat. And yes, bread is sacred. Even if bread goes moldy, it is saved. I am not sure what it will be used for, but my host mom has a bag of bits of old, stale and some moldy bread. I am sure it will be used for something. So the reason that this is so ingrained in the culture is mainly because in the early 30s, Stalin took every last bit of grain from peasants, leaving them with little to no food for themselves. Even during a year where there was a terrible drought, he stripped the peasants of all of their food, leaving much of Ukraine suffering from terrible famine. People and families starved to death, and if they attempted to leave for Russia, guards were there waiting and would kill them. It was really terrible. And to ensure that the world did not hear about this famine, he shipped the grain that he stole from Ukrainians to other countries, to give the impression that everything in Ukraine was fine. While there has been tragedy in parts of Ukrainian history, there has also been a lot of triumphs and amazing events that have taken place. I learned some other really interesting things about Ukraine last weekend and I am looking forward to reading and hearing more about this country. There is still much more to say, but for now, that will have to be all. Thanks for reading!!! Much love, RosePS Sorry this is so long. I am just not sure the next time I will have internet!

I will try to sum up three weeks in just a few paragraphs…. My town, where I have my three months of training has a population of 8000. Yes, 8000. It’s so tiny! I had no idea it was that small. The town also has a 13-person police department, 2 schools (grades 1-12) and also 4 colleges, which draw about 2000 commuting students everyday. The deputy mayor said that the town is very safe and “there are no gangsters”, so that’s good! Also that most places are safe, and that if college students hit on us in the center of town, just “use our humor to tell them politely that we are not interested.” I don’t think “using humor” is the easiest thing to do when there is a severe language barrier, but if this happens, I will try! Right behind my house is a nice little forest and one of the colleges is located there (I saw a whole bunch of students out having a dance party of some sort and Akon was blasting from a stereo.) There are a number of statues and monuments in the forest there that we walked to. A large statue of a man named Shevchenko who was a famous Ukrainian writer. There is a big statue of Lenin and also a WWII monument. My town is really great and has some beautiful areas. There are two rivers running through it—one of which eventually leads down to the Black Sea. It even has a beautiful sandy beach, but it is too cold already to swim. The food here is great—my host mother is a fantastic cook. And let me just say what they serve in the states and call “borscht” is not borscht. Borscht is not beet red liquid with sour cream on top. Real borscht is flavorful and delicious. She makes AMAZING borscht. I don’t even know what is in it—beets (but not many), carrots, chicken, beans, potatoes, more veggies. So delicious. Also she has the best garden ever—we eat insanely good tomato salad every night with the best tomatoes I have ever had. I also hope parsley is good for you since we eat the parsley from her garden by the handful every night. Even though my Russian is very very minimal and her English is nonexistent, we are still communicating and we already have established some jokes, and I also have jokes with her sister, who lives across the street. I am looking forward to when I can have meaningful conversations in Russian, and not just be able to say “I like tomato”, “I like borscht”, “I like baseball.” I mean seriously I sound like the character in Anchorman who says “I love lamp”, “I love carpet”. Okay I can say more then those things, but I am just looking forward to the day that I can really keep up with my host family, and also so I can understand what they are saying about me, since I know they talk about me all the time!! J In general, from what I had heard about the Ukrainian style of dress has pretty much been true. Many short skirts, high heels, lots of make up, etc. Women wear heels through the rain and mud and they never seem to get dirty, yet the second I step outside, even if the sun is shining, I somehow manage to get my shoes covered in dirt. At our school, even the students dress way stylish. I mean 5th graders wearing crazy amazing boots, skirts, heels, funky jackets, shiny tote bags. Amazing. Here is a summary of what learning Russian is like: Our language teacher explains a grammar rule and shows a chart, like for instance, a chart on how to make nouns singular and plural. Seems simple enough, right? NO. First make sure you can figure out if the word is female, masculine or neutral, then decide in which way you will be using the verb that goes along with the noun, and figure out if that verb will be used in the nomitive, genetive, dative or accusitive case, only then can you make the noun plural or singular. And now, ignore that ENTIRE chart you just read, because there are a million exceptions to the rules and very few words will actually follow a consistent rule. This is the point that we all crash and burn and say who invented this crazy language!?!?! Then we complain and smash our heads on the table and beg our teacher for a break because we cannot handle the insane grammar rules of this language. Then he says no, and we endure 3 more hours of inconsistent, confusing, crazy grammar and vocabulary words that we cannot pronounce correctly with an alphabet that we are still trying to figure out. Today we had a Russian test. I think we all bombed it. Oh Russian—you are such a mystery to me. So I don’t know how this happened, but I didn’t bring ANY hot sauce with me to Ukraine. Seriously, I don’t know how this happened. Although I guess that makes sense since I finished packing at 1AM the day I left for Philadelphia. My procrastination in packing might also explain why I brought like 20 pairs of tights and only 2 skirts. Oh well. One of my fellow volunteers brought a bottle of Siracha and when we have our lunch breaks during Russian, we slather that on everything we eat. We have finished half the bottle after only 3 weeks. Yikes! If you want to be my most favorite person ever, send me a bottle of Tapatio or Siracha once I have a permanent address. I will be forever grateful. I have a cell phone! WOOHOO. I finally feel like a real person. I was getting tired of seeing 7 year olds walking through town showing off their cell phones. It’s very exciting. We all got Bluetooth phones to try to get Internet on our computers. Not sure if it will work. We shall see! My host mom was so happy that I have finally been able to have contact with people back home. Every day she had been asking if I talked to my mama and everyday I said no, I haven’t. And now that I have (and with other people!) she is happy, and so am I! If you want my cell number, let me know! While training is stressful, I am having a great time. I miss you all very much and wish you were all here with me!

9/30/2009

*written by Rose; typed into the blog by Cara

Today was my first full day in my town, which meant that we had our first language lesson and we walked through the center of town for the first time. Let me tell you -- Russian is hard to learn and understand! BUT after only 2 lessons, I already have down most of the Cyrillic alphabet and have almost completely learned the numbers 1-100, as well as some introductory conversations. My language lessons are taught in the home of my language teacher, who is living here temporarily -- his home is somewhere else.

I am sure there are much smaller towns in Ukraine, but my town definitely qualifies as "small." I am not sure yet, but I just asked my host brother if there is internet in town, and he said no. I've heard that it is sometimes possible to get internet with a bluetooth phone, but that may only work in larger cities or towns.

There are dogs EVERYWHERE. Most are on the small side -- some are behind fences but many are just loose. Today my host brother walked me to my language class, and we walked past a dead dog on the sidewalk. It wasn't roadkill on the road -- it was just there on the sidewalk, its eyes wide open, with flies all around. I'm sorry to conjure up this kind of an image but it was a very startling thing for me to see, it was so sad and disturbing.

Right now, however, me and my host brother are watching TV. At the moment, we are watching Ukranian news but we were watching American MTV and Russian MTV a minute ago. It was so weird/comforting when he first turned on American MTV and a Lada GaGa video was on. It was like I forgot that American music and culture even existed.

Last night, my first night here, I gave my family some American souvenirs. I gave my host mother some nice lotion and a Boston shot glass. I also gave her sister lotion and a Harvard shot glass. I gave my host brother a Red Sox hat and his cousin a baseball that had the Red Sox logo on it.

Tonight at dinner, my host mother served the leftovers from yesterday's dinner. she also laid out some sprigs of parsley! I don't usually eat parsley by itself but it was very good. Then she took a clove of garlic from the fridge and held it up for me to see. I tried -- successfully I think -- to explain that I like garlic, so she handed me one half. Next, she instructed me to put salt on my half. We each did that, then she took a bit of the raw garlic, ate a sprig of parsley and then a bit of bread. I was thinking, she is awesome! People never eat raw garlic! So I did what she did and? Delicious.

Okay, so you now, we are now watching HOUSE on TV (dubbed in Russian, of course). Yay, Dr. House.

Apparently there are two Australians and a Canadian living in my town who are teaching English. We have yet to meet them, but I would like to.

I am surprised how much I am able to communicate with my host fmaily, even though we speak different languages. I guess I undertsimated how useful and easy it can be just using gestures, signs, pointing, expressions, etc. Even though for the most part, we have no idea what the other is saying, we still manage to communicate -- I can't communicate exactly what I need to say, but I can still find a way to get the point across.

One I am able to fully master the alphabet, that will be great. In the meanwhile, I feel like a little kid again -- walking around and not understanding any signs in town or being able to read anything, or being able to sound out words but not knowing what the vocabulary means. That will change ... hopefully ...

Until next time!

Love,

Rose

Sooo this might be last post for a little while. Once I get to Ukraine (Sunday) I am not sure when will be the next time that I will have internet access. Remember, no news is good news.I am ALMOST done packing. I know I know, I should've finished like, 5 days ago, but that's how I roll--last minute. Actually I am not feeling too stressed. I mean I haven't weighed my bags yet, but I am feeling pretty good about my packing. It's weird to think that all of the clothes/shoes that I will wear for the next two years has fit into basically one suitcase.

I've got some serious goodbyes to make tonight. I'm very sad. Not looking forward to them. But I am looking forward to Mexican food and bowling with my mom and some of my besties.

I'll catch ya'll later. Next time I post will be in Ukraine!!! SHUENFJDNFHTEUHTERJSANJSHDDHGDFNJSADUHE (that's me freaking out.)

Love,

Rose

PS: I wil have my U.S. cell phone with me and on until Saturday afternoon, so feel free to call and text me up until that point. And if you don't have my number, then you probably shouldn't be reading this blog right now....

See you LATER

So my time here in the US of A is coming down to the wire. Friday morning I will be flying out of Manchester NH to Philadelphia, will have about 7 hours of orientation in Philly, then we all take a bus to NYC that Saturday morning, sit in JFK for HOURS and then fly to Frankfurt, Germany, and finally reach our destination of Kiev sometime on Sunday. It's gonna be hectic, especially since I am an incredibly nervous traveller when it comes to planes. As long as I can hold hands with the person next to me on the plane, I should be alright. I hope they know what they are in for!

I had an amazing weekend. Saturday night was a Razzy's karaoke party, and so many of my closest and dearest friends were there. It was so much fun. Of all the karaoke nights I have had there (and trust me, there have been a lot) I think that was definitely one of the best. Highlights: singing "A Whole New World" with Fionna, Lola's rendition of "Bust a Move", the dance party at the end, Hampshire people together (Miranda, Njambi and Christina), people who sang songs for me (Nina, Jenny, Fionna, Matt), almost getting sprayed by a skunk on Somerville Ave.... fun times!

Sunday night, my mom threw a party for me, which was equally amazing. It was a mix of neighbors, old friends, family friends, and people from throughout my life that have meant a lot to me. It was wonderful to have them all together. Highlights: Scott wearing his Russian hat, mom wearing her orange revolution scarf, my favorite elementary school teacher Rich surprise showing up, my old neighbor Will surprise showing up with his wonderful family, my moms delish cooking and baking, and lastly--having people I love and care about all together, so for that, thank you everyone!

And lastly, for those of you that have not seen this, you should watch it. It is from the TV show "Ukraine's Got Talent" and it's really beautiful:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2009/08/amazing_sand_animation_from_ye.html

I am trying to decide if I should bring high heels with me to Ukraine. I probably wear high heels once a year, if even that. The Peace Corps literature and many past Peace Corps Volunteers have said that Ukrainian women wear stilettos in all weather. No matter if it is hot and humid out, or whether it is icy and freezing, they are in their high heels. Yeah, that's kind of intimidating. I am already dwarf size, so to already be crazy short and then feel even shorter because everyone around me is wearing 6 inch heels makes me feel kinda blah. Some people have said that they did not wear heels while in Ukraine, and that people didn't say much. Basically what it comes down to (and I have been told this) is that as an American, I will stick out no matter what, so I shouldn't even try to fit in--especially when it comes to clothing.So then I come back to the question, do I bring heels or not?

So here are some of my fears about going to Ukraine:

1. I won't have hot sauce readily available to dump on everything and anything I eat.2. I won't be able to make "That's what she said" jokes.3. I won't be around other Red Sox/baseball fans. 

4. I won't be able to blast gangster rap.

5. I will have to hide my tattoo for a long time.

Okay I have some real fears too, like about successfully learning the language, fitting in with my community, teaching, the distance from home, lack of communication with friends and family, etc etc. It's easier right now to think about those silly unimportant fears--makes me less nervous/scared about going. I think I am trying to look at my departure as this hilarious thing that is happening, not a really sad thing. I mean it's great and I am so SO excited to go on this adventure. There is nothing else right now that I want to do with my life. But still, it sucks to be leaving.

I don't get this blog thing. Is it like a livejournal? I don't think people want that. My journals are weird. And definitely private. I also tend to draw bizarre pictures. I recently found a little sketch book from my childhood with some REALLY disturbing drawings. One of them was a picture of some weird serpent creature with breasts on its hips, and some liquid coming out of the breasts, and that liquid is falling into the mouths of these little floating heads. Oh and also there is a giant X over the entire drawing. I mean, really. That's bad news. I drew that when I was a little child. What is wrong with me?!?! Should I have written that here? YIKES.

So I am giving in and starting a blog thingamajiggy. I figured that it might actually be a nice way to keep in contact with people while I am in Ukraine. For anyone who is wondering, my blog has this title because before I found out that Ukraine was my Peace Corps assignment, someone asked me what Eastern Europe was like, and I said, "Eastern Europe is like, WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!?!" Yeah it doesn't really make any sense, but what else is new.

I hope people actually read this... Anyone reading this? Blogs are weird.

In two weeks I will be in Kiev. That's what's up.