Last week, I went to the winter Russian Language Refresher camp. Peace Corps traditionally has 2 language camps each year (for both Russian and Ukrainian) and this winter, the camp was held in Chernigov - a city/oblast center in central Ukraine. There were approximately 50 PCVs there, and we spent several days studying Russian grammar and practicing our Russian speaking/listening/reading/writing skills. I also took another Language Proficiency test (affectionately known as the LPI) and scored at the Advanced Low level! I'm glad that my Russian has finally moved up from the Intermediate High level, although the teacher who did my evaluation told me that I would have scored a higher except I tend to only speak in the nominative case and use only the masculine form of adjectives... aka my grammar needs some serious work. But oh well, at least I've made some progress - I'll keep trudging away at the grammar!

Cases... the bane of my existence. The different elective "clubs of interest" that were offered each day. We also had the chance to participate in some cultural activities such as touring the bomb shelter (бомбоубежище) located in basement of the building that we were staying in. During Soviet times, many cities prepared bomb shelters in main buildings and actually trained their citizens on what to do in case of bombing.

Following everyone into the bomb shelter! This door is curved, which was designed to withstand the impact of a bomb hit. Look how solid this door is! The bunk beds. So for example, in that building they had prepared to withstand bombings by installing things like a filtration system and a small water tank. The filtration system consisted of a simple input/output system that would clean incoming air and then eject the outgoing air. Or maybe it was vice versa, I could have misunderstood the explanation in Russian. These cranks were designed to run normally on electricity but could also be manually worked if necessary.

Theo cranking the output valve. Pushing the input valve. The water tank. They also had bathrooms and showers down in the basement - they rerouted the sewage pipes for that basement bathroom to go 200m below the ground (when the city's sewage system was normally only 10m below ground) just in case everything collapsed under the weight of bombs. They also had beds down there of course, although I didn't see much in terms of entertainment... I wonder if they ever had to actually use that bomb shelter during bombings.

Bathrooms.

Power switches for the bomb shelter. Another interesting club that I attended was the hand-made club.... where I made some bracelets! Other people learned how to knit scarves, cross stitch, and embroider in the traditional Ukrainian style.

Linda and I with our bracelets. Knitting. Cross-stitching. Earrings! The figurines from the salty dough club! Along with the theme of Ukrainian cultural lessons, Volodiya tried to teach the boys how to do the male part of the traditional Ukrainan dance. The male part is very physical and difficult to master, which made it amusing for the girls to watch. Katya had already taught the female part of the dance during dance club :)

Chest out, shoulders back, and open your arms up wide to the women! And kick... while your friends got your back. Next, you can try to do it by yourself (the trick is to do it without falling). And my favorite lesson that I attended at Russian language camp.... basket weaving! Volodiya gathered a bunch of willow branches and taught us a basic weaving technique that he learned from his mother. He told us that she used to weave baskets to carry things like food back from the market in their village. Of course, none of our baskets look as smooth and professional as Volodiyas but it was still awesome to actually produce a basket from sticks!

So many sticks... Starting the base from 2 long and 2 short sticks. See... our bases are starting to look circular. (The next day) evolving into baskets! Still working on the baskets (I'm weaving around a waterbottle for structural support). Almost done.. most of us are finishing up the handles. Ta-da! The finished baskets!

I also tried to organize a Talent Show at the end of our Russian language camp, but unfortunately not very many people were interested in showing off their talents. I wish I could have sang (like the summer, when I adapted Lady Gaga's Bad Romance into Russian) but I had a sore throat all week and almost lost my voice... so I was barely able to speak, let alone sing. But we still had some really fun talents!

Mysterious as a Sphinx.... Sphinx, sphinx, sphinxxxxxx..... Music club with Sergei and Helen. Counting to 1000 in Russian with Nathan and Richard. The Sphinx team plus Andrew! I had a fantastic time at Russian Language Refresher camp, and I really hope that I'll be able to go to the next one in the summer... though it will be much harder to get selected as a participant because I'll be one of the oldest groups of PCVs in Ukraine by then. It's so weird to think that I'm considered one of the older (and therefore more knowledgeable and experienced) PCVS now! One of the most interesting things that happened to me at this camp was that several group 41 PCVs came up to me and introduced themselves and told me that they read my blog before they came to Ukraine - its amazing to feel like people actually take the time to check out whats going on in my life and follow my blog! Thank you to all my readers out there :)

Over winter break, I had the opportunity to go skiing with Kharkov Gymnasium No. 82. My friend Whitney used to work as a Peace Corps Volunteer there, but she already finished her service and went home so her counterpart Svetlana invited me and another PCV to travel with the students instead. We spent about 6 days skiing at Bukovel, a ski resort in the Ivanko-Frankivska Obast (in western Ukraine), skiing during the day and teaching English lessons in the evenings. It was really beautiful out there, it was almost like being in a whole different country! I had never been skiing before but I loved it, it was awesome :)

Me with a bunch of the students on the ski slopes!

The Kharkiv - Ivano Frankivsk train has been cancelled recently, due to construction and repairs of the railroads... so we traveled through Kyiv. Many of the students had never been to Kyiv before so they really enjoyed walking around Independence Square and seeing some of the main sights downtown. We also saw the "national" Christmas tree of Ukraine, the one located in the Maidan (Independence Square).

Olya and Nika, two adorable girls from 6th grade. Everyone by the Christmas tree. And a panda photobombing. Ty (another PCV) with Illyaz, Marina and Julia. We actually stayed in a small town called Yarmche, about 45 min from Bukovel. I roomed with 6 girls, ranging from 5th grade to 11th grade. We had an apartment with 2 rooms and a kitchen. At first I was really nervous to go skiing, because I've heard from so many friends who have gotten skiing-related injuries from falling and whatnot. But after I actually tried it, I found that it wasn't that bad... kind of a cross between the balance of surfing and the coordination of ice skating.

with Darina and Liza. Riding the ski lift with Olya! so many people! Ty and I taught lessons focused on healthy lifestyles in English. Svetlana and the students wanted to film a series of social advertisements, so we taught topics such as anti-smoking, anti-drinking, the environment, sports, music, leadership, diversity, etc. I felt a little like a Peace Corps LCF (language facilitator) because I was teaching groups of kids and using the strips of paper method that is the signature of many LCF's :)

Maxim and Vadim (7th grade) Matching American slang words. The girls on the couch. Olya, Dima and Sasha. Ty working with the students on their rap. We also celebrated Christmas on January 7th by cooking shashlik (like shish kabobs). Ukrainians celebrate Christmas on the orthodox date because most of them of Eastern Orthodox. Children walk around the neighborhoods, dressed in interesting costumes and singing Christmas carols. However, I was told that this is only a tradition in western Ukraine and its not so popular in eastern Ukraine.

with Ira and Anya, two university students who are alumni of Gymnasium 82. Bros! Nika, Elvira, Olya and Julia. Konstantine, Sergey, Marina and Ty. The carolers! I had a ton of fun hanging out in western Ukraine, especially since Kharkiv didn't really get any snow until last week (and now its already -20 degrees C). I walked around the ski resort with the kids and we bought tons of souvenirs :)

After we got back from the trip, the kids put together a video slideshow of photos and videos from the trip... enjoy!! I was very thankful to have the opportunity to go on this trip and I hope that I'll see these kids around in the future, they were a ton of fun to be with and they all loved learning English :P

A few weeks ago, my sitemate Sam organized ABC Weekend Camp in our town. ABC Camp is a 2-week long summer camp that is that is traditionally held in downtown Kharkov, focused on leadership and PDM (project design and management). The goal of the weekend camp was to give some of our students the opportunity to experience a little taste of what an American style summer camp is like and practice their English.

Everyone at the Closing Cermony on Sunday. You can check out the video that Sam created from our ABC Weekend camp here:

We had about 25 students attend the weekend camp from my school, Sam's school and neighboring towns. Sam invited 5 PCVs and 5 Ukrainian university students to serve as counselors and team leaders. Each team had a PCV and a Ukrainian, which worked out well for the students to be able to ask for translations if neccesssary.

Green team yelling their team name. Purple team showing off their team chant. We've got spirit, yes we do... We've got spirit, how about YOU? We've got spirit to the sky, you've got spirit ankle high! Sam selected some topics for the leadership lessons from a book called Seven Habits of Highly Effective Leaders. These lessons were taught in English jointly by the PCVs and Ukrainian counselors, and I think that the students really enjoyed how active and creative the lessons were.

Students sharing their picture representation of "responsiblity". Lee and Zhenya teaching about personal values and priorities. Shannon and I playing the guessing game (with Ukrainain leaders on our foreheads) during "Qualities of a good leader". In addition to teaching lessons on leadership, we had a number of team challenges. One of the team challenges was a game called Tank, where each team selected a representative to be their "tank". Each tank was blindfolded and put into the playing arena, where the rest of the team had to give the tank instructions on where to find the balls and how to dodge balls thrown by other tanks. This game was hilarious and everyone loved it so much, including the counselors who demanded to play an all-counselor round of their own.

Another team challenge was the Egg Drop, where teams were given only 9 wooden skewers, 4 sheets of newspaper, and some scotch tape. They were asked to design something that would protect an egg from falling when dropped. The team whose egg dropped from the tallest height without being broken was the winner. Some of the teams came up with super interesting contraptions, but in the end all the eggs were broken.

In between lessons, we also played some team building games and had "electives" like American football, art class, music class and Mafia (the card game). The students made mini paper Christmas trees in art class, played guitar and bong drums in music class and ran around the gym in American football.

Photos taken during People-to-people are always hilarious. The Christmas tree, designed by Shannon and Danny. Kyle catching the football. Another team challenge was to come up with a short 5-minute skit on leadership... the kids came up with a bunch of fun stuff ranging from a quiz game show featuring celebrities like singers Nastya and Potap vs.Tymoshenko/Yanokovych, a Mafia version of Winnie the Pooh, and singing "We all live in a green leader ship, a green leader ship, a green leader ship".

The quiz game show. ...which somehow involved a wheelbarrow race around the stage. A music band where each member had a different skill. Asking to join Don Pooh's Mafia family. Crossing the river. All in all, I think all of the students had a great time at camp! More information about ABC Camp can be found on the official blog at http://abccampukraine.blogspot.com/. My students asked me to organize a similar weekend camp at our Lyceum in the spring, so I'm planning on running a Camp HEAL weekend camp, focused on HIV/AIDS awareness and education training. I hope that this will inspire some of the students to come to Peace Corps summer camps with me next summer :)

Last week, my old classmate and best friend Himali came to visit me from the States... Himali and I have known each other since the 7th grade, and she and I have just stayed in touch even though I moved away after 11th grade (and we went to different universities in different parts of the country). But anyways, she is traveling around Europe for a while because her brother is studying in Barcelona. She went to Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and then came to see me in Ukraine! She is going to Florence, Italy and then spending new years in Paris!

We found another church in downtown Kharkiv, near Pushinskaya St. The beautiful Christmas tree in Kharkiv's freedom square. Here are some photos from her trip to visit me, she was only here for 5 days so we hung out at my site, in Kharkiv, and in Kyiv. It was a short but action packed trip - I picked her up at the airport in Kyiv on Wednesday, then we took an overnight train back to my site and went to school on Thursday. We went sightseeing in Kharkiv on Friday and then took a train back to Kyiv on Friday night and walked around downtown Kyiv on Saturday. Himali got a little taste of what my life is like as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine!

Himali at the T. Shevchenko statue in my town's main square. Our 2nd Shevchenko statue in front of the train station. The traditional dress and celebratory bread of Ukraine. The trident, one of the most famous symbols of Ukraine. Posing on our train tracks. Kharkiv is a city that I've come to love, I can roam around comfortably without getting lost now that I've been here for about a year... Its funny to think that almost exactly a year ago, I got horribly lost on the way to Kharkiv my first time (for the Christmas party) when I got on the wrong bus and went to another town in the opposite direction.

The Christmas tree inside the Kharkov train station has little tiny soccer balls as ornaments.

We walked around the city with my friend Alina, this is the famous mirror fountain in downtown Kharkiv. Himali at the 50th parallel in Kharkiv. An exhibition dedicated to famous actors, artists, and musicans in Kharkiv's Shevchenko park. The main statue of Taras Shevchenko in Kharkiv, a famous Ukrainian writer. Alina and I kicking the Metalist soccer ball! A Central Perk cafe in Kharkiv's Constitution Square? We walked around most of the major tourist attractions in Kyiv, including the 3 big churches and the huge underground shopping center Globos. We walked down St. Andrew's descent (the hill of souvenir stands near the Lavra - St. Andrew's cathedral) and Himali bought a bunch of traditional Ukrainian souvenirs such as the famous matroshka dolls, a decorated ceramic plate, some magnets, and some jewelry!

Kyiv's Independence Square. Personally, I think Kharkiv's Christmas tree is prettier :P The official EuroCup 2012 soccer ball in Globos. I'm almost ashamed to say that I wish there was snow right now, its still a little bit too warm for snow so all we've got is mud on the streets. The first big snowfall is always really pretty because everything is frosted over, and I'm sad that Himali didn't get to see that. But I still had fun hanging out with her and showing her around Ukraine :)

I worked with my school psychologist to organize a small project at our school to help raise awareness for HIV/AIDS on World AIDS day, which is the first of December. As a member of the Peace Corps Ukraine HIV/AIDS working group, I am very passionate about educating Ukrainian youth about HIV/AIDS and especially trying to reduce stigma and discrimination by teaching accurate information about prevention and transmission. In Russian, World AIDS day is called День Борьбы со СПИДом, which translates to Day of Solidarity. Here is the poster that I drew and the true/false statistics that I prepared for school.

Translation - "Day of Solidarity: Overcoming HIV/AIDS and leading the world!" True facts are in red and the false facts are in blue. Together with the help of some of the 10th form girls, we presented some basic information about HIV/AIDS statistics and passed out the little booklets and flyers in Ukrainian and Russian to the students. The students from the 10th form attended a training several years ago about HIV/AIDS when the previous Peace Corps volunteer was at my school.

with the girls from 10th form. Some 9th form girls with the booklets.

We also held a poster contest and asked each class to draw a poster, we will use some of the winning designs in our AIDS memorial mural (to be painted in the spring as part of my PEPFAR project). There was a surprising number of poster entries from the 5th-7th form classes, I am glad that they already have some knowledge about HIV/AIDS!

The boys from the 5b class and their posters. with the girls from the 5a class. with the girls from the 5b class. Okay, so 5th graders love taking photos.

with 11th form girls. 11th formers with our school psychologist. December is shaping up to be a really busy month for me, project wise... my sitemate and I have a weekend leadership camp planned for next weekend and then my best friend from middle school is coming to visit me the week after that! I'm currently in the process of writing a SPA grant for a Journalism club at my school and I'm also writing the partnership grant for Camp HEAL next summer, a camp about HIV/AIDS education, human trafficking, healthy lifestyles and leadership. I'll post the link to the grants once they are finished :)

Last weekend, I worked at my friend Alison's weekend camp at her school. She organized a weekend camp called Camp Unity and invited about 10 other Peace Corps Volunteers to work as counselors and teachers. The camp was a great success, we had kids from 7th-11th grade attend and divided up into 6 teams of about 10 students. Here are some highlights from the camp!

I led the Pink Team with my friend Avital (from Dnepropetrovsk)... guess who decorated our team room? I'm glad that Avital knows so many great team cheers, I'm embarrassed to say that I've forgotten a lot of cheers from my swimming days.

Props to Avital for the best team cheer! Pink team and green team together at team time. The first thing that we did with our campers was Living Libraries, which was great because they got to ask us questions about ourselves and we got to judge their level of English. I was glad that Alison asked her students to prepare some questions and impressed with what they came up with. I got asked some really great questions, such as what has been my most exciting moment in my life and what traditions do I have in my family.

Catherine sharing her experiences. Showing photos of my family. Next, we split up the teams and taught lessons. I taught a lesson about multiculturalism with Carolina and Ira. We talked about the difference between a stereotype and discrimination. It was really interesting to hear what the kids thought were different stigmas and stereotypes in Ukraine. We also had lessons on leadership, which included a really crazy team building challenge - the teams were given 25 balloons and a roll of tape, then asked to design a chair that would support the weight of 1 person. This turned out to be hilarious, I'm glad that Tiago found this challenge on YouTube :)

This was the most successful balloon chair - a round pouf designed by the counselors.

The kids found a loophole where they could also use their hands in addition to the balloons and tape. In the afternoon, we had some game time where the kids were given the choice of art class, music class, playing Mafia (the card game) or playing American football outside. We also played some standard American camp games throughout the whole camp such as the Tram of Love, People to People, Hee-Ho-Ha, name games, etc.

Nathan leading "Hello, my name is Joe and I work at a button factory" Boom-chicka-boom! American football outside... thank goodness there isn't snow yet. Music class with Tiago. Art class with Danny and Shannon. Mafia with Nathan and Catherine. Anyways, I think that the camp was a great experience for Alison's students and I'm glad that I was able to be a part of it. I wrote a VAST grant for PEPFAR funds earlier this fall and I will be planning a camp focused on HIV/AIDS trainings for my 9th and 10th form students, and a 1-day seminar for my 11th form students in the spring... I hope my project turns out as well as this one!

I went to visit one another of the village schools in my rayon (district) yesterday with two of the English teachers from my Lyceum. Our town only has two schools, the Gymnasium and the Lyceum but there are about 10 or so small village schools. Some of the teachers work at multiple schools, my English teachers only work at this village school once a week. I visited one of the other village schools around Valentine's Day last year with another English teacher friend.

With my English teachers Liliya and Larisa. This school was also small with an average of 5-8 students per grade level and only a handful of teachers. The kids were very nervous to speak English with a native speaker and some of them seemed almost shocked to meet a real live American. I visited 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 8th-11th grades while I was at their school. Some students asked great questions, like what is the difference between Ukrainian students and American students and they were all very curious to hear about the American educational system of grading and choosing your own classes.

The director of this school is a biology teacher and she has accumulated quite the collection of stuffed birds, fish, and other animals from her husband (who is a hunter). So the teachers proudly showed me their natural history musem, which happens to be the biology classroom. This classroom was PACKED with all these taxidermied animals and I was very impressed with how lifelike and well preserved the animals were.

Birds everywhere! I think I would be too distracted by all these to be able to focus in this classroom... They also showed me their school museum, including a display for the Young Pioneers (a youth group during Soviet times) and other old momentos from Soviet times. This kind of school musem is actually fairly common here, I've seen it at other schools along with traditional Ukrainian embroidered fabrics and costumes.

The Young Pioneers display. The corner dedicated to The Great War (WWII). In other news, it has already started snowing in Ukraine and I'm preparing myself for the winter ahead... not exactly looking forward to walking to school in the ice and snow, but at least the holiday season is coming up soon!

Last weekend, I organized a Halloween party in Kharkiv and we had a great turn out of people who came to the party in great costumes! There weren't very many traditional American Halloween costumes like witches, ghosts, m&m's etc but some of the costumes were really original like the Super Mario brothers. I dressed in the traditional costume of an 11th form Ukrainian schoolgirl :)

Excited for Halloween! Sam (my sitemate) came as a Jabbawockee from America's Next Best Dance Crew. Mario and Luigi with the Princess! Where's Waldo? Pepsi promoter, a cowgirl, a carnival girl and the Statue of Liberty! With a few other girls from Kharkiv Oblast - a black cat, a Lichtenstein, flapper girl and the Queen of Hearts. A basketball team from Vinnytsia Oblast. I miss Starbucks!

Last week, my sitemate Sam and I organized a second round of the Living Libraries at both of our schools. Since we teach at the two different schools in the same town, we had one session of Living Libaries on Thursday at my school and then another session on Friday at Sam's school. We invited 5 Peace Corps Volunteers to come to our town and talk to our students. At my Lyceum, the volunteers met with students from 9th through 11th form.

All the PCVs and some Ukrainian students at Sam's school. If you don't remember what Living Libraries is, it originally started out as an oral history project and it is now a project sponsored by the Multicultural Working group of Peace Corps Ukraine. The goal of the project is to provide a platform for volunteers to share about their different life experiences and spread diversity throughout Ukraine.

Laura Higgins shares family photos with some 9th form girls. Brooks Harrison compares American football to Ukrainian soccer with 10th and 11th form boys. Erika Hornli tells about traveling through Eastern Europe.

Joohee Lee shares about Korean culture with 9th grade boys.

Blakely Neff shows off landscapes from Utah to some 11th form girls.

Linnea Zielinski tells 10th formers about her internship at Glamour fashion magazine. After Living Libraries at my school, we cooked fajitas in my new apartment. I moved to a 3 bedroom apartment at the beginning of October, and this was the first time that I've had visitors at my place :)

Laura, Liliya Nikolaievna, Sam, me, Erika, Joohee, Blakely and Linnea in my living room. My friend Alison brought some of her 10th and 11th form students to our Living Libraries project. Her students are organizing a weekend leadership camp over Thanksgiving weekend and they are planning to have their own Living Library as well.

Linnea and I with the girls from Alison's school. The girls with Joohee, Sam, Alison and Linnea.

Last weekend, I successfully organized and held my 527 Counter Trafficking Seminar in downtown Kharkiv. I worked with my friend Natalia who works for the Kharkiv Red Cross office and as the Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) program Eastern Ukraine Alumni Coordinator to make this seminar happen. I had almost forgotten how much I love organizing events, this was my first seminar that I've run since I worked with the Georgia Tech Women's Leadership Conference over a year ago. Completing projects like these are what really make me feel like I'm having an impact and making a difference in peoples' lives here as a Peace Corps Volunteer :) Natalia and I by the Red Cross banner. What is 527, you may be asking? 527 is the Counter-trafficking and Migrant Advice Hotline developed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Mission in Ukraine. The hotline is advertised in all counter-trafficking information campaigns as a helpline providing advice and assistance to victims of trafficking or risk groups. Additionally, it is advertised in information campaigns targeting potential migrants as a helpline which provides information on the current realities and dangers facing Ukrainian migrants abroad, including human trafficking and the consequences of irregular entry and stay in foreign countries. By calling the hotline, Ukrainians can: Be provided with information about how to travel, work, and study abroad safely and legally Find out if the foreign employer offering work is a legitimate and legal source of employment Know what legal, medical, psychological, and professional reintegration help is available to victims of trafficking through IOM and IOM Partner Organizations in Ukraine We had 17 participants attend our seminar, all with a very high level of English and therefore we were able to teach this entire seminar in English! 8 other Peace Corps Volunteers from Kharkiv Oblast were able to come and help teach, which was awesome. This made it a great networking opportunity for everyone who attended the seminar - we were able to meet active Ukrainian university students and English teachers, and they were able to meet and get to know us. Everyone at the end of the seminar, with our posters advertising 527. The Ukrainian participants. The Peace Corps Volunteers. We taught a basic overview of human trafficking and included some specific statistics related to the situation in Ukraine. The goal of this seminar was to increase awareness of human trafficking and educate our participants on how to protect themselves from becoming victims of human traffickers. As an icebreaker, we did a blindfolded trust run, where volunteers were asked to run in between two parallel lines of people. Afterwards, we talked about trust and why trust is important in life. We discussed how 57% of traffickers are women, because people are more likely to trust women rather then men.

Natalia running down the hallway. Next, we asked the participants to guess whether a statement about human trafficking was true or false. They were asked to move to the right side of the room if they thought the statement was true, and to the left if they thought it was false. It was interesting to see both sides defend their views, especially when some of the statments contained statistics that were surprising to the participants. For example, one statement was that "Ukraine is a country of origin and transit – not destination – for trafficking in human beings." This statement is FALSE, because Ukraine is all 3: a country of origin, transit, and destination. Everyone debating one of the true/false statements. We gave a general overview of the Who, What, Where, and How of human trafficking using the powerpoint slides provided by the Gender and Development Working Group of Peace Corps Ukraine. This covered where people are recruited by traffickers, how people may find job opportunities that are not legitimate, what jobs they are offered, who is most at-risk to be trafficked and how victims may escape. The participants were surprised to learn that many people become victims of trafficking when their own family or friends lead them to find opportunities that are not legitimate job or travel offers. After the overview, the participants were asked to identify the different steps in the human trafficking process. It was inspiring to see how our presentation impacted the participants - they were able to realize that human trafficking does not only involve women who want to become models and end up being trafficked into the sex industry - absolutely anyone who is interested in traveling or working abroad is also at risk for becoming trafficked. Many of them began to ask questions about how to tell if a job opportunity is legitimate or not, so we explained that there are different factors that contribute to a victim's helplessness (such as having their passport and official documents confiscated by the trafficker). We covered some tips on how to check if a company is legitimate and how to make sure that a job contract is real. To summarize the information covered in the seminar, we divided the participants into smaller groups and provided them with different tasks related to human trafficking.

The participants then presented their posters to the class. The first group presented an overview of the human trafficking process. The second group brainstormed on how human trafficking can be fought on a personal, community and national level. The third group came up with reasons why people potentially become victims of human trafficking and why women seem to be more at risk than men.

Group 1. Group 2.

Group 3. The last part of our seminar was the action component. To do this, we asked the participants to write information advertising the 527 hotline and about human trafficking on posters. We filmed a short public service announcement using these posters.. you can view our PSA on YouTube here! I apologize about the volume, the microphone on my little Canon PowerShot was clearly not meant for filming videos on busy streets. But we had fun filming the PSA and I hope that you enjoy it. Our video clips from Kharkiv will be submitted to the Gender and Development Working Group of Peace Corps Ukraine and they will compile a PSA with clips from everyone's 527 seminars from all over Ukraine to send to CNN later this fall!

Ed overseeing the poster-making. Everyone and their posters (sorry its so far away, I wanted to show the scope of the Metalist stadium). Everyone on the steps of the Sportivna Metro entrance. We wrapped up the seminar by handing out certificates to all of the participants and giving them the resources to hold such trainings of their own on flash drives. I wish we had time to watch the MTV "Exit" video about human trafficking, but I was happy with all that we were able to accomplish in a short 4 hour seminar. And last but not least, here are the obligatory "funny" photos of the group :)

Showing off big "American" smiles.

Its everyone's favorite time of the year.... football season! And I'm not just talking about American football or college gamedays, it is professional football (soccer) season here in Ukraine too. I went to a Kharkiv Metalist football game last weekend with a few other Peace Corps Volunteers from my oblast. Metalist is the name of the professional team here in Kharkiv, each major city in Ukraine has a professional team. One cool thing about living close to the 2nd largest city in Ukraine is that we have one of the better football teams :) Kharkiv will also host some of the EuroCup 2012 matches so we got a sneak preview of the renovated stadium.

Brooks, Sam, and Kyle. We all bought some Metalist gear so we could fit in with the fans. The Metalist Stadium is located at the Sportivna Metro stop. I thought this area would be much busier, since it is the location of one of the EuroCup stadiums but its actually fairly residential. There is a bazaar (open-air market) behind the stadium, but everything else around it is high rise apartment buildings. We tossed around an American football on the lawn across the street from the stadium, which drew some questioning looks from Ukrainians passing by but it was fun to hang out on gameday.

Can you believe how empty these fields are? These would be packed if this was a college gameday in America. We got tickets all together and sat in the 5th row for only 40 griven - the equivalent of $5 USD!! How crazy is that? I can't believe that tickets to a professional sporting event were so inexpensive... after working for a year at Aspire with GT Athletics to sell football and basketball season tickets, such a low price seems crazy to me.

Whitney and I rocking our Metalist gear. Everyone holds up their scarves like this. See? One thing that I thought was interesting - you know how in a college football stadium, the student sections traditionally sit on both endzones? At this Metalist game, there were also two specific cheering sections of hardcore Metalist football fans seated in the end zones. And they had someone who acted as a drum major and coordinated the stadium cheers, like when to raise the scarves and when to stomp/clap to a chant. It was a fun atmosphere and reminded me a lot of home!

All the fans holding up their scarves together. The fans in the front holding up Metalist flags. The sea of fans dressed in yellow jerseys, down at the other end zone. Our group sitting together!

The game was Kharkiv Metalist vs. Arsenal Kyiv and it ended up being 0-0 in overtime. I hate to admit this, but the top team in Ukraine is probably the Donetsk Shaktars (coal-miners), followed by Dynamo Kyiv. I'm not sure if this was considered a big game or not, but there seemed to be a ton of football fans there. Its times like these that I wish I had one of those fancy DSLR cameras instead of my 6-year old Canon Powershot... but oh well, at least I have a working camera even if I can't take professional-quality sports photos haha.

Such a squeaky clean new stadium... have you ever seen a blue jogging track before? Players marching out onto the field.

Me, Jillian and Whitney at halftime! I will miss my group 37 friends when they leave. A corner kick?

So I know its been a while since my last post, and I promised to upload photos from my travels with Annie... but things have been busy since school started. I had the opportunity to attend the PEPFAR conference with our school psychologist Irina Ivanovna about HIV/AIDS awareness and education. PEPFAR stands for President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and it is an international Peace Corps initiative.

With a few Ukrainian counterparts and Doug Teschner (our PC Country Director).

Ira and I in front of the banners :) Ira and I with Andriy, the Peace Corps PEPFAR coordinator. Last week, Irina and I joined about 25 Peace Corps Volunteers and their counterparts from their school or organizations in Kalamets-Podilsky for the conference. The sanatorium that we stayed at turned out to be a beautiful resort on a lake... western Ukraine is so green and pretty! We were lucky to have a few days of clear weather, we spent our coffee breaks outside enjoying the scenery and sunshine : )

Alex, Maria, Robin, Patrick and Kym. Robin, Alex, me, Amanda and Abby.

Just stopping to smell the flowers. Ira and I by the fountain. with Abby and Amanda, the other counselors from Camp HEAL and OHALOW :)

No conference is complete without a jumping photo. We spent a week learning about the biology of HIV/AIDS, methods of transmission, stages of infection, stigma and discrimination, and we also had a few very valuable language lessons on HIV/AIDS terminology in Russian. We also had a few guest speakers who came to tell us their stories as HIV positive individuals, one was an intravenous drug user (IDU) and one was a commercial sex worker. It was really interesting to hear about their firsthand experiences with living with HIV/AIDS in Ukraine and listen to their opinions about how Peace Corps Volunteers can work with our communities to help educate about HIV/AIDS.

PCVs learning about ways of transmission. An joint session between PCVs and Ukrainian counterparts, working on a stigma/discrimination activity. Learning about the different stages of HIV in a Russian language class. I had a great time at the PEPFAR conference, and I think that Ira (my school psychologist) enjoyed it as well. It was great to meet other Ukrainian counterparts and talk to other volunteers about their different experiences working with organizations in their community. I am excited to start organizing a project at my own site, we are planning on doing a small presentation on December 1st, HIV/AIDS Awareness Day!

Annie and I spent our second day in Poland taking a guided tour of Auschwitz, the old concentration camp located just outside of Krakow. Before the war, the buildings at Auschwitz were used as barracks for the Polish army. Auschwitz was the biggest death camp during the war, and over 1.3 million people were deported there during 1940-1945. The majority of the prisoners died in the camp from starvation, dysentery, other physical hardships from working 10 to 12 hours per day, or in the gas chambers. Here are some photos from our visit.

The entrance gate to Aushwitz.

The double electric fences that prevented prisoners from escaping.

The barracks where thousands of prisoners lived, most only survived for several months. Bunks which became so overcrowded that 3 people slept on each bed. The standing torture room where 4 people had to crawl through the little doors on their hands and knees , forced to stand for an entire night. Registration documents for the prisoners. A model of the gas chambers and crematorium (they were torn down before the Red Army arrived). Eyeglasses - personal belongings were collected from the prisoners after they were sent to the gas chamber. Shoes - the better quality goods were sent back to Germany or sold. Our tour also included a visit to Birkenau, the other concentration camp built close to Auschwitz. Mostly women lived at Birkenau, and the living conditions there were much worse since the barracks there did not have heating during the winter.

The beds in Birkenau were converted horse stables. The barracks at Birkenau. The communal toilets - prisoners were only allowed to use them twice a day. After Auschwitz and Birkenau, we took an overnight train to Prague. Prague is a beautiful city in the Czech Republic. A word of caution: be very careful of your stuff on overnight trains, especially since you have to share a compartment with complete strangers who may or may not speak the same language. I woke up in the morning when we got to Prague and found that my purse was gone... and nowhere to be found. I started freaking out because I had no passport, money, or ID and thankfully Annie and I were able to find my purse in the toilet of our train car. The thief had just taken the cash out of my two wallets and left everything else there, so I was extremely lucky to still have my passport, camera, phone, ipod, kindle, and credit cards there. I usually travel by myself on overnight trains in Ukraine, and I've never had a problem so I guess that I've just been lucky up until now. The moral of the story is that I will be much more careful about where I keep my purse and my cash when I travel on overnight trains.

Anyways, the rest of our trip to Prague was less eventful and we saw lots of gorgeous old European churches and buildings there. Prague is separated by the Vltava river and the famous St. Charles bridge connects the two banks. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that I was able to understand some words in Czech because it is also a Slavic language, though the spelling of their words in latin letters was a little confusing (I think it would have been easier for me to read if it was printed with cyrillic letters instead).

The streets of Prague are so quaint and cute. One of the famous St. Edwards churches. The astronomical clock. Central square. Annie and I plopping our Chacos down on the Meridian line.

On the bridge, with the view of half of Prague behind me. A hot dog in a french baguette - best idea ever. A giant lifeguard chair and penguins. Annie and I on the riverbank. I love modern art. Annie with the modern art memorial to the victims of communism. The view of the city from the top of the hill. The other St. Edwards church. Halfway up to the Prague Castle. The changing of the guard at noon by the Prague castle. A HUGE gothic church - this is only the side width view of it because we couldn't get the front into 1 photo. Traditional Czech pastries! The view from the Castle. Walking down from the Castle. After Annie and I Czech'ed out Prague, we took a 6 hour bus down to Budapest, Hungary. The bus was actually one of the nicest buses that I've ever been on, with plush leather seats, a little tray table, in-route coffee/tea and they even showed a few movies with English subtitles. Budapest is also a city separated by a river, one side of the Danube is called Buda and the other side is called Pest. Our first day in Budapest was bright and sunny, and our second day was very rainy so we were glad that we had walked around for like 8 hours and saw most of the sights the first day... we saw the Citadella, the Palace, the Fisherman's Bastion, and a few more places.

The view of Pest from the hill by the Citadella. The "White" bridge, reminds me of San Francisco! Annie and I at the fountain by the Palace. On the bridge, with the Citadella in the background. Annie and I in a tank by the bunker museum. Georgy Arthur lived for 98 years from 1818 to 1916... can you imagine seeing so many technological developments!!! The Basilica. Annie at the Fisherman's Bastion. Umm... hello? The view of Buda from the Fisherman's Bastion. The Palace. Hungarian currency is crazy... the exchange rate is 180 Hungarian forents to $1 USD so we got ridiculously large bills from the ATM.

The Opera House. The Synagogue. We spent most of the second day buying our next train ticket at the train station and wandering around the House of Terror. The House of Terror is a museum dedicated to the victims of the fascist Hungarian Arrow Cross party and the time that Hungary was under Communist control. Another interesting thing about the museum is that it is located at the actual headquarters of the Arrow Cross Party, so some of the rooms had been preserved. Unfortunately, they didn't allow photos inside so we only took a few outside the musem.

The front of the House of Terror. The Arrow Cross party and the Communist party. A monument to the Iron Curtain. A piece of the Berlin Wall. And a giant cell phone that we saw along the way. Next we are headed down to Slovenia! We will be there for a few days then continue our journey onto Belgrade, Sofia and Bucharest :)

About a week ago, my old roommate Annie from Georgia Tech flew from Atlanta to Kyiv to meet up with me and travel around Eastern Europe for a few weeks. I met her at the airport in Kyiv, which was a little bit scary because the flight came in about a half hour late and I started worrying that I had mixed up the date of her arrival or something. But I managed to find her by baggage claim and we started our journey by spending the night in Kyiv and seeing some of the famous churches there.

Annie in front of the St. Sophia's bell tower. Annie in front of St. Michael's. St. Andrew's church had some construction. We had originally planned our next stop to be Warsaw, Poland but the overnight train ticket to Warsaw from Kyiv was ridiculously expensive (800 griven ~ $100) for our budget so we decided to travel to Lviv instead. Lviv is a beautiful city in western Ukraine, and I was excited to go there since I haven't really traveled west of Kyiv yet. We had to buy kupe tickets (second class sleeper cars with private compartments) for the train to Lviv since they were out of platzcart tickets (third class sleeper cars). When we got on the train, I was very surprised to see how new and clean the compartment was - we had our own mirror, sink, a few coat hooks, and AIR CONDITIONING. I was very impressed with it... we must have been riding one of the new EuroCup 2012 train cars!

HELLO from the top bunk! Annie in the middle bunk. The Lviv train station. We walked around Lviv for a day and saw some of the famous sights... and then we ran into a bunch of the Peace Corps Volunteers from the Lviv oblast! They were actually staying in the same hostel that we were... small world! Another interesting thing about Lviv is that they speak predominantly Ukrainian there, whereas they speak predominantly Russian where I live in the east. So I got to practice some of the few basic Ukrainian words that I know (hello, goodbye, thank you, yes, no, and some train traveling vocab) haha.

The countdown to EuroCup 2012 in Lviv! Annie and I in front of the old Opera House. The small used book market by one of the Shevchenko statues. Annie and I by the big Shevchenko statue. Annie and the King. Me and Ksenyia!! She and I are both from the SF Bay area and this is only the 3rd time that I've seen her in Ukraine since we went to different language training groups and then she went to live in the west and I went to the east. From downtown Lviv, we took a small bus to Shegani, where Ukraine borders Poland. We followed a group of very nice Polish backpackers who showed us where we could walk across the border to Poland. This proved to be a very interesting experience, I had never just walked across a country border before. We passed through the exit customs on the Ukraine side without a problem, then found ourselves waiting in a massive group of people to go through the customs on the Polish side. We ended up waiting about 2 hours, but we made it safely across the border before it started raining. After crossing the border, we took a bus to the next town and then hopped on a 6-hour train to Krakow. In Krakow, the train station is connected to a huge 4-story mall and I was thrilled to see giant Walmart-like supermarkets and American fast food places like KFC and Subway!

Our marshrutka bus to the Ukrainian border town. Annie eating her doner kebab in the mall food court. OMG! I love grocery stores! We settled into our hostel for the night and then went out walking around Krakow the next day. The weather was a little overcast and rain was drizzling, so some of the pictures had strange lighting. I really liked Krakow, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that everyone spoke English on the streets and in the shops.

Annie and I by the old main gate into Krakow. Statues in the old square. In front of the big gothic cathedral... it was so tall that the top of it got a little cut off from this photo. A giant piece of a statue in the old town square. Old town square (with the famous gothic cathedral shown fully). These Polish bagels were sold on the streets everywhere so we decided that we had to try them! The church of Saints Peter and Paul. The church inside the Wawel Castle. Look, one of Krakow's twin cities is San Francisco!! While we were in Krakow, we walked over across the river to see Schindler's Factory, the inspiration for the movie Schindler's List. Annie and I spent our second day touring Auschwitz and Birkenkau, the former concentration camps located in Krakow. It was really incredible to see all the artifacts preserved from the second world war, and it was sombering to see how awful the living conditions were for all of the people that were kept there. I will post photos from these two places in my next post, along with photos from Prague. We are in the beautiful Hungarian city of Budapest now, and we will travel down to Slovenia next!

I just got back from 2 weeks in the Sums'ka Oblast, where I worked at Camp HEAL and Camp OHALOW - two camps sponsored by the HIV/AIDS working group in Peace Corps. Both camps were awesome and I had a ton of fun working with kids during lessons about HIV/AIDS, healthy lifestyles, project design/management and leadership skills. Camp HEAL was for children ages 16-22 and Camp OHALOW was for younger children, from ages 8-16.

Both camps were a huge success and I loved having the opportunity to work with the older kids and teach lessons all in English, which was very impressive. The younger children were very sweet and energetic and I got to practice my Russian language skills with them. Here are some photo highlights from Camp HEAL! I don't have all the photos from OHALOW yet so I will post some of those up later this summer when I return from traveling.

The boys painted themselves up in their team colors for our field day.

The girls are ready for the water balloon fight! Me with a few of the campers who were university students. One of the girls focused on her tie-dye shirt. Teaching everyone how to scrunch up their shirts in the spiral pattern for tie-dye. Jonathan teaching about the biology behind HIV/AIDS. Campers cross the river during a team building activity. Campers presenting their own project ideas. The "tram of love" song on the sports field. Running the 3-legged race. Playing bear/ninja/hunter on the field (like rock, paper, scissors but more intense). Jumping into the pool. All of the participants at Camp HEAL. Performing a skit about HIV/AIDS. One of the campers singing a traditional Ukrainian song at the Talent Show.

Some of the campers danced to Soldier Boy's "Crank That" at the Talent Show! The Peace Corps Volunteers who worked as counselors and directors of Camp HEAL! Anyways, sorry for the post being mostly photos... being away at camp for 2 weeks has been really tiring and the photos are awesome. I will be at my town for a few days and then headed off to the Russian Language Refresher camp hosted by Peace Corps and then out of the country for some travelling with my old college roommate Annie :D I am not bringing my computer with me on my travels so the next post won't be until August, but I promise to have some great photos ready for then!

This past week, I've been helping my friend Sasha with the World Map Project at her school. Due to some schedule changes, my own camp was canceled this week at my school and my teachers allowed me to travel to Sasha's town. There are many different ways to paint a World Map, here is a link to my blog post about when I helped with my friend Alison's World Map project. This time, instead of painting on wallpaper, we used the Peace Corps world map manual and followed their guidelines for a grid method and painted the continents instead of every individual country - that way the map will stay more current, as more new countries are created (such as South Sudan). Here is a photo of our finished World Map!

Our map of the world, with handprints from the students and PCVs who helped us make it happen!

Sasha had help from a few other Peace Corps volunteers with her project, and the first step was to prime and paint the wall blue for the ocean. The day before camp started, Sasha measured out a 2m by 4m rectangle on a wall behind her school's sports gym. After measuring out the rectangle and painting it blue, Sasha, Margo and Samantha spent the first day of camp preparing the kids to draw grid-style by using the worksheets provided in the manual.

Samantha and Sasha teaching about how to draw maps using the grid technique. Sasha and I talking about how we will paint the world by continents. On the second day of camp, after practicing on the gridding worksheets once more, we went outside and drew a grid of over 1,500 squares that each measured 7cm by 7cm. This was not a simple task since most of the kids only brought little 6-in rulers, but we were able to get the grid drawn accurately with the help of some teachers' meter-sticks.

Measuring out squares on the grid. Accuracy is important! Me with Kate and Oksana. Sasha starting the grid lines on the top of the map. Working with the meter stick really helped keep the lines even and straight.

After drawing the grid, the next step for the third day of camp was to outline the continents in pencil. We only had about 10 students, so we divided them up into groups and assigned them each to sections of the map. According to the manual, there are 18 sections of the map, but the bottom 3 sections are mostly ocean and Antartica. The most difficult section of the map was the area where Europe, Asia, and Africa were all in the same square. We spent a lot of time on creating an accurate and recognizable contour for as much as the map as we could. we had the kids outline each continent in Sharpie permanent marker. We decided that outlining the continents would make painting go much easier since the basic shape would already be drawn clearly on the wall.

The students drew carefully on the wall, according to the numbered squares in the grid. Igor (an English teacher) working on finishing Asia while I am drawing the Peace Corps logo. Sasha using blue paint to "edit" where the students accidentally outlined the Rio Grande instead of Texas haha. On the fourth and last day of camp, we started out the day by mixing concentrated colors into white paint. The kids loved recycling their popsicle sticks and getting their hands a little bit dirty. We painted each continent a different color, and then outlined the continents in black paint. Here are a few photos of the progression of painting :)

We added concentrated color to white paint. Mixing the paint. Most of the kids outlined the continents again in paint anyways, before they painted the middle with larger brushes. Each kid had their own technique of painting, and since we only had 9 students, almost all of them got to paint their own continent!

Lilia painting Australia.

Kate outlining South America. Washing their hands off in the water bucket. After getting started painting, we were all really exciting that the map was actually taking shape on the wall. Asia, Europe and North America needed a lot of small details to be painted in carefully.

Sasha is so proud of her students! Kate painting in Africa.

Vika painting carefully around North America. Oksana helping Kate with South America. Bogdan painting the Pacific Islands around Australia. Yulia preferred to use her fingers to paint in details instead of a paintbrush, which was very interesting but turned out quite well... to each their own!

Yulia working on Europe. Sergei, Lilia and Bogdan working together on the wall. A few hours later, we had made a lot of progress on the map! All of the students were very proud of their work and their teachers were just as excited to have such a beautiful map on the wall.

Putting the finishing touches on Europe and Asia. The map is almost finished! After the map was finished, the kids all painted their hands and put their handprints on the wall next to the map. We took a few photos with the map and then called it a day!

Lilia and her purple hand. Serhiy writing his name on the wall. The trail of handprints on the right side of the map, plus the Peace Corps logo that I drew. Sasha, Dan, Thomas and me. Me and the world :) Overall, this project was great and I was so glad to be able to help Sasha out with it at her school. I definitely want to do this project at my school in the fall, maybe I can show my teachers these photos and convince them to let me paint on the wall in the hallway by the English classrooms!

Last Thursday, one of my fellow English teachers and I attended a seminar about Volunteer movement among youth at School No. 65 in Kharkiv. The seminar was the first of its kind, led by the organization EuroClub. EuroClub is a popular after-school activities club focused on studying European countries and they host different events throughout the year. Many schools participate in EuroClub events and I plan to start a EuroClub at my school in the fall!

Everyone present at the seminar!

There were members of about 10 different volunteer organizations present at this seminar, and teachers from about 15 different EuroClubs located in Kharkiv and Sumy Oblast (Sumy borders Kharkiv to the west). I was excited to meet the president of Kharkiv's AIESEC organization and I was impressed to meet a Ukrainian university student who had lived and worked as a volunteer in India through AIESEC.

The Ukrainian teachers and representatives from different volunteer organizations.

Here is a photo of the representatives from Svit Ukraine - an organization which sponsors volunteers to come to work on projects and camps in Ukraine from different countries. They currently have 2 volunteers in the Kharkiv area and others scattered around the country, such as in Donetsk.

Two of Svit Ukraine's volunteers: Caroline from France (far left) and Hank from Germany.

I was invited to represent Peace Corps at this seminar by my friend Oksana, one of the Ukrainian English teachers. They asked me to say a few words about Peace Corps in Russian, so thankfully I had brought along a piece of paper with some PC statistics and history from our Language Manuals.

I started out my speech by apologizing for butchering the endings since I only studied Russian for 3 months here.

It was really interesting to see what local volunteer organizations do in Ukraine, and to hear about some of their projects. Luckily this seminar was presented in Russian (and not Ukrainian), so I could understand most of what was going on.

The school director spoke a few minutes to welcome us all to her school and to begin the seminar.

After each of the organizations introduced themselves, we had a mini "press-conference" where some representatives from the different organizations sat on stage and the audience was permitted to ask us questions. The questions that came from the audience were thought-provoking such as how do different countries view volunteering and in what professional spheres are volunteer opportunities available. These questions were interesting to me as well, since I have little knowledge of what volunteerism is like in France, Germany or even in Ukraine - most international people (outside of other Peace Corps volunteers) that I meet in Ukraine are university students or working here, not volunteers.

The "press conference" panel of volunteers. The seminar also included some time for the students to attend breakout sessions and come up with their own project ideas for volunteers in Kharkiv and in Ukraine. After the breakout sessions, the students came back to the main auditorium and presented their ideas to everyone. This was great because the students were able to recieve feedback from actual volunteer organizations, which gives them more of a chance to take the intitative and actually launch their own projects in the future.

I have a few weeks off from work now, then I'm headed off to Camp HEAL in Sumy Oblast in July! Happy travels and have a great summer everyone :)

My school finished its classes on Thursday May 26th, and I got to see what Ukrainian school graduation ceremonies are like. On Friday May 27, we had a huge ceremony for the graduating seniors in front of the school which is called a "Linneka", or a line. Here are some photos from the graduation day : )

The students line up with their classes from youngest to oldest. The 8V class. The graduating 11A and 11B class marched out 2 by 2, dressed in the traditional black and white school uniforms. The graduating class walked all around. The graduating seniors performed a few dances. In Ukraine, the last day of school is traditionally known as the "Last Bell." The tradition is for a pair of the oldest student and the youngest student to walk around the Linneka, while ringing a big old-fashioned bell.

An 11th form and 1st form student walk around, ringing the "last bell". On Saturday, May 28th, my school had the official "school-leaving party" at the auditorium in our House of Culture. Ukrainians traditionally dress very formally for this party - girls wear nice evening gowns and fancy hairdos and boys wear suits, similar to what Americans would wear to their prom.

The auditorium was decorated and looked very fancy for the party! After classes at my school finished, we started what is known as "Practika," or a few weeks of practice and final exams for 9th and 11th formers. During these few weeks, I am working with my English teacher's 8V class. My goal for this camp was to teach a series of cultural studies lessons about different countries from around the world and partner it with the World Map project, but I've been having logistical difficulties with figuring out where to find funds for the paint so unfortunately the map will be postponed until the fall.

Our opening day photo. The student enjoyed games in the school gym. We threw around an American football outside. The kids loved football. The school had a sidewalk chalking contest and several girls from 8V won. I spent this past weekend in Kyiv to attend the HIV/AIDS and Technology for Development working group meetings. We got a lot of logistics and planning done for Camp HEAL and Camp OHALOW, two of the summer camps that I am working at this summer. I had fun hanging out with the other techies in Peace Corps and going to lunch at a Chinese food place! I miss eating Chinese food :(

The entrance to the restaurant. My sweet and sour pork. Nicole got seafood lo mein. Danny got a big bowl of soup with beef and vegetables.

Springtime is finally here in Ukraine and the weather has been beautiful! Everywhere that was previously covered in ice and snow when I got here in the winter is now green and blooming :) I went to visit my friend Alison in her town and we went with a few friends to cook Shaslik, aka meat skewers over an open fire. Before we cooked the meat, we had to gather our own firewood and build a pit for the fire.

Vadim starting the fire from small pieces of paper and wood. Tiago rolled over a log for us to sit on. The view of the river. So calm. Heading into the woods to gather some wood for the fire. I have two small trees in my hands haha. Alison and I put the meat on the skewers. Our skewers of meat, onions, and cucumbers (sounds strange, but it was what Alison had in her fridge and it actually turned out okay). Our school year has gone by so fast! We are finishing up the last two weeks of classes now, with graduation for the 11th form on May 28th. However, the 9th and 11th graders have all of their final exams during June. And I will be running a mini-camp for my English teachers 8th form for the first half of June. In the midst of all of our standardized end-of-the-year exams, my school decided to have a Healthy Lifestyles and Sports day. The 5th through 10th forms participated in different competitions around the school grounds.

Girls from the 8A class chalk about being healthy. 6B draws different environmental things related to health. The sports competitions were great and very different from the typical field day games that are held at schools in America. For example, they had soccer-related games instead of things like the egg toss and wheelbarrow race.

A pullup competition. The first part of the relay race was dribbling a soccer ball around basketballs.

The second part of the relay race was dribbling a basketball. After the sports competitions, all the students and teachers walked to have a kasha cook-off. Kasha is a type of cereal that is small yellow grains that look like dried grits, but taste bit softer when cooked, like oatmeal. The picnic area was right behind the stadium, which is located right next to our school.

Me with Olena and Dasha from the 5A class. Kasha is traditionally boiled in a pot over an open fire with potatoes, meat, and spices. The kids were having fun playing volleyball outside. The girls from 8V with the sandwiches that they prepared. My counterpart Alina and the school nurse tasting the kasha from 8V, as the jury. The boys from 5A class made their version of a human pyramid.

Last Friday, I went to my friend Whitney's school in Kharkiv to attend their karaoke show. Whitney is a TEFL (Teacher of English as a Foreign Language) Peace Corps Volunteer like myself, and she organized this karaoke talent show as the culmination of her school's English week, and it was certainly an impressive show! The school's auditorium was all decorated professionally and the event was called Euro-Club, complete with MCs, a jury panel, and a projector screen of music videos and lyrics.

Whitney with a few of the English teachers from around her district and fellow PCVs - Sally, Ty, Sam and myself. We kicked off the show by singing the Glee version of Bill Wither's "Lean on Me". Students from the 5th through 11th forms participated in this event, complete with costumes and choreographed backup dancers. They all memorized their songs and sang very well in English, I was really impressed! I tried to sing a song in Russian called "Pozvenee" by Tatyana Bulanova and was horribly embarassed because I didn't realize that I wouldn't be able to see the screen with the lyrics from on stage. Here are a few highlights from the show:

The 7th graders sang a song called "Valentine". These 5th graders were adorable, they stole everyone's heart while singing a Marilyn Monroe song. Several of the 8th graders performed Bob Marley's "Don't Worry, Be Happy". A girl from the 9th form sang Maroon 5's "She Will Be Loved". A group of girls from the 11th form sang and danced to Shakira's "Waka Waka: Time for Africa" The MCs sang a song in French! These 5th graders were super cute while singing Aqua's "Barbie Girl". Overall, I think that a karaoke talent show was a great idea. I might even try to plan an event like this during my school's English week next year :D Sam and I were the only two PCVs that participated as contestants, the others were judges. The panel of judges each held up pieces of paper to give marks from 1 through 10 to each contestant, like American Idol style. After all 14 groups/contestants went, the jury went out to debate and selected the top 3 winners based on their marks and criteria like vocals, pronunciation, overall performance, etc. All of the participants received a little certificate ("gramota" in Russian/Ukrainian) printed in color on glossy photo paper with their names on it. Ukrainians are crazy about certificates like these and all the students were excited to have them. Prizes were given out for the top 3 participants and each participant also received a box of chocolates!

Sam (my sitemate) gave his own rendition of Celo Green's "Forget You". We were also featured in the Euro-Club's official blog. I am not quite sure what Euro-Club is, but from what I understand, it is about sharing cultures among European countries and it is quite popular among secondary schools in Kharkiv. I will have to research some more information about it... maybe my school will be interested in participating!

Last Thursday and Friday, my sitemate Sam and I organized a project called Living Libraries at our respective schools. We invited a handful of other Peace Corps Volunteers to come visit our town and help us out with the project. More information about the Living Libraries project can be found at this website, provided by a returned PCV from the Zaporizhzhya Oblast. The project is called Living Libraries because the PCV's are supposed to serve as books and provide a bit of oral history on their backgrounds. The students "check out" the books and talk to each PCV for a set number of minutes, then the PCVs rotate around the room (like speed dating style). In the past, other PCVs have done this project at the university/college level and this was the first time that this project has been done at the secondary school level.

Sasha, Rich, Chris and Sam with their biographies posted on the first floor of my school.

At my school, we organized two different sessions in the activity hall/auditorium - one for the two 11th form classes, and one for the three 8th form classes. We divided the students up into 6 groups of about 8-12 students each and had them sit in different corners of the room. Our classes at school are 45 minutes long, so the students were able to talk to each PCV for only about 7 or 8 minutes. We encouraged each of the PCVs to bring a "prop" to help encourage conversation - most of them brought a few photos from home, and Sam brought his American football.

Sam talking to some 11th form guys about how to play American football.

Sasha showing some of her postcards from home.

Chris answering some of the 8th formers' questions.

Rich talking to a bunch of the 8th form girls.

After school, we hung out in the school gym and tried to teach the students how to play football. We had about 25 students show up, ranging from 5th to 10th form. We started out by teaching them how to place their hands on the laces and throw the ball. A few of them figured out how to get the ball to fly in a spiral, but most of them threw it like a dodgeball. The rules of football were too intimidating to explain all in Russian, so we ended up just splitting into 3 teams and basically just playing Ultimate Frisbee with a football.

One of the 8th form boys throws the ball. The students loved running around the gym and passing the ball to each other to try to score "touchdowns".

Playing football was great because many students could play and interact with the PCVs, along with learning a new game. They thought it was really interesting how the football didn't bounce up and down like a normal ball. After we were all exhausted from running around the gym for an hour, we ended the games and took a few team pictures.

Team Salo with students from the 8th-10th forms, me and my PCV friends Alison and Rich.

Team Apple with Sasha, Chris, and students from the 6-8th forms.

I forgot this team's name but they have 8th and 9th formers with Vadim and Sam.

Me and my peer advisor Sasha with the football :) At Sam's school, we organized two sessions in their lunchroom and used their tables to group the students together. This worked well since the students were oriented more in a circle than how they were seated by rows in my school's auditorium. One of the goals of this project was to have the students practice communicating in English with native speakers, but many of the students ended up asking their questions in Russian or Ukrainian. So at Sam's school, we worked with 9th-11th form students which was a little bit more manageable since the older students had a higher level of English.

Rich talking to some students about his hometown, New York City. Me using a map to show the students the 5 different states that I have lived in.

Alison showing photos of Florida and making a bunch of new best friends with some of the younger girls.

Kyle's table was intrigued with his story, including Sam's counterpart Olena.

Tiago was hi-tech and showed photos to students from his iPod touch. Sam's counterpart Olena with Sam, Chris, Kyle, me, Rich, Alison, Sasha and Tiago.

After we finished the project at Sam's school, we headed to the town's Culture House to play basketball in their sports gym with the students. However, we didn't plan for over 30 students to show up for basketball and the Culture House wasn't able to accommodate all of the students there without a Ukrainian teacher from one of our schools. So we went outside and played football on the muddy grass at the stadium instead... I unfortunately did not take any photos there since my camera battery died but I will try to find some pictures from my students!

The last few weeks have been really busy for me, I went to my friend (and wonderful peer advisor) Sasha's town to help her out at her weekend camp two weeks ago. Her camp was called "Super Camp" and the theme was Regions of America. She had about 6 other Peace Corps Volunteers travel to her town and help her teach lessons to students from 5th to 11th form over two days (Saturday and Sunday) at her school. Overall, I was very impressed with how active and excited her students were about coming to school for extra lessons on a weekend! Sasha did a great job of coordinating everything from the schedule to tea breaks with the M&M candy icebreaker and even having dodgeball for a little lesson in physical education. It was an action packed weekend and a great experience, I hope to run my own weekend camp at my school in the fall!

All of the PCVs with one of Sasha's English teachers during the lunch break.

Me and Sasha with one of her English teachers. Jillian taught lessons about the West coast, which included her home state of Washington. She brought some cool props to teach the class with, including a calendar with scenic photos of Washington. During the lesson, she had the kids design their own state flags, which was a really creative idea :)

Margo taught about the Midwest and her home state of Nebraska. I was originally assigned to teach about the Midwest, but I was very thankful that Margo wanted to switch regions with me because I don't know very much about the Midwest, except that there are a lot of farms with corn haha.

We began the 2nd day (Sunday mornning) with teaching the students how to do the Cha-Cha slide. To do this, first we reviewed some verbs of motion like to jump, to stomp, to hop, and then we showed them how to cha-cha and how to do the Charlie Brown.

Samantha taught lessons about the northwest and New England, which included her home state of New York. Her lesson was really creative and she had all the names of the states written as leaves on a tree.

Erika taught lessons about the Mid-Atlantic, which is the states around Washington DC. She brought a few maps of the USA from her town to show the kids where her states were located.

I taught lessons about the South, which was great because we got to talk about the Atlanta 1996 Olympics, Coca-Cola, the Wright brothers, Florida oranges, Cajun food, and a strong tradition of high school and college/university football!

Teaching about traditional southern foods and some fun state facts with my flipcharts.

Ty taught about the Southwest, which included his home state of Texas. The kids had a lot of fun learning about how to use a lasso during his lesson, and then they got to give it a shot for themselves afterwards!

Ty teaching a student how to lasso some chairs.

At the end of the camp on Sunday afternoon, we handed out certificates to all of the students that attended the camp. They were all super excited to get certificates in English and sad to see us go.

Sasha announcing the names of students from the stage.

Ted, Jillian, Erika, Margo, Samantha, myself and Ty with two of Sasha's teachers.

After a full day of teaching lessons back-to-back at school on Saturday, we grilled shashlik (chunks of seasoned pork on long skewers with onions) outside in the evening. It was my first shashlik experience in Ukraine and it was absolutely delicious! Sasha had two bags of marshmellows that someone had mailed to her in a care package - they don't sell marshmellows here! We roasted marshmellows over the fire for dessert, which was messy but tons of fun :)

Relaxing with the girls before grilling out.

Starting the fire with pine needles!

Shashlik was juicy and delicious!

You can also check out an article with some more photos from the local town website here (but its in Ukrainian). The first photo is of me teaching the Hokey Pokey dance with Ty and Jillian on stage... you put your right foot in!

I know its been a few weeks since my last post, I apologize since I was sick for about a week. I traveled to my friend Alison's town to help her with her World Map project two weekends ago. The Peace Corps World Map mural project is a project where volunteers have been painting on walls, floors, walkways, and virtually any flat surface since 1988 when PCV Barbara Jo White launched the idea in the Dominican Republic. As you may know, 2011 is the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps, the 41st anniversary of Earth Day, and the 23rd anniversary of the beginning of this map project. I was proud to be able to help Alison and her students with this project at her school :)

Step 1: The students divided into 4 teams to work on different corners of the map. Step 2: They outlined the countries in pencil. Step 3: Draw the outline of the countries in black marker. This is Alison and Brooks working with the kids on drawing North and South America. Step4: Paint each country's flag on the map. Alison and I are working on America and Canada. Alison and Ira working on South America. A group of students working on Australia. I went to Kharkiv with a few other volunteers from my oblast and we found a nice little Mexican restaurant called La Cucaracha (which means cockroach in Spanish) on Sumskaya Street. I wish I had taken some more pictures inside the restaurant because it actually had the feel of a Mexican restaurant from home. The menu consisted of traditional Mexican food dishes, transliterated from Spanish into Russian and then with the ingredients listed in Russian. Our waitress was super sweet and spoke English very well.

Andy loves his fajita! I got hard shell tacos... and then ordered a quesadilla because I was still hungry after these 3 tacos haha. I also went to visit one of the nearby village schools with my friend Oksana. The village is about 30 minutes away from my town by car, and it has about 70 students and 15 teachers. Oksana is the only English teacher at the school and all of her students were really excited to meet me and practice talking with a native speaker. I don't have many photos from my camera, so here are a few for now and I will post some more later when I get Oksana's photos. The front of the school building, which was apparently built in 1963. Oksana's students made me a welcome banner! The school was having a small Ukrainian festival/market... kind of like a school bake sale with homemade food and some small handicrafts. The 9th form table was still being setup but they have some traditional Ukrainian embroidered cloths. 7th form prepared some lollipops, cookies and blinchiki (pancakes). Me with two of the 9th form girls, wearing one of the traditional flower headbands. This week is spring break at my school... I'm being boring and hanging out at home, then working at my friend Sasha's weekend camp next weekend. I am teaching lessons about the Southern United States so this should be fun :)

Sorry for the delay in updating my blog, the past couple weeks have been a little hectic! I wrapped up the International Writing Olympics by selecting winners from each form (8th-11th) and typing up their entries to submit to our Oblast coordinator for judging. Kharkiv Oblast will then send its winning submissions along to the National level in Kyiv. The water was also out in my apartment for a full week... Going to the well to draw buckets of water when it is icy and like -20 degrees outside really makes you appreciate having running water inside your apartment! It turned out that the pipes in my building froze over and the water returned when it finally warmed up a bit to -5 degrees.

Image designed by Danny Zawacki, courtesy of the PC Ukraine creative team. On March 1st, Peace Corps celebrated its 50th anniversary! The United States Peace Corps was founded by President John F. Kennedy on March 1st, 1961 and this year also marks the 20th anniversary of the Peace Corps in Ukraine. My school's alumni magazine published an article about the Peace Corps, including alums who are RPCVs and I was highlighted as a current PCV! You can check out the article online here.

An excerpt from the GT Alumni magazine article, courtesy of Kimberly Link-Wills. Last week in English club, we made some friendship bracelets! My 5th-7th graders have been bugging me about how to make the bracelets for a few weeks since I wear a bracelet made by my sister Celina on my left wrist. I finally bought the embroidery string and taught the students how to make the chevron-style bracelet, using 4 different colors. I drew a picture of how to tie the knots onto the strings to help the students visualize and supplement the instructions in English.

Some of my students making friendship bracelets in English Club. Separating the strands of embroidery thread, keeping them in the right order to make the chevron pattern. A closeup of the chevron pattern friendship bracelet, scotch taped onto a desk for easier braiding. Last weekend, I traveled to my friend Jillian's site to enjoy some tasty home-cooked Indian food! She lives about 3 hours from Kharkiv, in a small town about the size of mine. Her town has some cool statues in the center, along with a small church.

Maybe George and the Dragon? A statue of an angel. The church and a small tank. Jillian received a box of spices and assorted other ingredients to make Indian food, so she invited the Kharkiv Oblast PCV's over to share the feast. We each made our own naan (Jillian made the dough from scratch), also had a few different curry dishes, some chicken and rice :)

Step 1: flatten the dough. Step 2: Erika and Jacob demonstrating how to put the dough on the pan and fry it in oil. Step 3: Whitney flipping the dough over as it begins to turn golden brown. Step 4: add some assorted spices to your naan. Step 5: enjoy your naan with the rest of your meal! We also celebrated International Women's Day on March 8th. In Ukraine, we can say "Поздравляю всех девушек и женщин с праздником Международный женский!" in Russian - which translates to I congratulate all girls and women with the International Women's Day holiday! Last Friday, many of the students were dressed up in the "official" black and white business professional school uniforms and the 11th formers greeted all women at the front door of the school with a song and chant of congratulations!

The 11th formers with their little spring headbands :) With Jenia and Marina, two of my 10th formers. I am so excited for spring to be here! The days are getting longer and the sun doesn't set until after 5pm now. And the snow is finally beginning to melt in my town... which means that I need to bust out my trusty Yak Trax since the streets have turned from packed down snow into slick solid ice.

This is my 100th post on my blog! So much has changed from my first "Hello World" post, I can't believe it has been more than a year since I started the Peace Corps application process.

The second half of my school's English Week has been really busy! We celebrated Valentine's Day at my school by displaying many more handmade valentines and doing some special activities in our classes. I printed and photocopied a Valentines-themed word search for my 5th form class and a crossword puzzle for my 10th form class. We also had a small competition in the auditorium between the 8th and 9th form classes. Each class selected a male and female representative, and they competed in pairs to answer questions, act out charades, and even dance a slow dance at the end.

One of the 11th form girls hand-sewed this pillow for me! It is super cute and about the size of a steering wheel! Several of my 5th formers working on the Valentines Day word search worksheet. I also had 11 students participate in the International Writing Olympics at my school this week! This writing competition was apparently the first of its kind to be held at my school, so I'm glad that at least a handful of my students were able to participate. The IWO is a creative writing essay contest for students ranging from 6th form to University level, coordinated by Peace Corps Volunteers across Ukraine and in the surrounding Eastern European countries. Like English Olympiads, students were each given 3 questions (based on their form) and they select one question to answer in their essay. The students had 60 minutes to write essays based on different prompts, corresponding to their grade level. The essays will be judged by myself and several of my school's English teachers based on a rubric which awards more points to creativity of ideas than perfection of writing mechanics. We will select one winner per form (only 8th-11th forms participated) and send our school's winning essays to compete at the Kharkivs'ka Oblast level. Here are a few sample prompts from the 2010 International Writing Olympics (I don't want to give away any of this year's prompts in case any PCVs haven't had their school-level competitions yet):

What would you do if you could become invisible? (8th form) Why is the grass green? (9th form) If people had to hold hands to talk, how would the world be different? (10th form) What would the world be like if all cell phones disappeared tomorrow? (11th form)

In English club this week, my 5th-7th formers worked on some American puzzles that I brought from home. One puzzle is a map of the lower 48 United States and the other puzzle is a picture of the $100 bill with Benjamin Franklin on it.

The kids are working hard on matching up all the pieces! Ta-da! Here is the finished $100 bill puzzle :) Georgia Tech is ranked 24th in the Peace Corps Top University and College Rankings (for medium sized colleges & universities), which is really exciting! I'm featured for being a current Peace Corps Volunteer in this week's edition of Georgia Tech's campus newspaper, The Technique. You can check out the text version of the article online here or download the full pdf version of this week's newspaper (the article can be found on page 11 and 12).

Several of my 5th formers and I with our "Invitations to a Birthday Party" class writing activity. Larisa Alexandrovna, a Ukrainian English teacher, and I with some of our 8th form students. My friend Tiago Forte (a PCV in the same town as my good friend Alison, about an hour from my town) just published a book called "Beyond the Orange Curtain" about his experiences in South America. It is the story of his adventures working and traveling in South America - from the slums of Rio de Janeiro to the Caribbean Coast of Colombia - and what those experiences taught him about life, love, and the Orange Curtain: the bubble that surrounds Orange County and makes life there so different from anywhere else. In the spirit of the Peace Corps, 100% of the proceeds from the sale of this book (after production and shipping costs) will go to fund ABC Camp, a youth summer camp in Ukraine that teaches leadership, creativity, and civic skills. I have also applied to work as a camp counselor at ABC Camp this summer, with the hopes that I can influence some young Ukrainians to become leaders in their schools and communities. With each purchase of the book for $19.95, $12 will be donated to fund the camp. You may also donate to the camp apart from purchasing this book by clicking here.

And last but not least... it has gotten so cold this week that they canceled school yesterday and today (Thursday and Friday). We have had some beautiful sunny days and bright full moon nights this week but they have been very chilly. Apparently it is a school policy to cancel school if it is colder than -25 degrees C outside! I planned a little trivia quiz game on holidays, sports, movies, geography, and music from English speaking-countries for my 8th, 9th and 10th formers and we didn't get to have it because school was canceled. So hopefully it will be the last cold frost of the winter and we can start school again next Monday!

This week is English Week at my school, along with next week. I started off the week by having my 5th, 6th, and 7th formers (graders) make Valentines Day cards during English club. They did a great job, here is a photo of their Valentines posted on the wall in the main hallway on the 1st floor of my school. A few 11th form students made the posters in the middle.

Happy Valentines Day!

My 5th form class is studying holidays right now, so we discussed different holidays in Ukraine and the USA. Then my teacher Larisa and I assigned them Valentines Day cards for homework. I wish I had homework that was as fun as making Valentines Day cards when I was back in school! Here is a photo of me with the 5th formers :)

How do you like my Ukrainian boots with the fur? Those are the boots from my host sister, they have like 4in heels and all the teachers always comment on how they like the boots.

Just for fun, I asked my 8th, 9th and 10th form students to draw a Facebook profile since teenagers in America all use Facebook, as opposed to Vkontakte.ru (the Ukrainian/Russian version of Facebook). I only convinced a few students to do this assignment (since it wasn't mandantory), but here are the profiles that they made! I taped them to the wall of my classroom door and now they can write on each other's walls (with a pen or pencil) in English :-D

Now all of the students love crowding around my door to stare at the Facebook profile pages haha. We also played the UNO card game during English club, all my students are crazy about this game! I'm not sure whether its the novelty of the cards or the fact that they can play silently, without needing to practice their English haha. Last week during English Club, I taught my 8-11th formers how to play Go Fish and we ran out of cards to "fish" from really quickly since I only had 1 deck of cards and about 10 students.

UNO! My school also had its annual Fire Brigade Competition this week between the 8-11th forms. I had never heard of such a competition before, it is apparently all about fire prevention and poison mushroom awareness education. The students performed creative short skits, danced, or sang songs by class on stage in our school auditorium. They all worked very hard on their performances! A few girls from the 8V class show off their posters of dangerous fire hazards (and to call 101 in case of fire emergency). Students from the 10A class have to identify different types of poisonous mushrooms as part of the competition. Several girls from the 11th form dance in traditional Ukrainian dresses as part of their play.

I've had a few questions about what to pack for Ukraine from a member of Group 41 so I figured I would post my answers up here... these are good questions that remind me a lot of my own questions about packing for Ukraine! I've also updated my Packing List page so feel free to take a look at that :)

1. Did you end up buying a hair dryer or straightener in Ukraine? What about bringing a CHI hair straightener from home?

I actually didn't end up buying a hair dryer or straightener here.. but you have to realize that I almost NEVER blew my hair dry at home and only straightened my hair before going out, so letting it air dry and not doing anything to it is normal for me. Many of my friends here (who are girls who blow dry their hair on a daily basis) bought hair dryers their first week here and then straighteners soon afterwards. You can expect to spend between $50-100 UAH on a hair dryer (they call it a "fan" in russian/ukrainian) and about $100-200 on a hair straightener. Hair dryers can be found everywhere from the bazaar to the magazines (thats what they call all the little stores/shops).

Hair straighteners are a little bit harder to find but any store that has home appliances like electric tea kettles, microwaves, etc usually has them. I've also seen them in the bazaars and in the stands on the streets, sometimes they are called hair crimpers (but you should just ask if you can see it, it is most likely a straightener). Three of the other girls in my cluster bought hair straighteners and they used them all the time. I wouldn't bring the Chi if I was you, you aren't going to be able to use it here and you probably don't want to risk frying it. I brought my straightener to Singapore/China last summer (which is also on 220V electricity, like Ukraine) and shorted out the power in my dorm room the first time that I tried to use it haha.

2. What type of luggage did you end up taking with you? I have been planning on buying a hiking style backpack because I doubt I could carry two rolling suitcases.

I picked a roller duffel because the bag itself is lighter than a regular suitcase (since a duffel doesn't have a hard frame) and still holds as much as a regular suitcase. My personal preference is to roll a bag that weighs almost 50 lbs rather than carry it on my back, but it is up to you if you want to bring the hiking backback. The flip side to this is that evenly paved streets and sidewalks don't really exist in Ukraine, so you will most likely be rolling your luggage over potholes and on gravel/dirt paths. I didn't own a hiking backpack at home, so I didn't want to buy one just for Ukraine. Unless you plan on going backpacking or hiking, I would get a roller duffel bag or a luggage with wheels (carrying duffel bags without wheels will be really heavy).

The luggage that I brought to Ukraine: a suitcase, roller duffel bag, and backpack. As for dragging your luggage by yourself, I wouldn't worry about it too much because the one and only time that I had to carry all my stuff by myself was at Staging in DC when we went to the airport as a giant group on a charter bus. You can always let the 2nd heavy bag sit there and come back and get it during a 2nd trip because there will be Peace Corps people around to watch your bag. When you land in Ukraine, they have little shopping carts for free at the baggage claim in the airport, and that is how you will carry your bags to the charter bus to go to your first Staging retreat in Ukraine. When you move to your host family's place and to your permanent site, you will have people to help you (like your host dad, your counterpart, etc). Many host families have cars and Peace Corps will give you a stipend to take a taxi to your host family's place and to your permanent site as well. Peace Corps actually hired an army of 20 guys to work as porters at the train station in Kyiv when we left from Swearing-In to go to our permanent sites and it was awesome, all I had to carry to the train was my purse!

Group 40 B (the half that left a week after Group 40 A) with our luggage at the airport in DC.Most people have 2 luggages and a backpack, some carried on a duffel (or instruments like a violin, saxaphone, guitar, and banjo!).

3. And what about for your carry ons? What did you take with you to Staging and on the plane from Washington DC to Ukraine?

On the way to Ukraine, I carried on my backpack and a large purse that had a lot of heavy books like my Russian dictionary because I knew they wouldn't weigh my purse. Some people got away with carrying on 3 items like a purse, backpack and small duffel or carryon size suitcase in DC at Staging... but when we got to Germany, their 3rd piece of luggage got checked at the gate (and when airlines check luggage at the gate, its usually for free). Also, I persuaded the gate agent in my home airport not to charge me extra for the 2nd checked bag by chatting them up about Peace Corps and Ukraine, and he was really nice and didn't even weigh my bags. Other people weren't so lucky and had to shell out $50 for the 2nd bag and they didn't get reimbursed until 3 months later. However, $50 USD = $400 UAH which will be like half of your monthly living allowance during PST, so it seems like a lot of money here :)

4. I see you wrote that you would have gotten a knee-length winter jacket now...why is that? Just for warmth? Or is that what everyone wears?

I bought the North Face Brooklyn down jacket and I love it! I would have bought a knee-length jacket because of both reasons... the 8 inches of my legs between the bottom of the jacket and the top of my knee-high boots get cold! Most women here have fur jackets that go down below their knees and most girls have the puffy down jackets that look very similar to mine, but about knee length. So my jacket actually fits in really well, it even has a fur-lined hood that is awesome when it is snowing and windy outside.

Okay, maybe there is more than 8 inches between the bottom of my jacket and the top of my boots. But my knees really do get cold during snowstorms and when its windy outside haha.

Also, Peace Corps Trainees will get a bunch of books from Peace Corps at the Staging retreat once they arrive in Ukraine.. just FYI. It is about 10-15 lbs of language learning books plus a bulky black medical kit (see picture below). And then once you leave Kyiv from Swearing-In, you will get a huge babushka bag (the woven plastic bags) full of a space heater, fire extinguisher, smoke detector, etc for your permanent site.

All my PC language books, minus the 5 that I took to school to study between classes. Also pictured is my space heater (still new-in-box), fire extinguisher, and medical kit. Chinese New Year was yesterday, February 3rd. I had my 3-7th graders make paper lanterns during English club (and some kids were so excited that they came to my classroom in-between classes to make them!). The lanterns are really easy to make, I actually just read the instructions off of this website and then just taught my kids how to make the lanterns!

The lanterns hanging from the ceiling of my English club classroom on Wednesday... I actually have more lanterns now because like 10 more kids made lanterns today in-between classes! We talked about some of the traditions and foods from Chinese New Year, like doing the dragon dance in the streets to scare away evil spirits and how adults give children and teenagers gifts of money in red envelopes. My students thought it was interesting how 8 is a lucky number in the Chinese culture and 4 is unlucky, for they told me that the lucky numbers in Ukraine are 3, 4, 7, 12 and 40. Just like in America, the number 13 is considered unlucky here. Afterwards, I taught them how to make the hand symbols for the numbers 1 through 10 in Chinese street-market style. These hand symbols are widely used for bargaining with street vendors and useful if you don't know how to say the numbers in Chinese (while traveling in China).

You can also use these hand gestures in places that have large Chinese speaking populations such as Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia. Today, I invited my sitemate Sam and all of the English teachers in my school over for dinner, along with my school Counterpart and Sam's Counterpart. Sam and I made jiaozi (Chinese dumplings) from scratch, and pork fried rice. We fried half of the dumplings and boiled the other half of the dumplings. The dumpling skins turned out to be a little to thin and many of them broke during the cooking process, but they were still tasty!

I love making jiaozi!

I taught Sam how to make dumplings too :)

Our dumplings turned out pretty well... or so we thought.

Noms.. they tasted delicious! My English teachers at school thought the dumplings were very interesting.. they are like a cross between the Ukrainian traitional dishes of pilmeny (dumplings with meat, boiled in water) and vareneky (breadier dumplings with potato, cabbage, or plum that are usually steamed). They each brought a dish to share, so our dinner turned into a potluck feast!

From left to right: Larisa, Lilia, Svetlana, Alina (my counterpart), myself, and Sam's counterpart. I am super excited about kicking off English week next week, watch for some pictures of the projects done by my students that will be posted in the hallways of my school!

Last weekend, I traveled to visit my friend Alison in the neighboring town (about an hour away from me). Alison's town is actually made up of 3 towns clustered together, so it is quite a bit bigger than mine. There are 3 Peace Corps Volunteers there, one in each of the 3 towns. Alison lives in an apartment building close to her town's Бокзал (vokzal - train station) and right next to a swimming pool!

There is also an outdoor skating rink and football stadium nearby. While the football field is completely snowed over, the ice skating rink is super cute. You can rent skates and go ice skating there for just $8 UAH (the equivalent of $1 USD)

Last weekend, I invited a few other Peace Corps Volunteers from my oblast over to my apartment to cook tacos for dinner and watch some American football. It was great to hang out with everyone, and meet some of the older volunteers that weren't able to make it to our oblast's Christmas get-together. We met up and hung out in Kharkiv for the day, then traveled back to my little town.

Grabbing some coffee with Jillian and Erika. We walked around the art bazaar, off of the Historical Musem metro stop. All of the artwork being sold was produced by local artists, including these two little snowmen :-)

Or perhaps they are snow-monkeys? Although night was falling (since it gets dark around 4pm here), we walked down to the Blagoveshchensky (Благовещенский) Cathedral in Karl Marx Plaza. It is a Ukrainian orthodox church, more affectionately known as"The Candy Cane Church".

I'll have to go back to take a picture of the church during the day, so you can actually see the red/white candy cane stripes. We went inside the church to take a look around. Since it is an Eastern orthodox church, women are required to cover their heads with something such as a scarf while inside the church. I am not a member of the Eastern orthodox church, but according to Wikipedia, this tradition of head covering stems from 1 Corinthians 11.

Alison, Jillian, Erika and I with our scarves covering our heads. While we were in Kharkov, I participated in my friend Jillian's "Panda Project". The Panda Project is a quest to have many different people photographed with Jillian's black and white hand-knitted panda hat. You can check out her Panda Project photo album on Facebook here.

Fun fact: the word for panda in Russian is also panda! After walking around Kharkiv, we all hopped on the bus back to my town. We cooked up a storm in my little kitchen- we used ground chicken for the taco meat (it tasted great and not gross like it sounds, I promise!), cooked rice, shredded cheese, made a veggie filling of bell peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers tossed in oil and Italian seasoning, and I sliced up some gigantic squares of lavash (the Ukrainian version of tortillas) into burrito sized pieces. Our Ukrainian friend Vadim impressed us all with his delicious guacamole made with avocados and limes. The tacos turned out great!

Say... Queso! I started off my English clubs last week at school by teaching my students how to play UNO, duck duck goose, Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, and I also taught the 11th formers how to write informal letters. My 5th form class also wrote their first pen pal letters to America as part of the World Wise Schools correspondence program and we are very excited to be hearing back from our partner school in Florida sometime soon! This week, I plan on getting my older (high school age) students ready to participate in the International Writing Olympics, coming up next month :-)

Sorry for the long delay between posts, I was traveling around a bit for the holidays. I went back to my old town in the Kyiv oblast for New Years, which was great. It was nice to be back and to see my host family (including our two pet bunnies). I also had the chance to walk around Kyiv on a sunny day :)

Independence Square at night, with all the holiday festivities. The view of St. Sophia's church from up in the bell tower. A mosaic exhibit inside St. Sofia's church entirely made out of the hand-painted eggs! Click the picture to enlarge for a closer view of the eggs. There is a skylift behind St. Michael's church! I am going to check this out next time I travel to Kyiv. When I got back to my site, it had snowed! So we did have a white Christmas in Ukraine after all, since most people in Ukraine celebrate Christmas on January 7th. Thank goodness for my Yaktrax, I would have slipped and fallen on the snowy and icy roads without them!

The walkway leading to the front my school, all covered in snow! The snow is so pretty on the trees. During the winter break, I also traveled to Kupyansk (a nearby town that is a little bigger than mine) to hang out with a few other American friends. Fun Fact: Kupyansk's claim to fame is that sometime in the period between 1917 – 1934 when Kharkov was the capital of Ukraine, the government apparently moved the capital of Ukraine to Kupyansk for a day. We played Apples to Apples, cooked homemade hamburgers, and tried a Ukrainian dish - bread and butter topped with fish eggs.

With Alison and David. The interesting new Ukrainian dish... It looks like sushi but definitely does not taste like sushi! Me and Chris : ) Ukraine also celebrates Old New Years with several traditions (see previous blog post for the explanation of why there is an old new years and a regular new years). On January 13th, Old New Years Eve, children go from door to door and sing Christmas carols in exchange for candies and chocolates. This is very similar to the American Halloween trick-or-treat tradition, though the Ukrainian children do not dress in costumes for Old New Years. On the morning of Old New Years Day, January 14th, men and boys go around knocking on everyone's doors. According to traditions, it is lucky for the first person to enter each room in a house to be a man or boy. Once the man or boy has entered the room, he throws buckwheat or grain onto the floor and recites a rhyme wishing good luck and happiness for the upcoming year. Then as thanks, the men or boys are presented with small gifts such as candies or $1 UAH bills.The last part of this tradition is that you may not clean up the buckwheat grains until the next day, or else you will sweep away your good luck!

Two students from the other school in my town came to throw buckwheat in my apartment at 7am. 4 students from my 5A class came to throw buckwheat in my English classroom. I started team teaching my English classes last week. I am currently teaching the 3rd, 5th, 8th, 9th, and 10th forms (grades) and working with 3 of the 4 English teachers at my school. My younger students are super excited to have class with me, they always run up to me and say "hello!" in the halls. My older students are a bit more shy to practice their English, but are also excited to be able to talk to an American and learn some more about American culture and lifestyles during English Club.

With some students from the 8B class and my fellow English teacher Larisa Alexandrovna. With most of the students in my 5A class. And last but not least, happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Today was a normal school day for us here in Ukraine, but I had the chance to share the famous quote said by Dr. King in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963: "I have a dream that one day, my four little children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character".

Happy New Year! I wish you health, happiness, luck, love and success! С Новым Годом! Желаю вам здоровья, счастья, удачи, любви и успехов!

I went over to my friend Alison's apartment this week, and baked some chocolate-chip cookies with her and her PCV sitemate, Tiago. Alison and Tiago are both also TEFL volunteers who live in the neighboring town, about 30 minutes away from me by bus. They do not sell chocolate chips in Ukraine so Tiago smashed up 3 large chocolate bars inside a gallon-size ziploc bag with a meat hammer. Another interesting thing about baking in Ukraine was that they do not label degrees whatsoever on their ovens, so we just turned it onto high and let the cookies bake until golden brown (completely disregarding the recipe's suggested 7-9 minutes). I love baking, I used to bake like every week while going to school in Atlanta - you can ask my roommates about the seemingly never-ending cookie jar :)

Yum... American cookies were a delicious reminder of home. For a Christmas/New Years present to myself, I bought a new cell phone that has Dual Sim Card Standby capabilities... I had never heard of this before I moved to Ukraine. This means that it has 2 sim card slots and that both sim cards are active at the same time (as opposed to Dual Sim Switch, where the phone holds 2 sim cards but only 1 can be active at a time). If you are wondering why the heck I would need 2 sim cards, it is very common in Ukraine for people to carry 2 cell phones with different operators because the service coverage varies by geographic region and it is cheaper or free to call to someone with the same operator. So now I have my Life sim card in this phone, as well as a KyivStar sim card - my town uses mostly KyivStar, even though most cities in our oblast use MTC.

This is a "Fly" brand phone and it cost $375 UAH (about $47 USD). No, I had never heard of it either but it looks just like the Samsung Dual Sim Switch phone and was cheaper (and works well with the Dual Sim Standby). The third slot is actually for a MicroSD memory card, which makes me wish that I had brought mine from my blackberry at home.

My new phone has two dial keys (a phone symbol underlined once and twice), one for dialing with the 1st sim card and one for the 2nd sim card. It also has a dedicated flashlight button, which is convenient at night. And of course one nice thing is that I can text in Russian and read texts in Russian now! Even though I waited until it was too late to buy a train ticket to Kyiv to be back in time for New Years Eve, I successfully traveled back to the Kyiv Oblast to visit my old host family and it is wonderful to be back home. Buying the train tickets at the train station (Вокзал -Vokzal) wasn't too bad, I told the cashier that I had only studied Russian for 3 months and asked her to please excuse my Russian. She was really kind and helped me book roundtrip tickets succesfully, then walked me through all the information printed in Ukrainian on the actual ticket. Even though almost everyone in Ukraine speaks Russian and Ukrainian, the official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian so things like documents are printed in Ukrainian (including street signs, train tickets, and classes are taught in Ukrainian in schools).

Here is a picture of my train ticket. My apologies, I have no idea why it decided to rotate itself - I tried to reformat it unsuccessfully :( For my first time traveling within Ukraine by myself, I didn't do too bad! I traveled in a third class car on the train, called the "platzcart wagon". First class is the luxury car (which I've never been in), and second class is called "coupe". The only difference between second and third class is that the second class compartments consist of 4 beds in 1 room that has a sliding door with a lock. I traveled by "coupe" when I moved from Kyiv to my permanent site with my Ukrainian counterpart, and Peace Corps was nice enough to purchase all 4 tickets inside 1 compartment. Peace Corps recommends that volunteers travel by third class "platzcart" if they are traveling by themselves, and I can definitely understand - it could be a little awkward to be inside a compartment with 3 strangers for 11 hours (or more on an overnight train).

To start off the new year, my landlady came over to my apartment earlier this week and showed me two bags of books that were hidden away in a corner of my room, behind an armchair. These two bags of books turned out to hold some hidden treasures: English grammar books,including some with Russian translations!

Yes, I laid out all of these books on top of my map of Ukraine. Apparently the previous tenant had been a young man studying something like construction/gas engineering (according to Mama Lyda, my landlady) at a university in nearby Kharkiv and he left behind these two bags of books when he moved out. The landlady told me that she didn't know what to do with the books, and I was welcome to use them if I wanted. The first few books were about AutoCAD and engineering physics in Russian (which of course I thought was interesting because I'm a nerd) but I was pleasantly surprised to find a bunch of English books - apparently he was studying English as well as engineering! This was very exciting, because finding a bunch of books that will be useful while teaching English was like Christmas!

Here is a list of the books that I found in my room:

Право и Бизнес (Law and Business English) 2000 Русских 2000 Английский идиом (2000 English Idioms with Russian Variants) Английскиий язык с Мюриэль Спарк (Short stories in English) Русско-Английский Разговорник (A Russian/English Phrasebook) Англо-Русски Тематический иллюстрированный Словарь (An English-Russian Thematic Pictorial Encyclopedic Dictionary) Реалный АнглийскийЖ Диалогом в Актуальных Ситуациях (Living English in Real Situations: with Exercises, Keys and a Glossary) 100 Англсйский Существительн(100 English Nouns and 1000 Idioms) English Grammar in Use (blue cover) and Essential Grammar in Use (red cover) by Raymond Murphy (I know my Technical Faciliator (TCF) would be very excited to know that I have the infamous blue AND red grammar books from our PST resource center) Безопасность и Качество в Строитульстве: Основные Термины и Оределния (Safety and Quality in Construction: Basic Terms and Definitions)

Nerd Alert: The last book is one of the ones that I am extremely impressed and excited about using - it has a lot of technical terms that are relevant to what I studied at Georgia Tech as an Industrial Engineering major. Some of the topics covered in this book include how to construct flowcharts, database maintenance, basic indexed sequential access method, resource allocation, what a delimiter is, break-even analysis, fixed-rate loan, production cycle, explanations of venture capital and investments, and statistic analysis of process accuracy and stability. All of these topics are explained in Russian, to define key words and phrases in English... but this book will definitely be useful in improving my technical Russian vocabulary :)

I'm also pleased to be able to announce that I have been matched with a gifted third grade class from an elementary school in Florida for the World Wise Schools Correspondence Program through Peace Corps! If you want to find out more information about this program (and learn how to get involved), check out the World Wise page on the Peace Corps website.

So my students in Ukraine will be writing and receiving letters from actual American students! I will be teaching 3rd, 5th, 8th, 9th, and 10th forms (grades) at my school. Since my school is on vacation from classes until January 10th, I haven't had the chance to tell the students about this yet, but I'm sure that they will be absolutely thrilled about this program and the opportunity to become pen pals with someone halfway across the world.

So I have now officially spent my first Christmas in Ukraine! Classes ended at my school last Friday on Christmas Eve, and the kids were all so excited to begin the holiday season... I taught a 4th form class all 3 verses to Jingle Bells! And after they learned the english words, they sang the Russian version of the song to me!

Then they sang a Ukrainian New Year's song about a Christmas tree to me and demonstrated the dance to it :) A bunch of kids stopped me in the hallway to take a picture in between classes. In Ukraine, they have a really intense holiday season. They celebrate New Years as Americans would celebrate Christmas, with a Christmas tree decorated with ornaments and lights and exchanging presents. The Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar, which is 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar, used in Europe and North America. Therefore the Ukrainians celebrate Christmas on January 7, 13 days later than the Catholic world and then they celebrate the Old New Year on January 13th. Russia and Ukraine officially switched to the western calendar after the 1917 Revolution. My school held a New Year's party in their auditorium on Friday and invited me to sit with all the parents in the back.

Several teachers put on a short play for the kids. All the children dress up as if it was Halloween! My little town also put up a big Christmas tree in the central plaza and had a little celebration on Christmas Eve. They sang a few of the same traditional Ukrainian Christmas carols and walked around the tree.

Cultural Moment: This is the first time that I have seen Christmas lights strung on a tree vertically instead of spiraled around the tree. All the kids linked hands and walked around the tree. For Christmas day, I traveled to meet up with a few other Peace Corps volunteers in Kharkiv. It was interesting to make new friends and hang out in the big city! We went to a pizza parlor for Christmas dinner, which was nice because it was American food :)

They served ice cubes!!! This is the first time that I've even seen ice cubes here! My neighbor Alison! She only lives about 30 minutes away from my town. Yes, this is a dog wearing a tracksuit. Dogs get cold too! On Sunday, we walked around downtown Kharkiv and did a little bit of sightseeing. We walked down Pushinska Street, known for its famous shops and restaurants. This is one of the famous statues in Kharkiv.

This is a GIANT thermometer, hanging on the side of the building! Seeing a 3 story tall thermometer was almost the best part of my day... though of course it was in Celsius and not Fahrenheit haha.

We also passed the famous Philarmonic Theater along our journey, which also had a really cool monument of four musicians in front of it.

I am dwarfed by the statues!

Two of the other PCV's in my region, Ty and Tiago, stopped to conquer the last remaining bit of snow on the ground.

We also walked by Kharkiv's Dolphin Aquarium! We didn't pay the admission fee to go inside but the outside reminded me a lot of the Georgia Aquarium. i was sad that all the fountains were turned off for the winter, but I'm sure that place will be really cool to visit in the summer. And apparently you can pay to swim with the dolphins too, which would be really awesome!

You guessed it... Dolphin is a cognate. Rawr! What an awesome blowfish. And now for the best part of the day.... we went to the Shevchenkov Park and saw the big Christmas tree in the city center, then went ice skating! I haven't gone ice skating for a few years, and certainly haven't been to an outdoor ice skating rink in forever! I always wanted to go ice skating in Centennial Olympic Park (in Atlanta) but never had the chance to go.

Alison being a superstar :)

Our Ukrainian friend Vadym. I love ice skating! Alison and her sitemate Tiago. Ty showing off his skating skills. The big Christmas tree reminds me of the one in Atlantic Station (in Atlanta) and the big one in Macy's Square in San Francisco! This plaza was filled with lots of holiday festivities, including some amusement park rides and GIANT Russian dolls. If we had more time, I was going to go take a ride on a llama.

Gotta love the artsy-fartsy angle! Little kids are so adorable on the baby roller-coasters.

A baby pony, I was too busy debating whether or not to go have a llama ride to remember to take a picture of it.

Look how big those Russian dolls are! So now that American Christmas is over... the Ukrainian New Years Holiday is coming soon and I am traveling back to Kyiv to visit my host family for New Years next weekend! I can't wait to see Mama Sveta and maybe tour some of the holiday festivities in Kyiv, I have heard they also have a huge Christmas tree on display in Independence Square :)

I can’t believe 3 months have flown by so fast in Ukraine!

After a very busy week in Kyiv last week, I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! The Swearing-In Conference was a week of informational sessions and excitement, as it was great to see old friends that I hadn’t seen since Staging and meet the other half of group 40 that arrived in Ukraine a week before me.

With Nicole, Avital and Colette. Hanging out with Peter, Jonathan, Warren, Jun and a few new friends. Shortly after we all arrived in Kyiv, we settled into the dorms. It was fun to be back on a university campus, I forgot how much fun living with roommates was! I was in the triple room of a suite that connected with a double room and bathroom.

My awesome roommates, Deedra and Nicole. Alison, Katie and Bri in the dorms.

After lunch on our first day, they had announcements of where all the Trainees in group 40 would be working in Ukraine! There are 86 volunteers in group 40, and we are now spread out all over the country. My site is located on the eastern side of Ukraine, in Kharkiv Oblast. Here is a glance at the map of all of our sites.

I am on a purple post-it note in a teal colored oblast.

We also got to meet our Ukrainian Counterparts for the first time. Counterparts are typically future colleagues, so for us TEFL volunteers that means that our Counterparts also teach at the same school that we will be working in. For Community and Youth development volunteers, Counterparts are usually involved in a volunteer’s primary organization.

My Counterpart Alina and I with my friend Melanie and her Counterpart, by the flags on stage.

We also had an informational session about all of the different “working groups” that are within Peace Corps Ukraine, such as the Volunteer Advisory Committee, Gender and Development (GAD) Council, Technology for Development, Healthy Lifestyles, Multicultural Awareness Council (MAC), HIV/AIDS Awareness, Environmental Working Group, and Special Needs Working Group.

My super awesome peer advisor Sasha came to Swearing-In to represent MAC and GAD.

On Wednesday evening, we had a little concert as Peter Yarrow from “Peter, Paul and Mary” came and performed live on stage. He was joined by Kurt Hagamann, a PCV from our group who is awesome at playing the sax.

Peter playing on stage with our Country Director Douglas Teschner and Kurt. Not to be outdone, Warren shared his lovely piano skills. The actual Swearing-In Ceremony took place on Thursday, and many host families came to watch their Trainees become Volunteers.

My training cluster and linked cluster (minus Monica) with our country director. Repping the ATL with Dara and Nathan.

With my suitemates Deedra, Melanie and Natalie. We also said goodbye to our dear Language Facilitator and Technical Facilitator. Without Larysa and Vika (our two Language Facilitators), I would not have learned enough Russian to score at the Intermediate High level. And our Technical Facilitator Ludmyla was immensely helpful in providing guidance on how to plan and structure our English lessons.

With Luda, Larysa and two of the host families from my training town. Heather, Nathan and I with Vika.

Moving into my new town was a little bit crazy since my train arrived at 6:30 in the morning. It was snowing outside on top of the already existing 4 inches of snow on the ground. Luckily a few people met us at the train tracks, including my school Director, her husband, and my fellow PCV site-mate. They were a great help with my luggage and drove me to my new apartment. My new apartment is great, it is a furnished 1 bedroom apartment with a kitchen and bathroom (including a regular shower with running hot/cold water and a clothes washing machine!). I am also lucky to have lots of pots, pans, dishes and a full size refrigerator in my kitchen. Here is a photo tour of my new home.

My bedroom/living room. I sleep on a flip-down sofa.

This is the other half of my bedroom, with a flip-out table and 3-ft tall teddy bear. I have a balcony, which will be nice for hanging out in the summer. The view from my kitchen. Washing machines look a little different here in Ukraine! Don't worry, my landlady showed me how to use this one. My kitchen (sorry for the unpacking/cooking mess).

The view from my balcony... check out how icy the streets are! I can't believe Christmas is right around the corner! This will be my first Christmas without my family, but hopefully I will be able to spend it with some of my new friends here. Happy holidays to everyone!

These past few weeks in Ukraine have been really cold. By really cold, I mean that the temperature has dropped to around minus 10 degrees C and it has been snowing off and on all week! My host mom says that this weather is normal for winter, and soon it will be -30 degrees outside. Snegapod (snow fall) is my new favorite Russian word, though I’m not quite sure if it is a real Russian word... We kind of made it up from the word for snow - снег (pronounced sneg) and pod - под (meaning to fall). Over the week, my town has gotten a few more inches of powdery white snow :)

The view of the playground in front of my apartment building from our kitchen window.

You can tell that winter is setting in because the days are getting shorter – the sun sets around 4pm now, and it still rises around 7am. But no worries, life still goes on during the winter and we’ve had a really busy week in our little town.

Heather and I walked to school in the snow with our umbrellas!

Our Technical Facilitator Ludmyla taught us how to paint eggs with wax by hand, in the traditional Ukrainian style! It was very similar to dyeing Easter eggs, except designs drawn in hot wax with the stylus are usually a lot more intricate than the designs drawn in white crayon on eggs.

These eggs are so beautiful – I can’t believe our teacher painted all of these by hand!

Luda was kind enough to let us each take home one of her painted eggs! We were all so excited to get one of her beautifully painted eggs. Luda is really talented at painting the eggs, I can't believe that she painted all of these in just a few short days! They are so detailed and intricate.

Monica and I got matching teal eggs.

First, our teacher poked holes in the eggs and blew out the whites and the yolks. She let them dry at home and brought them to school for us to paint.

Our teacher preparing all the eggs and dye.

Next, we used a small stylus to draw on the egg shells with hot wax. We stenciled on some traditional designs in pencil first, so our eggs weren’t completely drawn freehandedly (can I turn freehand into an adverb?). The places on the egg covered by hot wax were white after the first round of dye. After the first lines were drawn on with wax, the eggs were dropped into the jars of dye for their first coat of color. Luda explained that each egg usually has only 2 or 3 colors – any more than that and the colors kind of just blend into brown.

The eggs soaking in the jars of dye.

After the first coat of color, hot wax was drawn on the egg again. This time, the places on the egg covered by the second round of wax preserve the first color.

Danielle and Heather working on their 2nd coat of wax.

My egg didn’t turn out so well, because I accidentally rubbed off some of the wax between the first and second coat of color. However, Monica’s egg turned out great!

Monica and her hand-painted egg!

In our little town, it is common to have a dacha. A dacha is a second house, usually a summer house with a garden or a farm house. We all went to Jakob’s host family’s dacha and got to saw and chop wood!

Nathan and I with the saw.

Jakob chopping a little chunk of wood.

Inside the dacha, Jakob’s family had an old wood stove. I thought it was interesting to see what a wood stove looks like, for I may be cooking on one when I get to my permanent site soon!

Making tea on the wood stove.

I think Mama Tanya said that this dacha has been in their family for a few generations. She showed us an old photo album with black and white pictures of her and her family from the early 1900s, which was really interesting. They’ve definitely done some renovations, for the house has electricity inside.

Our group inside the dacha with Jakob’s host mama, Tanya.

Mama Tanya told us that her dog likes to dance in his spare time… and she wasn’t kidding!

Heather and the dancing dog.

Last weekend, Laura cooked pizza and invited us over to her host family’s house for dinner. It was fun to hang out with another host family and practice my Russian. Our Language Proficiency Interview (LPI) is coming up next week, so I can use all the practice that I can get!

Our group at the dinner table with Laura’s host sister.

World AIDS Awareness Day was December 1st. Since Ukraine currently has one of the worlds fastest growing infection rates of HIV/AIDS, our group dressed in red and presented a short Powerpoint presentation at school to the 8-11th form students.

Yes, the only thing red that I brought to Ukraine is my famous Christmas sweater... I'm a hardcore Yellow Jacket :)

We also toured the “Kiev-Atlantic Ukraine” factory in our town. Kiev-Atlantic is a grain and feed processing plant, they produce feed for livestock and also export sunflower oil to surrounding countries in Eastern Europe. Disclaimer: this part of my blog post is going to sound pretty nerdy. As an Industrial Engineer, I am naturally curious about a factory’s manufacturing operations, quality control process, distribution system and warehousing facilities.

In front of the factory’s short-storage bins, where grain is stored for up to 2 months.

The factory employs around 300 people from our town and churns out about 15-20 truckloads of oil per week. It was really interesting to see what their operations were like, and we were lucky to have a tour in English since the directors of the factory are American.

Monica tasting some soybeans fresh from the production line.

Since our town is located near one of the bigger railway hubs, Kiev-Atlantic takes advantage of the open rail lines to import raw grain and export their products. The founders of the company actually used the railway to import all the machinery and materials to build the factory from the United States.

Rail containers are loaded directly with grain product from the factory.

Walking into the factory’s warehouse made me smile, since the CAT forklifts all look familiar and a lot of the machines have Russian translations taped onto the control switches. Inside the warehouse, finished bags of feed grain are stacked on pallets and stored on vertical pallet racks.

Mike, the director of the factory, showing us a bag of quail feed.

My host family drinks water from the well in front of our apartment building, and I usually draw water from the well every few days. I asked my mom the other day if the water in the well would freeze during the winter. She laughed and told me that the well is deep enough not to freeze. We keep a silver coin on the bottom of the water bucket, apparently silver is a natural purifier. I just noticed the date on the coin the other day, and was astonished at how old it is!

Cranking the water from the well!

Check it out – the silver coin is a ruble (Russian currency) from 1896! So my apologies - I meant to post this last week, but didn't have time to upload all of the pictures until today. This is my last post from my Training town... I'm headed to Kyiv tomorrow to find out my permanent site! I am thrilled to see everyone in group 40 again that I haven't seen since Staging (and to meet everyone else that staged a week before me). And then our Swearing-In Ceremony will be on Thursday, after that I will officially be a Peace Corps Volunteer!

I celebrated my first Thanksgiving in Ukraine this week with my friends from my Peace Corps training cluster, our Language Facilitator Larysa and our Technical Facilitator Ludmyla. It was awesome, and we even went around the table to say all that we are thankful for! I am thankful for all of my new friends here in Ukraine, for my health, for my wonderful Ukrainian host family and my family at home in California!

Our little Thanksgiving dinner!

Thanksgiving was a really busy day for us, starting out with Russian class in the morning and then I went with my host mom to see my sister off at the train station. My host sister left to go work in beautiful Crimea :( and I will miss her dearly. She is hilarious and fun to have around the house.

At home with my host mom Sveta and my host sister Inna! My host mom and sister on the platform, ready to go.

First, we wrote a huge text in Russian explaining what the American traditions for Thanksgiving were. It turned out really cute, and our flipchart explains that eating turkey and giving thanks are two Thanksgiving traditions. I didn't know that there were so many theories on why we eat turkey on Thanksgiving!

In our Russian language classroom with our Thanksgiving flipcharts…

We also wrote a little recipe for stuffing, adapted to what is available here in Ukraine (meaning that it contains parsley and dill instead of oregano or Italian seasoning). Heather and I made the stuffing from this recipe, and it actually turned out pretty well!

Is my Russian handwriting better than my regular English handwriting? Mmmmm, stuffing!

For dinner, we cooked 2 chickens instead of a turkey (turkey is expensive here). I wish that I could say that we picked out fresh chickens from the back yard, but our chickens came from the supermarket. We were kind of creative and spread mayonnaise all over the chickens, which actually didn’t turn out as strange as it sounds. Then we spiced them with some packet of chicken seasoning, onions, garlic, salt, pepper, dill and parsley. And when I say we, I mean that Nathan prepared the raw chicken while the rest of us worked on cooking the other dishes.

Nathan hard at work. Two seasoned chickens.

We made mashed potatoes (without a potato masher), which was really interesting. Since we didn't have a potato masher, we just smashed the boiled potato chunks with a fork first and then a big soup spoon. The potatoes didn’t turn out as smooth, but they were still tasty! We totally forgot about making gravy with the juices from the chicken though.

Monica and Heather peeling potatoes with knives. Heather and I dicing the potatoes.

Jakob used an old family recipe and cooked an awesome macaroni and cheese casserole! It had layers of macaroni, Colby cheese (or the closest that we could get to Colby here), butter, milk, and some crushed Tuc crackers sprinkled on top. Tuc crackers are just like Ukrainian version of club crackers and they are awesome. Our adopt-a-cluster Margo recommended them to us, and she was right – the crackers are a delicious salty snack.

That casserole has a whole kilogram of cheese! Laura slicing butter.

“That’s too nostril-y!” snacking on some cheese with Heather and Nathan.

After about three hours of cooking together in Larysa’s kitchen, our food was finally ready! The whole apartment smelled delicious and I’m sure the whole building could smell it too.

The finished mac and cheese casserole and our pot of veggies.

I've never cut a whole chicken before, usually I only buy parts of chicken like thighs, legs, etc. But it really wasn't that hard, there was plenty of chicken to go around and everyone got their preference on light or dark meat.

Monica and Nathan with the chickens.

We set up the table and ate like a little Peace Corps Ukraine family. I love my cluster :)

We are all ready to eat!

Only 2 more weeks of Training left! We all taught our last lessons at school this week, and our classes all said that they would miss us.

Nathan's class made him a card and put up ballons! Monica's 4th form students were so sad to see her go that many of them wrote her thank-you cards and even gave her small gifts :) My last 10th form lesson was a fun one - we played tic tac toe with some of their vocabulary words and also worked on translating the Thanksgiving posters from Russian to English.

My last 10th form class, with my turkey day posters and their turkey hands.

For homework last Wednesday, I assigned my 10th grade class to write 4 sentences about what they were thankful for on the 4 fingers of a hand-traced turkey. I wish I had the resources like colored paper, scissors, crayons, and glue to actually make paper turkeys here... that was one of my favorite things to do in school when I was little, along with making pink and red heart-shaped paper valentines.

Turkey hands are adorable.

Guess what else happened this week? It SNOWED last night!!!! OMG SNOW!! We were all really excited to see snow, and one of my Ukrainian friends from dance class even called me to tell me that it was snowing outside. I haven't seen snow since... last January when there was a random snowstorm in Atlanta. I forgot how beautiful everything is when it is covered with snow.

Two words: snow angel. The playground in front of my building, all covered with snow!

I traveled to Obuhiev again last weekend with Monica and Nathan to visit Vika, our old rotational LCF (Language Facilitator). We went shopping at their giant supermarket and bought food to cook fried rice with. I was really excited to find some real ginger root, I miss cooking with ginger and my host mom had no idea where I could buy it in our town. And then as soon as we walked out of the supermarket, I saw a bunch of Babushka stands on the street with much fresher produce and then kind of regretted buying vegetables inside the supermarket. But no worries, the fried rice still turned out well!

Catherine (from Vika's Obuhiev group of PCTs) joined us for lunch. Dara joined us after her run After lunch, we walked around town a bit and checked out one of their second-hand stores. Apparently the word for second-hand in Russsian is also second-hand. The shop owners were very nice and curious about where all of us Americans had come from. While walking around, I found a GIANT cell phone!! I'm sure all the locals in Obuhiev judged me hardcore for taking this photo but this was definitely the highlight of my day :)

ZOMG! Can you hear me now? There was a Ukrainian traditional dance show in our town this week, but it was on Friday during school hours so unfortunately we weren't able to go. However, Laura and I did get to try on their headdresses during our dance class.

With Laura and her Ukrainian host mom. My friends from dance class were really excited about taking photos with us, so we took the first 15 minutes of class to snap a few photos.

Laura, Nathan and I with our Ukrainian friends Luba, Marie and Tanya. Dance mama Sveta (our dance teacher, below in the gray sweater) arranged us all for an artsy dance class photo! Cha-cha ras, cha-cha ras. During dance class, we worked some more on the Cha-cha-cha. There are a lot of complicated steps to this dance including twirling around (and I can never remember which way to spin, clockwise or CCW). But it is fun to learn and we're getting better at it each week.

Yes, I dance in my TOMS shoes because I don't have any other shoes that would work (besides maybe my sneakers). Then I taught the American hip-hop dance to a song that was very popular and swept across the country a few years ago. We've tacked it onto the end of the hip-hop dance that we learned, and the ladies love learning this dance because apparently they rarely do hip-hop dancing in class. I'll let you guess the song that we are dancing to...

The first part of this dance is to kind of jump up slightly and cross your right foot over your left and then jump back to your original position. Next you punch with your right hand, then left hand, and snap with both hands. I taught this part first using the song "Snap Yo Fingers". There are a few more moves inbetween, but the last part of this dance is to crank it - also known as the motorcycle, a dance move which originated in ATL :)

We only have about 3 more weeks left until Swearing-In! I can't believe that I've already been in Ukraine for almost 2 months. I'm going to miss my cluster very much when we are all sent to our different permanent sites!

For the past few weeks, Laura, Nathan and I have been attending a dance class here in Ukraine! I originally wanted to join a traditional Ukrainian dance class, but that class is closed to the public (due to the dance troop is paid to perform at events so they are pretty professional). We attend dance class twice a week in the evenings and its great to have an extracurricular activity to do outside of the classroom. Plus I get the chance to just dance around in my TOMS shoes for a few hours. I don't really have proper dance shoes (the ladies here dance in 2 inch heels) but they don't sell any dance shoes in my little town, so I'd have to find them in Kyiv and I have no idea where to look for dance shoes.

So far, we have learned the Cha-Cha-Cha, the Rumba, the Samba, the Jive, the Waltz, the Slow Waltz, the viennese Waltz and a hip-hop dance. There are also a few standard dance steps that our instructor calls the New York and the Stop-and-Go. I love when we dance to familiar American music, and I actually had the opportunity to teach an American hip-hop dance move :) Dance class is also fun because the instructions are all in Russian... and the count is also in Russian - Raz, Dva, Tree etc. So I get to practice my Russian with the other people in the class and they like to practice their English skills with us so it works out well! I've also picked up a few random Russian words that haven't been taught in our Peace Corps Russian language lessons.

Here are a few photos from our dance class. My apologies for not chronicling this as much as I would have liked to - usually I am busy trying to follow dance steps in Russian and therefore I always forget to take photos during class.

One of the ladies is teaching me part of the Rumba dance. Check out my friend Luba's shoes in the background... I am always impressed with how well she moves in those heels! Practicing the Cha-Cha-Cha, and watching Laura (in the gray shirt) figure out the steps.

I can't believe we are already done with the Language facilitator rotation! We have been in Ukraine for approximately 6 weeks now, and Russian class is moving along rapidly. Here is Vika, our rotational Language facilitator, and her younger sister who came to visit us!

We got a picture with her sister! She was super sweet and just as excited to practice her English with us, and patient with us when we were trying to practice our Russian with her. We have been building our Russian vocabulary and now I can tell the time of day, talk about the weather, speak about dates and birthdays, name buildings within a city, give directions, talk about traveling on public transportation and describe most of the furniture items within my apartment using prepositions. We have learned the 4 different motion verbs in Russian for transportation - walking and traveling by vehicle (for everyday actions, for completed actions/to emphasize the duration of an action, for the beginning of an action, for the ending of an action) in the present, past and future tenses.

We played a board game in Russian class to practice saying where we were coming from and headed to, using common words like school, library, bazaar, etc. For example, my character is the bear and I am walking from the theater to the park (between circles 24 and 26).

Nathan is practicing how to give directions in Russian while walking within a city.

Have you ever thought about how many different grammatical tenses there are in English? There are 27! Here is a photo of an exercise that we did during one of our technical training sessions.

We should have just watched Schoolhouse Rock and called it a day haha.

Margo, our super awesome Adopt-a-Cluster mentor visited this week! It was really cool to hear about her experiences with training and living on the eastern side of Ukraine. She was actually in an advanced Russian language cluster as well and now she lives in a small coal mining town (and they have a pool in the town!).

We also helped plan after-school activities for English week at school! The theme for English week was "Welcome to America" and it was a great opportunity to work with all different forms and practice English. We grouped the forms (grades) into different days and planned games and activities based on age and skill levels. We also made several posters advertising the schedule for English week.

This is the poster from the front lobby of the school, with my fun little signs about American Holidays!

For 1-4th form, we played games like Duck Duck Goose, Simon Says, and Red Light Green Light. We also sang the Hokey Pokey, I Don't Wanna be a Chicken, and I'm a Little Teapot. Although we had to give some of the instructions in Russian, the kids absolutely loved the games!

Kids love running around in circles for Duck Duck Goose, but watch out because they are super serious about it! A huge game of Red Light Green light is hilarious with little kids and certainly helps them practice their listening skills in English.

For the older students, we presented about everyday life as a teenager - going to school, working part time, after school clubs/sports, music, etc. I taught the 10/11th form students several popular American dances such as how to do the Cupid Shuffle and Cha-Cha Slide.

The six of us PCTs with my 10th form class :)

And of course last but not least - I just wanted to share what our school lunch looks like. It is a ton of food for $8 UAH (about $1.20 USD). This photo is from last Wednesday, we had mashed potatoes, hot dogs, apple pancakes with honey (not as good as maple syrup but still tasty), bread and cabbage.

Nathan and Monica are ready to chow down.

I would like to take a quick poll: have you ever heard this phrase “to my mind” before? I had never heard this phrase before I moved to Ukraine, instead of using that phrase I would have used “I think that” or perhaps used the phrase “in my opinion”. I have found that “to my mind” is commonly used in Ukraine by English teachers and anyone who has studied English in Ukraine is familiar with this phrase. This is strange to me and everyone else in my cluster, but we suppose it must be a colloquial British English phrase. If you have any insight on this phrase, I would love to hear about it.

We celebrated our first American holiday in Ukraine by traveling to Обухів (Obuhov in Russian) for Halloween last weekend. Обухів is a town of about 40,000 people and many Peace Corps Trainees are located close by. We met up with about 20 PCTs from other towns and had fun hanging out with all together for the day. Ukrainians do not celebrate Halloween, but they do learn about it in school.

My claim to fame – I taught all the PCTs how to properly do the asian tourist pose.

First stop was the local park. I like the swings that they have here, they all have seat-backs (kind of like those red swings in Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta).

Catherine and Nathan rocked out the spinning wheel thing.

Everybody loves a sandbox!

After the park, we decided to take a walk into the woods. Being in the woods was a nice change of pace since my town is mostly agricultural and we do not have any sort of woods or foresty areas nearby.

Chilling on a log in the woods.

The PCTs from around Obuhiuv plus Nicole.

Monica, Nathan and Catherine.

My friend Warren used his Eagle Scout skills to start a bonfire for us, with the help of Nitai and a couple of the other guys. I haven’t been to a bonfire in forever, I wish we had brought marshmellows to make s’mores! That would have been a fun American traditition to celebrate Halloween with.

Warren building the kindling into a little pyramid to start the fire.

Nitai decided to take over and show us how to start a fire!

Nathan went foraging for firewood!

It was great getting to see some of my friends from the 40 Ѕ Staging group and meeting people from the original Group 40 that staged a week before us. It was interesting to hear about everyone’s different experiences with their host families and teaching English!

Warren, Allyson, Katie, Cary, Monica and Laura.

Adam, Nicole, me, Nathan, Catherine and Nitai.

Gotta represent.

The standard jump photo (this was the best out of like 10 attempts, I’ve apparently gotten rusty at jumping since the summer).

Warren and Nitai, two of my good friends from Staging.

The 4 of us from my cluster!

Although we didn’t get to celebrate Halloween the traditional way with costumes and trick-or-treating, I told Nathan that he should be a Babushka (grandmother) for Halloween. Fun fact: the phrase “trick-or-treat” is apparently translated into Ukrainian as “candy-or-die!”

See? Nathan would make a great Babs, he just needs a few gold teeth.

We went to Kyiv again with our new Language Facilitator for bank day, which was fun but it made me a little nervous to walk around while carrying $2500 UAH in cash. We also went to visit the Peace Corps head office downtown.

Yay Peace Corps Ukraine!

Here are some more photos from walking around Kyiv. There were quite a few other PCT groups that went to Kyiv on Monday, and it was fun running into fellow Peace Corps people randomly around the city. We took the metro train a few more times and guess what? A young lady about our age was kind enough to give up her seat on the crowded train for Monica, since Monica is wearing a boot for her broken foot. That was a surprisingly nice gesture and definitely a Cultural Moment here in Ukraine!

This is contemporary art at its crunchiest… it is a cat made out of plastic forks!

I love the architecture of the older buildings in Kyiv.

We ran into Andrew and Avital while they were looking for the Golden Gate on their scavenger hunt.

This is what is known as the Golden Gate. It is an old church and also has a metro stop nearby.

For lunch, we went to a little place called The Drum (or ??????????) and I had a cheeseburger and fries! Well, I guess this isn’t as exciting because I could have gotten a cheeseburger at McDonalds by the train station but this burger actually was pretty good.

NOMS!

We also picked up hard copies of the Kyiv Post in English at this restaurant!

We walked around Independence Square again and stopped by the big post office there so Monica could mail a parcel home. Actually, we had a small task assigned by our Langage Facilitator to take pictures of street signs and advertisements with endings in different grammatical cases, but those pictures are boring so I won't post them up here.

Standing on top of the Globus shopping center and across the street from Independence Square.

Did you know that they have mini coopers over here? This is the 1st one that I’ve seen!

On the way home from Kyiv, we apparently bought tickets for the slow train that took us almost 5 hours to get back to our town. It should only have taken us 3 hours, but we kept stopping for 30 minute intervals. I have no idea why we kept stopping, the intercom was so fuzzy and I could only make out a few words in Russian (though they were probably speaking in Ukrainian anyways). It is hard to believe that it took us 5 hours to travel 100 km (or about 65 miles) because that is absolutely ridiculous. To top that, the train wasn’t heated so we were freezing in addition to being exhausted from walking around Kyiv all day.

Is that a bum on the train? Nope, its just Monica all bundled up!

But after I got home at like 11pm instead of 9pm as expected, my host mom told me that the route we took was longer than it appeared on the map at the train station. Nerd Alert: Maybe this is why I wasn't so good at Optimization, I should have found the shortest path by calculating the weight of each arc by distance instead of just eyeballing the number of stops shown on the map. Moral of the story: always consult your local Ukrainian host mom when it comes to traveling around Ukraine by public transportation!

Don't those two paths look about equal to you?

Last Sunday, I traveled to Kyiv with Monica, Nathan, Jakob and Laura (from my Peace Corps training cluster). It was an interesting experience, especially since we traveled without our Language Facilitator and none of us are fluent in Russian (yet). Monica’s Peer Advisor was in Kyiv, so we met up with her and she showed us around the city. I was really thankful for a tour guide that was another Peace Corps Volunteer, she saved us the hassle of having to try to navigate the Kyiv metro train system by ourselves and find places from our Lonely Planet guidebooks.

The view from the steps of St. Andrew's Church We left our town at 8am on Sunday morning by electric train, and arrived in Kyiv around 11am. The train station in Kyiv is especially large and confusing since it is a hub for a lot of domestic and international trains

escalators! Haven’t seen those in a while. We were so excited to see our first McDonalds in Ukraine at the train station. Fun fact: when I was practicing my Russian food vocabulary with my host mom and sister, they both said that the one food that they did not like was McDonalds! This McDonalds was almost exactly like the ones from home, meaning that all the menu items were exactly the same but just written in Russian.

and check out McFoxy! We took the metro train to the central part of Kyiv. I think it is interesting how inner-city subway maps all look similar. Well, I guess this is only judging from the New York City, Atlanta, Singapore and Beijing subway maps. The Kyiv subway uses little blue plastic tokens about the size of a quarter, instead of a magnetized ticket (old school!) and you simply use 1 token per ride. Fun nerd fact: the Singapore subway and city bus system both charge fares based on distance traveled instead of per ride.

These apartment buildings and the cable wires above the street remind me of downtown San Francisco!

From a glance, would you be able to tell that this photo was taken in Ukraine? Our first stop was this theater. When I showed this photo to my host mom, she was pleasantly surprised and informed me that her restaurant is just down the street. Maybe next time we can go visit her restaurant!

I just thought the two towers on this building looked interesting, they remind me a little of the twin towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Monica’s peer advisor pointed out this 4-story department store, apparently it was famous during Soviet times and is still a huge shopping center today.

We walked past a Lexus car with an Illinois license plate! This is would be extremely unusual in my little town, but it didn’t seem that out of place in Kyiv since there were so many ex-pats around the city.

Our next stop was the capital area of the city, called the Maidan. If you’ve ever looked up Kyiv on Wikipedia, chances are high that you’ve seen pictures of these exact same landmarks!

I wanted to climb up on the horse but everyone was already judging me for standing up on the statue. Here is Monica with her peer advisor Megan and Megan’s friend Kelsey! Kelsey actually roomed with my peer advisor Sasha at their Staging! I love the Peace Corps Ukraine network. They are standing in front of the famous Kyiv Opera house.

Our group is standing in front of the celebration statue. This statue is apparently one of the newer landmarks in this area.

We miss you Heather!

We ran into some of our fellow Peace Corps Trainees from Obhuhov! Of course Warren and I are doing the token asian pose.

Warren and I are token PCV asians. Monica and I are also great at the token asian pose. After taking lots of pictures in the Maidan area, we went into the Globos shopping center. It is a crazy intense mall, I would compare it to Lenox in Atlanta, Fashion Square in Scottsdale, or the Macy’s in Union Square (downtown San Francisco). They sell regular things inside the mall from regular stores like Hallmark, shoe stores, underwear like Victoria’s Secret, department stores, etc.

they even have a Sanrio store with Hello Kitty!! The mall even had an international food court, including a Chinese food stand! I ordered some steamed pork buns there, it was a huge relief to speak Chinese and not have to worry about my pronunciation or conjugating verbs correctly in Russian. We left the mall after grabbing a snack at the food court and walked around to where the famous churches were.

standing in front of St. Sophia’s bell tower one of Ukraine’s famous Cossack military leaders This was a super touristy area of Kyiv, we were surrounded by groups of kids clearly on a school field trip and other ex-pats.

I love this picture, it would be perfect except Jakob isn’t doing the asian pose correctly and we are missing Heather We walked behind the baby blue church down to St. Andrew’s church and the famous street bazaar. This was a serious cobblestone road, literally built out of chunks of rocks and mortar. I have no idea how Ukrainian women walk everywhere in stilettos, the cobblestone hurt my feet and I was wearing my relatively flat footed boots!

this was my favorite church, because it is teal and gold! This photo is for my old roommate Annie, who got me into House. Ukrainians love the House tv show, they call it ???? and apparently they sell little touristy magnets of Dr. House!

my favorite is the one in the upper right hand corner that says “Only Salo can help.” The street bazaar had a lot of stereotypical Ukrainian items like the traditional Russian dolls, furry hats, old Soviet memorabilia and painted eggs.

Touristy items like this are really common, I'm waiting until right before I come home to do any shopping though.

a view of another castle-like building and the street bazaar We walked down the street, to the bottom of a big hill. The street bazaar must have been a solid half-mile long and had tons of stands that were all exactly the same, pretty much like Chinatown. Do you like how I compare everything here to Chinatown? I guess that is probably because I spent last summer in Beijing and Singapore and I miss it.

Nathan bought a Kyivsky Tort cake for his host family! They have a Domino’s Pizza in Kyiv! I wonder if they still have the 5-5-5 deal.

At least they deliver pizzas!

We ended up walking around Kyiv from about 12noon until 5 pm, but it was fun to be back in a big city and see the sights. We will be heading back to Kyiv next Monday for “bank day” – hooray for payday and new ATM cards. I hope the ATMs here have English (another fun fact from last summer: ATMs in Beijing all had an English language option on the home screen).

Last weekend, we had a cross-cultural information session about the history of Ukraine. I learned a few interesting things during the session, like how Ukrainians refer to WWII as “The Great Patriotic War” and how almost every family in Ukraine was affected by that war in some way (since many of the USSR’s troops were actually from Ukraine).

This picture was HUGE on the wall... it must have been like a solid 5x7 ft. Afterwards, we walked to the town’s local museum. Our linked town is so scenic… if I printed these out as postcards and mailed one to you, you would probably never know the difference!

So picturesque. I can't wait to ice skate on this river when it gets colder here. This is the Bridge of Love... reminds me of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. The view of the town's church. Look, they have a tank too! The museum was really interesting, we actually got to see some of the things that we talked about during the history lesson and admission only cost $3 UAH (60 cents).

My host mom thought it was hilarious that we took a picture with our tickets. The museum turned out to be a private 2 story home that had been converted into a home for the collection of artifacts from the town’s history and about the history of Ukraine.

There were saber-tooth tigers in Ukraine?? Here is a picture of Monica and I with several people from our linked cluster. We are standing with their Russian Language Facilitator Lena – in the red jacket, Sarah – a political science major from Utah, and Ally – a Biochemistry major from Texas (but fun fact: her family lives in Singapore). Yes, these wooden cabins can still be seen around Ukraine today. We took a picture with a bronze statue of Lenin. Statues of Lenin are very popular in Ukraine, we have one in our town and there is one in our linked cluster’s town as well. Yay statues! Sorry to Ally for getting cut off from the bottom of this picture. Here is the famous Ukrainian poet Shevshenko (Тара́с Григо́рович Шевче́нко). I’m sure his name comes up from time to time as a Daily Double on Jeopardy. This guy has a ton of statues of him too, apparently he was a big deal.

He knows whats up. Ukrainians are very self-sufficent and some people continue to weave and sew their own clothes. I am proud to say that I can name the chronological sequence of steps needed to weave fabric, thanks to my fun Polymer, Textile and Fiber Engineering (PTFE) elective classes at Georgia Tech. Ahh, the good old days. In the good old days, Ukrainians apparently also used to carve their furniture and kitchen ware by hand.

Danielle with one serious cup of chai. The Soviet era is a very big part of Ukrainian history. I’m sure that you can recognize this poster from your high school history books. Lenin pointing at progress.

Surprisingly enough, the town’s landscape hasn’t changed much since this huge wall mural was painted. This mural reminded me of the sort of rustic countryside landscapes that are painted on the walls of "Old Country Buffet" restaurants. Danielle, Jun, myself and Nathan. This was an exhibit showing some important political figures in Ukraine. It also displayed some of the old currency. Unfortunately, all the captions for the pictures and labels for everything in the museum was all in Ukrainian… so I couldn’t read like any of it.

From rubles to hryvnia!

We really enjoyed how the artifacts in the museum were authentic. Can you guess what this exhibit was about? Sarah is super cute in the soldier's hat.

salute! We all taught a few more lessons at school this week, and I even got to teach a class all by myself for the first time! It was really exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time. I taught a little about United States history and geography to the 11th form (the equivalent of high school seniors at our school).

 Nathan and I discussing lesson plans with our 11th form teacher, Tatiyana.

Monica and Laura taught "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" to their 5th form class. For our weekly field trip, we took the electric train (eletrichka) to Biliecirkov (white church). It is a city of about 200,000 people and famous for its Bazaar. We had fun on our first train ride in Ukraine.  Entertainment on the train: random guy playing the accordion and begging for money.

The train has booth-style seats that face each other and our car smelled like a port-o-potty. We ate lunch at a great little pizza place, where they served real pizza (without ketchup or mayonnaise!). Our group with our Langage Facilitator, Larysa, on the left!

After lunch, we had a little scavenger hunt around the city and I took a few pictures of the city’s landmarks.

Every town has statues of Lenin. Funny story: I managed to call a wrong number when trying to reach my Language facilitator Larysa and yet still had a successful phone conversation about meeting at the White Church in a mix of Russian and English… apparently there are quite a few ladies named Larysa that work for the Peace Corps and it just so happened that I copied down the wrong cell phone number for my Language Facilitator. So I accidentally called the Larysa that works in Vasylkov, then she immediately called the correct Larysa that I was trying to reach and we figured everything out in a span of 5 minutes.

One of the town's famous white churches.

Their library looks like the White House! Monica bought a sweet fur hat while we were shopping. I’m jealous, I haven’t found any nice ones for cheap yet (but hopefully I will!).

whats classier than fur hats and espesso? Before we left to head back home, we took a group photo in front of the 4 story mall. Walking around the mall was almost like being in the Silk Street market building in Beijing, except definitely less crazy.

we miss Heather! She hurt her knee :( And last but not least, Sveta (my awesome host mom) cooked burritos for dinner! Who would ever have thought that they sell tortillas in Ukraine? The tortillas came out of a package that looks just like the regular Mission tortillas that they sell at Walmart. I love my host mom, she has been great about working on Russian with me, I love chatting with her at the dinner table. I told her that we (the 6 American Peace Corps trainees) wanted to cook some Mexican food like fajitas and she surprised me with burritos!

I never thought a burrito with cabbage, hot dog and mozerella cheese would be delicious. We went to Kyiv yesterday, which was awesome but it means that now I'm still like a week behind on my blog... so photos of beautiful golden church domes will be coming soon :)

So since I’ve been limited to posting updates only about once a week, this post will be quite lengthy… but I promise I have tons of awesome pictures! Warning – if you are a vegetarian or opposed to seeing raw meat being prepared, you may want to scroll down past the pictures of us cooking Ukrainian food.

Standard Myspace-style photo! I’ve been working really hard in my Russian class and learning a lot of new things about grammar that I’m pretty sure that I have never heard of before – like the Instrumental Case, the Genetive Case, the Dative

Case, the Nominative Case, etc. Our Language teacher’s apartment is getting a little crazy!

Language classes are hardcore. I’ve been eating lots of traditional Ukrainian food at home… meaning soups like Borsch at every meal and some weird things like these little salty smoked fish. My mom plopped one of these down on my plate and I had no idea what to do with it. She showed me how to rip off its head and tail, then peel off the skin and pull the meat off of the bones. I replied in my broken Russian that it seemed to be a lot of work for such little fish meat! It wasn’t that bad though, just tasted fishy and really salty.

I was very pleasantly surprised that my mom made mashed potatoes! This is what I eat for breakfast almost every day – a sandwich with butter, cheese and sausage with a cup of tea (chai). My host mom slices the butter just about as thick as she slices the sausage. I don’t quite have the heart to tell her not to put any butter on it, so my cholesterol will probably be well over 200 by the time I get home from Ukraine. Check out my Xena Princess Warrior cup… my host mom told me that this is my designated cup in the house because the cup has some resemblance to me haha.

Boot-terr-brrrrrod! Thats Russian for sandwich. My Ukrainian town is relatively small compared to everywhere else that I have lived, since it only has a population of about 12,000 (that’s smaller than the number of undergraduate students enrolled at Georgia Tech!). We have about 3 main streets, 3 cafes, 3 schools, 3 banks, 3 internet clubs, 3 mobile phone stores, 1 church, 1 river, 1 tank, 1 train station and 1 bus station. And yes, we really do have a tank. And I am pretty sure that it is real. The tank is located directly across from the train station. All the locals probably judged me hardcore for taking this photo with the tank, but I am just really excited to see a real tank! From what I’ve heard, it is relatively common to see a tank on display like this in Ukraine.

Its already in the minus degrees celsius here. One of the cafes in our town sells real coffee, they actually grind the beans and it tastes just like Starbucks. Okay, maybe not exactly like Starbucks but it is not bad, much better than the weak instant coffee packets that they sell here. Monica and I are enjoying our latte and espresso!

Theres nothing like hot coffee on cold Ukrainian days. We also have a bazaar which is very similar to the open-air street markets commonly found in Southeast Asia. Our bazaar is basically like a very spread-out Walmart store, and it is only open from 9am to 1pm. It has one part that sells food products and the other part sells non-food items such as clothing, shoes, rugs, kitchenware, hardware, etc. Here is what the main entrance to the non-food part of the bazaar looks like. The Bazaar reminds me of Chinatown. As you walk further into the bazaar, you can see that each stand has its own specific products. These stands are probably all family run businesses, and they simply rent out the space at the bazaar to sell their goods. Monica and Nathan are checking out some of the Russian-style fur hats (shopkas). They were really expensive at this stand, so none of us bought one. But I am definitely going to shop around when we get to travel to Kyiv and see if I can find one there. $700 UAH for one of these hats?! Thats like almost a whole month's salary! In our spare time last Sunday, we had a little pottery class with our Language Teacher’s daughter Alina. Alina is 23 and just graduated from one of the universities in Kyiv. She taught us how to make pottery out of the clay dirt that came from Nathan’s backyard.

Nathan, Monica, Larysa (our language teacher), Alina, and Heather! Pottery in progress. Monica and her sweet alligator... Chomp chomp! I haven’t made any pottery like this since art class in high school (in Arizona), so that was like 5 years ago! Everyone worked really hard on their pottery. Here are the finished products! Can you guess which one is mine? Actually I made two of these pieces.

I made the bear in the back and the 3 stacked cubes. For lunch, we cooked a big pot of Pelmeni (пельмень). Pelmeni is a Ukrainian dish that is basically like little tortellini filled with meat. And by we, I mean that I bought a bag of frozen pilmenye at the grocery store and boiled it in a pot and served it to everyone.

Cooking on a gas stove, the kind that needs to be lit by a match. Lunch was awesome! We managed to feed everyone for about $4 UAH (or 50 cents).

Om nom nom. Looks like tortellini, right? In Ukraine, they use these old-school fly strips to catch bugs inside their house. It is essentially a long strip of two-sided brown packing tape. Funny story – Laura stood up from the lunch table and somehow managed to get this tape full of dead bugs stuck all in her hair. I wasn’t quick enough with my camera to capture the look of disgust on her face, but here is Jakob and Jun putting the bug catcher strip back up onto the kitchen light.

The Russian language teacher at our linked cluster has some interesting decorations on the wall. Granted, it is a house rented out by the Peace Corps for her to live in, but these decorations are still unusual. From what I understood, it is apparently its an old Ukrainian tradition for men to lead battles with these… YARRRRRR Our cluster cooked Goluptse and Vareneky together with Nathan’s host sister Tamara and Jakob’s host mom, Tanya. Goluptse are like cabbage rolls stuffed with ground meat and rice, in a tomato-based sauce. Vareneky is just like the Ukrainian version of Chinese dumplings, we filled ours with cabbage and potatoes. We went to the Bazaar as a group and bought all the ingredients in the morning, then cooked everything from scratch! The meal turned out to be about $10 UAH per person, or about $1.20 USD. Tanya is totally a babushka. I’m going to write about how we cooked Goluptse first. The first step in cooking Goluptse is to slice the core out of a head of cabbage and cook the leaves until they are soft. We peeled the potatoes, onions and carrots with a knife… they don’t use potato peelers here! And they definitely do not sell ground meat at the Bazaar here – you have to grind it yourself! Tanya showed Nathan how to use a meat grinder. You can buy really fresh vegetables here at the Bazaar. Laura peeling potatoes with a knife. Nathan loves grinding. The next step was to mix the ground meat with some spices, chopped onions and rice. We cooked the rice on the stove while Nathan was grinding the meat. Then we scooped some of the meat-and-rice filling into the cabbage leaves and rolled them up like egg rolls. While we were preparing these, the tomato sauce was simmering on the stove. We put the cabbage rolls into a pot and poured the sauce on top. Then we left the pot on the stove for about 45 minutes to cook thoroughly.

Mixing the meat and rice for the filling. Heather and I rolling the cabbage into eggroll shapes. Pourng the tomato sauce onto the pot. Making Vareneky (варе́ники) was fairly easy, mostly because it was so similar to making homemade dumplings! I make dumplings with my mom at home :) To make Vareneky, first we mixed and kneaded the dough. I forgot to write down exactly what went into the dough, since I was peeling potatoes but here is Laura kneading the dough. Rolling out the dough was a team effort!

No rolling pins here... we mean handmade when we say handmade! After you roll out the dough, the next step is to slice it into small portions – each chunk was about 1in in diameter. We flattened out each of those small chunks to become the skin of the Vareneky. No rolling pins here, we just did it the old school way by patting it down with the palms of our hands.

Tanya was great about being teaching us how to make vareneky! Nathan slicing the dough. After the skin of the Vareneky was made, we scooped some filling into it. Laura and Tanya’s dumplings are filled with cabbage that has already been shredded and cooked. The last step in making a Vareneky (is Vareneky plural or singular? Ugh, I have been studying Russian and English grammar for too long) is to pinch the dough shut with your fingers. It is very important to seal the dough together, otherwise it will explode when its cooking in the pot.

This is the part that really reminded me of making dumplings with my mom at home. Laura is hard at work, sealing the edges of the vareneky together. We made a lot of Vareneky, enough to feed all of us and quite a few leftover for lunch the next day! The Vareneky was kind of steamed in a pot, over a towel and in some boiling water. This was interesting to me, since at home my mom and I either boil our dumplings or stir-fry them as potstickers.

See, these could totally be mistaken as dumplings! Tanya cooking the vareneky in the pot. Here is our goluptse (on my plate) and the vareneky in the pot, yummy! We taught our first lessons at School #3 this week! It was really exciting to prepare our lesson plans based on the material that the regular teacher was scheduled to cover. I’m sure that the students were all very excited to hear English from native speakers – many of their school resources here are based on British textbooks and CDs. Heather and Jakob taught the 6th and 11th form students. Jakob is presenting some new vocabulary to the 11th form students.

Jakob forgot his tie.

An activity where the students were to each read a sentence from a paragraph, in the correct order. Nathan and I taught about positive and negative sentences to our 11th form students. We set up the chalkboards with some dialogs written on the back of pink wallpaper. Buying wallpaper is cheaper than buying white poster paper to use in the classroom. Us poor Peace Corps Volunteers have to purchase and bring all of our own teaching supplies, but this is standard here since nothing is really provided by the school – the students even have to purchase their own textbooks!

We have brown boards instead of blackboards at our school. We presented some new vocabulary to our 10th form students. It is so strange to think of these everyday words as vocabulary being studied in school. And I promise I wasn’t scary in the classroom, this is me in action… pronouncing the vocabulary words loudly and enunciating clearly for the students.

Try explaining these "surveillance" words in laymens terms to non-native English speakers haha. We also checked out another one of the cafes in our town and actually met a few other Americans that live here in our community. It was fun to hang out together outside of going to school to observe lessons and our Russian language class. I actually practiced my Russian a bit to order food at the cafe and introduce myself as a Peace Corps Volunteer :)

I missed the memo on wearing maroon, whoops. Monica and her host sister Oxana... look at Oxana's fancy chinchilla fur coat! Everyone here likes how Americans smile in pictures. And how we take pictures like Asian tourists. We finished out our week here by visiting a local history musem at our linked cluster's town yesterday... pictures and details to come in next week's post though because I forgot to transfer those photos onto my flash drive, sorry!

To everyone who commented on my last blog post - thanks for the feedback, it is exciting to know that people are actually reading my blog! Its nice to have some contact with the world outside of my little town - I haven't been in contact with like any of the other Peace Corps trainees in other clusters yet, but I've heard that they will be publishing a phone directory soon since we all just bought cell phones here. Sorry my posts are so long, I've taken a ton of photos and I think I will only be posting once or twice a week so the posts are longer than usual. Here are a few more photos from inside my apartment that I live in with my host mom.

Here is our kitchen! Here is the other half of our kitchen, we have a small booth-style table that is like 6 in away from the fridge. Here is our living room! Have I mentioned that my host mom loves growing plants in her spare time? Here is the bathroom. The tub/sink are in a seperate room from the toilet. The toilet looks like a normal toilet, so I won't post a picture of it here. This week, we went to visit the school that we will be teaching at! They are very creative with the names of the schools here... we are working at School #3. There are 3 secondary schools in our town, and you guessed it - the other two are called School #1 and School #2. Here are the 6 of us in the cluster in front of the school.

1st day of school! Our school is a typical secondary school in Ukraine, where they have 2nd form through the 11th form. Each form has about 50 or so children. And I learned that apparently only in America do they use the word "grade", most other places use the word "form". Its strange to think that they have kids from ages 6 to 16 all in the same school. Although the school looks really plain from the outside, the inside lobby of the school is bright and colorful.



And yes, they ride the little bikes here that have tiny wheels.. just like in Beijing! And there is a statue of some famous Ukrainian poet in the lobby as well. At first I thought this might be a statue of one of the old Soviet leaders, but then one of the local teachers told us that it was a famous poet. 

The inscription on the wall is in Ukrainian, not Russian.  Most of the subjects in our school are taught in Russian, though all the kids can speak and understand Ukrainian as well. They actually teach English in all of the forms, so we will have a great opportunity to observe and practice teaching children of all ages. Unlike most of the elementary schools that I have been in, the hallways of the school are bare, but at least here is some of the children's artwork outside the Teacher's Lounge. Fun fact - the designated Teacher's bathroom is an unmarked white door on the first floor, and it is a single unit squat toilet without any toilet paper or soap. I'm having flashbacks of studying abroad in China haha.

Art is the same in any language! On Wednesday, we sat in the back of the room and observed a 5th form English lesson and a 10th form english lesson. The 5th form students were learning the names of different animals, their lesson was very cute and used some interactive computer software that the teacher had projected onto the wall (very impressive technology that I did not expect to see). The 10th form class was definitely more advanced, almost all of their entire lesson was conducted in English with some prompting of the directions in Russian. This is me and my cluster-mates sitting in a classroom, ready to learn how to become teachers :)



These desks were not really meant for anyone over 5 ft tall haha. We also had our first school lunch! They only give the students 15 minutes to eat lunch, so they all just wolf down their food and then run (literally, run down the hallways) back to class. They call their school cafeteria a canteen, which reminded me of the time that I spent last summer at the National University of Singapore :) Here is a photo of lunch from our first day at school, served with juice made from apples - cok (pronounced like sook). The cup of cok was deceptive, I was hoping that it was going to be milktea. I think I've had a cup of tea (or chai, as they call it here) with almost every meal at home.

Lunch was some salty oatmeal, pork cutlets, and tomatoes tossed in some kind of oil. I can't believe we are going to be teaching our first classes next week! I feel like I've just arrived in Ukraine and we're getting put to work already. Oh and fun fact - the central heating doesn't go on in our town until October 15th, so our classroom is quite cold and we all still wear our jackets inside the classroom.



Monica and I are ready to learn! So after just one week in Ukraine, I will be team-teaching two classes next Friday with Nathan, the guy from UGA. Don't worry, we're not going in cold turkey - we've had some techical classes on how to plan and present a lesson. One of the more interesting things that we have learned is that the Ukrainian grading system is on a 12 point scale... and that the 12 point scale does NOT correspond to a 100 point scale. It is illegal to fail a student and the lowest mark given is a 2, 11 points are given to exceptional students and a mark of an 8 equates to about a 85% or something like that. Nathan and I are teaching the 10th and 11th forms (so all the kids will probably be taller than me). Jakob and Heather are teaching the 5th forms, and Monica and Laura are teaching the 6th and 11th forms. We each have to teach 15 lessons by December, so we start out teaching in pairs and then we will eventually be teaching lessons on our own. We will also rotate through different forms, ranging from little elementary-age kids to high schoolers. From what I've heard, that is pretty standard for the secondary school TEFL Peace Corps volunteers.

After school, we did some more exploring around our little town. Here are a few more photos from the adventures of my cluster-mates and I, in no particular order.

Gotta love the statues of Lenin randomly around town. Look, its a store that sells capris! You know how Europeans love rocking capris.

Nathan and I reppin' the A-town by the lake. I taught Laura and Monica how to take photos like this. Jakob's host family saw us take this photo and laughed. Jakob and Nathan on the dilapidated old bridge... they were worried that the old wooden boards would break. They like to recycle old tires by laying them around randomly like this. The playground in front of my building actually has painted tires stuck into the ground as part of the playground. There are a lot of stray dogs in the street, and it is common to see them wrestling like this. One of the other PCV girls actually got bitten by a dog on her way home from school, so she is getting some dog-repellant spray from the PC office. Remember how I posted about turkeys running around last time? Well here is a house that grows chickens in their backyard, I pass this house on my way home from school every day.



What better place to stock up fresh meat for winter than your backyard? So after one week of intensive Russian language learning bootcamp, here is a basic summary of what I can say in Russian:

I am now able to introduce myself and say a few basic greetings in Russian such as good morning/day/night, glad to see you, whats up, etc. I can also say some basic phrases like please, thank you, and excuse me. I can identify myself as a Peace Corps Volunteer from America (state of California, city of San Francisco) and explain that I am a teacher. I can describe my family and ask questions about family members and occupations. I can express a lack of understanding, ask for clarification, and ask for translations in Russian/English. This is especially helpful when I sit down at the dinner table for meals with my host mom and my Russian/English dictionary... I use it to ask her the names of the ingredients in the food dishes and talk about what I learned at school during the day! I can ask what someone likes to do in their free time and what their hobbies are. If you're wondering, I've been saying that my hobbies are swimming, yoga, dancing and studying Russian. I can ask about the price of something at the local Bazaar and understand the prices (unless they speak too fast). I also know how to say the colors and the names for the basic clothing items such as hat, boot, coat, scarf, skirt, etc thanks to Rosetta Stone. I can conjugate basic verbs such as to love, to like, to write, to play, to swim, to speak, to buy (unless its a Friday afternoon and I've mentally clocked out for the day). I've also learned how to tell my host mom when I will be returning home from school. I actually made a weekly calendar in Russian of when I have language class/teaching lessons at school and posted it on the refrigerator... its super cute because I used a pink marker and I write Russian in all caps like a 5-year old haha. Next week's Russian language classes focus on food. The food is organized into different categories like meat, vegetables, dairy products, fruit, desserts and there are a TON of words to learn! I think we are going to cook a Ukrainian meal as part of our class as well, that is really exciting! I need to start taking more pictures of the food that my host mom serves at home.

My first week in Ukraine has been such a whirlwind of new experiences and a lot of moving around. Traveling with a group of 37 poeple who all have 4 (or more) pieces of luggage is crazy! We spent a long time at the airport in line, but it was ok because we all just got to know each other better.

So excited to be traveling to Ukraine! I've been assigned to learn Russian! During our Pre-Service Training retreat, we were all assigned to clusters to be sent out to small towns in the Kyiv Oblast. There are about 6 people in each cluster. One of my cluster-mates, Heather, brought a gorgeous Stradavarius copy! If you aren't familiar with violins, Heather's violin is from 1894 and a copy of some of the original violins produced in the late 1700s but still in great condition.

We flew from Washington DC to Frankfurt, Germany and then to Kyiv, Ukraine! Here is a group of us at the airport in Kyiv. We were all so tired, I didn't really sleep on either of the flights so I ended up staying awake for about 30 hours.

We were all glad to see that they drive on the right side of the road in Ukraine, and that all of the cars look very familiar. In my town, people drive cars that are also seen in the United States such as Toyota, BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, Mitsubishi and I even saw a Chevy! This is the Kyiv airport from my seat on the bus (sorry for the foggy window).

Just another cloudy day in Kyiv! Once we arrived in Kyiv, we drove for 2 hours by bus to our retreat. This is the dorm-style building that we stayed in. This building did not have an elevator and my room was on the 3rd floor... luckily we all left our luggage in a storage room on the 1st floor and just wore some business clothes that we packed in our carry-on bags.

Here are my two roommates for the retreat, Courtney from North Dakota and Ashley from Chicago. Sorry about the mess, we kind of just got into our rooms and dumped everything onto the floor. Our room was super cute, I had a sweet leopard print bedspread hiding underneath that top blanket :)

We had our first taste of Ukrainian food at the retreat! I forgot to bring my camera to dinner so here is a picture of our breakfast. Dinner was soup, bread, and some fresh tomatoes and cucumbers. Breakfast had a fluffy (and delicious) egg casserole, along with tea and oatmeal.

Yay for my first Ukrainian food :) I made a ton of friends during the first few days as a Peace Corps Trainee, it was so sad to see everyone split up and head off to different towns for Training. My group is mostly in the Kyiv reigon, I am in a small town about an hour south of Kyiv. Here are a few of the girls from my group 40 1/2.

And of course I had to take a picture with the other Asians in our group, this is Warren from Oklahoma and Johnathan from Alpharetta (he actually went to Emory, small world!).

Say... Peace for Peace Corps! We have 3 redheads in our group! Here is Nitai from California (he actually went to S.F. State, another example of small world), Adam and Ryan!

And OMG there are turkeys and chickens running around everywhere in Ukraine! Except I dont think that they are wild here, I'm pretty sure they are some family's future dinner... Here are the turkeys that I saw at the PST retreat. These two weren't even scared when I walked up close to take this photo.

Good thing that Thanksgiving is only an American holiday... The drive to my town was a lot of countryside that reminded me of the Midwestern United States. We did pass this river, and I tried to ask if people swim in it or if they have like open-water style races in it and the local Ukrainian Peace Corps people just laughed at me. Apparently it is too cold and the water isn't clean enough to really swim in, though there is some holiday in January when everyone jumps into the freezing water (to signify something that I didn't quite catch).

We passed a few monuments like this one, with a giant tank and kids playing on it or around it.

I was so excited to meet my host family! I live with Sveta, my host mom, on the third floor of this apartment building, we are fortunate enough to have indoor plumbing (with hot water) and central heating. Its already about 40 degrees in Ukraine, thats freezing by my standards! Our building is a small community in itself, complete with a playground and dogs running around outside.

 They have swings and some pullup bars, maybe I can work on my pullups! I have my own room in the apartment, with about a full-sized bed (two twins pushed together). My host mom really likes to grow indoor plants, I've got a bunch of them on my windowsill behind the curtain. She even has a few small cacti and a spider plant! By the way, I don't have internet access at home, so I'm updating from a public internet cafe. Here is my room.

 I also have a duck stuffed animal, compliments of my host mom :) Half of my cluster-mates arrived a week before us in group 40. I've somehow been stuck into an advanced Russian group, for most of my group has studied Russian previously in college (and two of them were linguistics majors!). Here is a photo of the other 5 people in my cluster. Nathan is from Atlanta (he went to UGA, to HELL with Georgia!), Laura from Pennsylvania (she studied abroad in Slovakia), Jakob from Indianopolis, Monica from south Florida, and Heather from Indianopolis (she was a French major and also studied Arabic abroad in Morocco).

I love my cluster-mates! We went exploring around our little town to try to get accustomed to our surroundings and began integrating into our community. I've been practicing introducing myself in Russian and explaining that I am a Peace Corps Volunteer. Here is Heather and I at the local community church.

I am not sure what denomination this church is, perhaps Eastern Orthodox? Laura found a Cadillac that looks straight out of downtown Atlanta. I love it.

If only it was for sale. My cluster-mates and I gathered with our host families to have lunch after class on Saturday. During class, I learned that it is very impolite to throw away bread at any time, for bread (and grains) are like the staple of the Ukrainian culture. The gold in the Ukrainian flag apparently symbolizes grains. We ate outside in a covered tent in Jakob's host family's back yard.

Jakob's family actually lives on a farm, and they grow all sorts of fruits and vegetables. This is the side of their storage shed in their backyard, not the parts of the house that the live in. I think they also have an outhouse instead of indoor plumbing... bring your own toilet paper! I did not get the chance to go inside their house, but Jakob is about 6'2" and says he has to duck inside the house sometimes.

Here is a photo of their grapevines that line the awnings in the backyard. It was really cool to be able to reach up and pick our own grapes to take home. These grapes were delicious!

We went to a local flower shop to buy some flowers for our language teacher, since it was National Teacher Day in Ukraine on Sunday! There are many flower shops in our town, and many people grow beautiful flower gardens.

I love Babushkas and their scarves. There is a big lake in my town, and we went exploring around the old abandoned building near the lake. It looks almost like a guard tower, but its really run down and unfortunately it is covered with graffiti (and littered with a lot of trash).

Yes, that water is actually green... I am not sure if that is considered normal here? The run-down buildings by the lake almost look like a castle, its such a shame that they have become run-down. I wonder what they used to be used for... maybe I can ask some locals once my Russian gets better. We walked by this very colorful house on the way to the Bazaar... definitely Ukrainian!

Oo-rah, oo-rah, oo-rah! And yes, I totally bought some black leather boots at the local Bazaar! I went shopping with my host mom and she helped me find a decent pair of boots. The Bazaar is crazy, its like Chinatown or like the street markets in China except everyone speaks Russian and they don't try to hawk or grab foreigners (like me!). My boots kind of look like riding boots and they are fur-lined all the way down to the toes... I'm not sure if they are waterproof but hopefully they will keep my feet cozy during the winter! This picture is from the run-down buildings by the lake, I got too excited and distracted about sharing my experiences from the Bazaar and posted it out of order.

My time in the internet cafe is almost up, so thats it for now! Thanks for reading such a long post, I love blogging :)

I arrived in Washington DC last night for Staging, after a whole day of traveling from California. I started out the day by waking up at 5:30am to head to the airport, then stood in line for almost an hour to check in my bags. But the line was worth the wait, for the United Airlines ticketing agent actually didn't even weigh my bags or charge me to check them (which was awesome because it saved me $60). There was a surprising large number of people at the airport for so early on a Monday morning, and I got to my gate just 10 minutes before boarding began. I've never cut it that close to a flight, and that was pretty stressful, but I made my flight and thats what counts! The middle seat, on the other hand, is another story.... but I managed to sleep most of the time and neither person sitting next to me was super overwhelmingly chatty so it actually wasn't that bad after all.

I love traveling across the country! I flew from San Francisco to Chicago, and met up with another Peace Corps Volunteer named Nicole. Nicole flew to Chicago from Missouri and we actually lucked out and had seat next to each other on the flight to DC, which was awesome because then we just chatted and got to know each other the whole time. I've never been to Washington DC before, so flying in was a cool experience... you can see all of the famous national monuments like the Capitol building and the Washington Monument from the air! My friend Stephanie picked us up in DC and after touring around the city for a bit, we made it to our hotel near Georgetown. Stephanie unashamedly took this photo by sticking her hand out of the car window at a stoplight (while it was red of course), like a true tourist.

The Washington Monument! Nicole, Stephanie and I met the other few PCVs that had flown into DC that night. Staging was actually today, but everyone coming from the west coast like California got to fly in a day early since it takes like a whole day to travel to the east coast (with the 3 hour time change and whatnot). Then we went out to dinner at a little restaurant downtown that served Spanish-style tapas. Here is our group from dinner!

Thanks to Nitai for the photo :) I ordered way too much food (as usual), but it was delicious! I got some bruschetta-style bread with tomatoes and proscuitto, fried calamari and aioli sauce, and some papas fritas (spicy fried potatoes).

So many noms. Staging was a really interesting experience, I got to meet the rest of my group that had been delayed due to visa/passport processing. There are 37 people headed to Ukraine with me tomorrow! We went over a lot of the Peace Corps' Core Expectations and some more country-specific information about Ukraine. We received information like what to expect from our host families and the language learning program in Ukraine. I am not sure if I will be learning Russian or Ukrainian yet, but I will find out really soon once I get to Ukraine.I learned lots of cool facts like how Ukraine is currently the largest country of service for the Peace Corps, with over 350 volunteers currently serving there in Education, Health Extension, and Youth/Community Development. Our Staging Director also pointed out that we will be in Ukraine for the 50th Anniversary of the Peace Corps, since the Peace Corps was started in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy (JFK).

President JFK with a group of the first PCVs in 1961. Image courtesy of The National Archives. We also discussed some logistics of traveling - I'm going to be one of the six "Group Leaders" to help ease the process of traveling to the airport on two charter buses, checking in at the gate, passing out everyone's plane ticket stubs and passports, and keeping track of all our luggage for all 37 people. I love logistics (the link is included for those of you who may not be familiar with the term logistics, I certainly had no idea what it was until I switched my major to Industrial Engineering). This may not be an example of traditional Industrial Engineering logistics of transportation and distribution, but traveling with large groups of people like this certainly takes some logistical organization. Whoops, I got off on a nerdy tangent since I love stuff like improving efficiency, reducing travel time and logistics.

Tomorrow is going to be a super hectic day! We are all checking out of the hotel around 12noon (I'm going to check out a little early to try to avoid the bottleneck there) and flying to Frankfurt, Germany then to Kyiv, Ukraine. So this is my last post from American soil for a while, and my next post will mark the beginning of my adventures in Ukraine : ) All of us PCVs are really excited about flying halfway across the world to start our journey in Ukraine!

I originally thought last weekend was going to be my last weekend here in the Bay area, but plans changed and as it turns out, this is my last weekend at home. My family and I drove 2 hours to Lake Folsom, where my sister raced in an open water 5k. I used to love racing in open water events, though I'm not quite sure why... the water is cold, there are no flipturns, you get awful tanlines, and people kick and scratch you to try to break into the leader's pack. Maybe its just because I was a distance swimmer.

All the swimmers lined up between the starting buoys at Lake Folsom today. It cracks me up that Masters swimmers wear their BlueSeventy racing suits to open water swims, I guess they are afraid of the cold? The officials said that the lake was about 67 degrees today, compared to a normal pool racing temperature of 78 degrees. But it was like 90 degrees outside in the sun, so that should have warmed up the swimmers a bit. Or maybe the Masters swimmers were just trying to get that extra edge with the seamless technical suits...

Those BlueSeventy suits are pretty expensive to be splashing around a lake in! A few years ago, I placed 3rd at the Clemson Grand Prix Open Water event with at time of 1:00 (1 hour and some seconds that I've since forgotten) but only the top 2 finishers from each Grand Prix event qualified for the USA Swimming National Open water meet.

This is from the Clemson race in 2008. Note to self - lake water also turns swimsuit straps brown. My sister won the 5k today, finishing first on the women's side with a time of 1:02... and she's only 15! So she still has plenty of time to beat my best 5k time, what a baller :) Here she is running up to the finish line.

Theres nothing quite like running uphill for 25 yards when you've just been swimming all out for an hour. While my sister was racing for an hour, I walked around the lake and snapped a few photos. The shoreline was rocky but really calm. Its probably rocky since its a man-made lake, there was a huge dam in the distance.

Definitely no lifeguard on duty. The lake's shoreline reminded me of this Amazon Kindle tv commercial where the girl sits on a rock and reads her Kindle by the water. If I had a Kindle, maybe I would have just chilled on a rock and read books on it too. The new Kindle looks nice, and they've knocked the price down to just $139. However, I don't really have time to read a lot of books, so I didn't invest in a Kindle... so I just played with the 10-second timer on my camera instead. I've heard a lot of the Peace Corps Volunteers have them and absolutely love them though, they're probably way more convenient than reading actual paperback books while overseas.

Yes, I know jump pictures are so High School Musical. But not bad for the 10-second timer, eh? And here is another shot, I managed to get like 5 of these in a row where I'm still on the ground (and not jumping in the air). Oh well, this one turned out good enough and I just look really excited to be on a beach.

Thats right, I wear my Chacos on the beach. Especially when the beach is more rocky than sandy. These extra few days at home have also given me some extra time to re-pack my suitcases. I updated my Packing List and adjusted some quantities of the clothes and items that I'm bringing to Ukraine. I took out some stuff like a pair of jeans, 2 workout tshirts and 2 dresses. I hate having to leave these clothes behind at home, but I know I'll definitely want to shop and pick up more clothes when I get to Ukraine. And I added some things that I had forgotten about packing, like my regular Nalgene waterbottle and a few more pairs of fluffy socks. I also crammed some little things like my deck of UNO cards, my 2 photo albums and my non-graphic calculator (don't judge, I am a true math nerd at heart) with the rest of my school supplies into my GT Speedo swim backpack for my carryon. My backpack is going to be ridiculously heavy to lug around the airport, especially with my huge laptop, but thats better than having to pay for overweight baggage fees.

I finally got both of the suitcases down to 48 lbs, which makes me feel so accomplished! I think I am set and ready to go for Monday morning, when I fly to DC to meet up with the rest of my Peace Corps group 40 1/2 : )

As you may know, the national language of Ukraine is actually Ukrainian. Russian was the official language for over a century, many Ukrainians still speak Russian, especially the older generation and the major cities such as Kyiv. Since Ukraine gained its independence in 1992, Ukrainian has been promoted as the national language across the country.

Ukraine's Independence day is on August 24th. Every Peace Corps Volunteer serving in Ukraine will either be assigned to learn Russian or Ukrainian during Training. If you have prior Russian language experience, it is most likely that you will be assigned to learn Russian. I have no prior Russian language experience, so I picked up a copy of Rosetta Stone in Russian (a Ukrainian version is not available yet). I've been trying to learn some basic conversational Russian from Rosetta Stone, and so far I've just finished Unit 2, lesson 2 of level 1. I've learned a lot of basic household nouns like random foods and a smattering of other random things that might be useful like the numbers 0-12, the colors, and some family words (parents, mother, father, daughter, sister, brother, etc). Once I get to Ukraine next week, there will be an informal language interview that determines whether I am placed in a Russian or Ukrainian language learning group.

In response to Bianca's blog challenge to me earlier this week, I've come up with a list of 7 Russian words that are fun to roll off your tongue. If you are a student of Russian or a native speaker, please pardon my creative transliterations (I was never any good at pingyin). Here they are the 7 words, in no particular order:

бутерброд (boot-ter-brod): sandwich Rolling the double r's in this word was like a tongue twister when I first learned it, especially since I'm not great at rolling my r's (3 years of Spanish classes didn't help much with that).

хлеб (huleb): bread This word is interesting because I've found that you have to say it really quickly, otherwise Rosetta Stone gives you the voice recognition fail noise. And for some reason, it reminds me of saying the word tulip.

яблока (ya-bla-ka): apple Say it three times fast - yablaka, yablaka, yablaka! It just sounds so playful. This word is very similar to the Russian word for dog - собака (sabaka).

велосипед (vil-lo-sih-pee-ed): bicycle This word probably has the most syllables of all the Russian words that I've learned so far... and I think it took me a few days before I could say it confidently enough to pass the Rosetta Stone voice recognition thing for this word.

рыба (riba): fish I've found that words that begin with the rolled r sound are easier for me to pronounce if I add a little ah sound before the r, thus this word becomes arriba! And Rosetta Stone's voice recognition seems to find that pronunciation of fish just fine :P

шляпа (schleppa): a fedora-style hat I just like saying this word... and don't really have a good reason why. Schleppa!

их (ni-gh): their This word is hard to transliterate, it basically sounds like "ni" with a little bit of an h sound added to the end to make it sound more guttural. I like saying this word because it reminds me of the Knights of Neep, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

With all the random words in my Russian vocabulary, I'm still working on how to put these nouns and things together in complete sentences and still struggling with the pronunciation on some of the words. Good thing I have a few extra days to practice before I'm totally immersed in the language in Ukraine!

I got home this afternoon from the North Face Outlet store in Berkley, and saw that I had a new email from the Peace Corps Ukraine people in my inbox. The North Face's "sample sale" was absoutely out of control, worse than a Labor Day sidewalk sale at an outlet mall. And everything was in size Medium, so I didn't end up getting anything except for a blue/teal beanie for $5. Plus I didn't see anything that I really needed, so I just bought the hat on a whim (still waiting until I get to Ukraine to find the furry Russian hat and winter boots). And its not like I should be trying to pack more things into my luggage since they're both like right at 50 lbs.

I'm going to need a hat like this to survive a -30 degree winter... Anyways, guess what? My fears have been confirmed... my Staging date has been changed to September 28th, due to delays in processing my passport and visa. Good thing I checked my email and was able to call the travel agency before they closed at 5pm on the east coast.... otherwise I might have gotten on my flight to DC tomorrow morning!

Everybody loves lolcats... see the original image here. "Rest assured that the delay in processing your passport and visa does not imply that you are at fault, nor will it affect your ability to serve in Ukraine... The list of invitees that are experiencing delays do not follow a logical pattern of invitation date, last name, etc." - Lenny Bankester, Peace Corps Ukraine

So I had to call the travel agency and reschedule my flight to DC for Monday morning, instead of tomorrow morning... what a nightmare. The first travel agent that answered the phone had like no clue what I was talking about, since they apparently hadn't been notified of the date change. But the second one did, and he was able to help me switch my flights successfully (though he booked me in middle seat for SFO to Chicago O'Hare, which does not make me happy).

This departure date change just serves to remind me that with the Peace Corps, things may not always go as planned and you just have to take what life throws at you and roll with it! I'm still super excited to be this close to leaving for Ukraine. Apparently delays like this are not that uncommon, since it happened to last week's Ukraine group as well. They just took advantage of the extra few days to go sightseeing in DC and dubbed themselves Group 39 1/2, according to my fellow PCV Tammela Platt. So I guess that means I'm now part of Group 40 1/2, and now I have another weekend in the Bay area!

In other news, my friend Becca at nostalgi'art presented me with one of her blog awards! Many thanks, I am excited that other people actually read my blog...



According to the rules, I have to:

1. Accept the award. Post it on your blog with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.

2. Pay it forward to 10 other bloggers that you have newly discovered.

3. Contact those blog owners and let them know they've been chosen.

Here are the 10 bloggers whom I've recently discovered and decided to nominate for this award!

Awkward Sex and the City Bianca and the B-Sides Crazy with a side of Awesome Sauce Fool.in.the.Rain* I Crane, Ukraine, We all Crane for Ukraine Intimate ramblings of a girl with a multitude of disguises Notes from a Lab Princess Red Means Go! Sandy and the 1000 Paper Cranes We hate you. Love, us Congratulations! Your blogs will certainly keep me entertained when I move to Ukraine :)

To follow the rest of the wild turkey family to the other side! This is crazy, there is a family of like 10 wild turkeys that randomly wander around my neighborhood. This should not be normal, considering that I definitely live in a suburb and nowhere near any turkey (or chicken) farms haha. The car in front of me stopped suddenly and started honking to get the turkeys out of the way, and luckily I had my camera in the front seat next to me to snap this photo of the turkeys!

Mom, dad... wait up for us! We're still in the middle of the road! I had a great last weekend here in the Bay area! I went downtown to a couple places on Polk Street and met up with Saethang and Priya, a few of my friends from Georgia Tech that were here visiting family for the weekend.

We represent the diversity of Georgia Tech really well :) My friend Samantha is actually going to law school at UC Hastings. UC Hastings is in downtown San Francisco and pretty close to the Union Square area.

Me and Samantha. And then my friend Kseniya invited me to attend her going-away-party! Her family is awesome, they are from Latvia and they all speak Russian. Kseniya is another Peace Corps Volunteer heading to Ukraine with me. We are actually on the same exact flight to Staging, flying out from the San Francisco airport ridiculously early this Thursday. Her parents decorated their back yard in yellow and blue (the colors of the Ukrainian flag) and made tons of Russian food.

The two vegetable dishes were delicious with string beans and eggplant. And the pierogie things were also great, they came with a cabbage/mushroom filling and a pork filling. I kind of already forgot what the names of all the foods were in Russian... mostly because I would just point at it and say, "что это?" (schtoy etta), to ask what is that? So much for learning useful Russian nouns from Rosetta Stone, it doesn't help if I can't string together phrases in Russian.

The garden salad came from Kseniya's backyard and the purple dish has 3 layers of fish on the bottom, then beets, then hard-boiled eggs and pomegranate seeds. So I'm wondering how similar Ukrainian food will be to Russian food. And I've heard a lot of dishes have mayonnaise, which is one of my least favorite foods (along with peanut butter, curry, and soymilk). I guess I have 2 years and 3 months to find out what the food is like over there.... so stay posted!



Kseniya's бабушка (babushka, or grandma in Russian) was super nice, I sat next to her at lunch to practice some of my Russian words and so she could practice some of her English words : ) And then she had me try on her traditional red scarf-thing. I'm sure this has a proper name in Russian and translated into English, but I've yet to learn it so I'll just stick with scarf-thing for now. Which reminds me, I can't wait to buy a Russian furry hat with ear flaps for the winter! I hope they are cheap in the Ukrainian bazaars!

Kseniya, me and Babushka. I hope my Ukrainian host family is as nice and welcoming as Kseniya's family! I can't wait to meet them when I get to Ukraine on Saturday! Only 3 more days at home until I leave for Staging in DC!

I forwarded the press release from the Peace Corps San Francisco newsletter to the Georgia Tech sports information office, and they released a short article about it on the Sting News today!

And I'm having a winter boot crisis! My North Face Nuptse snow boots are apparently out of stock, so they canceled the order that I placed online and did not notify me... good thing I inquired about the order. The bad news is that now its too late to order another pair of boots online (like the Merrell Spire Peak waterproof boots I originally wanted). Plus those Merrell boots are expensive!

So I called REI, Any Mountain, Sports Authority and the North Face outlet store downtown by Berkley and they don't have any winter boots in stock yet either... I guess I will be buying my winter boots in Ukraine! I really wanted to just bring some from home (so I'd be guaranteed of their quality in the the -30 degree winter, plus that way my mom could pay for them). But I've heard that they sell lots of boots there in Ukraine, and Sasha (my peer advisor) said that she bought a nice pair of fur-lined winter boots there for about $80 USD. I've heard mixed things about whether I should bring rain boots or not, so I think I will just pack my rain boots in my luggage - they will use the space that was previously allotted to my winter boots.

I spent the day running around, trying to take care of a bunch of stuff before I leave for Ukraine. Its scary to think that I'm actually moving my life from here in the United States to way over there! Taking care of these seemingly everyday things like my bank account and phone just makes it seem more real that I'm leaving... It hasn't really sunk in yet, but I'm leaving for Staging in a week!

I've been trying to close my Wachovia bank account every day this week. I was actually told over the phone by a customer representative that I could not simply just transfer the funds in my account to my Wells Fargo account, they recommended that I just withdraw all the funds and deposit it into my Wells Fargo account then call them back again and try to close my account. Thats what I was hoping that they could do with a few clicks of the mouse! This bank is ridiculous. Ever since it merged with Wells Fargo, the people at the local Wells Fargo here in California cannot access my Wachovia account - simply for the fact that it has not yet been "converted" over to Wells Fargo. Apparently they started "converting" accounts in California and are gradually working their way to the east coast, but I opened my Wachovia account in North Carolina so mine won't be "converted" until December 2011 or something equally ridiculous.

I also suspended my Verizon cell phone and cell phone number today. Call me selfish, but I've had the same cell phone number for 6 years (while I've lived in 4 different states). So I really want to keep my same old number. Luckily, Verizon allowed me to just suspend it for free under their military suspension policy. The down side to this is that I have to give up using my beloved blackberry and revert back to using the ghetto old Motorola RAZR. The up side to this is that it will mentally prepare me for using the even more old school Nokia phone (no color screen) while I'm in Ukraine.

Side note~ I can't believe such a similar Nokia phone is listed on Amazon, the online reviews of it said it was only sold in developing countries... which means I guess Singapore is a developing country? They also sold the same exact phone in China for about the same price that I bought it for in Singapore.

At least the pink case makes the old school Nokia phone look cute next to my Blackberry. I called United Airlines today to try to see if I could weasel my way into qualifying for the checked baggage fee waiver that they give to active military personnel.That didn't go very well, the representative that I spoke to over the phone flat out told me that the Peace Corps did not qualify and that my best bet would be to email their Customer Relations department and explain my situation. Plus I'm only flying United to DC for Staging, I've heard we are on Lufthansa for the flight overseas to Ukraine (meaning I don't qualify for their "international continuance" baggage policy). So this guy made it sound like it would be highly unlikely for them to grant me the fee waiver. Other PCVs in my group have also been trying to get the fee waivers with other airlines, but I don't think anyone has been successful yet. Maybe I'll just bring my official Invitation letter and some other official-looking documents to the airport with me and plead with the agents at the check-in counter at 5:30am to give me a fee waiver.

Here is something more exciting for you: I'm featured in the September issue of the Peace Corps San Francisco regional newsletter! Hooray for being a minority PCV and representing diversity.

Check out the original article here. And just to remind you that Americans are the only ones that don't use the metric system, here is a fun comic from xkcd.com :) I'll have to get used to measuring things in meters, grams, and liters... so maybe my 2 calculators will come in handy after all!

I love xkcd comics about life, love and nerdy math jokes. The original comic can be found here .