The Beginning of the End of the Beginning

So I’m needing a little confirmation that somebody is reading my blog. Please comment. Let me know you’re there. I’m feeling cut off from the world I once knew. And whatever you do, avoid Facebook since the internet’s so slow I can’t even post on walls. Email updates on what’s going on back home are amazing.

They say we will go through mood swings throughout training and the rest of service. Well, the confidence I was exuding a couple of weeks ago has taken a solid hit and sent me back down in the trenches.

Being sick was tough, but as I fought off my cold’s lingering hold, I received word that my grandfather was deathly sick with pneumonia, and it didn’t look good. My one major fear of leaving home for two years faced immanent realization. And though I hadn’t felt homesick for quite some time, I was pulled back into the misery of missing everything I left behind. And I’m not sure how, but all this served to weaken me so my confidence could be exposed and attacked. So now I feel as if my Russian will never be good enough, which won’t matter anyway since everyone seems to speak Ukrainian here, and my looming responsibilities at site seem impossibly challenging. Where I once felt comfortable I now feel like a stranger, unwelcome and unwanted.

Honestly this is all in my head, but training is so competitive we don’t exactly encourage each other all the time. And my pride keeps me from seeking solace from my competitors as it might reveal a crack in my armor. Staff from the office even gave us a speech about how if we were even thinking about quitting we should do it sooner than later. Don’t get me wrong. I’m nowhere near ready to give up. I’m just insecure, and a little lonely. And it’s not like I have any time to sit and reflect on any one success since now that I’m done teaching, my group has to plan an extracurricular activity we just found out about, a community project, and a three day summer camp for 6th graders, diaper deal to those of you who know what I’m talking about. And all this is due in a week as our project is on June 1st, and our camp starts on the 3rd.

Well, my grandfather is breathing on his own off the ventilator, the last lesson I taught was a resounding success all things considered, I only cough in the mornings now, I had a successful conversation with my host father without having to punt to my English speaking host sister or give up entirely, and I’m in Kiev. There are three weeks to go and the intense part will be over. I will graduate my cultural boot camp, be sworn in, and be blissfully sent to the middle of nowhere Ukraine all alone, an independent, functioning volunteer with a job to do. They said we would have mood swings. But they also said they would get shorter. I think I’m heading back up into no-man’s land.