So last Thursday my grandfather died. He had a fatal case of pneumonia and was on a ventilator. Coming off the ventilator was his idea and he knew I loved him as he was dying. Know that it's hard to grieve thousands of miles away and I pray that none of you find yourself in the position to grieve away from those you love. But my group is supporting me immensely and it has been great to be able to talk to my family over the phone at least. But I'm really doing fine and as for me, it couldn't have come at a better time. I was told just hours after finishing my final test for training, a 25 minute conversation with a Russian instructor I had never met to determine my "official" language ability. I was at a beautiful lake with a beach when Mom called. It really was about as perfect as it could be, and I have a couple days' break to work through it. The funeral is today.
So I'm done with training and am spending my last few days at my training site. I will go to Kiev Monday for the Swearing In Conference. On Monday I will find out where I will serve for the next two years. Also at the conference I will meet my counterpart and do some final training activities. It's a time of celebration, anxiety, excitement, and nervousness. I will update as soon as I can about where I will be going.
Peace,
Ben
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Back to Life
So I’m finally back to being human. Much better than the last post, and much better thanks to the support from everyone back stateside over the last couple weeks. I’ve been run ragged planning a summer camp and a community project, and then conducting each. But that’s all over and put to bed and I’m better for it. So what’s to be expected now is a huge rush to the end of training which will be mostly language focused, and then going to site with absolutely nothing to do. It’s scary and relieving all at the same time. It will be nice to relax, but I’m not sure what I will do with myself. Since training began I’ve already cleaned up all the files on my computer, reorganized my itunes, read 6 books, and reorganized my room countless times. And that’s with all that’s been going on. So my first care package needs to be a ton of books and movies, and a bike if you can fit it in.
Our camp was leadership based with some gender issues thrown in. I planned and taught a lesson about leadership qualities and spheres, with an emphasis on students recognizing their own leadership roles. I also planned a ton of games and led the games for one of the three days of camp. The games were awesome since they had never played anything we taught them so they loved all our games, almost to the point of annoyance since they kept begging for the same games over and over. All we had to do was think back to every camp we’d ever been to and take our pick. We had a sixth grade class of about 20 students and had the camp at the school. It was really a lot of fun as I hope the pictures will show.
The community project coincided with the June 1st holiday of the Protection of Children’s Rights. There was a county wide celebration in my city and my cluster set up a game area outside the concert hall for kids to play our games, get their faces painted, and make friendship bracelets. We couldn’t get the kids to go home for wanting their faces painted, and it didn’t take long for us to run out of water balloons. Hopefully no parents are mad at us for sending kids home wet. The plans for the day were a mess as the festival was meant to take place at the stadium. It got moved the day of to the House of Culture. Our part was supposed to happen from 9-11:30am and then we would go to the concert. But we found out around noon that the concert started at 10am. This was all summed up perfectly when one of our Ukrainian counterparts shrugged and said to me “This is Ukraine.” But we were super flexible and managed to accomplish everything we set out to do, though none of it looked how we expected it to look.
I’ll leave you with a story that has entertained most of my training group Ukraine wide. So one night I get up around midnight to leave my room to go to the bathroom. I try to open my sliding door but it only opens maybe 6 in. I’m perplexed as I really have to go, but cannot get the door to budge. I try to look outside my room to see what’s wrong but can’t get my head out. I take my camera and stick it out the door and take a picture. What had happened was my little host nephew’s toy dumptruck had fallen behind my door after I closed it, and was blocking the door from opening. No problem I think to myself and attempt to just force the door open. No luck. The truck was sitting on a piece of carpet so I try to reach out and pull it out with the carpet. No luck. After 30 minutes of attempting to get out of my room, I finally made enough noise to wake my host mother. She comes to find the carpet all messed up, me with an arm and a leg sticking out the door, my body wedged in the little opening. She looked at me like I was insane, then finally saw the truck wedged behind the door. She bout died laughing and freed me from my cell. The next morning my mom made me show my host dad how I had been barricaded in my room, and he bout died laughing. So it’s been a nice running joke around my cluster, and now the whole training group has been told I believe. The solution to the problem: my host dad stacked two trucks and tied them together so the one on top wouldn’t roll behind the door again. Didn’t seem to cross his mind there might be a better place for the trucks. Check out my pictures. I have pictures to prove it!
Well, it’s all down hill from here. I’ve got a major language exam next week, but all that matters is I pass it, and I feel good about my abilities. And it’s not like I have to worry about studying, since I speak Russian all day anyways. I can’t believe I’ve made it this far, but I’ve got a very far ways to go.
Our camp was leadership based with some gender issues thrown in. I planned and taught a lesson about leadership qualities and spheres, with an emphasis on students recognizing their own leadership roles. I also planned a ton of games and led the games for one of the three days of camp. The games were awesome since they had never played anything we taught them so they loved all our games, almost to the point of annoyance since they kept begging for the same games over and over. All we had to do was think back to every camp we’d ever been to and take our pick. We had a sixth grade class of about 20 students and had the camp at the school. It was really a lot of fun as I hope the pictures will show.
The community project coincided with the June 1st holiday of the Protection of Children’s Rights. There was a county wide celebration in my city and my cluster set up a game area outside the concert hall for kids to play our games, get their faces painted, and make friendship bracelets. We couldn’t get the kids to go home for wanting their faces painted, and it didn’t take long for us to run out of water balloons. Hopefully no parents are mad at us for sending kids home wet. The plans for the day were a mess as the festival was meant to take place at the stadium. It got moved the day of to the House of Culture. Our part was supposed to happen from 9-11:30am and then we would go to the concert. But we found out around noon that the concert started at 10am. This was all summed up perfectly when one of our Ukrainian counterparts shrugged and said to me “This is Ukraine.” But we were super flexible and managed to accomplish everything we set out to do, though none of it looked how we expected it to look.
I’ll leave you with a story that has entertained most of my training group Ukraine wide. So one night I get up around midnight to leave my room to go to the bathroom. I try to open my sliding door but it only opens maybe 6 in. I’m perplexed as I really have to go, but cannot get the door to budge. I try to look outside my room to see what’s wrong but can’t get my head out. I take my camera and stick it out the door and take a picture. What had happened was my little host nephew’s toy dumptruck had fallen behind my door after I closed it, and was blocking the door from opening. No problem I think to myself and attempt to just force the door open. No luck. The truck was sitting on a piece of carpet so I try to reach out and pull it out with the carpet. No luck. After 30 minutes of attempting to get out of my room, I finally made enough noise to wake my host mother. She comes to find the carpet all messed up, me with an arm and a leg sticking out the door, my body wedged in the little opening. She looked at me like I was insane, then finally saw the truck wedged behind the door. She bout died laughing and freed me from my cell. The next morning my mom made me show my host dad how I had been barricaded in my room, and he bout died laughing. So it’s been a nice running joke around my cluster, and now the whole training group has been told I believe. The solution to the problem: my host dad stacked two trucks and tied them together so the one on top wouldn’t roll behind the door again. Didn’t seem to cross his mind there might be a better place for the trucks. Check out my pictures. I have pictures to prove it!
Well, it’s all down hill from here. I’ve got a major language exam next week, but all that matters is I pass it, and I feel good about my abilities. And it’s not like I have to worry about studying, since I speak Russian all day anyways. I can’t believe I’ve made it this far, but I’ve got a very far ways to go.
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