Calm before the storm, hopefully, I really want a storm

Alright, here’s the quick lowdown on what’s been up since I finished camp. I came back from camp totally wiped. I slept for pretty much two days, and then did my best not to do anything for the next week so I could get over what at that point was a two week long cold that was getting worse. Of course, I tried to do nothing, but my counterpart had other ideas. She wants me to make ‘friends’, so I got a text on the first full day I was home telling me one of her teacher friends was waiting for me so we could go for a walk. Well, realizing my need for friends I complied and went to meet a rather attractive girl from Russia who’s my age. We had a good walk and she showed me pictures on her camera of the runway modeling gig she had in Norway. Then she invited me to the salt lakes with her the next week. So we went and had a really nice time, despite the awkward language barrier. It was shaping up to be a good ‘friendship’ but she was only in town for a couple of weeks before she headed off to Crimea, then on to Russia where she lives with polar bears. The day she left, and only when asked who she was traveling with, she informed me she had a boyfriend.

The next week I went back to my stomping grounds of Svatagorsk and observed a Peace Corps run camp. It was run solely by volunteers on the theme of HIV/AIDS prevention. It felt good to be back where I had spent the last three weeks. Despite the exhaustion and sickness, I have tons of great memories of that city. Got to meet several volunteers and actually speak English with Americans, which was amazing. I felt a little awkward not having any official role at the camp so I did my best to find odd jobs.

Left the camp early because it was made aware to me that I had been given a ‘study’ at my school and it needed to be cleaned before Monday, when the state was to come and inspect our school. I was a little nervous since I’d heard teachers refer to their classrooms as studies, which made me think I might have to prepare an entire classroom before Monday. Turned out just to be a small office with a desk and a couple of closets. Awesome! This means I have a place to go prepare lessons, somewhere to keep my bike, a place to change clothes after riding to school, and a place to invite teachers to have tea. I really am lucky to have an office.

Since my ‘study’ preparation only took an hour, I was free to go to Kiev that weekend and meet up with my cluster from training. We rented an apartment and just chilled for Saturday and Sunday. It was great seeing them again and getting to speak more English with natives. We spent Saturday evening just people-watching on the main boulevard soaking in the last bits of summer. It was so relaxing. I also loaded up on some souvenirs for my family and got some more movies, music, and shows on my hard drive.

Came back home and started trying to get the last few settling in tasks accomplished. Managed to get a usb modem with internet service from a mobile carrier. So I pretty much spent the next few days updating everything on my computer, reconnecting with as many people as possible and catching up on the news. I got all this set up through a friend, Anna, I had met at one of the graduations I went to earlier. She and her husband, Maxim, are pretty health conscious and like to run, so Maxim showed me a good quiet track they typically run on. It felt good to get back to exercising, and we’re going to try to run twice a week from now on. Maxim was heading to Donetsk on business on Tuesday so he invited me to go with him so I could shop for bike parts. We were successful and I got my first taste of Donetsk, a perfectly sized city that is the center of the region I live in.

The next day I went back to Donetsk to meet with a couple of volunteers I had met at the camp the week before. Went shopping and found some deals on a basketball and shoes, got a webcam, and found the freewheel which I was wanting for my bike.

I spent the next weekend working on my bike. Seriously, I spent almost every hour of daylight working on my bike or being entertained by the people gracious enough to let me use their tools. It was as if their fee for their time and tools was for me to come have lunch or supper and do them the honor of visiting. It really almost made me feel guilty. But Ukrainians always put you in a position to be nothing but rude if you refuse. They’re crafty these people.

After getting my bike in order, skype set up, a new toilet seat, reminding myself I’m American, getting my phone to actually connect to my computer, eating the box of oreos and cooking with the Italian dressing my nana sent, and thoroughly cleaning my bathroom, I felt accomplished, though none of these things had anything to do with my job or Peace Corps. I started feeling pretty slackerish.

I hadn’t talked to Peace Corps or my school in over a week, and was starting to wonder what was up, especially since at this point the first day of school was only a week away. I called my counterpart and we worked up a speech for me to give at the county-wide teacher’s conference on that Thursday. I took care of some documents Peace Corps needed with my Russian tutor on Wednesday. Then on Thursday I gave my speech, which was rather humorous since at one point the crowd thought I said ‘toys’ instead of ‘clubs’, when I really said neither. They laughed, I laughed, I told them I’d only been speaking Russian for 4 months, they gave their support, and all was well. My director gave me the flowers some students gave him, so I win.

Afterwards a reporter interviewed me for the paper, and turns out he’s been a counterpart for Peace Corps in the past, and works with a major environmental organization. Networking is so easy. The best part about this guy is he organizes a bike race every year. I missed it by a week. Disappointing. After the meeting my Russian tutor informed me I was to introduce myself at a meeting of all the foreign language teachers the next day. This went a little better since 90% of these teachers could understand me in English. They gave me chocolate, I win again.

I’m feeling better now that I’ve reconnected with the school and had a conversation with my regional manager. Everyone seems pleased with me at the moment, which is all I can ask for. I was stressing about not having my lessons planned out, but when I questioned the person in charge of scheduling what to expect, she said the schedule wouldn’t be ready until after the first week of school. So I’m just outlining my lessons for now until I know what ages I’m teaching so I can choose the appropriate topics and activities. I don’t feel as much of a slacker if my school doesn’t plan any farther ahead than me.

This past weekend I was invited to the ‘grand show’ at the opening of Donbass Arena in Donetsk, the “best arena in Europe” according to President Yuschenko. At this point if you’re still reading, thank you. I’m going to cut it off here and add a couple of posts over the next couple of days of the stories that I couldn’t go too in-depth in this post. Sorry for just recounting events and focusing much about impressions. I expect my posts to become more about thoughts and feelings once my schedule becomes a little more monotonous. And sorry, but I’m writing this blog partly as my journal to keep up with my doings in Peace Corps, not just to entertain you J. So be looking for a couple more posts this week.

This might shed a little light on what I'm doing

Here's the transcript of the speech I'm about to give to a conference of teachers from the 13+ schools in my city this Thursday. Unfortunately it got translated into Russian and doesn't say half of this, but I didn't write it for nothing, so I'm posting it here for you guys to get the short and sweet version of what Peace Corps expects me to do here.

Speech to Konstantinovka Schools Conference 25/8/2009

Let me begin by telling you a little about myself. I am from America, the city of Atlanta in the state Georgia. I finished university and have a bachelor’s degree in Sociology. After university I wanted to live in another country, help children, and study the Russian language. Therefore, I joined Peace Corps.

Peace Corps is a governmental organization which is non-political and non-religious. There are three objectives for Peace Corps: to help people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women, to help promote better understanding of Americans in these countries, and to help promote better understanding of other countries to Americans.

My project is called Youth Development. There are 7 focus areas for my project: 1. Developing Employment Skills 2. Teaching Entrepreneurship Skills 3. Teaching Information Technology Skills 4. Teaching Healthy Lifestyles 5. Developing Citizenship Skills 6. Building Environmental Awareness 7. Recreation. As a Youth Development volunteer I will teach at the Novodmitrovka Lyceum about topics within the focus areas of youth development, and I will also coordinate extracurricular activities that correspond to these focus areas. I will also help English teachers during classes as a native speaker is a valuable resource. In the summers I will plan camps for students which focus on Youth Development areas and I will offer students the opportunity to attend other Peace Corps facilitated camps.

Beyond helping students I would also like to educate and train teachers in the topics I teach within Youth Development focus areas. This way my project will continue after I leave in 2 years. I would also like to involve parents in any way possible to reinforce the information I provide students at school. My primary site is Novodmitrovka Lyceum, but I am open to working with the community and partnering with other organizations to serve as many children in Konstantinovka as possible. I look forward to an exciting two years and building wonderful relationships that will last a lifetime. If you have any questions feel free to ask, and I am open to any suggestions. Thank you.

Camp

Back to the story of my experience at a Ukrainian camp. So after all the chaos of arriving at the camp had settled, I sat down to a cup of tea. I attempted to negotiate my job at the camp, and suggested I lead an English club. They didn't think this was such a good idea as none of the kids speak good enough English. Thus the purpose of an English club, but whatever. So they said they'd think about it and I would talk to the director later.

In the meantime I was directed to a cabin where some people were frantically cleaning and decorating. I had arrived in between sessions and these were counselors preparing their cabins for the next set of campers. I helped them decorate, which was hilarious, me being so craftsy and creative and all. I left to go to the bathroom around lunchtime and got caught by a crew of the senior staff. They sat me down and made eat a huge lunch and gave me the 3rd degree about what I was doing in Ukraine, and furthermore what I was doing at their camp. Further negotiations ensued over my job description, but nothing more concrete resulted. I returned to my cabin an hour later than the 10min I predicted, and was met with exhausted eyes and irritation. Of course they knew where I'd been while they continued to slave away at their daunting task. This came to be a running theme for my tenure at camp: every little circle wanted me to join, but I kept getting caught in the middle making more or less everyone mad. It became rather uncomfortable at times, except for the times I could play one clique against another for my own purposes.

The camp was a privatized remnant of a former Soviet children's rest camp. What that means is imagine a typical traditional American kids' summer camp, and that's what this was. For those of you who worked at Kanakuk, you'd feel right at home. The layout of the camp is just what you'd imagine: cabins sprinkled around a lake with a mess hall opening out onto a parade like square with flagpoles, a barn-like auditorium, crafts-rooms, soccer field, basketball court, pool, infirmary, etc. There were 400 kids and a ratio one counselor to 20 kids. You do the math, this was a huge camp, and the staff was overrun. Wakeup was at 8am, breakfast at 9, clean the cabins till 10, activities till lunch at 1pm, nap from 2-4, snack after lunch, usually loaded with sugar, activities till supper at 6, then either a party or disco from 8 till 10:30, snack then bed at 11. There were the typical 'olympic' style competitions with sports and crafts, there were performances almost every-other day, there were excursions to the monastery in the city, etc. So there was the semblance of keeping campers busy, but their days were still filled with loads of downtime. They got downright bored. Each session lasting 3 weeks made it hard to keep kids entertained.

It was decided that I would float throughout the cabins, help the counselors and play games with the kids, singling out the English speaking kids, if I found them, to give them a little tutoring. I worked my way through all 10 cabins, working with an age range from 4 yrs to 17 yrs. It was really brilliant to be so involved in every age at once and to see the changes maturity brings. I thought I would find my favorite age, but I loved them all, which really surprised me. I felt reasonably successfull with all of them. Each day I more or less acted as a counselor, without the responsibility of a counselor, which was great. None of the kids would listen to me since I wasn't their counselor, so all I could do was entertain. I taught them as many games from camps I could remember, played a good bit of soccer, and taught them basketball and frisbee, with a rather failed attempt at playing ultimate. One evening, they set up stations throughout the camp for the kids to rotate through, and I was in charge of a station, which of course was focused on 'American' games. I taught games from ring around the rosie to making the upper cabins do the human knot. I worked with 400 kids in one hour that night.

The crazy part of camp was the parties and performances. Whichever cabin I happened to be embedded in for the day would typically give me some role in their performance for the night. I played characters like a crazy inventor and a bumblebee, depending on the theme of the night. And usually the counselors would choreograph a dance which I would stumble my way through. One night the theme was 'country dance'. So I brought out my best line dancing moves and taught the counselor I was working with the two-step. Somehow, it became my job to choreograph and perform a country dance to Chattahoochee by Alan Jackson. It was a huge hit. Too big actually, cause the director of events asked me to choreograph a similar dance for all the counselors on the last night. We worked our tails off, rehearsing until 2 in the morning the last few nights of camp, but we pulled off a pretty elaborate and amazing performance, capped off by me solo dancing a traditional cossack dance. It was an absolute blast.

I only floated through the cabins for the first two weeks. During that time I did remain consistent with a cabin of middle schoolers by eating all my meals with them. I became a revolutionary when I actually sat with the kids instead of the other counselors. It was so funny to hear the kids begging me each day to sit at their table, and the looks of utter disappointment if I sat at a different table. I was excited to see another counselor follow suit in another cabin. It was breaking down the barrier between counselor and camper that so strongly existed at this camp that brought the most appreciation from the camp director.

After the first two weeks, I moved into a cabin permanently. The kids were aged 8-15 in this one cabin, which was why I chose it; the counselors really needed some help. So I tried my hand at disciplining kids in Russian and entertaing them long after the newness of being an American had worn off. At this point I was worn out. I got a bad cold in the middle of the second week, and despite taking a couple of rest days out by a beautiful river, found myself greatly deprived of rest. The mental stress didn't help either as I was the only American at the camp and could only struggle through English with the couple of counselors who had studied it in school. For the most part my whole day was spent speaking and listening to Russian from 8am to 2am. It was great for the first week because I could feel my Russian improve significantly. But after that I just became fatigued and fended off conversation like a boxer against the ropes avoids blows. But I made it through, got home and slept for two days.

Camp was an incredible experience that I feel really set me up for successfull service for the next 2 years. For one thing, I met loads of awesome people from my town that I will be friends with once they finally get back from camp. I met a potential counterpart at one of my partner organizations. In terms of networking, it was a huge success. For another thing, I gained valuable insight as to how Ukrainians do camp and what they expect. Alot of volunteers get to experience Ukrainian summer camp, but few stay for an entire session, so I feel like I have alot to bring to the table for Peace Corps run camps. And finally, I got to do what I came here for, which was pour into kids. As usual I'm not sure what I accomplished, but I poured every ounce I had into those kids. I tried to love them as much as I could despite the language and cultural barriers. I didn't teach them anything official, but I hope I still taught. I'll never know what I imparted, but time will tell.

Life has been a bit of a blur since camp. I'll try to catch you up on my intrigues since then soon.

Peace

Control

So Ukraine has it out for me to teach me about dealing with control. If you know me well enough, you know that pretty much nothing happens in my life unless I let it happen, and I get a little freaked out when I feel like my grip is loosening. I know it appears on the outside that I live pretty loose and carefree, but just take my word for it, it's organized chaos.

Four weeks ago, on a Monday, I am talking with my counterpart and she nonschalantly drops the hint that my director wants me to go to a rest camp. That's all she said, and so I figured I'd let that one play itself out when the time comes. I was happily getting into a routine and setting up shop in my new apartment. No need to complicate things. The next day, I'm meeting with my Russian tutor who also works at my school, and she tells me I'm to go to the rest camp until the end of August. At this point I realize I might be screwed.

So after prying from my counterpart that a rest camp is actually a children's camp that I would really be expected to work at, I ask for more details. She did not have more details, she would call me later that day and let me know. When she did call me, she informed me that I would be leaving on Thursday and I needed to pack my things so I could go raise children at this camp until the end of August. When I asked her for more information she had none. So the next day I tried one more time to get complete information, and nothing worked.

I didn't know where I was going, what I was going to be doing, what to pack, how long exactly I would be there, how I would get there, nothing. So I buckled and called my regional manager. He calls and gets more information out of my director, and attempts to negotiate a shorter stay, and a more definite job description. When he calls me back he is a little flustered. Apparently my director cannot understand why I wouldn't want to stay so long since it's such an amazing camp. But my regional manager asked me one more time if I thought two weeks was a better time frame, regained his resolve and made another attempt on my director.

In the meantime, on Thursday, I got a call from my counterpart telling me to be at the train station on Friday morning. I packed my big backpack with as much teaching material as I could fit, took a general selection of clothing, my frisbee, and med kit. Not knowing where negotiations stood at that point, I boarded a train and headed off to camp with the assistant director of my school. When I arrived at camp I was warmly welcomed and was given a document to sign. In my best attempt at Russian I deciphered that I was signing a paper defining the length of my stay at 2 weeks. I quickly signed and then began the process of figuring out exactly what I was supposed to be doing at this camp. I later get a call from my regional manager who is still flustered and tells me he still hasn't finalized anything with my director, but to go ahead and head to camp and we'll work it out later. To his surprise I inform him that I'm already there and have signed a document agreeing to our demands. He gives his blessing and wishes me a happy two weeks.

I wish you could have read my mind through that entire process. I had just reigned in all the confusion and complication involved with moving to a new apartment, in a new city, in a foreign country. The next two months were set. I was happy, comfortable, feeling accomplished. Then out of the blue I was told to uproot and head off into the unknown. I seriously about freaked out. Especially when I couldn't get solid information, and felt like I had no say in the matter. But as you will see in the next installment of my blog, this was about to be one of the best things that could happen to a newly initiated Peace Corps Volunteer.