Outage

Hey guys, might be some silence here for the next couple of weeks. I'm being sent to a kids' "rest camp" to help "raise" the children who are there. I think that means I'm leading English camps and games. And I think I get to go because there are like 4 kids from my school who are there. Anyways, I have no clue where this thing is or what awaits in terms of communication, so wanted to let you know I'm alive and well fixing up my apartment and damage controlling the decisions my superiors make for me. But I'm pretty pumped to have something remotely productive to do for the next two weeks.

In other news, I now have a bike, though it's not up to my standards, yet. I just got back from a trip to a salt lake, which surprisingly to me was super salty. Duct tape works miracles in Ukraine as it now pretty much holds my apartment together. Also got a schedule worked out for my first semester which is pretty much the requisite English, healthy lifestyles, and leadership teaching, but add to that a cycling club! Yep, I'm gonna try to teach these kids how to do basic maintainence on their bikes and then teach bike safety on short group rides. It could potentially be amazing or be a disaster, just the way I like it.

My mail works amazingly fast especially for letters and bubble mailers, so let me know and I'll email you my address. Not really into posting my address on the blog since who knows who might try to come find me. Hey, if you send something now, it will get here right when I get back from camp!

Hopefully I'll have some good stories to tell next time I post!

Ben

Settling In

Alright, so much to say. Sorry for radio silence the past couple weeks. Got to Kiev for Swearing In Conference and was nowhere near internet. Then got to my site and the internet club is constantly swamped with little hooligans playing WOW and Counter Strike. And then I can't help from indulging myself with some gchat and cnn. So I finally write. That said, email me and I'll give you my new address so you can send me letters and now packages!

So Swearing In Conference was where Peace Corps Ukraine wrapped up training with a ton of seminars on how to be the perfect volunteer and I met my counterpart. Now, a counterpart is a person involved in an organization which invites you to serve as volunteer for two years. They are Ukrainian and work with the volunteer to plan projects and serve effectively. Mine just happens to be a woman near my age who teaches English at the school which will be my primary site. Yes, this means she speaks English! She is super helpful and we are already good friends. Plus she is getting married this fall which means that's just one more party I get to go to. After the conference we loaded my stuff into a train car and embarked on a 19 hour journey to my new city.

My site is a rather large city in southeastern Ukraine. It's a Russian speaking industrial city with something like 100,000 people. I would probably compare it to Dalton, but without the carpet. Unfortunately there is a cookie factory near where I live which makes the place smell like chocolate chip cookies all the time. And there are none to be found in stores. Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink. My school is called a lycaeum, which to the best of what I can figure out means it is partly funded by the city and partly funded by sponsors, aka huge factories. So it is a pretty nice school. It is actually outside my city in a very small village. Less than 300 people live in my school's village, which means there are way more spots at the school than there are children. That means children from throughout the big city can apply to come to my school. And if they don't perform well enough they can be kicked out. So it's kind of like a private school in that way.

I'm living in a private, one room apartment, meaning I have a kitchen, bathroom, and living room/bedroom. The coolest part is the balcony. It feels great to be living on my own again, but I miss the good life with my host family. I have to cook constantly and don't have half the conveniences their apartment had. Plus, it's really quiet. So what have I been doing to stay busy?

Well, I've been around the school alot, attending meetings and graduations and helping teachers clean their rooms. Several people have been checking in on me, even cooking for me and doing my laundry. There is a mindset here that a bachelor living on his own will surely starve. But I made sure that nobody has cooked "for" me, but has taught me to cook. Hopefully I will prove myself to them eventually. Graduation was nuts. It's like a combination of American prom and graduation that lasts until sunrise. I'd go into details but that's a whole nother post. There was also a graduation for 9th grade since they have the opportunity to pursue other educational opportunities at this point at other institutions. Of course I had to give speeches at both. Luckily my English teacher translated for me. I was also taken to an awesome lake (or pond, depending on your standards for stagnant bodies of water) where we had a picnic and drank out of a natural spring. I went with the head of my school's equivalent of the PTA and her sons, so it was actually productive in terms of my project. I've been able to meet quite a few students, including the one who is my neighbor. My neighbors are great and I see them everywhere, so it feels good to have them looking out for me. Otherwise I've been exploring my new city and watching a ton of movies.

I can't believe I've only been here a week. I have to keep pinching myself and remind myself Rome wasn't built in two years, much less a week. There are lots of cool things to tell but I think they will each have their opportunity to appear in a post soon. Alright, I know there's not many details, but that's pretty much the past two weeks. If there's something you really want to know comment or email me and I'll indulge you. Here's to hoping my tv will pick up the Tour de France!

Peace,
Ben

Transition

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

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.

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.

Over the Hill

So I finally feel like I’m getting the hang of training and the end is in sight, when I get sick. And it’s hitting everybody, link cluster included. Started on Wednesday with a runny nose. No big deal, I’ve had a runny nose for about 3 months, must just be allergies. After I drug myself out of bed for class on Tuesday, it became obvious I was going to dehydrate through my nose. After the first 30 minutes of my tutoring I pretty much forgot all Russian, and English for that matter. Then I had to go teach a class, then suffer through a few more hours of class. I was miserable. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a true sinus infection. But two Benadryl and 13 hours of sleep later I felt a little better. Now it has moved down into my chest, but luckily I can at least think clearly. It’s really hard to speak Russian with a stuffy head.

So, three more cultural experiences to note. First, my cluster and link cluster went to Peregova Museum outside of Kiev, which is an open air collection of art and architecture throughout Ukraine’s history. And when I say open air, I mean acres and acres of exhibits in what could be useful farmland. And lucky for us, there was a massive craft fair going on. Of course none of us get paid enough to buy anything, but I found a couple of cheap, non-breakable trinkets for souvenirs. There was also some folk dancing and singing that was reminiscent of any folk festival and craft fair back home. Except that it was Ukrainian of course. No clogging or square dancing. But there were fiddles and mandolins, with the occasional accordion thrown in. It was really an amazing day and it was cool to see the old style Ukrainian villages.

Second, my cluster was invited to a “Ukrainian Discotech” which benefitted a charity. By Ukrainian they meant dress up in traditional Ukrainian clothes and come hang out with a bunch of teenagers. It was so cool. We picked out costumes from the costume closet of the House of Creativity and went and partied like we were in high school. Of course we Americans were picked on to take part in several embarrassing games. But it was so great to see some of the students we teach outside of class taking part and leading such a positive event.

Finally, this past Saturday was Victory Day in Ukraine. It basically is celebrated similar to Veterans or Memorial Day in America. Of course it commemorates the victory of WWII. It is interesting to feel the significance of WWII here. What we don’t feel about WWII in America is the consequence of having our homeland dominated, then the pride of driving the conquerors out to their defeat. The war is still very tangible here. They even dub certain cities “Hero Cities” depending on their valor during the war. It also keeps Ukrainians connected with their Soviet neighbors and Soviet past, and rightly so. The day was celebrated with a ceremony at the WWII memorial in town, with families and friends of those killed in the war laying flowers on the names of their loved ones. That afternoon there was a concert at which several dance troupes and singing groups, mostly traditional and folk, performed, including my host father. Then everyone went out for picnics and made merry for the rest of the day. There were supposed to be fireworks that night but they never happened, so we just hung out by the memorial talking to people we knew. It became evident how quickly we have integrated in this city as we said hi and shook hands at every turn, and even conducted a little business. We may not pass for Ukrainians yet, but we certainly have a lot of friends.

Things are starting to pay off and I feel like doing this on my own at site might be possible. The language barrier no longer seems to affect classroom management and my lesson plans are getting better and easier. Now I need to focus on my teaching skills specifically. We’ve been getting around decently with our Russian, and are finding people who speak enough English to supplement our shortfalls. And all the meetings we had at the beginning of training are starting to pay dividends as we look for support in planning our camp and community project. We just passed the halfway mark at training, and I’m starting to feel a little confidence that I’ll make it through.

Kiev

Another long and hard week. It was frustrating that the school changed its schedule without notice and I only got to teach for fifteen minutes, ten of which were my partner's responsibility. We had expected to alternate sections of the class and hers was the logical section to teach in the shortened schedule. This is something I've been told to get used to. Still felt a little more comfortable in the classroom. I teach civics this week.

The difficult week was made bearable by a trip to Kiev the previous Sunday. We went as a cluster with the guidance of our language instructors, who really just wanted to go shopping, and rightly so. We walked around what felt like the entire city, stopping in at churches and overlooks to see the sights. My favorite parts of the day were probably the most spontaneous. Our technical instructor decided the quickest way to get to the Peace Corps office was through the botanical gardens. Best shortcut ever. Beautiful mini magnolias were in bloom as we strolled through the gardens. We ate at a wonderful Ukrainian restaurant for lunch, but it was slightly overshadowed by the deep fried hotdog I had for 50 cents on the street. And the churches were nice, but it was the giant painted styrofoam eggs spread throughout the grounds that entertained us the most. We had a large photo op with the eggs in various poses rousing much laughter from the cluster and funny looks from Ukrainians. My truly favorite moment was walking into Mykhailivska church to the sounds of a gorgeous choir. We were lucky to have caught the singing on one of the few days they perform and at the only time that day. It made for a truly moving experience as I perused the gilded icons and frescoes covering the walls of the immaculate church. As our instructors shopped we were fortunate to people gaze for an hour while listening to the lovely tunes of America's greatest hits sung by a Ukrainian duo that would have rocked any frat party. And I must admit I got fries and a McFlurry. It was a really good day and a good reward for three weeks of training.

My bout with homesickness has subsided for the moment. It feels really good to say I've been here for a month, though the next 26 stand as a formidable peak to be conquered. Communications with my host family are getting better and my city is starting to feel like home. But I never get truly comfortable without some event proving that complacency is inherently forbidden in the Peace Corps experience. But there is also always a measure of success that rewards and motivates. I know I am more capable now than I was four weeks ago, and that makes it all worth it.