So, I had internet for like, the first hour or so when we first arrived at our training facility but then it went away for reasons unknown. Very disappointing as I initially wasn’t expecting any internet connection at all for a while so to have it and get excited only to have it taken away was not cool. Not cool at all. At least I got it for those few hours at least. Look on the bright side. The training people did warn us that the internet does go out randomly here so I wasn’t too surprised.
Here is the post that I meant to post that night I thought I had internet. It was written Wednesday, 18th at around 5pm or so.
I made it to Ukraine! I am safely tucked away in our training facility writing this lovely update for all ya'll. Allow me to sum up my travels thus far:
Getting here has been the longest experience of my life.
Seriously, I'm not sure how long I've been awake I just know that Tuesday (yesterday) was way too short and Wednesday (today) is never ending. Our flight from DC to Frankfurt was comfortable but of course I didn't sleep. There was a magnificent array of movies for me to watch that got me all excited; Star Trek Into Darkness; Iron Man 3; and the Great Gatsby. I made it through Gatsby but fell asleep during star trek (but I didn't start this one until close to the end of our flight so I only really got about 30 minutes snooze time tops). Never got around to Iron Man, sadly.
Let me halt there and back up a little to the before getting to the Dulles airport part. It was a nightmare of stressed out people frantically worrying about whether or not their bags were going to be overweight or not. Then it was a frantic shuffle to get everyone onto the two shuttle buses to the airport where we then experienced the stress of not knowing who was in possession of all our passports. Apparently the training leaders from Monday couldn't accompany us to the airport on Tuesday so they left our passports and the responsibility of getting all 49 of us through check in and on the plane to one of us. Apparently the person in charge didn't think that handing out our passports while we were all on the bus in one spot was the easier option and thus we didn't get them until everyone was off the bus, in the airport and scattered all about. It all worked out in the end but let me tell ya, did not help the inevitable ulcer I have growing in my stomach from all this.
Luckily we got to the airport 5 hours early so we had plenty of time to figure this all out. One poor girl had to pay for her overweight bags while the rest of our overweight bags just got waived. Not sure what happened there. She thinks she just got the attendant that was having the worst day.
Upside of this is I got to drive through Virginia, making the total number of states I have visited thus far in my life 8, plus DC which isn't a state so I don't count it.
The airport wait itself wasn't so bad. I grabbed a much needed beer with some other volunteers and made a couple phone calls to a very special person in my life. My stupid little prepaid phone ran out of minutes way too fast but luckily I was able to borrow other volunteer's phones to make these calls.
Everyone was a glass box of emotions and there was a lot of nervous laughter, excited laughter, nervous breakdowns, emotional phone calls, and general camaraderie as we all supported each other through this very emotional time in our lives. It really has made a huge difference going through this with a group as opposed to doing it alone. Knowing that other people feel that same way you do and are leaving behind similar situations that you are makes one’s life seem not so lonely.
We only had a couple hours in the Frankfurt airport and no one had/wanted to get Euros to buy anything so we all stood around and used our free 30 minutes of wifi while we waited to board. Nothing really special happened. What did strike me as odd though was that we didn't have to go through customs in Frankfurt. In my other experiences when I've had to transit through another country (Canada) I had to go through customs and immigration even though I wasn't staying there.
I got maybe about 20 minutes of sleep on this flight but gave up when the water-y eggs and potatoes came through my way because at this point I was starving and didn't really care. And they weren't that bad either.
Immigration in Kyiv was painless; however, again, we didn't have to go through customs inspection! What is wrong with these airports? You know how much stuff people could smuggle in without you knowing? Geeze! Not that I'm super upset about it because going through that takes time and it's a huge hassle but still. Could have brought whatever I wanted into the country and no one would have been the wiser.
We meet our Peace Corps helpers outside the security and they loaded our bags onto a truck and loaded us onto a bus for a 2 and a half hour ride to our training site. Yay.... I would tell you the name of our site but I can't remember/read it but I know it's up north close to Russia in a town that's about 1,300 years old.
They did give us a snack pack for our ride which contained an article of food that I was very happy to see! A Banana! I actually took a picture of it but it was with my old smart phone which apparently doesn't want me to get my pictures off my phone onto my computer so unfortunately you do not get to see a picture of my delicious banana. Why was I so excited to see one, though? Because I hadn't had fruit in a couple days and also it might be a sign that bananas are cheap here and if you know me at all you know that I like to have at least one banana a day! Anyway...
The drive was beautiful although I did manage to fall asleep for a lot of it. We drove past this field of dead, black sun flowers which i'm not sure if it was pretty or depressing. The scenery looks a lot like Oregon actually, other than the lack of hills and mountains. It's very green here and they drive on the correct side of the rode even! I didn't take any pictures while on the road because I was too tired to be bothered but here are a few pictures of the room I am staying in for the next two days!
(I"m sorry but the pictures won't work, I will fix it later)
The first thing I did when we were able to get down time was take a shower. Never has one felt better. We also found out what language we will be learning (for me it's Ukrainian which means I get sent to the west side of the country most likely which is what I wanted). We also learned a little about what we will be doing these next few days including getting our phones. Apparently we can get i-phones and apparently data plans only cost about 6$ a month! Haha bitches, who lives in a third-world country now!? We are going to have a little language training in groups (which the chill roommate I had in DC is my roommate here and we are in the same language cluster which means we get sent to the same training site eventually), and then some medical stuff (not really sure but the forms look like just basic information that they should already have but want again I guess).
We got a little free time to ourselves before we had our official first meal in Ukraine. They opened the meal by having two people come out in what I assume to be traditional Ukrainian garb holding a giant round of bread with salt in the center. They proceeded to tell us that it is tradition in Ukraine to offer guests bread and salt and that to be a true friend of someone you both will have to have consumed 16 kilos of salt together! The bread was delicious and sweet which made a nice combination with the salt. Then we got shuffled into the dining hall where we had cole-slaw, chicken and rice. The funny aspect of this meal was that no one knew when it was appropriate to start eating. All us volunteers sat at one end of the hall while all the Ukrainian teachers and assistants seemed to all sit at the other end which led us to constantly look over our shoulders to see when they all started eating as a cue for the “okay”.
The most exciting and disappointing part of the meal was the dessert. There were little bread rolls like the kind I had seen many times in Japan and when I broke one open they were filled with this dark paste-looking stuff. Immediately I jumped to the assumption that it was bean paste and happily bit into it only to find out that it wasn’t bean paste at all but chocolate. I guess there could be worse things but I was really excited for some bean paste. Whatever.
On Friday we will be sent to our host families in our training communities where we will be living for the next 11 weeks. I am both excited and terrified but that is to be expected.
There is a dog barking outside my window and a women yelling frantically at it in Ukrainian. This is my home for the next 2 years.
Jamie
Here is the post that I meant to post that night I thought I had internet. It was written Wednesday, 18th at around 5pm or so.
I made it to Ukraine! I am safely tucked away in our training facility writing this lovely update for all ya'll. Allow me to sum up my travels thus far:
Getting here has been the longest experience of my life.
Seriously, I'm not sure how long I've been awake I just know that Tuesday (yesterday) was way too short and Wednesday (today) is never ending. Our flight from DC to Frankfurt was comfortable but of course I didn't sleep. There was a magnificent array of movies for me to watch that got me all excited; Star Trek Into Darkness; Iron Man 3; and the Great Gatsby. I made it through Gatsby but fell asleep during star trek (but I didn't start this one until close to the end of our flight so I only really got about 30 minutes snooze time tops). Never got around to Iron Man, sadly.
Let me halt there and back up a little to the before getting to the Dulles airport part. It was a nightmare of stressed out people frantically worrying about whether or not their bags were going to be overweight or not. Then it was a frantic shuffle to get everyone onto the two shuttle buses to the airport where we then experienced the stress of not knowing who was in possession of all our passports. Apparently the training leaders from Monday couldn't accompany us to the airport on Tuesday so they left our passports and the responsibility of getting all 49 of us through check in and on the plane to one of us. Apparently the person in charge didn't think that handing out our passports while we were all on the bus in one spot was the easier option and thus we didn't get them until everyone was off the bus, in the airport and scattered all about. It all worked out in the end but let me tell ya, did not help the inevitable ulcer I have growing in my stomach from all this.
Luckily we got to the airport 5 hours early so we had plenty of time to figure this all out. One poor girl had to pay for her overweight bags while the rest of our overweight bags just got waived. Not sure what happened there. She thinks she just got the attendant that was having the worst day.
Upside of this is I got to drive through Virginia, making the total number of states I have visited thus far in my life 8, plus DC which isn't a state so I don't count it.
The airport wait itself wasn't so bad. I grabbed a much needed beer with some other volunteers and made a couple phone calls to a very special person in my life. My stupid little prepaid phone ran out of minutes way too fast but luckily I was able to borrow other volunteer's phones to make these calls.
Everyone was a glass box of emotions and there was a lot of nervous laughter, excited laughter, nervous breakdowns, emotional phone calls, and general camaraderie as we all supported each other through this very emotional time in our lives. It really has made a huge difference going through this with a group as opposed to doing it alone. Knowing that other people feel that same way you do and are leaving behind similar situations that you are makes one’s life seem not so lonely.
We only had a couple hours in the Frankfurt airport and no one had/wanted to get Euros to buy anything so we all stood around and used our free 30 minutes of wifi while we waited to board. Nothing really special happened. What did strike me as odd though was that we didn't have to go through customs in Frankfurt. In my other experiences when I've had to transit through another country (Canada) I had to go through customs and immigration even though I wasn't staying there.
I got maybe about 20 minutes of sleep on this flight but gave up when the water-y eggs and potatoes came through my way because at this point I was starving and didn't really care. And they weren't that bad either.
Immigration in Kyiv was painless; however, again, we didn't have to go through customs inspection! What is wrong with these airports? You know how much stuff people could smuggle in without you knowing? Geeze! Not that I'm super upset about it because going through that takes time and it's a huge hassle but still. Could have brought whatever I wanted into the country and no one would have been the wiser.
We meet our Peace Corps helpers outside the security and they loaded our bags onto a truck and loaded us onto a bus for a 2 and a half hour ride to our training site. Yay.... I would tell you the name of our site but I can't remember/read it but I know it's up north close to Russia in a town that's about 1,300 years old.
They did give us a snack pack for our ride which contained an article of food that I was very happy to see! A Banana! I actually took a picture of it but it was with my old smart phone which apparently doesn't want me to get my pictures off my phone onto my computer so unfortunately you do not get to see a picture of my delicious banana. Why was I so excited to see one, though? Because I hadn't had fruit in a couple days and also it might be a sign that bananas are cheap here and if you know me at all you know that I like to have at least one banana a day! Anyway...
The drive was beautiful although I did manage to fall asleep for a lot of it. We drove past this field of dead, black sun flowers which i'm not sure if it was pretty or depressing. The scenery looks a lot like Oregon actually, other than the lack of hills and mountains. It's very green here and they drive on the correct side of the rode even! I didn't take any pictures while on the road because I was too tired to be bothered but here are a few pictures of the room I am staying in for the next two days!
(I"m sorry but the pictures won't work, I will fix it later)
The first thing I did when we were able to get down time was take a shower. Never has one felt better. We also found out what language we will be learning (for me it's Ukrainian which means I get sent to the west side of the country most likely which is what I wanted). We also learned a little about what we will be doing these next few days including getting our phones. Apparently we can get i-phones and apparently data plans only cost about 6$ a month! Haha bitches, who lives in a third-world country now!? We are going to have a little language training in groups (which the chill roommate I had in DC is my roommate here and we are in the same language cluster which means we get sent to the same training site eventually), and then some medical stuff (not really sure but the forms look like just basic information that they should already have but want again I guess).
We got a little free time to ourselves before we had our official first meal in Ukraine. They opened the meal by having two people come out in what I assume to be traditional Ukrainian garb holding a giant round of bread with salt in the center. They proceeded to tell us that it is tradition in Ukraine to offer guests bread and salt and that to be a true friend of someone you both will have to have consumed 16 kilos of salt together! The bread was delicious and sweet which made a nice combination with the salt. Then we got shuffled into the dining hall where we had cole-slaw, chicken and rice. The funny aspect of this meal was that no one knew when it was appropriate to start eating. All us volunteers sat at one end of the hall while all the Ukrainian teachers and assistants seemed to all sit at the other end which led us to constantly look over our shoulders to see when they all started eating as a cue for the “okay”.
The most exciting and disappointing part of the meal was the dessert. There were little bread rolls like the kind I had seen many times in Japan and when I broke one open they were filled with this dark paste-looking stuff. Immediately I jumped to the assumption that it was bean paste and happily bit into it only to find out that it wasn’t bean paste at all but chocolate. I guess there could be worse things but I was really excited for some bean paste. Whatever.
On Friday we will be sent to our host families in our training communities where we will be living for the next 11 weeks. I am both excited and terrified but that is to be expected.
There is a dog barking outside my window and a women yelling frantically at it in Ukrainian. This is my home for the next 2 years.
Jamie
4 comments:
Thank you for sharing your adventure. Really looking forward to reading more.
Thank you darling daughter reading your detailed post brings me peace! I look forward to reading your adventures! Love Mom
Well, the adventure begins... Just know that we are all rooting for you. You've survived the first day - congratulations ;-)
I wanna keep reading but gotta go now. I will read the rest later. I am really glad you keep posting here. It's just nice to know how you're doing:) By the way, let me know if you want anything from Japan!
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