insomniac scribbles: Standfast and stock up on wine!

There are five stages of emergency Peace Corps has in place to keep its volunteers safe. This week we (all us volunteers in Ukraine) are celebrating together (or, you know, commiserating together) one whole week of being on stage two of the emergency stages, otherwise known as "standfast". Simply put, this means that we are not allowed to leave our communities under any circumstances (although how they'll know if you take a little jaunt to the next town over for a couple hours to buy some warmer clothes is something we won't discuss here). This is largely to keep track of all of us and make sure that we don't end up somewheres we're not suppose to end up. It also means that we're to prepare a bag with a lengthy list of items, tidy our apartment, and pack the rest of our stuffs away in suitcases with a list of what stays and what goes in order so that the things we want can be orderly shipped off to the states if need be.

I, and as i'm sure all of my other follow volunteers have done, started with a neat organized bag with neat organized piles of "other stuff" and "stuff to be sent to me" all arranged neatly around my apartment. However, as the days have waned by and no word of "consolidation" (get moving to a pre-determined destination as quick as possible to await orders) these piles have become less organized and my bag increasingly less packed. This situation in this country is serious but it's entirely difficult to gauge how exactly serious it is in regards to whether or not I'll be hoofing it to my consolidation point because the situation is, for lack of a more elegant explanation, complicated. So, although I still keep updated with news posts, I've become less apprehensive about everything and decided to pay more attention to what's going on in my community. I noticed that my neighbor hung up Spiderman sheets to dry (or rather, freeze), kudos to the little boy that must be living up there. Overall my community is rather quiet about the whole thing (as far as I can tell anyways, which isn't much to go on seeing as I can't hardly understand what people are talking about in the first place but there haven't been any demonstrations which I take, not as a sign of the people in my town not wanting to part-take in this ordeal, but rather as a sign that, given our relative closeness to Kyiv, they have all gone to Maidan to demonstrate there).

I can't exactly say that I feel our security level will go down to 1 anytime soon as every day I look at the news I get mixed feelings as to what's going to happen. Peace Corps did add a half stage to their security levels though, one that I find particularly amusing (although completely serious, this is a serious matter of security). They call it "shelter in place" which was outlined as "under no circumstances must you leave your apartment". So...pretty much relive my entire winter vacation. So, I've stocked up on wine (and food...of course) and await further instructions. What would push PC to put us into the next stages of emergency you might ask? Here are a few reasons:

State of emergency

"Marital" law (I know, I know. I couldn't stop laughing either, but it's a direct quote from the email. It's serious business though, marital law. Not to be taken lightly).

Loss of all communication (internet and cell phones).

I'm not entirely sure what would push us from stage 2.5 to stage 3 but regardless i'm more than prepared to be a hermit and i'm likewise ready to take off at the first command.

But I really can't say what's going to happen.

In other news, here's some highlights from my January!

I went to church for xmas mass and didn't burst into flames! Even got gifted with a Russian-English bible! Unfortunately it was a Baptist church and not the Orthodox church I thought I was being invited to...oh well.
Santa and his merry gang of adults visited me on xmas eve but I didn't donate to charity but instead played the "i'm a foreigner card and don't know what's going on" because i'm a terrible person.
I've started teaching and it's gone swell. Out of the eight classes I teach, there is only one i'm absolutely positive that if I ever find myself alone with them without supervision from their Ukrainian teacher, they will commit mutiny and throw me out the window.
I started going to a fitness class put on at my college by the PE teacher. Said teacher always finds time to speak with me which is nice; however, i've been going to her class for two weeks now, which is two weeks of conversation, and she only just recently realized that I don't understand/speak Russian. Well, I could have told her that right off the bat only, I didn't understand what she was saying or what I should say most of the time so I agreed to a lot of things i'm sure i'm going to regret. Needless to say, she's switched to Ukrainian and i've understood about 35% of our conversations together recently and I may or may not be giving a presentation in English about how to play American Football.

Side note: can someone tell ME how to play American Football?

I've also inspired my counterpart to come to said fitness classes with me. Win!
Said fitness classes involve watching Cindy Crawford workout videos. Win?
It's cold. Colder than I have ever experienced and I don't like it. My clothes have frozen on the line, my potatoes have frozen on the porch because I didn't have the hindsight to realize that, yes, potatoes can freeze. My mop froze to the porch. Everything is freezing and the warmest place in my apartment is my bathroom. Needless to say, I totally ate my dinner in the bathroom last night.
I have finished more books than I have finished in years due to not being in school, and it feels great!

Side note: it's possible that I might be reading too many books and should probably find some other useful activity for me to do. Like, IDK, community service or something...humph.

I have some pretty awesome Ukrainian friends who bring me water from their parent's well because the well on campus is frozen. :D
The 83 year old lady next door brought me ice cream in a plastic grocery bag. No, I mean like, ice cream in the bag with no other container. Just in the plastic bag. It was pretty tasty.
I got sick, but i'm good now.