Sorry again for not updating at the end of last week. Not a lot worth writing about actually happened and I was rather busy anyway. We have been non-stop working our little booties off these last couple weeks with lesson planning, language training, various tutoring sessions and weekend session, all mixed in with random visits from the Peace Corps office and us going on excursions to Kiev. It’s an exhausting lifestyle.

But let me not bore you further with the trivial stuff. Yesterday was our first official trip to Kiev (pronounced KII-V with a long “ee” sound).

Kiev is full of history both ancient and recent. It is both modern and industrial. There are no traffic laws so people park their cars where they bloody well please, never mind that it’s in the middle of the train tracks! (I wonder if the trains abide by any traffic rules…?).

Before our excursion we had a visit from the safety and security coordinator (the guy I mentioned in a previous post who is ex-soviet military, ex-soviet policeman, ex-UN world police who was in both the Lebanon situation and the Yugoslavia situationàin a nutshell, a HAM).

He informed us on ways to keep ourselves safe and that the highest reported crimes in Ukraine are theft and harassment (of all kinds). Naturally, after his little pep-talk about how most volunteers get pick-pocketed when they go to Kiev, I was extra cautious on our trip. I kept my big bills in my bra, my cell phone in my bra, small bills in my coat pocket, and my little handbag always zipped shut with the zipper pointing forward and clutched close to my body. Overkill? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I’ve been to a couple countries were pick-pocketing was an issue but never had a problem because I was cautious. And it worked. I was not pick-pocketed in Kiev.

I did however, leave my brand new bank card in the ATM in my village. Well, I guess you can’t win every game.

Pictures!

candid!

I know you're fixated on the Mc D's, but do take a moment and answer me this:
What does the McFoxxy say? 

Look who I found on the train!

Yay! We're going to Kiev!

Good to know I can get some bud while pretending to be in a tiki lounge. 

All the trees around here are painted like this. Apparently it's from Soviet days
to make sure bugs didn't eat away the tree.

yay! We found PC office!

nice walk through a park

OMG, Katie! It's picture time!

We eat here. It was good Ukrainian food. 

I bet he shops here a lot. 

Represent. Although, real thing or not? You decide. 

I didn't much enjoy the escalator ride in the metro. It was like going down a tube.

#Ukraine

I really like this picture.

Natasha (our language teacher) accompanied us there otherwise we would have been completely hopeless. Honestly, this woman could tell us/lead us anywhere and we’d believe/follow her blindly. She has our utmost trust. She convinced me that my name was Katie the other day. She’s that powerful.

Anyway. Since she is our teacher and this trip was cutting into her teaching time she made our trip to Kiev as educational as possible, with us using our language skills as much as possible. She had us each research a historical landmark in Kiev and when we got there, we were to ask people on the street how to get to the landmarks. It was a very good plan on her part to force us to use our language. However, the monuments that she chose for us were all pretty much in the same proximity of each other so a couple times the monument would be right in front of us but we had to ask anyway. This got some interesting reactions from the locals. First off, the guy I asked answered me in English and was like *points* “it’s right there in front of us”.

Yes, thank you. I’m practicing my language.

My friend Katie tried to make herself look less pathetic by standing behind a statue so she couldn’t see her monument before asking someone. She was drug by the arm by an older lady to the side of the statue she was standing behind and pointed straight ahead.

Needless to say we found all of our monuments. And they were all glorious.

We stopped at this café/chocolate bar that served actual espresso (not instant—almost forgot what it tasted like!) and the most delicious chocolate concoctions. Yum.  

Then we hit up the giant grocery-costco-esque store to see if we could find homeland products. Sadly no peanut butter (my supply is running low already!!). But I did find soy sauce which I used to make my host family dinner tonight! Also got peppermint tea and some random candies. Meant to buy conditioner because for some reason our grocery store here only sell shampoo but I accidentally ended up buying another thing of shampoo….so close. Next time.  

We’re going to Kiev again this Monday (tomorrow!) to finally complete our registration and get our foreigner papers in place. Since it should only take us a few hours to complete this it means that we’ll have another whole day in Kiev to spend as we choose! We have all decided what it is we want to do, but unfortunately the thing I want to do is not so much a want as more of a need. You see, I had to be the person who left her newly gotten bank card in the ATM machine. Had to be me to get that out of the way. Well, it’s not the huge of an ordeal as it’s only a bank card so no one could use it for anything without the PIN but it does mean that I have to go to the PC office, sign some papers, take those papers to the bank and then probably sign some more papers and then wait for 2 weeks until I get my new card. At least I pulled out my host family’s allowance.

However, I might look for some good quality boots while I’m in Kiev so that I can survive the winter to come. I’m totally regretting not bringing my dock martins with me. But my clustermate got a nice pair of boots here for around $150 and their real leather and re-solable so I’m sure I can find something similar.

Ha, when we visited the PC office in Kiev we were shown around by the language coordinator who had us repeating “we are going to the ___ floor” in Ukrainian, every time we went up or down the stairs. He’s a funny man and I like him. It just cracks me up every time we start repeating words or phrases in Ukrainian I always think what we must sound like to the natives lol Imagine a group of people randomly pronouncing the word “spoon” over and over again lol. Funny shit.

Our teaching schedule is getting more and more intense and our group project is coming along nicely. We have another “personal health day” which sounds nothing like it ought to. No, instead it involved a PC doctor coming in and talking to us about our health for 5 hours. Much like the safety session but with more ways on how to avoid contracting STDS. I think the doctor said “sex” as many times as he possibly could on purpose because he somehow knew that he was presenting to a room of 8 year old boys who giggled every time. Seriously. It’s rather pathetic our level of maturity sometimes.

I cannot possibly keep you updated on everything but those are the good parts and I shall leave you with something that will hopefully make you smile.

I think in my last post I mentioned how my clustermate might have said “hookers, hookers, hookers” in Ukrainian to a class full of teenagers, unintentionally of course. Well, we all have our moments (or two as this same clustermate asked a store clerk if she could buy some coffee and bitches—unfortunately the word for “sugar” and the word for “bitches” is easy to confuse) and here’s mine:

The other night my host mother asked me what I wanted to eat for dinner and she listed off a bunch of options. Thinking that I heard her say sausage I repeated the word for what I vaguely thought what she used for sausage. Nope. I straight up said that I wanted “boobs” for dinner. Really, it was her reaction that was the best part. Her hand automatically rose to her mouth and she did the whole shoulders hunched up, eyebrows raised, full on “you just said a dirty word” giggle. Classic 8 year old boy lol No hard feelings though.

Till next time!

-Jamie

  

Overview of week 2

Seriously, it’s only the end of week two? But wait, I have to start teaching on Tuesday? Teaching to 15 year olds? WTF is going on?! The time is simultaneously going too fast but not going fast enough.

I did this when hand washing my laundry. #thuglife

our wacky group with our wacky teacher Natasha

Friday was our "cooking day" where we
had to go to the bazaar and buy ingredients for borscht from the babushkas
and then make it ourselves. It was tasty. 

our pizza

We do this, have competitions like who can hold their
hands up the longest. It's how we relieve stress
(obviously I lost as I am the one taking the picture lol)

A lot has happened this week. So much in fact that I can’t even remember all of it. I know at one point we had a wild bird in our classroom that died after a day. Then we got a little kitten to replace it that (thankfully) didn’t die after one day and is still in fact, alive. Apparently the land lady of my teacher’s house’s boyfriend had the bird follow him all the way home one night (what is he, freaking snow white or something?!) and that’s how we got the bird. Then once it died the land lady bought the cat to replace it. We have a real menagerie up in here. I mean, every morning I have to wait for the geese to be herded across the street before I can continue on my way to school. Not to mention my host family’s 20 chickens (to which we almost added to today but unfortunately the bazaar was out of chickens which was fortunate for the chickens because all my host mom had to transport them back to the house was a burlap sack).

I had a picture of the bird but I somehow deleted it. Stooopid. 

Speaking of chickens. My host mom has been complaining about the neighbor's chickens getting into her yard, eating all her vegetables, and then going back and laying eggs for her neighbor. Well, I guess she had enough of it because her brother came over with some chain link and we all helped put it up so that the chickens will stay on their side of the fence! It was a bit of an ordeal though, when the neighbor lady came over and started yelling at us. Why she was yelling I have no idea, but my host brother kindly explained "she's *points at his head and rolls his eye*". So that's that. We got it set up though and she didn't tear it down or anything so, success!  

My language teacher continues to be the most awesome, kindest, most caring teacher in existence. She told us the other day when we brought her a present for teacher’s day that our group was her reward for working with peace corps the last 9 years or so. Apparently she’s had some tough groups and she thinks our group is fantastic. And we are! We all get along very well, we like each other, we laugh A LOT (perhaps too much sometimes) about the most random shit and it makes our teacher laugh too. I really lucked out with my clustermates and I can’t say that enough.

What else has happened?

I made a pizza with my host brother. It turned out alright. I don’t know what possessed him to want to make a pizza as from what I’ve heard from him kitchen stuff is “women’s” work, not “men’s” work. He did, however, leave me to clean up the mess afterwards, due to this logic. Oh. Well. I have come to the conclusion that I am living in 1950’s America. I mean, if I really think about it:

1)      Women don’t tend to go out unless they look their best, even if they’re going to the store

2)      The stores (or “magazines") are like those old time grocer’s where there’s a clerk behind the counter and you have to tell the clerk everything you want in weight so that they can get it for you. Not modern, American Super-Wal-Marts here. Nope.

3)      The children dress up in their best to go to school (there’s no official uniform but there is a strict dress code).

4)      The children stand up to answer questions and the lessons are very teacher focused, rather than student centered and all the desks are in perfect little rows.

5)      The whole “men’s work vs women’s work” silliness

6)      The cars. All (mostly) classic looking, straight from Soviet Russia kind of cars. I like them

7)      People get married here very young and have kids young.

8)      Seriously, if you’re 25-30 and not married there’s a problem with you and you’re going to have all the babushka’s trying to hook up you up with their granddaughters

I can’t say that I’m not enjoying it though. I find it rather interesting. I’m sure I’m going to find it rather old after a while but for the meantime I’m taking it in for what it is and enjoying it.

It is also cold as shit already and it’s not even winter time. The school won’t turn their heat on until the middle of October and that probably won’t even help much. I heard from other volunteers that sometimes they cancel school because it gets too cold to hold it. This winter is supposed to be the coldest yet. Hooray.

The language is coming along. Slowly, which is frustrating but it’s to be expected. I know that after a couple months it will really start clicking and I’m just going to have to be patient. At least I’m starting to understand my host mom more and more. That’s something.

Also, I want a pet so bad when I move out I’m seriously considering getting a puppy. I saw one on the street today and almost lost it and brought it home. I heard Peace Corps helps their volunteers bring home any pets they have after service. Very tempting.

I love my life

Jamie