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. 

Pictures!

Me and Nadia after our church adventure on orthodox xmas

Nadia's family

It's cold, level super bundle outside.

-Jamie

     

Year of the Horse at last!

Happy New Year everyone!

You'll be excited to know that I brought in the New Years with a classic Doctor Who Marathon and a skype date with my wonderful boyfriend, Mike. I also had a fantastic view from my window of fireworks being let off not far from my apartment :D

Here's a peek of my 2014 so far~

Natasha (blonde) and Ludmyla. They invited me over for a New Years celebration

New Years present I got from Natasha and Ludmyla. Closest I'll ever get to the real thing haha

I found some buddies in the park 

He's like Yogi

The obligatory Lenin statue in the center of town with the obligatory playground around it
(Kozelets had a set up similar to this therefore i'm assuming all town do)

A memorial of some sort

A cute little neighborhood I stumbled upon

These guys! They live right outside my apartment and pull my little heart strings
I love them 

The river splitting town

Turtle dude hanging out

#Ukraine

I broke down and got myself a new coat. Natasha and Ludmyla helped me pick it out :D

This jacket had me at thumb holes

Funny story about my new jacket. I walked around and around the bazaar looking at different jackets trying to get a handle on the prices people were asking. For a good, warm winter coat it seemed like 600 was the cheapest (around $70). I tried some on, I didn't like the fit of most of them (the style here is having your coat hang down to your knees) and my football shoulders were limiting my selection considerably. For some reason pastel is in this season and thus, it just seemed like I wasn't going to go home with a new jacket. Until we (myself, Natasha, and Ludmyla) stopped at a shop that was manned by one of Ludmyla's former students (this lady practically knows everyone in town either because they were a former student/are a current student or they are parents of former students/current students--one time I was walking with Ludmyla and this man jumped out from behind his stall and gave Ludmyla 200 UAH. Why? For some reason or another but it was totally random to witness haha). I tried on two of her coats (the only two that didn't hang down past my knees and were a reasonable color) and I actually liked both of them but ended up getting the one pictured. She was asking 400 for it (around $50), which seemed completely reasonable to me as all the other stalls were asking for more for the same product. I handed her a 500 bill and to my utter confusion she first handed me a 20, and then a 100. Noticing everyone was laughing except me, Ludmyla told me the clerk said the extra 20 was because I convinced her to make it cheaper for myself (which I totally didn't because I'm terrible at haggling and try to avoid it as much as possible). So I ended up getting the jacket for 380 ($45) and I now know that if I ever want to buy something that I need to bring Ludmyla with me to get discounts.  

Topic change!

As I'm sure everyone else does, I have all my pictures organized into files on my computer. However, I have mine all organized by the years I took them in (and then from there they are broken down into subcategories of where they were taken). As I was adding a new file for 2014, I noticed that I have exactly 1 decade worth of pictures on my computer! Starting in 2004 when I got my first digital camera to now! I'm putting together a little collage to sort of celebrate these 10 years of picture taking (however, I'm more than certain most the pictures from the years 2004-2007 are Myspace selfies).

Oh! Oh! I also found someone to fix my hipster glasses for cheap! I can come out of hiding as Jamie and finally reveal myself as Hipster Jamie, the most un-hipster-y person except for her glasses cuz she's a poser, in town! Exciting!

-Jamie

Merry Christmas from Ukraine

Even though Christmas isn't technically until January 7th here in Ukraine (according to the Orthodox calendar), my colleagues went out of their way today to make sure I had a little Christmas celebration today. It was wonderful:

The present I got from my friend Nadia
and my one lonely ornament :3

The group

I forget what the drink in the bottle is called but
it's a traditional xmas drink that's made from different fruits
and that i'm sure is supposed to have alcohol in it but
Lumyla kept is dry for school purposes :)

I had a lovely day with my friend Nadia on xmas eve. We made pizza! :)

It was delicious

I also went to a concert that was put on by one of the music students at my college. It was great and I really liked the bar that it was held in. Although, I did feel a tad bit awkward going to a place like this with my counterpart and the vice director of the school buuuuut, we only drank tea and listened to the music so it was alright haha.

 Merry Christmas to you all and I hope you have a wonderful day with your friends and family. I know I did :3

My last weekend in Kozelets

Tomorrow will be my last weekend here in Kozelets (read: my last weekend with my host family and my clustermates/TCF and LCF). An end to a beginning really.

(also, I want to add. Never talk yourself into a political conversation with people with whom you are attempting to keep a good report with. Also (and probably most importantly), never talk yourself into a political conversation when you are not able to formulate sentences more sophisticated than "I like cakes, what do you like?". It's dangerous and frustrating and i'm still not sure how I got into it but I think I swiftly and sufficiently (although anything other than elegantly) got myself out of it. Now if only my host mom would stop trying to drag me back in).

Here's what's happened in picture format. First of all snow:

I'm going to miss this view

Lots of snow. And i'm not amused. Sure, I like snow when I can play in it and have fun. But when I must walk for an hour in it to get to work. Nee dobre my friends, nee dobre. 

On a related note, I heard that it snowed in Portland. The world must be ending over there. It is rather relaxing to know that when it snows here, people are not going to go into apocalypse mode and buy out all the grocery stores and then proceed to crash their cars everywhere because they don't know what else to do. Although there were a couple car crashes here but we'll let them slide (haha, punny). 

Also, Thanksgiving happened!

It was super duper successful. I mean, I had my misgivings about being able to pull it off with all of our host families and finding ingredients. At best I expected it to be me and my clustermates eating mystery dishes that we almost cooked because we 1) didn't know exactly what ingredients we were using because we simply went off instinct and packaging and 2) I didn't believe that our host families would let us all cook in their kitchens because of some strange ritual rites one must pass before entering into a Ukrainian host mama's kitchen.

However, everything was fantastic and all the host families showed up! We even got to hold it in our LCF's house (which is huge) because the land lady loves us! Really, it was one of the best Thanksgivings I've had due to the fact that we were all truly very thankful to our host community for taking us in and helping our hopeless selves as we floundered. We were also very thankful for each other for being such an amazing group of people that refused to let any one of the group fail. Truly, an amazing Thanksgiving with amazing people that I will miss dearly.  

Kristie made some apple pie

Jake made stuffing that actually tasted like stuffing!

Also made cranberry sauce

It was supposed to say "Kozis" with a heart. At least you can sort of see the heart

Kristie finally let us taste "old bay" and it's rather good. I doubted her. 

Pumpkin pie

That Katie made, by herself, from a real pumpkin that she was told was "a pumpkin for pigs" but we don't really know what that was supposed to mean.

Part of the host family gang

Everyone is paying the puppy and the cats way too much attention

Such a "harnee" group we are

There was singing as well preformed by everyone. I had a video of it but I somehow erased it like a dummy. 

(I also found out that I am definitely lactose intolerant. I've been in denial for many years but it is definitely true and it sucks). 

Also, jam sessions. Jam sessions with pasta. Very important. I'm a little sad but also a little relieved that we didn't discover that we all liked to play guitar and sing because 1) we would have done it a lot sooner and more frequently and 2) we would have done it more frequently which would have resulted in less productivity.

Musician faces a go go

Whitney's artist face

Pasta! With the Ostair group and our wonderful TFC in the background

This is us preforming the song we wrote about Kozelets and our time here. It's to the the tune of "we are going to be friend's" by The White Strips. 

It's a pretty great song

And finally our last session with our LCF

That's the landlady, Lida, on the right

The best group of people to be stuck in a foreign country with <3 br="">That plate, by the way, was given to us by the bookstore ladies because we gave them
a present for always helping us when we went into their store to buy things and copy
things and ask general questions. Really, we went in there so much that one of them
knew Whitney by name. The plate says "Ukraine" on it and we all signed it.

And now what you've all been anticipating (i'm sure). Here is where i'm going to be living out the rest of the 2 years of service:

Bohuslav, Ukraine. Located in Kyiv Oblast. It is about 2 hours away from Kyiv (the capitol) and about 3 hours away from Kozelets. I am very far away from my clustermates which hurts a lot especially because I am also rather far separated from the other volunteers in my region. But no matter, I will make friends i'm sure. The last time this site had a volunteer was 5 years ago and Peace Corps used to use this place as a training community like Kozelets so they are no strangers to gangly, bambling, Americans in their town. The town itself is around 16,000 people which is a nice size. It is close to a city called "Bila Tserkva" (or "white church"). Things are gonna be good. 

I will be teaching at a pedagogical college for the humanities (which means i'll be teaching 15+ year old students--see what talking to the right people does for ya? Haha!). My tentative teaching schedule looks like i'll be teaching all the first years. I will live on my own (for the first time!!!), in an apartment that is located on campus (they call it the teacher's living quarters--actually they threw around the word "dormitory" and "apartment" in the same sentence so I don't really know what my expectations are). The college has internet and therefore it shouldn't be difficult for me to get internet in my apartment. I am super stoked to have my own place and meet my colleagues! Squee!! 

Sunday we depart for Kyiv where we will meet our "counter part" who will become the person we will rely on to help us out when we need it. Then we will swear in at the US embassy and become official Peace Corps volunteers, whoop whoop!

-Jamie