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