Pictures of Kiev + some extras!

As promised! Not all of them because it takes so long to upload and as you'll see when you scroll down I had some formatting troubles that I could not fix. But, enjoy none-the-less!

Found  bit of DC in Kiev

Kiev

Don't know why some of these are upside down but it took me way too long to even just get them uploaded so ya'll will have to deal 

I don't know her name but I do know that she could kick Lady Liberty's ass any day.
She is part of the museum of the "great patriotic war" or WWII as us Westerners know it.
We weren't able to go into the museum though because unfortunately it is closed on Mondays. 

We did go to a huge monastery and saw some caves that contained dead saints. Apparently it's a thing to show off said saints' hands. 

View from Bell tower. The church in the back ground was gorgeous! 

Inside the bell tower of Sofiisky Sobor

Sofiisky Sobor

Group mug shot!

The lady in the middle was a badass queen who united Ukraine. 

My first day of teaching!

Our class kitten

Movie night! We watched Red

Some statue of a bard who traveled Ukraine and organized a sort of militia 

Surprise holodets! (Meat jelly) Not so bad really if you spread it on a piece of bread

Liberty square

I swear these guys almost pick-pocketed us. 

Statue! 

Another statue!

Sofiisky Sobor, bell tower

Sofieesky sobor. Quite lucky that it didn't get torn down by the Soviets.

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

  

Dobre den, Mene zvati Jamie! Yak Vas Zvati?

Today was the big day. Today we all were ushered onto buses and hurried off to meet the families we will be living with for the next 2 months.

First though, this morning I went on a tour of the Soviet era nuke bunker in the basement of our hotel! It was kinda creepy in a weird sort of walk through history sense. There were a series of doors (the first two being curved so as to lessen the impact of a blast) that led to a main room that contained a ping pong table, a dart board, and some incredibly uncomfortable looking prison beds. There was also two toilets and a sink (all still functional) and ventilation shaft-things, air-conditioning that could either be hand cranked or turned on with a switch if there was still power. And of course a wireless radio and information on what to do if there is nuclear fall-out.  Our tour guide told us that bunkers like these are supposed to be inspected and kept up to date in case of any sort of disaster but of course, due to budget cuts, the one in the hotel was in rather poor condition.

you can't see very well but the door is curved. 

Everyone needs a stressed reliever when there's nuclear fall out!

am I right?

Here are the beds. And if you forgot your pillow, never fear!
That's what those extra boards are for :D

You know, it works at least...

The water cooler and the crawl space

The back exit that was filled with water
cuz it rained the other day which doesn't seem like this place
 would protect from radiation if it can't even protect from rain water...
Just saying.

command center

that says "air"

And if the power is out all you need is some man muscle and

you'll have air conditioning cranking out in no time!

After the tour we, once again, got talked at for numerous hours about safety (the safety coordinator is ex-soviet era police. Legit), signed some papers for registration and bank accounts, and went through a host family orientation!

Now, in my previous job I had sat through countless host family orientations for the short term exchange students that came to my university and they were all pretty boring and straight forward. I think my old colleagues could take a tip or two from how our Ukrainian LCF’s (I can’t remember the acronym but basically they are the ones who set up our host families, met them, did the house walk through, and they will also be our language and culture teachers/support link for these next few months).  They put together a 25 minute skit that covered everything we might encounter on our first day/night with our families. It was humorous, informative, and well done. They covered how to enter the house (no shoes!), what to expect at dinner (you won’t serve yourself and you’ll be offered alcohol of all sorts), privacy and personal space (pretty much you won’t have any and expect your stuff to be gone through and organized), bathroom etiquette (might only have half a bucket of water to wash with and then are expected to wipe the area clean when finished. And oh yeah, your host mother may or may not walk in on you w/o knocking to see if you need help washing your back), and clothing (what you choose to wear in the morning will never be acceptable, just leave it to your host family to dress you). The most important thing to remember is that host families do all of these things out of love and the constant need to have you fit in and feel like one of the family/community. They debriefed the skit with us and the most interesting aspect I found was the reason that our host family might go through our things is because they have this idea in their head that Americans are hopelessly unorganized and need all the help we can get. Also, because back in the Soviet suck era, personal space was unheard of due to crummy living conditions and small apartments so thus the non-comprehension of that. Apparently if you’re going to stand in line for something you better stand as physically close to the person in front of you (like boobs pressed against their back close), otherwise someone might mistake the gap you leave as you not actually standing in line and jump right in front of you. Awesome.

I don’t know my host family’s last name but my host mother’s name is Natasha. I also have a host brother who is in high school but I can’t remember his name at all. The father apparently died in a car crash some years ago. They are very nice and their house is a good sized house. I do have my own room and because my family has hosted 7 other Peace Corps volunteers they know exactly what to expect from me and how to treat me. That being said, food was not pushed on me, every time my host mom needed to get something out of my room (because it doubles as storage/ironing room) she asked politely (I learned the word for room very fast because of this. Kimnata). Although my host mom doesn’t speak English we had a pretty good conversation (I learned from her how her husband died, which I thought was pretty good –not her husband dying part but me understanding this situation). Her son does speak a little English and she was always calling for him to come and translate for us. I can’t wait for my language skills to get good enough that I can actually hold a semi-intelligent conversation.

Kozelets (the town I’m staying in) seems rather nice as well. There are 5 of us staying here and tomorrow we are meeting with our LCF to go get cell phones and do some other stuff. I’m going to look into making my internet situation a little better. According to my host brother, the previous volunteer had some sort of device that she plugged into her computer that gave her internet magically? I wish I had internet to look up this magical device but alas…I’ll be able to use my host brother’s computer when I ask. However I feel bad every time I do because it’s in his room and also his room smells like teenage boy. Awkward.

figure something out.

In the meantime, dopobachenya! I’m off to study then sleep!

-Jamie