I always wanted to be a camp counselor... Rose and Kim's Big Top Adventure...

There are always second chances in life, even for simple things like camp. This past week I spent five days at Camp Excite. It is a week long summer camp put on by PCVs in my oblast for youth. I am very happy I had the opportunity to see first hand what the camps are like and how they are run. I will be working with youth so it was very beneficial for me. Well I had no idea that I would be teaching once we got there but I was. There were many very interesting lessons too such as culture, human rights, HIV, etc. I didn't know camps like this existed. I remember going to camp when I was 10 and doing a lot of swimming and arts and crafts but I don't remember learning much. I think it was an excellent addition to camp and it didn't take too much time away from swimming because boy was it HOT out there. The campground was in the open and the sun was blistering hot for majority of the day. But we conducted our lessons in the shade and the kids got plenty of time to swim and cool off. We had songs and ghost stories around the fire at night it was an awesome time. And of course I taught kickboxing at 8am in the morning because why not? I met the other volunteers in my oblast which was also a treat. After five days you really feel like part of the family so it was sad to see the kids go but it was high time to go home and take a shower! I will be back next year.

I feel like I have been away from site for a month. I am sitting at work now typing my blog! Nothing really going on. Summer time is slllloooooow. I have a meeting today where I can hopefully go over some things with my counterpart. Of course I am planning on heading to Odessa this weekend for a few days. I just got back and I am headed out again. So many people take vacation in August it is slower here than in the states. Not easy to get much done.

Yesterday Rose and I went to the Circus... That was quite interesting. If it wasnt for the big top tent I would not have known I was at the circus. In the first act I thought I was at a dog show. They brought out some dogs and did some fun tricks with them. There were two clowns in the show that were a bit sketchy and then of course the bear that had a muzzle on and reminded me of silence of the lambs...it was rather creepy. There were some birds, goats, pigs and a rooster in the show as well. There was a hoola hoop showing and a mini trapeze performance. Not many people can say they have been to the circus in Ukraine but I can!

A visitor comes to town...

So I went to see the ladies at the Jewish Center on Thursday. Pics to the right. They are just the sweetest. I took some cookies to them this time. They want me to come every Thursday which is nice because it is hard to get through two hours of Russian when I know about 20 minutes. But they are patient with me and we do it. Nenil read me a story from their newspaper about Abraham Lincoln which was really nice. It is like story time there! They always brighten up my day.

Later that afternoon I went to the Unemployment center as I had planned thinking that there was a career fair...well as is the theme of Ukraine I was completely wrong about what we were doing today! So I show up at the center and the Director asks me if I want to go swimming. I am like "sure but when did Konotop get a pool or what body of water is in this building that we are swimming in?" More importantly my other colleague asks me where my bathing suit is. Well my bathing suit is where it always is when I am at work...in my drawers at home. So after a few minutes I realize we are headed to camp near the River Seim...yet AGAIN! So they take me to my apartment on the way and I get my suit and now I am ready to swim. Well when we get there we put on a presentation to the kids at the camp about the importance of choosing a career path and doing something with the rest of your life. I mean I certainly would have listened to some foreign chick in a bathing suit when I was 16/17 years old too! HELLO?! Probably not the best outfit to wear when you are giving a presentation but such is life here. Sometimes you just don't know what you are doing.

So Jay came to town this weekend. He is somewhere in the ball park of 24 hours away. You can make it in 17 but you would be breaking records. I wasn't there with him for the adventure to my town but he kept me posted the whole way and I have to admire his patience because it was tough! I mean the transporation system in this country is something of a mystery sometimes and then on top of that you can't understand the language. It is like a test every time you go somewhere. Well he left is town on Thursday and he got to me on Friday...he made it! We had a nice weekend. I showed him my hood and he left today. I can't wait to mak that trip out to him! It always sucks when your friends leave. Back to life alone. But I am off to camp tomorrow so it's all good. 5 days with other volunteers and some smart kids who speak English.

That is all for now. I will be back on Friday with some good stories....I hope.

Another day in the neighborhood...

Today I figured out how to get to the river on my own. Everytime I go I end up with someone who has a car which is great but I didn't know how to get there on my own. I took the marshrutka to the river and got off at the wrong stop! It was quite a way to the river from where I got off so I had to walk pretty far. Good thing I had been to this area before and I knew where I was and generally where the river was. I am getting used to making mistakes and being ok with it. It is life in Ukraine. Things just won’t go as you would like them to. But I made it and took a little sun in for a while before heading back to the city.

It has been a slow week. My director is on vacation so my counterpart is in charge and she doesn’t have much time for me. There are about 7 organizations in my city that want to see my face every week so after I visit them and try to speak Russian for however long it takes me to get through my entire Russian vocabulary which doesn’t take long there isn’t much left to do. Monday I spent some time with the kids drawing pictures. We drew some special places in Konotop and then I drew NYC. I figure that was more fun for them to see some interesting places in NY. Those kids can draw! I have not tapped into my creative side at all. I was never a drawer or painter or woodmaker, etc. My mom still keeps all the things that I made her when I was in school and they are just awful but she kept them! These kids…well they are really creative. They could show me a thing or two not the other way around!

Tomorrow I get to hang with the ladies at the Jewish center. Thursday is by far my favorite day of the week. I love the ladies. They love me too so it works. I will take some pictures tomorrow and post them soon. It is always a party at the center. I wonder if I can bring wine…hmmmm!

Jay is coming this weekend. He is getting on the train tomorrow! I couldn’t be more excited for him to come. Tomorrow after my date with the ladies I will peruse the bazaar for lots of food and cook some things tomorrow night. It is an excellent opportunity to try to cook some Ukrainian dishes and have someone eat them besides me. I will show him the town, try to go to the river and just have fun. I can’t wait!

On the home front…came home to yet the fourth leak in my bathroom and water all over the floor while soaking the new bathroom floor towel I bought at the second hand shop. Hopefully, I will get my new bed tomorrow so I can put the cot away. Cot? Is that spelled correctly? Oh how do you take care of cactus plants? I might be killing them. I don’t do plants!

I think that about covers it for this week.

Baths...

This is one of the favorite past times in Ukraine for women and there is a process! I won't have too many pictures to post for this event considering that this event requires you to wear nothing but your party suit! We go every other Friday night. After we are prepared in our uniform we go into the sauna and get nice and hot and after a while we come out and drop a bucket of cold water over our heads. Usually these baths have a pool but in smaller towns you just have a bucket. We shower after each interval into the sauna. Around the third or fourth time the salt scrub, the coffee scrub, the honey, etc must be rubbed on your body and then go back into the sauna. All of this makes your skin feel like a baby's a$$. Its really fun and relaxing. It's like ladies night. All the ladies come and we drink and talk about things. It is all in Russian but I can get the jist of things sometimes. It is nice to have a ladies night once in a while. Most of the ladies I have met are married and have children. We drank a lot of beer last night...it was fun...

New week...

After the adventures of this past weekend it is time to go back to work. Jud is back!! That makes me very relieved. Jud is another volunteer who has been in Konotop for a year now. I met him in the beginning of training and now I am volunteering in the same city. He was away for two weeks when I first got here and now he has returned. We met last night and he helped me gain some new perspective on my new life in Konotop. We discussed some ideas for our community and I think we can do great things together.

So yesterday I spent the morning at the zoo with the kids from the disabled center. We had a great time. It is a small zoo. It only had a deer, a goat, 2 ducks, many hamsters, a few birds and two turtles but the kids loved it. There were only 5 children that went with us. It is summer now and there aren't many children around. They go away in the summer or someone is home with them every day. The children are really great. This one little girl who I believe is 6 speaks very good English. I asked her name in Russian and she responded to me in English as if she were American it was fantastic. She was the only one and it blew me away.

Today I have gone to the Jewish Center in my town to see what they do and what the center is all about. There is so much history there it was a wonderful experience. Gregory is an excellent tour guide and he knows English very well. He brought along his grandson to translate as well. The center seems like a very well oiled machine but it is fun hanging out with the older ladies and the older men. They have lots of stories and they love to talk about them.

This afternoon visited the center for pensioners. They put on an event for the holiday here today. Ivan Kupala is the name of the holilday.

"Ivan Kupala Day is one of the great and enigmatic holidays signifing a celebration in honour of the "God of the Sun" (or "Dazhbog"). It is belived that during this time of summer solstice, the sun is strongest, before turning to the winter. They say that the Sun is a personification of light, celebrating its victory over dark forces, so as it rises it's "playing", "leaping" and feeling joyful. All Nature is also joyful because of this, becoming special and charmed. The name of the holiday is bound to the name of "Kupajla", who is the "Divinity of Fertility",of the harvest, welfare and medicinal healing herbs and plants. Traditional ceremonies are timed so as to celebrate in honour of youth, beauty, love and purification."

It was a lot of singing and dancing but it was fun. I couldn't understand a word of it and it lasted two hours but I got into it.

That's all for today.

Okay it has been two weeks since I have been at site and three months in Ukraine I think I can start the blog back up! I am living in an apartment that is pretty swanky for PC living. I have hot water now and internet so I can't complain. My counterpart is nice she has introduced me to many organizations here. I am working with the Department of Labor but I will be more or less doing things for my partner organizations which are mainly centers for disabled children and pensioners (as they are called in Ukraine). Also there is a chance I can work with war veterans which is super cool since history of warfare is right up my alley especially WWII! I have settled in pretty much everyday gets better. I have lost the sting of being away from my PC friends and home but some days are better than others.

I just got back from a camping/kayaking trip. I am pretty sure I kayaked 70 kilometers from Konotop to Baturyn. I didn't realize what we were doing until the second day of a six hour kayak trip. Apparently this is an event that we were apart of. We kayaked on the River Seim which is a nice river and where most people go when the go to the "beach". I went last weekend with my counterpart for the day and it was nice. It has a stream so it is clean. I also went to Seim during the week with one of our partner organizations. I have been to Seim many times this week! I have to say that I am DONE after three days of lugging my crap around, kayaking, drinking vodka, wiping my a$$ in the woods and dodging mosquitos. It was a lot of fun but I am exhausted. I couldn't wait to come home and take a shower and I broke my shower head after washing the red wine out of my clothes since my counterpart thought it would be a good idea to put it in my bag! Oy!

I haven't worked much. I have spent a lot of time "visiting" people and just doing stuff with them like camp for example! I am going on an excursion on Tuesday with another organization. Again, not exactly "working". I think we are going to the zoo!

So that is pretty much it. I haven't had much time to read up on my PC responsibilities or keep in touch with family or study Russian but all in due time. I really want to figure out my place here but everyone keeps telling me it will come so I will work on being patient because as you all know I AM NOT! :) That is all for now. Stay tuned.