Update....Turkey & My BFF comes to Ukraine

Currently I am in Kiev for the fourth straight week. I am not here on medical so this has become ridiculous. I still have a week here and then finally a REST. But here is a little update of what I have been doing while I was not updating my blog.

2 weeks ago I was in Istanbul with a few other PCVs. We had a great time. We stayed in an awesome hostel right in the middle of everything. We were right next to the Aya Sofia, the Blue Masque and the Topkapi Palace which made it easier to knock them all out at once. We were also very close to the metro and only about 45 minutes from the airport. We met a lot of people at the hostel and around Turkey. We even ran into a few other PCVs on their vacations too. We took a boat tour around the Bosphorus (sp?) and took a ferry to the Asian side of Istanbul. I didn't know that Turkey is split and that part of the country is on the Asian continent. We couldn't get a stamp in our passports though.

Shortly after I returned to Kiev from Istanbul Allison arrived in Kiev. She was coming for the week to hang with me in my new world. She arrived after an all night flight and layover in Frankfurt and then I had her rolling her big, heavy suitcase around Kiev to finally get it on a 3 1/2 hour electrichka to Konotop. Needless to say there was nothing to do after we got home but SLEEP!

On Sunday I showed her my town and where all the magic happens. She wanted to try authentic Ukrainian dishes and I took her to the best cafes in my town so she could try some borscht, chicken kiev, varenicky and pelmeni. Monday night I invited the KTop gang over to my house for some "breakfast for dinner". Allison brought some bacon over from the states and we had bacon, pancakes with maple syrup and derruny! A little American/Ukrainian mix.

Wednesday am we are back on the electrichka to Kiev! We walked around and I showed her all that Kiev has to offer in two days! The last night we thought it would be a good idea to stay up all night so she wouldn't miss her 530am flight! Which she had to leave at 330am to get to the airport. Well that might not have been a good idea. Of course we had to have some wine to celebrate her last night in Ukraine. So everything was fine I got her in the cab and she was off! But at 630am she called to let me know that she missed her flight! Oops. 8 hours later she took off on a different flight back to America. What a day! It was so awesome having her here though. I really missed her but the weird things is no matter how much time passes between our hang outs it is as if I just saw her last week. No time seems to pass. That is how I know she is my best friend! Love you for coming to see me.

Immediately after that I spent the weekend in Kiev doing some awesome healthy lifestyles workout videos for the Healthy Lifestyles Working Group. I was in charge of the cardio kickboxing video (obviously). I had no idea I was doing it until the night before but me and my fellow PCV Kevin hooked it up. We made it so much fun. Everyone in the group working really hard on the videos and it was such a great and fun idea.

Then I went back to site for a few days to catch up with my fellow Ukrainians and to conduct my career development session. Which is going really well! In fact, I can do it in English now because I found out that my four participants speak great English! So that makes life a whole lot easier and I feel like I might be able to teach them something. They are really great girls and they are very grateful that I am teaching this stuff to them which is really rewarding.

I had a great meeting recently with an organization in Ukraine called IOM (International Organization of Migration) they deal with counter trafficking. In this meeting I introduced the idea of our career development program because I know this is something that they want to do with their trafficked victims to get them back in the workforce and they were really excited about the potential to join forces. I hope this works out.

In addition to that I am directing a camp for our Healthy Lifestyles Working Group and this is where you might be able to help me. So I am the director of this camp in a city called Konstantinovka in the Donetska Oblast. A fellow PCV works there currently and his counterparts that work at the Konstantinovka Agricultural Technical Institute wanted him to have a camp about healthy lifestyles. We will be conducting the camp in English and we will be teaching the kids about the dangers of smoking, drinking and drugs, stress management, body image, etc. We will also be playing lots of sports to keep the kids active and introduce some American sports to them that they might not have played. The camp is really going to be lots of fun. We are trying to raise money for this camp so if you could help us out so that we can send some kids to this camp please donate using the following link:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=343-228

We only need to raise $3500! Please help us.

The End of Winter...

We had a celebration a week ago for the end of the winter. The first day of spring and the end of winter are back to back. Women's day and men's day also and they are big holidays around here. We celebrated women's day for a week. That was last week. We also got out of work for 2 days! The end of winter celebrations revolve around pancakes. I am not sure why. We had an event in the city center. Concerts and all kinds of people and a pole. I don't know the significance of the pole but it is essentially a tree shaved down and greased and men compete by seeing who can make it to the top. Very interesting tradition. They also have to strip down to their underwear before attempting to climb it. One of my site mates a fellow American Peace Corps Volunteer tried to climb. He gets an A for effort but unfortunately he didn't make it to the top. In fact, he didn't make it off the ground. You may have seen some pictures of this on my facebook page.

So today was the third session in my career development program. Today we talked about resumes and cover letters. This has to be the most boring of all the topics! You can't even really do anything fun when you talk about resumes and cover letters. My translator/counterpart said she was ready to lead the class. She did ok. I really need to figure out how to open her up. There really is this awful mentality here where students aren't very engaged and teachers aren't very engaging. I don't think of myself as a great and powerful teacher but when I teach I try to get the students involved. I feel that it makes it interesting for them. You could be talking about the most boring of subjects but when you get people involved they pay attention and then everyone has fun and you just might learn something. I wasn't impressed with class today. Only 4 out of 8 people showed up and they basically read the material verbatim. I almost took over in the end. That was the American coming out of me and then I stopped myself and thought, she will never learn if I keep saving her. So I left her to figure it out. Not sure if that was the right way to go about it. We talked about the next session in more detail this time so she would have some ideas on how to engage the participants. We went over it step by step. I think she gets it now. I am almost sad I will miss the next class.

I have been fighting a cold for the first time in Ukraine. I have been beating myself up by working out almost everyday and I don't know if that is making it worse or better. Anyway I decided to go home after class to try and sleep it off and I ran into a man on the marshrutka who speaks pure Russian because he is from Russia and was just here for the day. He was looking for a specific store in my town and he asked me where it was. I was surprised how much I could understand of what he was saying and I had just met him. I started to talk to him in Russian and then I said something in English and he immediately caught me. He asked me where I was from and I said America. He was surprised.

I enjoy meeting new people and I feel so handicapped not knowing the language enough to spark up conversations like that on a regular basis. I still do it as often as possible but sometimes I feel like people don't want to talk to you when they realize you sound like a 5 year old. But I have had some good luck so far. I have sparked up some random conversations with people on trains and buses and I always feel good afterwards no matter what the outcome. What have you got to lose?

The First Day of Spring...

March 1st is the first day of spring in Ukraine. It doesn't mean that the weather follows suit but it is a holiday in this country and claims the first day of spring in March. However, I have noticed that the sun is coming up earlier and staying up longer and it is actually sunny everyday instead of grey! Tuesday is Women's Day and last week was Men's Day. My work had a little celebration for the men in my organization. I couldn't believe that only 6 men work in my organization but there are like 40 women. It kind of changes the statistics a little.

Today Jud had an event at the Technical School. He opened up their English Books Library. He raised money from the states and used it to buy English books for the school. They had really old and useless English books so he decided to help them change that. It was a big event and all the volunteers from Ktop came and our country director! They gave us a nice lunch and put on a wonderful ceremony. Each one of us donated a few English books of our own too. It was really a great event and I was glad to be apart of it. We also did a little something for the 50th anniversary celebrations.

This past weekend I spent some time in Slavske. It is a ski resort in Ukraine in the Carpathian Mountains. It was really beautiful. The skiing was awesome. There are a few mountains out there but the one we went to was downright Ukrainian. The lines were like free for alls. The chair lifts were on the ancient side and you know you are in Ukraine when you come to the bottom of the hill and people are making and eating shashlik and pouring you some hot wine. Because after you drink the hot wine you can ski right on over to the chair lift and do it all over again. This is the first time I have skied in a few years and it was so much fun. There were quite a few of us volunteers there this weekend and we all had a blast! I had a little trouble with the "T" lift but other than that I skied pretty darn well. I was proud!

In other news...my career development program is really underway. We just finish our second class this week. We discussed goal and objectives and how to write an action plan. I lost two participants but gained two so it was fine. Lyuda did a good job of leading it to some extent. She is still not comfortable leading to a group of adults but I hope to change that by the end of the program.

I am having a dinner party at my house on Friday night for some of my Ukrainian friends. I will make them chilli! It is not that American but it will be something they have never had before. I am looking forward to it.