Happy Easter!

Easter in Ukraine was a week later than the USA so we just finished celebrating as of yesterday.

It was your typical Ukrainian Easter. We woke up at 2:30am to get to the church by 3am. We stood around the church on the edges of the sidewalks with out baskets. Our baskets were filled with Easter bread, butter, salt, eggs, salo and anything else you want blessed. Now Easter bread is break made especially for this holiday. It is usually round and tall and has some sweetness to it on the top. Sometimes decorated with jimmies or other sweet things. Traditionally, the bread was made at home but it takes a really long time to make it and you need certain cooking utensils. The service inside the church generally starts at 3am. So we get to the church early to get some good real estate. The closer you position yourself to the door where the priest will eventually come out the sooner you will be blessed and the sooner you can return home to start making breakfast or lunch or retire to the bed for a few hours.

Last year I came to this same church and did this exact thing. Only last year I was with Jeramie, Danny and Jeramie's neighbors aka grandparents. But we had some really good real estate. This year I went with Alla, Nickolai, Bogdana, Lyuda and a few of Alla's neighbors and co-workers. This is my Konotop Ukrainian family and it was good to be with them this year but the real estate was not as good. We definitely did not have our game faces on.

The priest came out at about 4am. He got to us around 4:30am, blessed all of our goodies and then we all started to scatter in different directions. I went home for a few hours to sleep. Alla and family went home as well and started cooking food for breakfast and lunch. I came back over around 2pm and had the meal of the year. I sat there at that table from 2pm to 5pm and just ate and drank. You can tell from the picture what happens next.

This was my last Easter in Ukraine. I won't need to wake up at 2:30am next year to stand outside of the church. It was a lovely day with my family.

Close of Service (COS)

I am not sure what to call this journal entry. In fact that is one of the reasons that I don't blog everyday there is so much work involved in coming up with the right title or the right things to blog about. Social media is still fascinating to me because I just didn't think people cared that much. Apparently, some do. It still isn't the first thing I think about when I want to tell my friends what I am doing or what I've done...but it just seems the easiest and fastest way to let everyone know all at once. So, I am coming around. (I just thought of it)

Anyway that was not the subject of this post. I had every intention of making the last few entries while still a Peace Corps Volunteer about the moving back process because it is a "process". I have been spending a lot of time closing things down and finishing things up. I didn't have too many projects open since I knew I would have to start shutting them down but I had quite a few things I stopped doing over the last few weeks.

The month of February was back and forth to the capital having my last meetings in each of my working groups. I was a member of HIV/AIDS but gave that up quite a few months ago. I finished my last meeting as the volunteer advisory council member for my group. That was the last meeting with the staff but I am still a rep for my group in the event that they have anything else they might have an issue with before we leave. I finished up with the Gender and Development Council where I was doing projects for women in the workforce and counter trafficking. I, along with one of my fellow PCVs, transferred leadership on the Special Needs working group to a good friend of ours who we think will continue our good work. Just recently had my last SPA committee meeting. That group reviews and chooses grants written by PCVs to receive money from USAID.

In March my group, group 38, had our COS conference. That means "close of service". We meet in a city and stay at a hotel for a few days. Until recently we would meet at a really awesome resort area but now there is no money in the budget so we now meet in Chernigiv, where we went when we arrived, at a pretty nice business center/hotel. We started with 76 volunteers but now we are down to something like 68 but I am not positive on the number. Anyway we meet, we eat, we have meetings, we leave. That is pretty much it. We cover information like what COS is going to look like, what we have to do for medical, what we have to do administratively, how to say goodbye to our sites, friends, other volunteers, things like this! It was really nice to see everyone all in one place again. I see people quite often but even for me there were some people there that I had not seen since we left swearing in almost 2 years ago.

Myself and another PCV were in charge of doing our slideshow. Volunteers usually do something at the conference for fun. In the past some people have done skits, talent shows, superlatives, and other things. But always a slideshow. So me and this other PCV asked for pictures and we put together an awesome slideshow of volunteers doing projects at site, volunteers with Ukrainians, volunteers with other volunteers, some vaca pics, and other such things people wanted in the slideshow. It came out really good! It was mostly happy but there were some sad parts. It is pretty amazing what we have all accomplished over the last 2 years. We have all done such wonderful work. We have had a blast and the people, for me, that I have met will be my friends forever. Truly amazing people that I had the pleasure of working with and getting to know and that is priceless.

I am really going to miss my experiences here and the people both Ukrainians and Americans. I spent a lot of time the last 2 months traveling, like usual. I just had my last full week in Kiev doing work related to Peace Corps and as I was leaving, finally leaving for a while after all of the travel since February I was really sad. It was 8pm and I was sitting on the train waiting to depart from the train station and my eyes just teared up. I had just had a few staff members hug me as if it was going to be the last time they would see me. I was the last person to leave the office that night and it just hit me. Very soon, possibly the next time in fact, would be the last time I will be in Kiev and there may only be one more time that I will get back on a train from the capital to my site. What if this is the last time that I will be on a train leaving Kiev to go back to Konotop? It was a rush of emotions and I was truly sad. I talk a big game that I am ready to go home and can't wait to be there and this is true but what I will be leaving behind is in my soul now and it will be difficult to leave. I remember leaving NY when I was coming here and I was in tears but I knew I would be in a few years. I also remember leaving swearing in when I had to leave all of the people that I had gotten to know over the first 10 weeks of our time here and how sad that was.

As sad as it will be it makes me feel good that I let these people in. I cared about them knowing that one day I would have to leave. I spent the time I had with all of these people both American and Ukrainian and will continue to do that until the very last day.