One crazy summer...

It is Tuesday, August 23rd. Tomorrow is Ukraine's Independence Day. I just returned from a month of being on the road. I have been traveling for months now. I left back in May and have only actually been in my apartment a collective 9 days since May 26th. This has been the best summer of my life. I don't remember when the last time was that I could wake up anywhere and do anything and not have to be somewhere. Except of course, on a train or bus that was taking me to another place. Unfortunately, this wasn't an everyday thing. I worked 4 camps this summer and attended the Russian language refresher so I certainly worked a lot for a wondering PCV but it sure beats the 8am - 6pm shifts at the old hedge fund in my former life!

I've been working what seems like my whole life. I've never taken a summer off to lifeguard or be a camp counselor. I always had to have the high paying bank job. Well I've killed a few birds with one stone this year. I have now been a camp counselor...several times. I've directed a few too. Even did some lifeguarding. I wasn't sitting a top a lifeguard stand at the white sandy beaches of Miami Beach or anything I had to settle for the rocky, dirty make shift sand of the river bank or the sea but none the less!

I started out this summer working camps and making my way around the west of Ukraine. I think I wrote about this already. Spent some time in Russia too! Over the last month I spent a week at Russian language refresher then made my way to the parts of the west I haven't seen with my pals Stephanie and Hailey. We started off in Shotsk, Ukraine. This is my friend Jay's site. Up in the most Northwest oblast. We headed out to a lake resort near there to spend the weekend with a few other 38ers. It rained more or less the whole time but it was a pretty little resort town and a gem for Ukraine. We made the best of it. We played some football, walked around and ate, drank, danced and when the sun did come out for a few hours we did a little sun bathing.

Next we headed to Lviv. I've been there a dozen times but didn't see the city the way we did this time. We climbed the clock tower, went to the huge cemetery and actually went inside the opera house. I stayed at a different hostel and had some decent sushi! Hailey's boyfriend met up with us and we hung out with the guys too. They pretty much crept up behind us most of the way. They are balls of fun so it was all good!

Then we hopped on a bus to Berejani. This town is about 3 hours Southeast of Lviv in Ternopil oblast. A friend of ours just got moved there and we were headed to check him out. His town is quaint. We met some Germans while we were there that were working a farm outside of the city. That happens a lot in Ukraine. They were nice and spoke great English. We hung out, watched movies, checked out the Polish memorial that overlooks the valley and made some good food. Just an old fashioned PCV hang out.

After two days there we got back on a bus to Ivano Frankivsk. Been there already too but again did things a little different. We hung out with the volunteer that lives there and he showed us a few new things like the church and a few memorials and a restaurant that overlooks the whole city. We only had a few hours there and we were off to the next town...Kolomia.

We went to Kolomia to climb Mt. Hoverla which was the highlight of the trip. We stayed at a PCVs house in the city. This was a really cute town as well. Man PCVs have it good in the west!!! We rented a van that took about 8 of us to the mountain about 2 hours away. We got up early and headed there straight away. We took the somewhat easier route to climb this mountain that is really only 2000km high but boy it was tough. It was a whole lot steeper than I was expecting and I never stopped long enough to rest. We started with the group and then me and my friend Abe somehow past the pack and we were headed to the top just him and I. He was my motivation to keep going because without any kind of steps we were almost rock climbing the whole way. It was a great work out though and it only took us 1 1/2 hours to reach the top. We got there about a 1/2 hour before everyone else. We had some lunch and drank a lot of water and then headed back down. It was a beautiful day. It was not too hot but sunny and no clouds in the sky. It was certainly hot climbing but once at the top after you cooled down it was quite chilly. The scenery was magnificent! On the way down Abe and I thought it was a good idea to run most of the way. It only took us an hour. My quads still haven't forgiven me for that but at least they don't hurt anymore!

After that it was time to go our separate ways. I took a train out to Kiev from Chernivtsi another town I had already been to and then met up with Amanda there to head to Krivoy Rog. That is my cluster mates site. We worked a camp together and I went down early so that I could see her city before heading to the camp and also to help her with whatever pre camp stuff she needed to do. All the volunteers trickled in over the next few days and then we were off to camp.

Camp was a sweet time. We had all University students so everyone was in their 20s. It was weird working a camp with a bunch of adults. You can't really tell them what to do perse. They all listened and they were respectful but after working with young teenagers it is quite different. I even found a group of runners. They did run 2 hours with me but they did a pretty good job. They are running the 10k in Kiev on the same day that I am running the marathon so it was good to have some people to run with in the morning.

The camp was a different kind of camp. Chris was implementing a new idea of role playing and he used ancient Greece as the theme. They had to vote and make decisions and try to save their government and their city. It was pretty cool. I was working the administrative side of the camp and didn't really get a chance to understand fully what was going on but the kids really enjoyed and they were really into it. We even had a toga party!

The last few days I spent in Crimea. The southern most oblast in Ukraine. This is where locals and even out of towners go for vacation. The Black Sea! We camped on a beach called Fox Bay which is a nude beach actually. It was quite the hippy scene. I felt like I was at woodstock only not that crazy. I never camped on a nude beach before. It was a lot of fun though and the scenery around us was beautiful. I woke up to the sun rising every morning right in front of our tent over the sea. Mountains surrounded us so we were in a little cove.

Now I am back in Konotop. I can't believe how fast the summer flew by. As much as I enjoyed it there were a lot of times I thought about the things I need to accomplish in these last 10 months and it has been pretty stressful. I have also been giving my after life a lot of thought (after PC). I have no idea what I want to do after this. It is hard to imagine sitting in an office from 8am to 6pm after an experience like this. I have even found myself considering an extension here in Ukraine. I am sure you (my family and friends) are thinking you better come home but there are things I want to do here and I want to know that I have done them before I can say good bye. It really is true that you don't really have that much time here. Two years is not that long. It is just enough to find your happy place and then you have to leave again. When you finally make those bonds and finish those projects or find new ones that you wanted from the beginning you have to leave. I never thought I would want to stay. It is funny how life works out sometimes.