lots of reading and catching up

I've been journaling everyday since I dont have direct access to the internet.  I am pasting everything here so feel free to read as much as you want, but I hope you read it all.  I'm loving life and I miss you all!!!


Last night of staging was a blast. We went to a Mexican restaurant where I ate my last American dinner. We then went to the same pub again where pretty much all 80 of us showed up to annoy the local Philly folks. After the bars closed, I walked back to the hotel with Travis, Adam and Eryn. We ended up walking through Penn’s campus and posing for some amazing pictures along the way. Travis and I are convinced we are going to shoot an award-winning Ukrainian film while out here. There is even a girl called Jamie who has connections with Sundance Film Festival that maybe we can sweet talk.

Monday morning, I woke up and ran around downtown Philly looking for a laptop lock.
I found a good one, but it cost me $45. We all checked out on time and loaded onto 3 buses. At the last minute, one girl had still not received her luggage and it was finally getting delivered at the last minute. It arrived just in time for us to leave. We took off just in time and drove for 3 hours through New York City (including Times Square) and ended up at JFK airport in time to eat and spend a couple hours in a boiling-hot airport before boarding. Apparently this airport isn’t allowed to turn on their air conditioning until summer is officially on. I mean, it was HOT!!!
We got into Frankfurt, Germany on time. It was really cool flying over “the motherland”. I really want to visit Germany and see more of it at some point. Our flight to Kyiv was delayed because of our large group and the amount of luggage. The entire group got on the plane, but when all was said and done, about 30 of us were missing at least 1 luggage. I was missing 1 suitcase, but others were missing everything...even the carry-ons they made them check. Originally we were all supposed to take off together, but since so many of us lost luggage, the one group took off ahead of us. Our group had to wait in line for about 3 hours and fill out customs forms for our lost bags. Once we were all done, we were able to head out of the airport….finally! As they were loading the bus, we were able to eat a banana, a candy bar, and drink a juice box. We had to hurry up because the Ukrainian Prime Minister was about to arrive at the airport and they were waiting for our bus to get out of the way. We took the 1 hour drive on the bus from the airport to Prolosok (snowdrop). The drive was interesting. There was a lot of normal city life (McDonalds and all) and then a lot of forests and fields getting burned. You could definitely notice the pollution in the air. We arrived at Prolosok around 7pm. Imagine the most run-down camp you ever went to as a kid and then multiply it by 20. It was rather beat-up to say the least. We were just happy to be somewhere and at that point that had somewhere to sleep horizontally since we were all so jet lagged. They unloaded our bags and our group was starving at that point. The other group was already done eating and were getting ready to play a game of soccer. We all went into the cafeteria and enjoyed out first official Ukrainian meal which consisted of a small chicken breast, rice, bread cucumbers and tomatoes. They had candy bars, tea and coffee for dessert. At the end of dinner, a Ukrainian couple in full costume came in and offered everyone this festive bread that everyone takes a piece, dunks in salt and toasts. After dinner, I put my 1 suitcase in storage, met up with Travis and we hung out in Eryn, Jen and Laura’s room after watching some Duck Tales season1 in another guy’s room. I had to live in a super small room with 2 roommates (Jonathan and Greg) and we all were so tired we started to have some crazy vocal dreams in the middle of the night.

The next morning we ate some cheese, cucumbers and other staples of the Ukrainian diet and then attended some classes. There was a volunteer from another group that gave a lecture, I found out I am to learn Russian and had my first Russian class (which sucks because I had put in so much time learning Ukrainian), and we had some other workshops. The United States ambassador stopped in to visit all of us as well. We then ate some sort of pork and noodles and some soup with onion and tomatoes and then went up to the room before meeting up to watch “Volunteers” (a great Peace Corps comedy starring Tom Hanks) in the campus theater. After that, we all went to the one small store on campus and bought out all the vodka and had a mad party in the downstairs discoteque where we played some guitar, listened to music and just hung out talking. Even at this point, I am still meeting more and more trainees that I haven’t had the chance to meet yet. In our rooms, they supplied us with bananas, water, juice and apples so we took the juice down to the ball room and had something to mix the vodka with. I was able to talk to my parents briefly today with a phone card they gave us and I am now wrapping up the night after a luxurious shower. This shower is basically a huge elevated step with no shower curtain where you use this nozzle to hydrate, lather, rinse, etc. It is extremely unreal, but entertaining nonetheless….not to mention the water is hot so that makes a huge difference. I guess some of the rooms do not have hot water and they have to squat the whole time because the hose is not long enough.

Friday, we attended more classes and ate more cucumbers. I swear I have lost about 5 pounds already. We got assigned out clusters (people we will be living near). In my cluster is Megan, Brian, Zach, and Teri. Our instructor’s name is Olga (pronounced “Ola”). She seems really cool. We got our assigned communities in which we will be shipping out to. There are 4 clusters of 5 people moving to my area. We will be moving to a city called “Chernohigiv” which is about 2 1/2 hours north of Kyiv. After a surprisingly delicious dinner of cabbage rolls and a beet and egg salad, most of us headed back to our rooms to study while some of the others stayed in the theater to watch a movie (I think it was Blood Diamond). At this point a small handful of people are really homesick and some are talking of quitting although I’ll believe it when I see it. One thing is clear, there is always going to be ups and downs. Yesterday my luggage was still lost and my ipod died on me. Today my luggage arrived and my ipod is working again. I’m having a great time, but am a little nervous about meeting my host family tomorrow. I hope they speak a little English or at least some Ukrainian as my Russian is extremely horrible at this early stage.

Welcome to Saturday…the most surreal day of my life to date and the most nerve-wrecking day thus far on my big adventure. This morning we attended classes on what to expect from our host families. The staff performed some funny skits about possible situations we may find ourselves in. After that, we had a quick safety workshop about water, vegetables and things of that nature. We ate a nice lunch of pork and rice which, by the way, I tried this stuff on the table which is essentially ketchup mixed with hot sauce. It is amazing and I can’t believe no one has brought this to the states yet. We had about an hour after lunch to get our stuff together and meet in the lobby where about 5 different buses were picking us up to take us to our cities (oblasts). I said some sad goodbyes to friends and we got on our bus to Chernohigiv. When we arrived, we drove by a McDonalds and other familiar things and they let us out in the downtown square where slowly host families began to meet us and take us away. I was the third to last to leave and was getting more nervous (probably more nervous than I’ve ever been) by the second. During the bus ride I frantically tried to scrape together a few words and expressions in Russian to make things less awkward. While we were waiting on the sidewalk 2 Ukrainian girls came up to Jonathan and me and started flirting with us. I think they were amazed by us and thought we were movie stars. Finally, my host father came up to me and in a very awkward 2 minutes with the help from my language instructor, we were off. My host father’s name is Andrey and he is 29 years old. His father and 6 year-old son were in the car and his father drove us to their flat (apartment). This was bar none the most awkward car ride in my life as all my Russian escaped from my head and I froze. The only one that made a lick of sense was Nikita (the son) who knew how to say brother, sister, mother and father in English. The father dropped us off and we walked up to the third floor of the apartment complex where I met my host mother Marina. She is 25. Right away the stress and awkwardness went bye bye and we did our best to communicate. I ended up following them around the apartment while they showed me various things such as the refrigerator, light switch, toothbrush, towel, etc. and I used a notepad to right down the Russian word. Now, get this…this flat is nicer than 80% of the apartments in America. It is a newer place with cable tv (even some English channels), a Roman bathtub with hot water, a washing machine, a home office with a computer and a nice kitchen. Andrey is a movie buff like me and has over 1000 DVDs. He works as a computer programmer for the college of geology studies. Marina works at the same college in a different department. I really lucked out. He offered me a really good beer and we sat down for dinner which was pretty much potatoes, cabbage with egg and some pork. The put it all in a bowl and add mayonnaise. It was actually quite tasty. After dinner, we finished our beers and sat down and watched some crazy Ukrainian television. We ran out of beer and it was Andrey’s night off so I offered to buy more. The three of us walked to the market and I picked up some bottled water, juice, chips and more beer. We came back and I taught them how to play UNO. We played the longest game in history and then showed each other photographs of our families and friends. We drank some more beers and watched Dancing with the Stars (the Ukrainian version) and after an awkward time of “who is going to go to bed first”, I finally caved in and headed back to my room. I never pictured my host family to be like this. I pictured a typical older family and a completely different scenario. Andrey and Marina are 2 people I would have made friends with back in the states. They are way cool and we have a lot in common. My host family is the coolest in the history of the Peace Corps and today was one of the most amazing days of my life.

I slept well last night. Although my room is very nice with a big desk, the bed is a long chair or bench and is similar to sleeping on a big brick with absolutely no cushion. I am not complaining because things could be a lot worse. Today we walked around the market where I bought some slippers. In Ukraine it is essential to wear slippers around the house. Andrey had to lend me some yesterday. I stepped out onto their balcony without slippers and they freaked out. I am slowly adjusting to the ways things are quite different out here. The market is like an outdoor mall. It’s really like a huge flea market in the states. The only unfortunate (or fortunate) thing is that Peace Corps has made me paranoid about getting pick-pocketed. So I am skeptic about anyone who gets near me. With my limited Russian skills, somehow I managed to buy a cell phone today. Incoming calls are free, but I haven’t quite mastered the cost of outgoing calls. In Ukraine, you need to buy a card which stocks the minutes beforehand. At least I won’t be receiving a huge cell phone bill this way. In the flat, we have a pet. He is a guinea pig. They treat him like a cat. I feel kinda bad though because they don’t give him water. I don’t feel comfortable saying anything yet, but I bet the little guy is thirsty as hell. Right now I am hanging out with Marina while Andrey went to pick up Nikita from his grandfather’s house. I believe for dinner we are about to eat fish soup (ugh). For breakfast we had bread with cheese and sausage with honey on it. Is everyone jealous of my eating habits? I am going to lose so much weight. It is kind of a good thing though. It’s like being on a diet with no temptation. The music out here is crazy. All of the stations play one song in Russian or Ukrainian and the next song is bad American pop music (i.e. Spice Girls). Gwen Stefani and Jennifer Lopez are big out here and I just heard a Green Day song on the radio in the kitchen. Thank God I stocked my computer with good music.
До сииданя!