Quick Post

I have a few minutes and thought I'd send a quick note out. I had a boring weekend of doing nothing. In the package I got from my parents, was a new card game. We spent many hours playing Phase 10 and now we all hate UNO. I had a new and exciting food experience...chicken embryos. They are basically eggs in the earlyy development stage comlete with nasty veins and all. They are very tought and resemble that of a sheep testicle. Good eating. Can someone please tell me why my host family eats the weirdest stuff??
Today we had an easy day in language class. We watched a Russian movie and cooked an awesome lunch together. I am aboutto meet up with some people at the beer tent in about 10 minutes to hang out for a bit before I need to go home and pack. It is super nice outside for once...nothing like Billings though.
We leave at 8:15am tomorrow and get in around noon. Tomorrow at this time, I will know where I am going to spend 2 years of my life. We are all excited to see each other again and hear the news...good or bad.
I got a call from the office in Kyiv this morning. They have 2 packages for me I need to pick up next week. I'm guessing they are from J.J. and Shawna. I'll let you guys know. Thanks for taking care of me.
Talk to y'all in a week!

The Week In Pictures

Pictures from the Soviet War museum. You had to pay to take pictures inside, so this is the best I could do. This is an old school Soviet tank.

This is my project group (minus Greg) slaving away in the only place available...the local shopping mall. The mall did have an amazing ice cream shop where the owner spoke English. I tried smoked ice cream....not good. Ukrainian ice cream is awesome though.

Project Group study break at Jonathan's place just before the greates Ukrainian meal of all-time.

A manly pose of me taking a tea break. Not only is Jonathan's mom the world's greatest cook, she also makes killer tea. Jonathan is the guy drilling for oil on the right.

Victory Day celebration!!!

Weekly Update

Tuesday was Victory Day. We went to this Soviet World War II museum which was really interesting. We had an English tour guide and it made a big difference. It was painful to see how the Jews were treated back then and to see graphic photographs of it all. I got home in the late afternoon to find out Andrey pirated Spiderman 3 so we watched that on his computer. I guess my Russian is getting better because I understood the entire film except one scene he had to translate for me. When that got over, we ate dinner. What was for dinner?? It looked like delicious chicken soup so I dove in. I noticed a peculiar taste and at that moment Marina said to me, " You do like fish heads, don't you? Just be careful of all the bones". I choked down the rest of it and Andrey had the idea to get on a bus to watch the fireworks show downtown. I was reluctant, but I was glad we went when all was said and done. We stopped and grabbed some beers and when we headed into the center it was like Vegas on New Year's Eve. Most of the city was out at 11pm and it was a huge street party. We ended up staying out pretty late. We walked home and stopped into this pool hall and played some Russian billiards. The differenece is all the balls are white and you can hit any balls you want. The first person to hit 6 in wins. The tables are twice as big as American pool and I sucked. They did have one American table so I taught Andrey and his friend how to play "real pool" and I still lost :) I finally got to bed at 4:30am and had to be up at 7am.
Wednesday was an awkward night. Andrey and Marina were in a screaming match and then not speaking to each other. I felt very uncomfortable and left the house to hang out with olga down the street so they could have some privacy.
Thursday we had our last session on grant-writing. I came home and watched some more lame DVD's.
Our project finally has life after several meetings and a busy week. We are putting on a seminar June 6th for 6 organizations and a group of college students on "selling yourself" (e.g. resume-writing and interviewing skills) so our original idea came backl to life in the long run. We sat in on one Russian seminar at the employment center Tuesday and brought an amazing translator with us so that is a big reason why we had success. We spent the last few days drafting our proposal and applying for a grant to pay for this thing. Wednesday at Jonathan's house I expereiced something amazing....food! His host mom rocks! She cooked so much food for us and it was all delicious. Good to know I'm the only one who got the shaft in the food department. I am going back there tomorrow with our translator to watch the last 5 episodes of "Lost". Jonathan's mom in the states mailed him a DVD with the last few episodes on it and I am excited!!! Our translator, Andrey, also is a huge fan of the show so tomorrow should be a good day. Speaking of packages, I finally received my first one!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was mailed April 6th from my parents. Cutoms took out the food that was in it, but I was glad to get something. My mom put a hot wheels car in there for Nikita and now he thinks he is the coolest kid inUkraine. He is so proud to have an American living with him and he loves to show me off to his friends.
On the down side, I am completely broke. I have enough of my pay to get me to my site on Tuesday and that's it. I get paid again when I arrive there. Therefore, it will most likely be a boring weekend.
Last night totally sucked. When I got home Andrey and Marina were shouting for hours and hours again. She's a screamer when they argue and it went on until about midnight. My dinner last night was a bag of mushroom flavor potato chips. She offered me dinner, but I saw it was left over fish head soup with nothiung but bones floating around in there so I kindly passed.
Today I laughed harder than I have in years. In language class, we had our Tech teacher come in and teach us Ukrainian cuss words. It was for our safety and for the business teachers mostly. The handout had every possible word and phrase imaginable and some of the translations were hilarious and made absolutely no sense. We just got out of another meeting with the director of the employment center and tonight I have the house to myself WOO HOO!!
I won't be posting for over a week most likely. I will be back around the 23rd. I can't afford phone minutes this week so I apologize for the lack of calls. I will be back in touch when I get back from visiting my new city.

Just Stopping By

I just got out of a brutal language class where we had to learn how the European train system works. The entire exercise was over my head so I guess I will end up in Kazakstan when I am trying to get to Odessa. We are going on a field trip Thursday to the train station so I have a few days to figure this thing out. Tomorrow I have tutoring in the afternoon and Wednesday is Victory Day and we have the day off, but need to get together with our clusters for reflection (whatever that means). I hear we are taking an English tour of a museum here so that should be fun....hopefully.
So yesterday, I got home and instantly got talked into going back to that amusement park. I guess my pictures sparked interest for the family. Olga and her son and my host family took the bus back there and I ended up breaking my kneecap in 7 pieces on the stinkin' bumper cars. I had Olga's son in my lap and in order to protect the kid, I sacrificed my precious knee. Oh well, I have another one. Now I am walking around town like George Jefferson "WHEEZY!!!". As a reward, however, I treated myself to a Ukrainian hot dog. Little did I know they were pretty much raw (what a surprise) with mayonaise and carrots on them. So, Heather, when exactly should I expect this package of Chicago eats??! We got home around 7pm and I studied for about an hour. One of Andrey's friends then came over and we ended up drinking beer and eating fish jerky (yes, the kind where you rip the heads off, take out the guts and eat away). I ended up arguing with the guy about television when he stated the "The Simpsons" was "s**t"! He spoke very good English and we got in a heated debate, but it was defused early on when he gave me the next batch of crappy English DVD's. This batch includes I, Robot, Swordfish, The Terminator trilogy and Doom. The crappy sci-fi film festival begins tonight if anyone wants to fly out to join me.
Word around the rumor mill is that up to 4 of the 30 of us will be stationed in Chernihiv permenantly. God, please don't let me be included in that group. I like my town, but I am ready to move out of here at this point.
Well, my hour is up and I need to head to the employment center now to have our meeting and finalize our project.

Welcome to the blog, Maicie and the i_TECH crew; it's nice to know I have a fan base out there and I am the topic of conversation around the water cooler nowadays. Thanks for finding my babbling somewhat interesting.
Keep On Truckin'!

My Tour of Chernihiv

So after I posted yesterday, I walked around downown looking for that cluster that was in town, but had no luck. Instead I ran into Greg, James and Brian and 3 Ukrainians. They invited me to go with them although none of knew where we were going. Greg and James had just finished their site interviews and were dressed in their suits. I also had nice clothes on and uncomfortable shoes. Long story short, we ended up walking around Chernihiv from 2pm until 8pm. These guys felt they needed us to see the entire city by foot. Brian and Greg took off about halfway through and maybe I should have followed their lead, but I did get to see a lot of stuff I normally would not have seen here. We checked out famous landmarks and statues and then walked down to the river. He showed us the beach and sauna and then we walked into the woods. I was thinking these guys were gonna murder us or something, but we stumbled upon Chernihiv's version of Six Flags (in the middle of the forest). Here was this huge central park with an amusement park, stadium and concert venue. I never knew any of this even existed here. The two Ukrainian guys (Sasha and Sergey) bought tickets and forced James and me to ride these rides that looked like they were built before world war II. They bought me a beer and we slammed it and then he made me ride the orbit which spins around a million miles/hour; just what my stomach needed (it's still holding strong at 97% by the way). We then rode a few more rides and continued to walk for another 10 miles. I finally got home, ate some pizza my host mom made and passed out around midnight wishing I had more crappy movies to watch. By the way, the weather was amazing finally. Today is pretty nice as well although it's windy as hell.
This morning I had my site interview. It lasted about 20 minutes and I'm not sure what to make of it. They went over my resume and asked me if my priority was a big city, to live by other volunteers or to be south near the Black Sea. I didn't know how to answer that question since those are all priorities for me. I sid I will just roll with the punches and told them I'd like to work for an organization that ties into my work experience; working with kids, AIDS, disabled and all that was secondary and ideal for side projects. I now wait for a week to hear where I get placed. Brian went on a date last night and saw Spiderman 3 without me so that is off for today, but Marina wants to take me to these caves in town and do more sightseeing after seeing my pictures. Unfortunately, my legs and feet are killing me from yesterday. I'm curious to see how the day will unfold. Here are some pictures from yesterday...

It's a wonder I was even able to take this picture. I hate heights, I hate ferris wheels because they freak me out and I was scared this old 1942 ride was about to break. The things I do for my blog.

This is the river that runs through my city. In the distance on the left is a cool little beach complete with a sauna.

Mini Me.

The three on the right were our Ukrainian tour guides for the day.

The Week In Pictures

Somewhere along our journey into the woods, I stumbled across the shire from Lord of the Rings. Here I am coming out of Bilbo Baggins' house.

One big happy dysfunctional family.

Roasting some expired, rotten wienies over an open fire and doing my best to tell my friends in Russian about my philosophy on life.

Oh yeah, I adopted a kid while out here. My goal is to Angelina Jolie my way to adopting enough kids to start a Ukrainian 80's cover band.

A true Ukrainian superstar I am. I believe here I was singing "I've Got You Under My Skin" by Sinatra. Chuck, where were you??

2 of the craziest SOB's this side of Nantucket.

I introduced The Running Man to Ukraine this week.

Oh yeah, and this happened.

I'm Alive!!!

Happy Cinco De Mayo, Mi Amigos!
Good news: Stomach meter is at 96% and I am in much better spirits this week.
J.J., haven't gotten your package yet, but as long as you didn't write food or CD's on it, it will come. I'm still waiting on other packages that were mailed to me 5 weeks ago. Brian, I am anxiously awaiting your package as well :)! Kelly, welcome to blogging heaven. I can't wait to visit you in your Ukrainian Chicago village. Heather D, did you get my email? Email me at my hotmail address. Kate, got your new number. I promise to call sometime over the next 26 months ;)
So it's been a week since last you heard from me. What did I do? Monday? Can't remember. The weather has been just awful. Freezing cold and rain everyday. Tuesday was Labor Day in Ukraine. It is the only day we have off during training. Did I mention there was a flippin' blizzard on Tuesday?? Next week is Victory Day which is a huge holiday here where they celebrate their victory over Germany in WWII with fireworks and festivals. We have to work, but it sounds like an easy and early day. On Labor Day we went day camping. A guy here called James said yesterday that some things in Ukraine are better like being able to start a fire anywhere you want. It was funny at the time, but he is right. Even in Montana, the world's greatest camping mecca, you can't have fires in campgrounds half the time. I went with my host family and Olga and her son. We hiked into this forest, set up a huge picnic blanket, searched for firewood and started a bonfire. We ate lots of food and played soccer. It was a fun day. The rest of the week is a blur. Wednesday night we went to Olga and Andrey's place to have dinner and drinks and ended up singing karaoke. I started off with some Blue Suede Shoes and went into some Sinatra, Steve Miller and by special request...Ace Of Base. They said I had an amazing voice and should make an album out here (they were actually serious). I said they need to get out more. Language class is getting better. We are studying how to make phone calls, take public transporation and kick ass at the post office. One of our assignments was to mail stuff to America and send someone a telegram. I chose this guy Geoffrey and we sent him one that read "I know what you did last summer" signed anonymously. The lady at the post office thought we were crazy and it was much more difficult than we imagined. He did receive it though and is still trying to figure it out. Our group project is still in the works. It's gone from a resume-writing workshop to train-the trainer to currently developing a career fair in town that they can hold annually. We have a big meeting Monday with the chamber of commerce and employment center to get this nailed out. Our final project proposal is due next Friday. Yesterday, we had 3 hours of safety training. We learned about fun things like assault and rape and we got to put out a fire in the back of the school. There was a medical guy in town from D.C. and he enlightened us with....I forgot. I do remember him looking like George Lucas, however. When he got up to the front of the auditorium, I was ready to ask why he chose the color green for Yoda, but instead everyone asked him questions about medications. I don't get it.
Other than that, I've been a slacker this week which may be part of the reason why I am feeling better. I hardly did any homework and gave myself a little one-week vacation. I managed to watch the rest of those American DVD's Andrey's friend lent me. I offically had the Worst Films Ever Made Film Festival this week. The list included Anger Mangement, The Whole Nine Yards, Bedazzled (Elizabeth Hurley is one of the most beautiful women on this planet by the way), My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Bruce Almighty and The Freshman (which I actually enjoyed). I'm hoping the next batch of flicks will be better, but obviously I will watch anything right now. Andrey uploaded Clockwork Orange, From Dusk Til Dawn and The Science of Sleep to my laptop so I have 3 more to watch. We also watched The Good Shephard the other night in Russian with subtitles. The movie moved very slow, but was still interesting. He got Tarantino's Grindhouse last night so we will nail that one out this weekend. Also, tomorrow we are going to see Spiderman 3 at the theater; yes, it's in Russian and, no, I don't care if I can only understand every 15 words.
So, out of 1500 channels on satellite at the house, we only get 4 in English (The Travel Channel, VH-1, BBC and CNBC). Thursday night, Marina and Andrey went out to the disco and I had my first night alone in Ukraine. It was amazing. I turned on CNBC and BEHOLD!!! Conan O'Brien was on. I was in my element. He had a musical guest on by the name of Brandy Carlisle. What's the deal with her? I hate female singers and bands, but that song was awesome. Is she a huge deal in the states? Who is mailing me this CD???
What else?? One of my clustermates, Teri, came down with the same stuff I had except her fever was much worse. An ambulance had to take her to the hospital and now she is in the Kyiv medical offices. I learned that if things get really bad, they medivac us to Thailand. Does that make much sense?? Anyway, we may be looking at the next American to leave us. I have discovered shaving in a whole new light and it sucks. I was spoiled with my electric razor that I killed. My neck is very sensitve and I cut the hell out of it. Funny story: Nikita, who is 6, learned lat week that the male genitals are a great target. He keeps walking around trying to punch everyonein their family jewels. I have managed to successfully block each blow this week until last night. I was playing Godzilla and destroying a village he built out of building blocks. He came out of nowhere and nailed me in my little guys. It instantly took me down; I guess I deserved it. I now need to buy a protective cup to wear around the house.
I discovered a new market in town that has an amazing selection of food including Guiness beer and Honey Nut Cheerios. We scored some tortillas to make quesidillas with at language class and I found smoked string cheese which completely rocks!
Training is just about half over. Tomorrow at 11am, I have my placement interview with the Peace Corps big whigs. They ask us what size town we want to live in, if we want to be in a Russian or Ukrainian town, if we want to live around other Ameicans, etc. I think they already have places for us and this is just a formality, but I really want to work on heading south to the black sea region...maybe the Crimea penninsula. Next weekend we head back to prolosok where all of us reunite for mid-training debriefing and site announcements. From there we all go separate ways to our new towns and we meet our new organizations and new host families. We stay there for a couple days and then go to Kyiv to debrief at headquarters. We then come back here to Chernigiv to complete our projects. Things are picking up and time is flying.
There is another cluster in town today and I'm about to try to meet up with them. I have been getting a lot of calls from other PCVs outside of my city. It is so great to talk to them and hear about their very different lives in small villages. We are all very excited to reunite in prolosok next week. Stephen and Nathan have invited me to room with them so it should be a fun time.
Be safe and I love you all!!
Until next time.