first week 04.02.08

it’s hard to imagine that it was only one week ago that our group started our trek to Ukraine. so much has been going on in that time that it’s hard to boil it down to a short page of text. i can’t speak for everyone, but i know that since i’ve arrived i’ve had a lot of questions answered (and probably thought of even more).

on to the big stuff though…

as i mentioned before, i am about an hour and a half north of kyiv in chernihiv (the Russian spelling is Chernigov which you may also see on a map). the city itself is amazingly rich in history and culture, and i’m hoping to have time to explore as much as possible over the next eleven weeks. i’m not going to be able to begin to describe it all, so if you are interested, i highly suggest checking out the Wikipedia entry for some basic info and further links.

the training seems like it is going to keep everyone very busy though. in three days of language lessons, we’ve already covered what is probably a month’s worth of material in a college Russian class. pages of basic vocab, business terms (many of which are cognates, and so are fairly easy to remember), three different cases/uses of pronouns, meeting and greeting, hobbies, likes and dislikes, the list goes on. even though my Spanish background does not really help in terms of the words, the structure and grammar ideas are similar. and even if my host family doesn’t quite believe it, i pick up a few more words from their conversations everyday :)

of course, all of that is only half of the puzzle. on top of those 3 and a half hours of language lessons every morning (starting at 8, for those of you who know what time i used to get into work!), there is also the community development work that we are learning and preparing for. this includes technical language class, technical training (in English) about different development ideologies and tools , and site visits two afternoons a week for the next four weeks. after that, we’ll be expected to take the initiative on a small community development project with our team members to implement in the last month of training. supposedly, some of the organizations that we will be visiting over the next few weeks have ideas already, so that should be interesting to hear. we’ll see what kind of ideas our group puts together (i’ve already got a couple ideas, but i’m trying not to think about things too much until we’ve met with a few organizations and hopefully figure out a few of the current priorities around town)

after all of the peace corps work though, i get to come home to a host family that seems to have dynamics very similar to my own :) my host dad doesn’t sit still and is always doing things around the apartment. he’s also got a pretty corny sense of humor that transcends language boundaries (he literally JUST handed me a pen that gives you a shock when you click it). my host mother checks to make sure my jacket is warm enough before i leave, and i’ve already been dragged back twice from the doorway so she could wash something off of my sleeve that i couldn’t see. she also gives her husband 'the look' when he tries to show me everything with any English on it around their apartment, and laughs at his childish happiness when he’s using his homemade rotisserie. so if you hadn’t figured it out by now, i feel right at home!

i also live with a host sister and brother who are twins and just turned 19 on Monday. they both speak English very well, although my host brother studies at a university in kyiv during the week so he is only around on the weekends. they have another older sister who is my age, but she lives in the south of the country with her husband and young child.

being able to speak a little English in the house has been very useful so far. we’ve all been able to learn about each other pretty quickly, and as i get more comfortable with Russian, they will help me with that as well. my host mom is a high school teacher, so she is always telling her daughter that she needs to speak to me in Russian so i will learn.

all in all, the little i have seen of Ukraine so far has been amazing, and i’m looking forward to whatever comes our way!

*one note that i did want to throw out there regarding the information on this blog. it seems that the peace corps overall is trying to come up with a good policy regarding blogs and the information that they can propagate unintentionally (google ‘infamous peace corps postcard’ for an interesting example). they asked that we password protect our site so that the information only gets to those people who we specifically want it to get to.

since it is not required, i do not really want to password protect anything as reading blogs was an amazing way for me to do research on what volunteers were actually doing and experiencing before i was able to actually be here. i feel that i have traveled enough to be aware when i may be crossing boundaries into territory that could become misunderstood, and i do not plan to use this blog as a way to complain to family and friends about how things are different between the us and Ukraine. if anyone reading this happens to come across information that you think may be misunderstood, please let me know and i will edit or remove it. and please remember that everyone can see any comments that you post. thanks for your help!