At the time I started writing this, I had been away from site for approximately 2 weeks. For the first 5 days I was in Kiev attending a training on volunteerism with my new counterpart and then following that, Conor and I travelled on to Krivoy Rog to help out at Camp Lead, a camp that teaches leadership skills while practicing the English language. The cool part about the whole experience was that I got to hook up with my entire Cluster and some of my Peace Corps peeps over the course of the entire two weeks. Even cooler, I got to hang out with Conor the whole time. Maybe not as cool, I have a real new found appreciation for McDonalds. (Hey, it’s reliable, you know what you are going to get, it’s fast, and now they have McCafé with decent Latté, Cappuccino, Espresso and Americano).
The trip started off without a hitch. My counterpart met me at the train station a little after midnight and we got on the train. At least I tried to get on the train. The car attendant didn’t put the stairs down and wanted us to climb on. Easy enough for my counterpart who wasn’t carrying much, but I had a HUGE backpack packed for two weeks, and I was carrying a good 10-15 pounds of magazines that I was going to share. I tried to step up and smashed my knee because I lost my balance. The train attendant looked at me and said something along the lines of… ‘Well if you weren’t carrying that huge backpack…’. Gee, thanks.
We seemingly had the compartment to ourselves. We made our beds and went to bed and two hours later 4 people came into our car, turned on the light and were talking loudly. Mind you, this is at 2 in the morning. I was pissed. Half of the group ended up getting off. I got the gist that the two that got on were not Ukrainian, potentially Dutch or from the Nordic, I had trouble placing the language. The woman was polite enough, trying to keep her husband quiet, but he insisted on having a full on conversation with her for a half an hour after the train took off. Grrrr.
Turns out my fellow PCV from Lugansk that I had endured the Baptist camp with was in the very next train car. So at 7am, she sent me a text and told me to come and visit. Since I was asleep when she sent the text I waited a bit, but after that, I was up. So I grabbed some of the breakfast I brought and headed over. We had some breakfast, chatted up some random people who wanted to practice their English. We drank tons of coffee and whiled away the rest of the train ride.
The training was awesome in that we got reunited with a lot of our group mates, both the Community Development Volunteers and the Youth Development Volunteers. The training was designed to train both the volunteer and their counterpart in both English and Ukrainian in how to recruit and motivate volunteers in Ukraine to do community projects. We had moments of separate trainings where they split the Americans and the Ukrainians up, and then we came together at points to come up with a joint project idea. This was DIFFICULT! This is where the language abilities or lack thereof really came to light. The Peace Corps provided a few translators, but it wasn’t sufficient. Everyone was battling for translators.
The training was useful in that we got to compare our sites and speak English freely and be around Americans. We got some forced working time with our Ukrainian counterparts. And the Ukrainians got to meet other Ukrainians hosting Americans to network and compare their trials and tribulations as well. I think the lesson that you aren’t the only one in this boat was useful for all parties. Getting to see my American peeps really gave me the perk up that I needed. It was kind of invigorating to see the ole ‘family’ again. Our cluster was really lucky. We had 4 out of 5, or rather 5 out of 6 since Natasha (our Language teacher) was there as well. Cassie couldn’t make it, but as it turns out, Cassie lives in the city that Conor and I were heading to next so we would get to see everyone, just in parts.
The last day in Kiev, Conor and I were kind of ambling around trying to figure out what to do before our train trip south. At a certain point, I think he said something along the lines of… ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to get a Couples Massage’? I looked at him and said, ‘Where the heck do you think you are right now’? But, this set us off on a search. I mean, it never hurts to look, right? So we happened upon a Chinese medicine and meditation center, but their masseuse was out of town on holiday. We started walking and looking at interesting architecture. And we saw a street sign that said Radisson Hotel some odd meters away. I looked at Conor and said, ‘You know, I bet they have spa services at the Radisson’. Let’s go check it out.
We walked up to the front desk and I asked if they had spa services and the reception dude said something along the lines of, ‘Well yes, of course we do. Go up to the 3rd floor’. They did have a masseuse just sitting around with nothing to do. The tragic part was that they only had one so Conor made the ultimate sacrifice and let me have her and went and walked around for an hour. I got an hour long massage. It was a great massage, a well-needed massage since I had a knot in my shoulder that felt like the equivalent of getting stabbed in the back slowly on and off. They gave me a HUGE fluffy white robe to wear and slippers and there was a nice shower in the dressing room. It was great. And it only cost the equivalent of around 60 USD. This was a huge indulgence in Ukraine, but a very necessary indulgence from my perspective.
After Conor and I got on our train headed to Krivoy Rog. We had splurged for Lux tickets. Our compartment had only two berths and we didn’t have to share it with anyone else. Let’s just say we had fun in our private compartment. We did some berth surfing with the door locked. It was a fun ride. Unfortunately, we got in at 7am, so we slept most of our time away in our private compartment.
We made our way to the hotel that Frank and Carol (the camp directors and Peace Corps Volunteers) live in. Frank and Carol’s apartment was nice, but the hotel was definitely creepy. It was a bit ramshackle and had long hallways with empty rooms. And not to waste resources, the lights were off. It felt kind of like the Soviet version of ‘The Shining’. I was waiting for creepy twins to appear at the end of the hallway.
The camp was an English language camp for motivated youth. Camp Lead [insert link] taught leadership skills and went through the process of how to design and implement a project in their communities. The kids seemed pretty pleased with it, minus the food situation. We served the Ukrainian version of luncheon meats for both lunch and dinner to these kids for 5 days. What’s the Ukrainian version of luncheon meats? Sausage, all different kinds of sausages. I have never seen so much sausage in my life. It was maddening. Each day we would oversee and manage the food prep for over 200 people. Now imagine how much sausage it takes to feed 200 people, twice daily for 5 days. Let’s just say, I don’t want to eat another sausage for a long time. I had a meltdown over the sausage one day. It wasn’t pretty. Everyday Conor and I left smelling like lunch ladies.
The highlights of the week made all that sausage harassment worth it though. We got to see Cassie. And we got to go to the banya twice. This banya was different from the one in Starry Belous. It had a small pool for us to jump into after the sauna. What a treat! We also went out for sushi twice with Cassie, and weird pizza once where the waitress kept trying to push us to put peach on our pizzas. Conor made it his quest to eat Okroshka (cold cucumber and dill soup) everyday. I drank as much freaking cappuccino as I could. We also visited Costco, or rather Metro, which is a German owned version of Costco in Ukraine. Conor found hot sauce and bottled salsa (Heinz, more like spicy ketchup, but per usual he had high hopes for it). I also got to copy TONS of movies and television series onto my hard-drive. I am slowly stockpiling media for the winter. All in all it was a great trip.
We also got to check out Cassie’s org ‘Shelter Plus’ [insert link]. It is a great organization housed in a super cool building with a gym, multiple recording studios, instruments to jam, a stage, a video lab, a computer lab, a crash pad, and a cafeteria. The gist of it is that it provides a safe place for youth to hang and explore their creative sides as well as other healthy lifestyle choices (i.e. working out). Let’s just say, Conor and I were super envious of Cassie’s situation. We want to go hang there for awhile. At night, there is always someone at the Shelter to guard the place, because it is that cool. So if we go to visit Cassie, we can stay there and play all night with the costumes on stage and in the gym.
The train ride back was pretty harmless, although a bit strange. I got a top berth in my compartment and for a couple of hours I was all alone. But then a family of 5 came in. Mind you there are only 4 bunks and I was on one of them. It was a mother, father, a teenage daughter who was my size, an 8 year old boy, and a baby. I was wondering how this was going to work, but apparently the teenager and the boy shared the other top berth and just laid head to feet. The father had his own and the mother and the baby were together. We all got off the train in Kharkiv a little after midnight. Then I had to wait in Kharkiv for two hours for my one hour train ride back to my town. Apparently there are various waiting rooms that you can pay for entrance too. I didn’t realize this until I was leaving, otherwise I would have paid the 30 HRV (3.50 USD) to sit in the Luxury Lounge instead of in general population where both to my left and right there was someone hacking up a lung. I am really hoping I don’t get TB by association while I am here.
My train ride to Balakleya was only an hour, but kind of eventful. Since it was only for an hour, I decided to ride Platzkart which is considered 2nd class. The car is open, but there are berths and bunks to sleep on just kind of all over the place. There was some interesting snoring, some interesting smells, but it felt really safe. I guess the safety in numbers rule applies here. In the Koupé compartments that I have ridden in thus far, it’s a closed compartment with 4 bunks. I guess if you have the wrong compartment mates, you might get trapped with people you don’t really want to be with. The compartment lady was really nice. She came over to wake me so that I was ready to get off the train and then realized that I didn’t speak Russian. She came over twice more, I think just to check on me, with the last time being to tell me to get ready to get off the train. I like that this happens, it makes it less likely that you will miss your stop, especially since it isn’t always obvious where you are getting off.
I got in at 3:45 in the morning so I took a cab. I told the cabbie my address and when we got to my building as he pulled towards my entrance (there are several), I said, ‘This is it, right here’. He said, ‘I know’. Apparently word has spread that there is a foreigner in town that lives in my building, speaks horrible Russian, and takes cabs to and from train station. I thankfully found my apartment exactly as I have found it. Apparently, I have a security system in place that I am not yet aware of. Or perhaps, people just don’t break into people’s apartments in Balakleya. Either way, that gives me some piece of mind seeing as I will likely travel a lot over the next 2 years.
