It has been a super long time since I have written. A lot has happened, and I have a lot to catch up on. I don’t think I ever wrote about my amazing hiking trip to Crimea. I think time has given me a more positive perspective of the trip. It was beautiful, extremely beautiful, but also extremely physically challenging on several levels. My bag was too heavy for me to manage with the steep inclines and declines, the food bothered my stomach and made me sick, there were two really annoying teenage boys on the trip, and it was incredibly cold at night. But, on the bright side, I met some amazing people, I survived some daunting physical challenges, I did my very best to maintain patience and understanding, and I got to see a very different region of Ukraine. I think, all in all we hiked between 50 and 60 miles in 10 days. That was a pretty good feet, even more impressive when you consider the extra weight we were carrying on our backs.
November went by pretty fast. There were a few notable things that happened. I have a new friend in Ukraine. One of my students at the Lyceum has sort of taken me under her wing and has been inviting me to walk, or to have tea, or to watch movies. It has been great. She invited me to her very AWESOME 16th birthday party and it was a really memorable day. We met at the train station and took the electrychka 2.5 hours to Kharkov for a really packed day. It was me, two 16 year old girls, a 13 year old girl and my friend’s mom. Her mom actually lives in Kharkov, so I think she came all the way to Balakleya to ride with us on the train to make sure everything went safely. Ukrainians really take care of their own. And I’m glad the mom was there on the train, because of course we were speaking English so the girls could practice and a drunk man came over at a certain point and expressed that he had a problem with us speaking English. He was angry for no reason other than he was worried about foreigners taking over his country. The mom quickly told him off and he soon after got off the train. My Russian isn’t very good, so I don’t know if I would have been able to get rid of him so swiftly and the girls were obviously really uncomfortable with the situation. But in the end, all turned out fine.
Her mom armed us with a pocketful of metro tokens and we were set free in Kharkov on our own. We had lunch at a nice restaurant, then we went bowling, then we met up with the mom for a pizza dinner and cake, and then a dolphin show and a tour of the aquarium. The dolphin show was really something else. Picture a variety show with different dance sequences, singing, gymnastics, some water ballet and then the actual performances with seals, a sea lion and then dolphins. I was really worried ahead of time that it would be horrible, but it was actually really fun. We had a great time and then took a cab back to Balakleya (1.5 hours) with all of us squished into a car. It was great. At a certain point, I asked how old my friend’s mother was since she looked really young. As it turns out, her mom is 4 years older than me. I asked my friend how old she thought I was and she came out with 21 which of course made me laugh. Then 23, then 26, then 28… it took awhile and finally I just told her how old I was. She couldn’t believe it. She really thought I was 21 years old. This I find hilarious. 26, I have heard a lot… but 21? Gee.
I also made a trip to visit Conor in Khartsitsk. This was great, because in addition to seeing Conor and being able to swap movies and TV episodes on our hard-drives (Conor now has high-speed internet that a friend helped him jerry-rig), and finding a great store to buy a pair of Ukrainian jeans, I got to eat pizza at Xar Pizza. Xar pizza is the best pizza we have managed to find thus far in Ukraine, real pizza. (Note: what passes as pizza in Ukraine is often ketchup and mayonnaise instead of tomato sauce and to me is absolutely disgusting). But the real highlight of the trip was when we met with Igor, Marina, and Father Leo for dinner and a movie both Saturday and Sunday nights. Igor and Father Leo were friends we met on the hiking trip. Father Leo’s wife Marina, and their son, Daniel both speak English really well. Marina has taken Conor under her wing and has been tutoring him in Russian, but also teaching him how to cook Ukrainian dishes. Marina is a great cook and only uses natural ingredient in her cooking. She and Father Leo are vegetarians, but she will cook meat for her sons. We always walk out of there absolutely stuffed. One of the nights she introduced us to quail eggs. They are supposedly extremely healthy for you and you should drink them raw. Yes, I drank two raw quail eggs, and you know what? It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It was actually pretty good. Will I go out and purchase quail eggs and drink them raw on my own? No. But I am certainly no longer afraid to drink a raw egg.
The other BIG occurrence in November was Thanksgiving. I decided that I wanted to be wherever Caroline was for Thanksgiving, because Caroline is a great cook. I figured if anyone could pull off a Thanksgiving dinner it was Caroline. And let me tell you, this girl did not disappoint. I had a few things sent from the states like brown sugar, coconut flakes, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie spice. We managed to get together almost the whole cluster for a group trip to Lugansk + a handful of PCVs in the area. One of the cool things about this was that Conor, John, Kim and Arden all met up and got on the train in Konotop to head to Lugansk at about 7pm. I got on the same train at around 3:45am. I woke up around 7am to someone poking me in the butt. I thought it might be Conor, but I couldn’t understand why he was up so early. Turns out it was two 12 year old boys in the beds across from me. Jerks. They could have at least waited until 8am to poke me in the butt. Apparently they were part of a large group of young boys, perhaps a sporting team that took up half the train car. After that, I packed up my stuff and went to the next car to have breakfast with the others. When we arrived in Lugansk around 9:30am it was like a real home-coming. Caroline and Wyoming were waiting for us at the station waving their arms around and hooting and hollering at us. It was a great welcome back.
As for Thanksgiving, everybody brought something or contributed a couple bottles of wine. Caroline actually managed to find a turkey. One of the vendors in the market had real turkeys and Caroline was able to ‘order’ a 12 pounder for our Thanksgiving. The turkey took up her whole oven, but it worked. We had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, I made a family sweet potato dish with pumpkin instead of sweet potatoes (for a country that loves their sweets and potatoes, you would think they have sweet potatoes here, but no), the brown sugar, and the coconut flakes, a few other people contributed some family dishes, Caroline busted out with both an apple and a pumpkin pie. We had a traditional Thanksgiving feast and we had a great time with a great group of people. There were 14 of us, we ate, danced, sang, and laughed. I have to admit it was the best time and a great Thanksgiving with friends and PC family. I hated leaving Lugansk, we had such a blast with each other it would have been great to spend more time, but alas we were all expected back at ‘work’.
December has been barreling through at a fast speed as well. My organization and I have gotten together a project that we have started the grant-writing process for. Our project would be a 3-day intensive volunteer training camp that would train a group of youth volunteers about volunteerism and how to do volunteer projects in their communities. In addition, we have added an element of healthy lifestyles and HIV/AIDS education and awareness. It looks like a great project, hopefully we will get funding. We submitted our draft to Peace Corps last week, the final is due mid-January. So we shall see.
We have started a very important countdown at this point. December 18 marks 6 months at site. So after the 18th, we will have a year and a half to go. But the more important countdown for me and my cluster mates is the countdown to our trip to Egypt. Yep, that’s right, we booked a package trip for a weeklong trip to Egypt for our Christmas. We will be there from the 22nd through the 29th. We’ll get to see the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx, but more importantly, we will get to spend the Christian Christmas holiday with good friends/Peace Corps family. I am really looking forward to this.
