April flies by

Again the time has flown by really fast and all of a sudden I am behind on the blog again. More funny stories have ensued. I should really start jotting this all down (says she as she pulls out a piece of paper and a pen and tries to recall the past few weeks… again).

Well let’s see. I think I mentioned that I have already been embraced into a weekly banya group. So Wednesday nights for me, are now occupied. When I am free I go to my twice weekly yoga class and then the rest of the week seems to fill up rather nicely as the days go on. I’m working on getting up in the morning and running or doing yoga and that has been going well. Still looking for other opportunities for group athletics, but I think that is something that will come with time.

I took a mini-trip to Lugansk for a couple of days. I managed to snag an extra ticket that Caroline had to an organ concert. The concert was pretty amazing. It was a situation that for me is difficult to sit through without fidgeting, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Because the concert was in the evening on a Thursday, and I had a PC meeting on Saturday with the Lugansk volunteers, I stayed through on Friday and helped Caroline with her English Clubs for disabled kids which I had a good time with. Friday night the PCVs decended on Lugansk and we made pizza at Caroline’s and topped off a few bottles of wine. It was a fun night. My big lesson learned from the weekend was how to get home from Lugansk from my site. To get to Lugansk, I figured out that if I jumped out of the bus near the ferris wheel coming into town I was reasonably close to the train station and could walk to Caroline’s from there. Leaving town on the other hand was not that easy. Logic said that I could stand near the ferris wheel and grab a bus back to my town. Nope. I stood out there for an hour in freezing wind and inevitably gave up and crashed with Wyoming, heading to the bus station first thing in the morning. So note to self: Suck up the bus ride to the bus station and buy a ticket legitimately. Waiting on the side of the road for a bus is a crap shoot.

In returning to Starobelsk I had what turned out to be a really busy week. Yoga and then Banya on Wednesday where the girls made a date with me to do drinks on Friday. There was an event at the library and a famous Ukrainian author came to do a reading of his poetry and to promote his latest novel. Our reading room was packed. Unfortunately, the author spoke Ukrainian, so I understood even less than usual, but it was still a fun gathering. And in true Ukrainian style I got to take my picture with the author. The other weird occurrence was my tutor dragging me into the hallway of the library and presenting me to this man and saying, ‘Amy are you free tonight’. ‘Well, yes, I suppose I am’. And then the question, ‘Are you interested’? Not sure what I was answering yes to, but since we are told to accept all invitations in the beginning, I said, Yes I am interested, and then completely regretting it because I thought there was a chance I was getting fixed up on a date since the whole thing was introduced as a way for me to meet people my age. Turns out I was going to hang out with the director of the youth theater group. Yes, he is roughly my age. And yes, I was very relieved to be surrounded by about 15 youth of various ages including two of English Club members.

Friday, I thought I was invited to see the Ms. Starobelsk pageant or contest. I walked to the House of Culture and called the person who I thought invited me. Turns out, it wasn’t for her to invite me. Or maybe it was. She invited me and told me about it, apparently the director of the library was supposed to give me a ticket. There was some kind of a misunderstanding and I was standing around without at ticket. I figured the situation was awkward enough as it was so I bounced and went home and got ready for my night out with the Banya girls.

Night out with the Banya girls was awesome. We apparently were meeting for dinner and drinks, but I misunderstood that part. It’s my understanding that in Ukraine, people don’t go out to dinner often, because it is so expensive. So I thought we were just going out for drinks. Nope, I had to eat dinner twice, because apparently it was my birthday celebration. There were 5 of us and between 2 of us we drank 3 bottles of wine and the other 3 girls drank two bottles of vodka. There was a lot of bad dancing. I tried to mix it up a little and was told to ‘Stop dancing like that, this isn’t New York City’. I really thought the bad dancing was just bad dancing, but apparently it’s a thing, a style per say. Good thing I am a quick study. I started dancing bad too so I could fit in with my new friends. At a certain point some guys started smoking in the restaurant that we were in and my friend was like, that’s it. I’m calling the cops. And she did. Next thing I know all 5 of us are in the back of a cop car crammed in with the two cops. The cops gave us a ride to the club, where there was more bad dancing and this is where we ended the night.

My birthday turned out to be great. The day before my birthday I just relaxed and read and watched some movies which is something that I have been wanting to do for months now. On my birthday, I slept in and my landlady presented me with a pair of neon orange underwear and a handkerchief. My tutor came over at 10:30 bearing a cake and a photo album of Poltava. Then came the onslaught of phone calls from people in town and people from home. I think there was a good 4 hour chunk of time where I was on Skype back to back with different people. The birthday celebrations continued on Monday with my friend at the library giving me some chocolates and then my secondary organization gave me some towels and another cake.

Then came my first trip to Kiev from my new site. We are talking a 2 hour marshrutka ride plus a 15 hour train. Thankfully, I downloaded an audio book and a whole bunch of new books for my Kindle so the trip was actually pretty relaxing. I got a lot of reading done. In Kiev, I got to hook up with Emily and Kim for my birthday. We went to a halal café that I remembered had some really good marinated chicken kebabs for not too much money. I unfortunately must have eaten something not good for lunch before because I had to high-tail it into a fast food joint for a toilet on the walk home. This also kept my drinking to a minimum so I was not the life of the party, but it was great to see my peeps. I then got on the train for my 15 hour train ride back and apparently had a chronic belcher in my compartment. Yep, that’s right, but this time it wasn’t me. There was someone standing in the hallway for awhile burping really, really loud and I had trouble being mature. I kept snickering and later realized that the belcher was the doctor in my compartment because she was burping in the compartment later. She spoke some English so asked me where I was from. I told her where I was living and working and she made two really kind of funny comments. I told her I worked at a library and she said, ‘So there are people who read in Starobelsk!?!’ She told me she was from Lugansk and I told her I really liked Lugansk as a city. She looked at me and said, ‘Lugansk is a hole’. You should go see Odessa. Okay, fair enough. I could see this conversation wasn’t going anywhere too positive so I politely said, Well, yes, it is my goal to see Odessa and Lviv by the end of the end of the summer. Then I hopped back up on my bunk and opened my book. She belched. I snickered.

I got home after my journey to someone in my house with my landlady. Apparently, my landlady was having a sort of reunion with her friends who work the Olympiad, which to my understanding is some kind of academic competition. We sat down for a meal and I offered up one of my bottles of Spanish wine that I had acquired at the Wine Mania store in Lugansk. The guy later went out and grabbed a bottle of Crimean wine. My landlady left to walk her other friend home and the guy offered to give me a foot massage. I politely declined and since my feet were on the couch next to me, he decided to start rubbing my foot anyway. Now see, I really don’t understand why this happens to me. I don’t flirt with people. I am cordial and polite and then someone feels the need to touch me and I have no idea how to deal with this situation politely. So I sat there squirming for a couple of minutes then swung my feet on the floor and got up and left the room. What else is a girl to do!?! I think my landlady is still puzzled as to why I spent the remainder of the night in my room avoiding the foot toucher. Anyhow so ends my busy week as I patiently wait for what other uncomfortable and awkward situations will come my way.

New Site New Life

When I write my blog, I truly intend to stay up to date with it and keep the stories coming. But, then life happens and all of a sudden several weeks have gone by in the blink of an eye.

My new site has been nothing but amazing. I think I am quickly approaching the one month mark here and I have been embraced with open arms. Things have been happening so fast, I barely know where to begin. I guess I should introduce my new site. I moved to Starobelsk in Luganska Oblast. I am on the far East side of the country, and I am basically about an hour drive to Russia in a few directions. To travel to Kiev, I have to take a roughly two hour bus ride to Lugansk and then a 15 to 17 hour train ride. CRAZY! But, oddly enough, instead of feeling isolated here, I feel welcome.

My new job post is a library, the central library in the district or rayon. I should probably mention that there was a previous volunteer who just medically separated about 3 months before her close of service. She totally paved the way for me here. She laid some foundation work at the library and I am trying to pick up where she left off. There is a weekly English Club, I have already asked for book donations from two different programs, and this week I am hoping to write a water grant to install a toilet in the library. Can you believe the library doesn’t have a toilet? Fortunately, there is a great program that offers grants to do responsible water projects and new toilets fit the bill. Once I get that one written up, I’ll be asking friends and family to donate towards the toilet, eh hem… hint hint. Don’t worry it’s a relatively small grant with a max of a little over 500 dollars so every little bit helps and you can write it off.

Thanks to the previous volunteer, I also have an amazing secondary project site where I’ll admit I spend the majority of my time. It’s a non-profit organization called Viktoria and they do a variety of projects dealing with human rights, women’s rights, civic education, and anti-corruption. It’s a really great place and I will also be doing a project with them that I will ask for support for (again, hint hint). My boss there is named Vera and she is amazing. She and two other ladies fight corruption in the bazaar and I have nicknamed them The Warriors. Everyday they come to the office and have these really heated discussions and write petitions and letters to administration. I only understand half of what they are saying, but the level of energy expended is great. These ladies have some seriously heated discussions. It’s really great to see such passion and dedication. Rosa and Nina also always bring food. So I have been fed pretty much every day I show up at the office. I’m getting badgered with the cooshites (eat Amy eat) again.

I have also had a sort of guardian angel to help me here. The previous volunteer sent her friend and travel buddy Olga my way in the form of a tutor, but she has been so much more than that. She has really helped me a lot with the settling in process and she continues to be a solid advocate for me. She is helping me meet people, she shows me important things around the town, and she helped me secure my new apartment which is awesome. She also comes to my English Club at the library and helps me when I struggle by asking great questions, and she also acts as an interpreter at times in a very interesting way. Olga’s English is so so, but she was a French teacher and speaks French fluently. So we communicate in French when it’s important that we understand each other perfectly. So for example, I had a meeting at the library and they asked her to translate, she spoke to me in French, I asked her questions in French, etc. It’s not the most efficient way for me to understand things here, but it works.

The first English Club went by really fast. I had a decent-sized group and the people all spoke at a relatively decent conversational level. I introduced myself and let the group introduce themselves, and then I told them they could ask me questions about me or America, etc. Olga went last and asked me kind of an odd question at the time. She asked me, ‘Do you believe in destiny?’ Well, I thought that question was a bit odd at the time. But, a week later it kind of came back to bite me. Over the past summer I participated in a camp and it kind of got hijacked by a group of American Baptists. If memory serves me right, the blog entry was titled The Karate Kids Save the Day. We ended up making the best of the situation, but the hijacking kind of ruined our program. We did get to work with a great group of kids that I wrote about way back when and called them ‘The Karate Kids’. They were kick ass. They ended up boycotting the Baptist camp and heading out solo to camp by the river so that they didn’t have to have anything to do with the religious stuff that was kind of getting crammed down their throats. Turns out, the Karate Kids are from Starobelsk. I got invited to a karate exhibition and guess who… the Karate Kids from camp. I ended up having tea last week with one of the older ‘kids’ who is actually an English teacher in town. Ukraine is a pretty big country. The odds of my getting reunited with these kids were pretty slim. Now tell me that Olga’s question about destiny doesn’t send chills up and down your spine. It’s really as if I was meant to come here. I had to go through all that crap at the other site, to finally end up where I belonged all along.

Vera, the lead Warrior, is also a source of a few interesting stories. First let me say, Vera has embraced me as one of her own the moment Olga dragged me into her office to make the introductions. She is great and even though she doesn’t speak English, we communicate really well. She understands how to speak with someone who is just learning Russian. Anyhow, basically her little office in the hotel where she rents space is now my office. She told me to make myself at home and feel free to come and work there. It’s great. The first funny Vera story was my first Friday night in my new apartment, I decided to go out and grab some cookies. I needed something sweet. When I was in the store this women wearing this enormous furry hooded jacket grabbed my arm, turned to me in the way that you have to turn if you are wearing a giant hood and looked at me and said, ‘Amy, are you going to Vera’s?’ I vaguely remembered meeting this woman, but told her, no. I wasn’t planning on it. But then I thought better and asked her, ‘What is going on at Vera’s?’ She looked at me and said, ‘I can’t tell you here, I will tell you outside.’ Fair enough. So she drags me outside and says slowing flicking her neck. ‘We are going to get drunk! You are coming with me!’. Okeedokee. So started the first vodka night with the girls. Vera has also introduced me to another group of girls who banya/sauna once a week. So I already have a banya group!

I also got invited to a yoga class twice a week for retired ladies. One of my English Club members invited me and I went because I am trying to meet new people and I want to practice yoga. I figured, why not? The pace is good for someone who doesn’t speak the language well and it’s a complete hoot to see these ladies do some of the rocking back and forth poses. It’s something akin to Weeble Wobbles rocking back and forth. Oh and the class is held in a hallway on the third floor of one of the schools. So picture 10-15 ladies stacked down a hallway doing yoga. I would love to take a photo sometime, but I don’t dare. I’m already the outsider being around 20 years younger than the other participants. I don’t want to ‘rock’ the boat.

My last bit of great news is that I was put up in temporary housing for two weeks when I first got here while they were waiting for my apartment to open up. (Temporary housing was akin to indoor camping). Well for some reason, I lost the apartment that I was waiting for and Olga decided that I should move into the previous volunteer’s apartment. There was some question as to whether the previous volunteer would be returning from her medevac, so they were holding it for her, but it turns out that she will not return, so apartment is mine. So, I got to move into her room. I do have a landlady now, but Natasha is an incredibly energetic and happy woman who has a great sense of humor. She is also an AMAZING cook and more often than not is shoving food down my throat. She is an awesome roommate. And her apartment is very ‘luxe’. There is a shower pod with hot water, great water pressure and it rains from the shower ceiling, a kitchen with all the amenities and appliances (re: microwave and toaster oven), a washing machine, a television, and unlimited internet. I do have to kick in some of my own money each month for the rent, but considering she throws in food, the internet is unlimited, and she does the cleaning, it is well worth it. Oh and maybe the best part is that she has a garden in back and a porch, but not a rinky dinky porch, a real porch. And apparently she has 38 different kinds of roses in the garden. I can’t wait for the weather to get better so that I can sit on the porch and drink coffee in the morning. It’s going to be so nice. Oh and did I mention that it is in the center of town and literally a two minute walk from both my primary and my secondary sites? Awesome.

The past few weeks brings to mind a good quote… ‘Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it’. And on that note, I think I breezed past the one year in Ukraine mark a week ago.