November 7th, 2009
Hey all. Coming to you live from Ukraine. It’s currently 75 degrees in my room which is hot compared to earlier in the week when my host family hadn’t turned on the heat. I went to bed one night with it right around 60 degrees. I felt like that entire day I didn’t get warm.
Last night (11/6) was my host mom and dad’s 10th wedding anniversary. We had a large dinner with a handful of family and friends. It was definitely the most delicious meal since I’ve been in Ukraine. I also got to participated in shooting shots of Russian vodka throughout the dinner. Let’s just say that no, no matter how many times I said it didn’t really worked. The best I could hope for was saying chew chew which means a little and pray for a small amount in my glass.
My family is absolutely wonderful. For the most part, the other volunteers enjoy their families but I really think I got some help from the big man upstairs when it came to getting paired with this family. They all have a great sense of humor. It’s been amazing how far a positive attitude and good sense of humor can take you. Tonight at dinner my ba-boo-sya (host grandmother)quizzed me over dinning utensils and food while my host sister tried to whisper the answers to me that I couldn’t remember.
This week was filled with tons of language and technical training. On Saturdays, we head over to the next small town for more technical training with our cluster. Today, we covered the dynamics of co-teaching and team teaching with our Ukrainian teacher counterparts. Two other topics were adjusting with culture shocks and methods to adapt to our new environment as well as how to start up English clubs once we get to our site.
First when arriving and seeing my other cluster mates teaching in the school, I thought “holy crap what have I gotten myself into.” Now after some training and getting to know & really like my host sister, I’m really excited at the opportunity to work with Ukrainian children. I think it will be an amazing experience getting the privilege to be the for the most part the first American they have ever interacted with. My TCF was telling us today there are some strong misconceptions and stereotypes about Americans, that we are like Brittney Spears rolling up to school in a fancy car with diamonds in our ears. Boy are they going to be in for a surprise when this giant with nappy curly hair hops of the local transportation the first day of school.
So week three there have been some ups and many downs but right now I find myself in a really good place. This afternoon after technical training, my cluster mates and I were able to get in a 2 hour hoo-lya-tae (a stroll without a purpose) before it started to get dark around 4:30pm. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some photos up here or on Facebook. We often try to get some walks in when the weather is nicer which means it isn’t freezing or rainy. Most days the weather is cold, dark and grey. Tomorrow, Sunday I’ll be headed into Chernigiv to post all of my recent blogs. Hope this finds everyone doing well.
Oh also thought I would add the breakdown of Peace Corps Lingo
PC- Peace Corps
PCV- Peace Corps Volunteer
PCT- Peace Corps Trainee
RPCV- Returned Peace Corps Volunteer
ET- Early Termination
MT – Medically Termination
PCMO- Peace Corps Medical Office
Cluster- the 4 other PCTs in my town (that I have daily everything with)
Link- the other cluster (from the closest small town to me) plus my cluster
LCF- Language Facilitator (the person who teaches us Ukrainian everyday)
TCF- Technical Facilitator (the person in charge of supervising us in our internship with the local school as well as some other random PC training)
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