Week 5: I Almost Drown

November 20, 2009

From the title of this you are probably wondering how that is possible considering my village isn’t close to a lake or river, nor do I have a bathtub in my house. My cluster buddy, Allison, and I had enjoyed Thursday evening in the city using the internet. Also before leaving, we totally indulged on probably the most delicious McDonald’s Cheese Burger I have ever eaten. Funny because I can’t really remember the last time I ate Mickey Dee’s in the states, I was always more of a Wendy’s frosty kind of person.

Any who, Allison and I got back to town around 7pm-ish. Now understand that it had been pitch black since 4:30pm. So with flash lights in hand and just chatting about the ways Americans and Ukrainians act toward foreigners, our lives almost came to an end. We had almost fallen into one of the largest mud puddles I have ever seen in my life. We both dramatic reacted with a “whoa” followed by a lot of laughter. Man, the dangers of living in a small village without any real paved roads.

Yeah, week 5 has flown by. Of course, we still have one more technical session tomorrow with our link but for the most part the stress of language is over. Actually this week I wasn’t too bad. I really enjoyed our first LCF returning for our last weeks of language. Regardless of my small knowledge of Ukrainian, I am starting to understand things in the class room a little better. I still don’t know much but I’m relaxed and not stressing about it. Also the end of training is rapidly approaching so I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

But as I’m calming down about learning the language, I’m starting to get anxious about having not taught any classes yet. Hopefully, we will find out tomorrow morning at technical training if the quarantine has been extended one or two more weeks. This is the wrap up of my 5th week of training but in reality it is the end of the 8th for the rest of the group. So we have week 9, 10 and 11 left. Monday morning of the 12th week is when we head to Kiev for swearing in and all that other good stuff. So everyone think happy thoughts. Otherwise, I’ll be freaking when it gets close to the time to move to our sight and start our jobs if I haven’t ever taught in training.

This week started to prepare my cluster for the changes that are coming. On Monday, we had our second mock language proficiency interview. I was pretty nervous before it. I sort of had the same feeling as I did in French class in high school when I was praying not to get called on. Over all it went pretty well. I don’t have an ungodly amount of topics I can hit but the ones I do know I feel like I can say correctly. I’m telling myself if I have the basics down in the language I can survive. Right now I’m capable of going to the store to buy food, using public transportation, sending mail from the post office and random greetings & small talk vocab. We have our real LPI in week 11 where PC rates our level of language.

This past Tuesday, we also had a visit from the office for our Site Placement Interview. Pretty much it boils down to expressing yourself in a way that you think you are going to get the placement you want. I didn’t really go into it with that big of an agenda. I just talked about my back ground from being a small town, and having worked as a Resident Assistant as well as coaching different levels of basketball for summer camps. I’m hoping for a small community similar to what I’m leaving in now but I’m really not reading into anything too much. I have faith in the system that has gotten me into this community, host family and cluster I have fallen in love with. As much as the days I’m walking in the rain and stepping in cow poop/mud and dreaming of the warmer and dryer Turkmen climate, I can’t really imagine not being in Ukraine. I have definitely found a home with the 37th training group.

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving this coming Thursday. I might be celebrating at Mickey Dee’s with my fellow cluster mates. Also good luck to all my NCC buddies with finals coming up this week.