Being a June baby, I live for summers. Many of my most favorite moments in life are during the summertime. I’ve had several summers abroad and there is a familiar anticipation and excitement twitching inside me, bringing back memories of Volgograd and Kaliningrad. Last summer made for more excellent memories – lots of swimming, a Ukrainian wedding, an American vacation. I can’t wait to see what this summer will hold. I feel as though my heart and emotions are on the brink of something. I have this nervous excitement in my stomach most days. It’s the same feeling I get before jumping off the high dive. I know everything will be fine, I’m an excellent swimmer, but at the same time that single step, the letting go, holds me there.
The first couple weeks of June, I was in Donetsk, primarily. My school had a day camp that I worked every day. I entertained and played with kids all morning. Because there wasn’t really any general goal to the camp, I took it upon myself to teach lots of silly songs and have ridiculous competitions. Most of the students were in 1st through 3rd grade. That was thoroughly exhausting. I’ve realized that 4th grade is definitely the youngest age that I can work with successfully. The English level of my 4th graders is adequate enough for me to be able to teach more than just simple vocabulary, and their Russian level is advanced enough that they can understand my accented speech. The little ones just look at me blankly when I speak in Russian. It’s a tad discouraging. My lack of palatalized r’s and l’s baffles them to the point where they have no idea what I’m saying at times. I did get a chance to feel moderately brilliant – these 6 year olds had no concept of what it meant to be a citizen of a country.
“If you are an American because you are from America……What am I?”
“You’re Ukrainian.”
“Oh. OH! I am Ukrainian!”
That pretty much blew their minds.
My birthday weekend was spent in Novoazovsk with Jessica, Mattison, Ben and Katelyn. The majority of the weekend was spent eating. We made lots of excellent food and stuffed ourselves. The boys biked from their town to the sea, a feat that deserved the cheesecake and brownies that we had, for sure. We went swimming only a little, as the sea is rumored to be full of cholera. I kept my mouth shut while swimming. I made friendship bracelets. A big part of the weekend was spent keeping the secret of Ben’s going-away outing from him. The following Monday, with a couple Ukrainian friends, we threw him a small party. It was really pleasant and only partly heartbreaking. The goodbyes came the next day. It was sad and bewildering.
The past 10 days or so, I spent at a Ukrainian-run English language camp in Yevpatoria. The camp was fun, but I was just too tired to make the most of it. Howver, I did get to swim every day, in the iodine-rich water. The water in that area is said to be very healthy because of this iodine and a lot of the resorts around are medical centers for the treatment of children. I got my first taste of Crimea, at least. I hope to go back at the end of this summer and do more traveling there. I want to see the cliffs and beaches and take all the pictures that everyone takes.
After the first very long train ride of the summer – 23 hours, I am in Chortkiv with my pal Laura Ruth. We are hoping to prance around hers and the nearby oblast. I haven’t had a chance to see a truly Ukrainian part of Ukraine yet and I’m looking forward to it. It was strange enough being on the train here. My Russian is good enough now to eavesdrop pretty decently, and I’m often too distracted on trains to read, because I’m busy listening to everyone talk. I definitely have to concentrate really hard to understand any Ukrainian, which although that will be frustrating during the next week, it’s really nice to be able to tune everyone out. I do feel rude, though. People ask me questions and I respond with a look of horror (also known as the ugliest face I make, and I do feel awful showing that to these people) and freeze up and eventually say something stunning like “NUH-UH”.
Yes, so travels around Ukraine. After adventuring with Laura Ruth, I’ll be off to Survivor Camp in the Carpathian mountains. I’ll be teaching first aid and CPR skills to high schoolers, sleeping in a tent, and bathing in a river. I am seriously stoked for this. Donestk is a fairly industrial area and as I have no bike, it’s very hard to get outside of the city into the nature. Also, having recently developed the ability to maintain all bodily functions while being far far away from indoor plumbing, my remaining fear of camping for that long in a strange country is that I don’t know two things – if Ukraine has poison ivy, and what poison ivy actually looks like. It never bothered me in America. Despite being allergic to all things good (kittens, flowers, and not dusting regularly), I’m not affected by poison ivy. We’ll see what I blunder into while playing woman of the mountains.
Given that I survive this camp, I will trek back to Konstantinovka for Camp SLAM. Camp SLAM is a healthy lifestyles camp that will promote all sorts of good things like not smoking, HIV awareness, and saying no to drugs, all while practicing English and playing sports. I recently realized that there is no guaranteed body of water and as my only athletic capabilities require that I be partially submerged, I am not entirely sure how much of an asset I will be. I’ll be a great teacher, at least, and I am damned enthusiastic.
At the end of July I’ll be heading to the Russian language refresher. I’m really pumped for that. This year I have been rejuvenated in my studies of Russian. Having just received a bunch of index cards, I’ve been making flashcards like crazy, learning new words such as “equinox” “to come to one’s senses” and “mucous.” I have this underlying goal of achieving “Superior” status according to the Peace Corps rubric. It is ridiculously hard though. My idiosyncrasies in English are enough to impede me achieving that status. I have this terrible habit of starting about 7 different sentences before I finish the first one. I just can’t get my thoughts out fast enough and in the right order sometimes. This, combined with my general inability to speak in a broad abstract manner, means that Superior might be out of my grasp. We’ll see. I’ll try first for Advanced High and keep memorizing poems, reading Harry Potter, watching classic Russian films, and doing what I do anyways.
That is the beginning and middle of my summer of 2011.
My twenty-fourth year has begun and I am off. Here’s to what lies ahead.
