For those of you that get my family and friends newsletter, you may feel some deja vu as you are reading this. I will not be offended if you decide to go no further. I figured that since I’d fallen out of the habit of blogging regularly, I would catch up my anonymous blogging world by simply posting those letters. A cheap and easy fix, and for that I do apologize.
Big news, as of lately – I am extending my service in Ukraine. Hopefully. I’ve sent in all of the paperwork at least, and then on September 19, I have a check-up with the doctors to make sure that I’m healthy enough to stay here. Sometime soon after that, I’ll find out if I’m officially allowed to stay until June 26, 2012. (Oddly enough, I am sick all the time in Ukraine. Since I have been here, I have had bronchitis, walking pneumonia, stabbed a knife through my hand, hurt my shoulder and got UV rays as a treatment, an unidentified stomach virus, several respiratory infections, pink eye, various rashes, sliced open a hole in my foot that proceeded to become infected, and more ailments than normal young person should ever have to deal with. Whatever. I want to stay. Keep your fingers crossed that the doctors don’t find something even worse.) I chose the end of June so that after school ends, I could celebrate my 25th birthday in country, and also so I could potentially see some of the soccer games in EuroCup 2012. I’ll keep you all posted.
So the school year ended and so began my summer of NEVER BEING IN DONETSK. It was grand. After leaving on June 15th, and finally arriving August 29th, I’ve spent less than 2 full weeks back in my apartment and most of those nights people were visiting. I kicked off the summer with a small celebration of my birthday down at the Sea of Azov. It was just a wee gathering of friends – and the swimming wasn’t as fun as it usually was as there had recently been 15 cases of cholera in the area. (Note that I didn’t list cholera on my illness list. Good to go.) We swam with our mouths closed. A few days later, my good friend Ben left Ukraine, as his service was over. That was pretty heartbreaking. He’s a crucial member of the Donetsk Oblast group and him not being here is weird.
The first camp of the summer was down at the Black Sea. I was at a sanatorium in Yevpatoria, which is in Crimea, but not in the gorgeously pretty part that you see when you google Crimea. I was in the flat part. The water we swam in was full of iodine. Apparently it is good for your health. I am moderately resentful. I might need the health boost, but now my cute swim suit is brown, as the water dyed EVERYTHING faintly reddish brown. Foo. But really, the sea was wonderful. One day it was completely clear all the way to the bottom. For a girl who is used to Lake Erie, this was breathtaking. I felt like I was a mermaid and spent most of that afternoon entertaining myself in the water.
From there I traveled to visit my friend Laura Ruth. She lives in a small town in Western Ukraine, her town is called Chortkiv. We spent a few days strolling around town, shopping at second-hand stores, going running together, in general just enjoying the slow pace of summer. Her town is adorable – quaint pastel buildings, gothic churches, cobblestone streets. Also, her town is in a valley with a river running through it. I couldn’t get over how precious it was. We went later to a town called Kamyanets-Podilsky, where we visited a castle from the 14th century (it may be older. I forget). Later we went to Kolomiya and went to a neat Hutsul museum (Hutsuls are a group of ethnic Ukrainians who live in the Hutsul region of the Carpathian mountains) and the Pysanky Museum (those cool painted eggs!).
From there, I went to meet up with people at Survivor Camp, in Kosiv. My experience there was amazing. It reminded me of going to Wilderness Camp back when I was in high school. Being outside 24/7, swimming in the river, bathing with buckets, cooking over a fire. After living in one of the biggest cities in Ukraine for 1.5 years, it was good to get back to basics for at least 8 days. It rained a lot and the tent I was sharing got several holes in it from rogue footballs, but aside from the mud – or because of the mud, it was a great time. I got to see some cool high schoolers go through major transitions that week as they met people from all around their country and lots of PC Volunteers. The camp itself was a huge challenge – hiking up 45 minutes to base camp, using the bathroom in a trench in the woods (which was actually comfortable), hiking 1.5 hours there and back to play in the river (wash oneself). I remember how scary my first camping experience was, and I’m so proud of the campers from the week. May my team, Bloody Angels, forever be victorious.
After Survivor Camp, I took a train 24 hours back to my home oblast (province) to participate in a sports/healthy lifestyles camp. (You can see pictures of it here: http://campslam.blogspot.com/ ). I was a counselor for the team Green Peace Lizards, and taught Drug and Alcohol Awareness to all the campers. They all had two lessons a day – anything from nutrition, my lesson, self-respect, to teamwork. In the other parts of the day they did team building activities and learned to play ultimate frisbee, baseball and American football. They loved all of the sports! A bunch of the kids came because they wanted an English camp – which they got – but didn’t realize they would have to be playing sports all day. After the first day, they were not disappointed. Rather, they were asking for more time to play sports outside. We got really good feedback from the kids – they could explain to us what they learned in their lessons, and it was outwardly visible from their actions how much they loved the sports. I’m contacted almost daily by these campers on a Russian facebook-like site with messages like “Elise, I miss SLAM. SLAM SLAM SLAM all the time Slam. Come to us next year!”
Following that, I went to the outskirts of Kiev for a Russian language camp. For a week I got to be a student again, which was wonderful. I much prefer to be taught than to actually teach. The language teachers there also speak Russian the way I need it to be spoken – minimal slang, with a clear accent, slower rate – and it gives one the impression that they know much more than they do. It was still fun and informative, and I learned a lot. I took a language interview to assess my level and turns out I’ve progressed. It might not mean much to others, but according to Peace Corps, I’m at Advanced High. Woohoo! The next step is Superior, which means that I can talk about anything with anyone freely with almost no mistakes. I hope to get there sometime.
We had another weekend at the Azov Sea, which was much more pleasing than the first this summer. We gathered a bunch more volunteers, went out to a nice beach outside of town, and grilled out every night. One of the days it was super windy, so much that the waves actually reminded us Americans of the ocean. We had taken out our air mattress into the water to play (this is the one that we sleep on) and as a result of the wind – lost it. The mattress flung all of us off and flew away, tumbling across the sea to Russia.
In August I ran around to other volunteers’ sites. We camped a bunch, went out upon the town, and danced. I know there was a football game somewhere in there (by football, I mean soccer) as well. I got to see my Australian friends, Ben and Angie a few times, which was wildly amazing. They’ve been so kind to me here, I can’t thank them enough. It’s like having family here.
My latest travel took me to Krakow, Poland for 4 days. That was not enough time. It is such a gorgeous, lovely place – I wanted to quit my job and live there forever. Poles are wonderfully joyous people and everyone speaks English and it’s so so so clean – compared to Ukraine it was like a breath of fresh air. Don’t get me wrong, I love it here, but it is so nice when a cashier says something and I smile silently and give them the “I don’t know your language” shrug, they say happily “7 and 90, please.” I raged out upon the town with some random Aussies that I met at the hostel the first night I was there. It was nice to be able to live up my youth without having to worry – Am I representing the USA and the Peace Corps in the proper manner? I spent a lot of time wandering the city, sitting in parks, reading tourist guides. I went on two walking tours – one through the Jewish quarters and one through the Royal Route of the Old Town. The Royal Route was really interesting – lots information about Polish history. After years of studying Russian history – “We’ve taken Poland, hooray!” – it was interesting to see the other side of it – “We’re being invaded again, dangit!” Another PCV met me in Krakow and we spent a night out in the Jewish Quarter – they have a really neat artsy scene of bars that had a much more laidback feel than the Krawl Thru Krakow that I had participated in the night before.
My biggest impressions of Krakow were undoubtedly from touring the Jewish district and then visiting Auschwitz. I took the tour through the town first – saw where the community thrived at one point, heard the history of how Jews came to be in Poland. They took us to a portion of the ghetto wall that remains, pointing out the nearby buildings that had been utilized as a wall – the windows are left cemented as a reminder. The wall itself is shaped like a tombstone. A Jewish man was forced to design it, so as a way to inform his people of what lay before them, he designed a wall that looks like tombstones. We then went to a square in front of the “Under the Eagle” pharmacy – the only one that functioned in the ghetto. It was owned by a Polish Catholic man who helped smuggle in food, transferred information, and all in all – saved the lives of many Jews in the ghetto. On the square is a new art installation – many large bronze chairs. They look like kitchen chairs. This pharmacist, in a memoir he wrote, told of how after the Jews had been gathered with their belongings on the square, they were deported. Many things got left behind – a lot of furniture. He noticed specifically the empty chairs. Now, on the square are 2 dozen or so chairs. Empty. It is really eerie to see – they appear as though they’re waiting for someone. In all reality, they are. At the beginning of WWII, there were more than 60,000 Jews in Krakow. Now, there are 97 people there that identify themselves with the Jewish community.
Visiting Auschwitz, I don’t even know where to start. I think people need to see it. I first went through Auschwitz I, where they show you the barracks and the wall where people were executed, and the piles and piles and piles of people’s things. I’ve seen photos of these things before but seeing it firsthand was heartbreaking. I’m in tears now as I write this – the shoes – you look and you see someone’s wedge heels. They have a red design on them. Or another woman’s pointed flats – you can see that they must have been a bit too big, the toe is turned up . Seeing that, it isn’t just a pile of shoes that belonged to people. These are someone’s shoes. They belonged to a person who was killed. That personalized it – made me realize that these items belonged to people’s sons, daughters, husbands, wives, friends. Seeing the piles of glasses was especially moving. It seems odd to have saved the glasses – maybe they were useful to the Nazis, but to me it just seemed weird and unsettling and personally cruel.
Going to Birkenau took what I had started to comprehend as a very personal horror, and blew it up a million times. I couldn’t even see to the end of the camp. Seeing what went on, and then seeing the scale of what happened, knowing that this wasn’t the only place, that there were hundreds of other camps like this – even in the place where I live now, in Ukraine – I can’t even catch my breath thinking about it. The lack of humanity is frightening. Our guide showed us photos displayed and kept repeating – “They believed that what would come next would be better.” You can see the hope on people’s faces in photos. Hope was taken away, and they ceased to be human and simply existed until the day they were killed. At the very end of the train tracks is a memorial, where it says “forever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity.”
So yes, my trip to Poland was intense. It feels odd to continue on a light note, but I want to finish this up so I can get some sleep before schools starts tomorrow.
After Krakow, I went to a small resort town in the Carpathians called Slavsko, where we had our Close of Service conference. I celebrated with 97 other Volunteers that we’ve made it almost to the end of our 27 months. We had excellent food (bacon-wrapped steak and ice cream), a swimming pool, and of course, we were surrounded by mountains. It was weird to be around all of these people going home soon – kind of like everyone is graduating and oh, I have to repeat a year. Only I want to. It was still really enjoyable to stay up late with everyone and visit with people I haven’t seen in a long time. Downside of life – I got a respiratory infection. It later exploded out my eyes. That was cute. Like pink eye, only not itchy.
Following the conference, I went with my pal Mattison to L’viv. We ended up staying a day & night in a small town 1.5 hours away with another friend (who is from Ohio!). The town, Sambir, was really nice and cute. Very European, cute buildings, cobblestoney everywhere. We went to one of the largest organ halls in Ukraine and I got to hear one of Bach’s Toccatas played. My heart leapt out of my chest when I was hit with the wall of sound. Amazing. We wandered through a destroyed Jewish cemetery (lots of Western Ukraine was Poland), and went to the Dniester River. After making a dam and successfully altering the ecosystem, he and I went back to L’viv for the night. The following day Mattison and I raced around taking photos of all L’viv’s glory. 24 hours on a train, many games of gin rummy later, I arrived in Donetsk.
So ended the Summer of 2011 in Ukraine. Pictures of these adventures can be found right here.
