October Recap

Hopefully, this will be the final installment of family and friends newsletters being copied and pasted here.

I’ll pick up with where I left off in my last update – my mom had just left to go back to the states. The next week, I taught a full week of lessons, only for autumn holidays to begin! The last Friday of that week my friend Heather from college came to stay with me. She was living in St. Petersburg, Russia teaching English but had a visa problem so she had to leave the country to deal with it. She came to Ukraine for a couple of weeks to sort everything out and hang out with me. For the most part, we had pretty low-key adventures. After a day of rest, we wandered through Donetsk, went to an English Club meeting together in the center, and met some other volunteers in the city. That Sunday (the 16th), I had an interview with UEFA EuroCup to volunteer for the EuroCup 2012. They seemed to like me a lot – they have a lot of volunteers with really good English, but they haven’t many foreigners with good Russian. Hopefully I will stand out and be given a volunteer position. It would be such a cool event to take part in. That next week, Heather and I went to Konstantinovka where I participated in a teaching workshop called “Innovative Teaching Ideas” with a few other volunteers. The group of us then came back to my site to have essentially the same seminar at my school.

On Thursday we both took trains to Kiev. Heather toured for a couple of days by herself, while I went to a suburb called Obukhov and did my job as an ‘Adopt-a-Cluster’ Volunteer. Basically, all of the Peace Corps trainees come to Ukraine and have 3 months of training before they start their jobs. During those 3 months, trainees study and work with 4-5 other trainees – their cluster. I went to meet them for 2 days and it was such a neat experience. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for 2 years. This is the group that essentially replaces mine. Most of my friends are leaving, and around the time they’re leaving, these trainees will find out where they’ll be living for 2 years as volunteers. My time with them was spent touring around Kiev on the first day, and the second day I was in their training town. On Friday we all got to know each other and I answered about a million questions. I was so excited to share my personal experience and how much I have gained and grown during my time here. On Saturday, with a cluster from the town over, we had about 4-5 hours of technical and cross-cultural sessions. I felt awfully grown up – talking to them about planning workshops and seminars, managing classrooms, dealing with Ukrainian bureaucracy, culture shock, and adapting to a new place. That evening, Heather and I met up in Kiev to take the train back to Donetsk together. On the train, as is the usual, people heard us speaking English and took notice. They were thrilled to find out that we spoke Russian, and we were pumped to have language practice.

On Sunday a group of volunteers gathered to go to a Shakhtar game down at Donbas Arena. Unfortunately, my math capabilities are lacking and I forgot to buy myself a ticket when I picked them up a few days prior. Everyone went to the game without me, and I ended up meeting the group later down at our favorite local dive bar – Ganju Baz. That night there was a trivia contest at the bar. Called ‘Pub Quiz’, one is usually held at least once a month. Usually a couple of ex-pat Brits or Americans create 4 rounds of questions, and teams of 5 people come and compete. Luckily for us, everything is in English. There tends to be at least 50 or so people competing, and the competition can be intense. I’m fairly terrible at trivia – I’m only useful with a few very specific topics (Hanson, kittens, linguistics, Glee, Barbara Kingsolver novels). However, PCVs are just full of [useless] information and a team of volunteers got 1st place! They won a bottle champagne from Artyomovsk, our local champagne and wine factory. My team got 3rd or 4th place. I’m pretty proud!

The following few days involved a lot of lounging around the apartment and trying to get things checked off of my to-do list. Heather left to go to Kharkov to deal in bribes at the embassy, and I had a couple very silly lessons about Halloween on the 27th and 28th. Over the weekend a few of them even made their own jack-o-lanterns and brought pictures to school. That weekend, I went up to Kharkov as well, for the annual Peace Corps Halloween Party. The party took place Saturday night. My usual pack of friends – Katelyn, Jessica, Mattison – and I decided to do a little touring around beforehand. We saw the city’s main square, which is apparently one of the biggest in Europe. The center of Kharkov is very pretty. It has a nice urban feel, while being of a manageable size, and it has a lot of history. At one point it was the capital of Ukraine. We found a park of ‘attractions’ and went for a ride on the ‘Sky Glider.’ We weren’t sure what that would entail – but it turned out to be kind of terrifying and exhilarating. Imagine the Sky Ride at Cedar Point, only a tad lower, skimming treetops, and in Ukraine, meaning that I don’t trust it not to just fall apart at any given moment. That sad, I’m so happy that we went. As scared as I am of things like that, it was just breathtaking – autumn in Ukraine is beautiful. After dinner we went to a French restaurant. It was very quaint and cozy with low lighting and comfy seats – and club music in the background. We didn’t mean to stay there long as we had a party to get back to, but we ended up there for almost 3 hours. The food was expensive and tasty. I ordered onion soup and a bowl of fondue. The waitress was a tad bothered by my order “That’s for many people. Are you really going to eat 450 grams of cheese?” In the end, I was unsuccessful, and briefly had a stomachache, but it was a valiant and delicious attempt.

The party wasn’t nearly the wild crazy bash that I thought it would. Part of me is disappointed – there’s something to be said about partaking in an event that will be forever banned. But for Peace Corps’ sake, it was good that everything stayed calm. There were 143 volunteers counted that night and the fact that there were no problems, I think that says a lot of good things about this collective of ours.

My costume was a cat. In a crafty spurt the week leading up to Halloween, I sewed a tail and ears out of leopard print fabric. I was pretty impressed with the way that I constructed the ears – I sewed them onto bobby pins. I have an enormous head and knew that I wouldn’t be able to sport a headband for an entire evening.

A hippie, me, a pumpkin, and a stilyag (50's Russian hipster).

After all of the hugs and tears as I said goodbye to volunteers who will be heading back to America, it is no surprise that I came down with a cold the week after. I took a few days off to rest, use a Neti Pot, and drink tons and tons of hot tea with lemon and honey.

I’m all better now! This past week was insanely busy. Mainly, my English Clubs started back up. It’s nice to know that kids I don’t even teach want to come and spend time practicing English. The 7th graders told me that some of their favorite things to do are be creative. They love when I just give them a bag of props and they have to make skits in English, when I describe a picture and they draw and color, or when we make up crazy stories with a set few words. This week’s activity was ‘fold-a-story’. On a piece of paper, each person wrote a sentence, then folded over the paper and passed it to the next person. The next person opens it, looks at the sentence and draws it. They fold it 2 times, then pass. The next person can only see the drawing, then they write a sentence of what it is. It continues on until the page is full. It can get really silly depending on the imaginations of the kids and their artistic abilities. My group of kids were cackling maniacally while drawing and the results were hilarious.

As for the older kids, I’m curious to see what kind of turnout there will be. Two of the best tenth graders have already approached me about the fact that they can’t come to English club. They’re sweet kids, very bright and motivated, but it’s really difficult and frustrating for them to speak in English. I decided that I would just stay after lessons on Monday, when the two are available and give them that time to speak with me and improve. I’ve never had anyone actually come forward about their schedule conflicts, so I don’t mind going out of my way to help these guys out. I’ll probably extend the invitation to 2 or 3 more students their age as well.

There are a bunch of projects that I’m currently in the midst of. Next up on here will be a description of those – a Book Challenge, a Homework Lottery, a Peace Corps Partnership Grant for textbooks, pen pal exchanges and connecting with World Wise Schools.