I'm alive

loyal readers,

I've been neglecting you. but Dude, whoever said that PC would be that one chance in your life where you could pursue all the hobbies and interests that you could never do before because of all the free time you would have in PC could not be MORE WRONG!!! I am 500 times busier now than I ever was in college or any other time of my generally, busy/overly involved/extended life. Training was a MADHOUSE of activity. I thought life would be slower once I got to site but much to my dismay, it has only sped up. I'm in overdrive now. I'm alwayssss exhuasted and my poor and abandoned introverted personality has almost been frazzled beyond repair. SO what I'm trying to say is: yes, I still have my blog. BUT (very unfortunately) I have not been writing in it lately. I'll try to add a few posts to keep you updated every now and then though ;) millions of crazy, insanely amusing things happen to me every day... every minute. and they all absolutely deserve to be written about. but I gotta find the time.

PS. I went to a Sauna last weekend in a nearby village.
I had dinner with one of my students at her family's apartment last night. They were gypsies and SUPER interesting to talk to.
I'm going on a field trip to the Carpathian Mountains on Sunday for a week to teach a mini English camp there and ski/snowboard (obvi).

I just finished judging the Olympiad competition for my region. I'm attending a latin american dance class in russian two nights a week. I'm taking tutoring lessons and currently translating "Bambi" from Russian to English once a week. I'm sort of learning to play the guitar in my "free time" = usually 2am in the morning on a school night. I went to my first Ukrainian club two Friday nights ago - it was a fun night of dancing, vodka, and hooka that ended with a bowl of spaghetti being shattered on my kitchen floor. I usually have at least one PCV come and stay the weekend with me from about thursday through monday morning. I have yet to spend a friday, saturday, or sunday alone in ukraine (day or night). I baked my first banana bread for some of my co-teachers. it was a huge success. I read exerpts of Harry Potter in English with my 8th formers. I went ice skating with my favorite English teacher and her family. I suck at ice skating. ...
....so I should tell you about all of these things, when I have more time :)

notes during training to my dad...

11/27: Thanks for calling me yesterday, dad. it was comforting and really sad all at once. you know how it is.

ukraine is loving me, everyday. and i love it just as much. i cant believe ill be leaving my host family in two short weeks. theyve been my rock and i think i might be lost without them.

11/3: I've been learning how to cook Ukrainian food. I usually try to watch my host-mom in the kitchen as much as I can and she always ends up letting me help her. well, last night: I "skinned", gutted, and chopped the head off of my first Ukrainian fish. I cleaned a 2 foot fish that my host-dad caught that morning) :D Someo...ne told me that you know you've arrived when you start to get treated like a Ukrainian and stop getting treated like an American. After last night, I think I've arrived. (probably not, there's a lot of other things that I'm sure that I need to do to prove myself... but I'm climbing that ladder. fosho.) and, I'm learning how to cook it tonight ;)

ohh. I don't eat the fish here b/c I'm scared of radiation. and my family knows that. they laugh, but my fears are grounded in truth. I think that I will have really "arrived" when I take my first bite of their favorite fish dish. ... what to do, what to do.





10/10: WOULD YOU RATHER... have explosive diarrhea in a stranger's match-box sized house with paper-thin walls with no toilet paper where you can't even speak the language to ask for some? OR eat a bowl of straight-up, raw, un-cooked pig fat with the pink, freckled skin still attached with a side of "natural" co...ttaged-cheese that you saw and smelled "being naturalized" on the kitchen counter for the past 15 days?

from personal experience on both accounts, I would rather have neither but I think that I'll go with the explosive diarrhea on this one.

...I thought that you would be the only one who could relate to those stories and I understand if you delete this post. :D ... its not the one hole that bothers me. its the smell. it makes me vomit, literally

Fear Factor Ukraine, anyone?

AND ... the pig fat is endearingly called "celo" and the "natural" cottaged cheese are deemed quite delicious by many people and a lot of volunteers. I'm just a slow adjuster to these delicacies. ... im not being critical at all. to each their own taste buds.

The Alpha and Omega of Training

In the beginning, I all but HATED my 3rd grade class. On the first day of teaching, when everyone else from my cluster was team-teaching – it somehow landed on me to teach by myself and to 3rd graders, no doubt. Of course, my class was the first one to be viewed by our TCF and… I was practically the premier example of everything NOT to do. I mean, I was teaching the “Present Continuous” to 8 year olds who are only supposed to be spoken to in Ukrainian. I've been learning Russian and I don’t even know how to say “hello” in UA… although, I do know how to say “police”. Regardless, it was only my 3rd week in Ukraine, so even if I had been able to speak better Russian… it didn’t really matter.

… more detail, I can’t help it. (Now that I'm remembering that first class... I have to explain how terrible it was... Those first 45 minutes were incredibly painful. My TCF was glaring at me, the regular English teacher was trying to avoid eye contact from the back of the classroom because she felt so bad for me. And my students were incredibly lost and totally out of control. They wanted to please me, but I was making it way too difficult for them.

After that class, I was sure that there was no way I was about to spend the next two years of my life teaching complex grammar rules that I don't even know the names for myself to Ukrainian oocheniks.

BUTT although that class was an epic fail, it was also a HUGE learning experience. Lesson #1 – avoid explicitly teaching grammar at all costs.

AND Hindsight is always clearer than foresight. Now, I see that that huge flop made me work harder and it has also made me appreciate every successful class that I teach where students don't throw paper balls at eachother or pull eacother's hair. Seriously though, every class after that, I’ve had those little dears eating from my the palm of my hand. (I also have a growing bag of secrets to help me out with this feat... feel free to email with questions).

How do I feel, now ?? Well, Yesterday was my last day of teaching at Boguslav School #1. I thought that I would be rejoicing to hit this milestone, which I am, but I’m also surprisingly sad. I’ll miss my little 8 year olds who tackle me with hugs when I walk into the classroom and carry all of my pencil bags and books for me down the halls. And erase the board for me before class starts. And correct all of my Russian spelling errors on the board. And hang all materials on the board for our lessons. And ask me 100 times/ day, in this exact dialogue, no varitions, ever.:
3rd Grader: Hello!!! Mmyyyy nammmeee isss Vanechka… wwwhhhaaattt isss youurr nammeee??
Me: My name is Whitney. It’s nice to meet you, Vanechka. How are you, today?
3rd Grader: IIIII AAAAM FIINE.
(repeat at least 3x for each student before I’m saved by the bell and class begins)

And I’ll also miss my 7th grade boys who scream “Sexy are you! Sexy am I! You are Sexy!... Sexy! everytime I see them in school and around town. At first, I was really disturbed by this, but I’ve come to embrace the fact that they can successfully conjugate the verb “to be” (a pretty crucial skill for speakers of English). And my adorable 7th grade girls, who have begun to imitat my gestures…. Now, they like to make their eyes get really wide when acting really interested in what someone’s saying during class, or putting their hands on their hips when they’re waiting for an answer from someone during a dialogue, or clicking their tongue when thinking out loud for a word in English.
And of course, I’ll be slightly thrown off with out my students screaming from across the hall in school or across the road in town, “HELLO Ms. FARMER” (I haven’t actually decided if I’ll miss that or not)

So Despite my initial classroom culture shock and related qualms, I have decided that I really love teaching especially when I have those (more-often-than-not awkward) bonding moments with my students -- even when it’s a two line dialogue, the truth remains: … It really IS/(WAS) a pleasure to meet you, Vanechka.

One World, One Game

A few Saturdays ago, I played a game of pick-up soccer with my host brother, Vlad. It was the hardest that I’ve laughed since I’ve been in Ukraine (and the hardest work-out I’ve had since I’ve been here… a week later, and my muscles were still recovering. I’m getting too old for these games, but I wasn’t about to let one of my little students steal the ball from me behind on a breakaway… )
But Soccer is NO JOKE here in Ukraine. For these boys, it wasn’t even just a life or death game either…. It was more than that. So a few times, I thought I was surely going to be kicked out of the game for laughing. Honestly, I’m not sure if I was in more pain from laughing so hard or because of how hard they made me play. Still, I was just amazed how awesome these little 70 pound 10 year-olds were at soccer. Two other PCTs were playing with me and we were getting stuffed by these little kids and I couldn’t help but laugh.

Because Vlad is 10, it worked out that I was playing soccer with a bunch of boys around that age. Except, they don’t look like they were 10. The children in Ukraine are MUCH smaller than their counterparts in the US. So a 10 year-old boy really looks like he’s about 6 or 7. Girls of that age would look like about 4. Anyway, there was this one little boy named Serioge who was the goalie for Vlad’s team. I swear he looked like he just came out of diapers. Little Serioge was blocking shots left and right and the sheer unexpected element of his performance just made me want to die laughing (picture a 30 pound kid blocking shots like _____). Eventually, some older boys from the high school came and played with us. Ain’t nothin’ but a thang for Serioge, he blocked their shots, too. (After the game, I found out that Serioge had just turned five a few months ago.) … these kids are unreal. I guess if you play soccer 8 out of 12 waking hours everyday, you’re bound to be pretty amazing.

Anyway, my second favorite kid was Anton. Anton was about 8/9, kind of chubby, and the BOSS. If the ball came to you, after your first touch… you could hear Anton repeatedly scream “PPAAAAAASSSSSSSSS” from the other end of the field. He was my team’s cherry-picker, which was just funny in itself. But you could Anton’s voice echo all over Boguslav, I didn’t know whether to be scared for my life or laugh at his extreme urgency... (of course, I laughed). Anyway, Anton and a few of those boys are in my English class- I now have major street cred. in the classroom especially after I scored a few goals.

Moments like these make me love Ukraine more than I usually do. I hope I can play again next weekend if the weather is good… as long as Serioge is on my team.

food, food - yum yum

I've been learning how to cook Ukrainian food. I usually try to watch my host-mom in the kitchen as much as I can and she always ends up letting me help her. well, last night: I "skinned", gutted, and chopped the head off of my first Ukrainian fish. I cleaned a 2 foot fish that my host-dad caught that morning) :D Someone told me that you know you've arrived when you start to get treated like a Ukrainian and stop getting treated like an America. After last night, I think I've arrived. (probably not, there's a lot of other things that I'm sure that I need to do to prove myself... but I'm climbing that ladder. fosho.) and, I'm learning how to cook it tonight ;)

ohh. I don't eat the fish here b/c I'm scared of radiation. and my family knows that. they laugh, but my fears are grounded in truth. I think that I will have really "arrived" when I take my first bite of their favorite fish dish. ... what to do, what to do.

Ukraine's California Virus Quarantine

LOL. UKRAINIAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS CLOSED FOR THREE-WEEK CALIFORNIA VIRUS QUARANTINE. What? Haven’t heard of the “California Virus”? In the US, we refer to this so-called “California Virus” as ... no other but H1N1 aka Swine Flu aka Mexico’s plague upon the human population and the delight of young children across the world who have excused school holidays for months on end. Like most things implemented by the government, my host family suggests that this quarantine was a result of mostly political power struggles between the Ukrainian President and Prime Minister especially during the heated months leading to the next Presidential election. Unfortunately, this decision caused an outrageous amount of hysteria amongst the Ukrainian population over a laughably small matter. It’s been officially documented that less than 5 people have died from the Swine Flu in Ukraine since the epidemic came to existence. Political power struggles and a rumored under-the-table governmental decision to cut budget costs by closing governmental facilities during the coldest winter months caused the cost of home remedies like lemons, oranges, garlic, and onions to more than triple in price over night- talk about a stimulus plan for the citrus and herb farmers.

So how does the quarantine affect me and the other volunteers? Basically, we just go on about our daily live as usual EXCEPT: we don’t teach in the school- b/c they’re closed, duh. AND if living with a host family, we wear masks anytime we’re out in public to satisfy our host moms - not because the masks are actually an effective preventive means against contracting the virus. In fact, the way in which the mass public wears these masks actually makes them counter-effective, if you do the research. Finally, we avoid traveling as much as possible. Or it’s recommended to avoid travelling- but my cluster mates are gallivanting around Kiev at this very moment- soooo… so much for that recommendation.

Big City?... Irony

So before I left my apartment on Sunday morning to go the Bazaar, I was a little worried that I would get lost. OBVIOUSLY, I have a minor language barrier. But even more of an issue is coming from a county of less than 5,000 people back in the US and not knowing how to navigate in what seems to me like the city.

Here, my Ukrainian “village” of 35,000 people seems a little like the big city to me. In Boguslav, I live in a high-rise apartment. Apartments are practically unheard of in Bath and the term alone “high-rise” hasn’t even been added to the Bath County dictionary- we’re about a couple centuries, maybe even millennia from that lexical expansion. Here, I may not drive a car, nor do many people even own a car. But I take regular taxi rides. Previously, I might have taken one taxi ride in my entire life – and that’s a benefit-of-the- doubt estimation… honestly, I can’t even remember one time. Now, I’m becoming a taxi-calling/whistling/money-haggling pro despite being close enough to walk everywhere I need to go – an added wonder that I’ve only had the joy to experience while in college. In Bath, there was one pharmacy. Here, per European standard, there’s an “apteka” every few meters on the road. I live an hour and a half’s Marshryptka-ride from one of Eastern Europe’s most mesmerizing cities. And being bombarded by women’s “city fashion” is a source of as much daily awe as it is a cause of my own discomfort and embarrassment about my personal appearance. I’m a hole-in-the-knees jeans and hoodie, rainbow flip-flops, winter UGGS, dress-shoe Danskos or Nine-West flats wearin-kinda-girl. Here, knee-high black boots with 4-inch stiletto heels are the norm for even a Sunday stroll to the bazaar. I’ve never been so keenly aware of my Deep South/ Big Country/ Appalachian Mountain genetic and cultural Roots before in my entire life.

But so NO FEAR, I made it to the Sunday Bazaar b/c even a country girl can survive. … but on the real, the bazaar took up about six streets in the historic district of Boguslav; and from about 6 am to 12 pm, there was a MASS public exodus by foot to the top of the city where, despite the below freezing temperature outside, the market was hot in action. No navigational trouble at all.

Anyway, I just have to laugh at my lack of experience with city life. I’m in a third-world country on the other side of the world and I’m learning as much about how to navigate and survive in the city as I am about how to give aid to an under-served, underprivileged population. Oh, the irony of it all.