November 29th!

Hello everyone! Life in good old Ukraine is about the same. Only two weeks left of training and then we head to Kyiv for a few days to wrap up our training, have our swearing in ceremony, meet our Ukrainian counterpart, and then with our counterpart, we depart by bus or by train to our permanent site. And oh yeah, we don’t find out our actual site until we arrive in Kyiv. It’s gonna be exciting!

Well after a month of no school, the flu epidemic is over (well maybe not over, but not as bad as before), and we are teaching again. On Wednesday schools reopened throughout the country so we are back in our school. When we went to meet with the English teacher we have primarily been working with, she said “the students have forgotten everything!” Oh joy. On Thursday, Yeri and I taught a 7^th grade class about the correct usage of the words “both”, “either” and “neither”. It went well. The kids were awesome. After the class, as we were about to leave, a student said to his friends in Russian that he would miss us. I think it took him by surprise when he realized we understood what he had said. We said we would miss him too. It was funny.

We are doing a small community project at our school about HIV/AIDs. We made tons of posters and hung them up in the school on Thursday. Then next week we will teach a seminar to high school students about HIV/AIDS and give out red ribbons for them to wear on World AIDS Day. We are also going to compile resources and lesson plans about HIV/AIDS to give to the school and other people in town who might be able to spread the info in the future. It feels nice to do something for our school and for the community. Hopefully we will also be able to show a movie afterschool about HIV/AIDS for interested students. The principal and some teachers said they really liked the posters we had made and hung up—they added a lot of color to the stairwell where we hung them, and many students were reading them and were interested in them.

Last weekend was my host mom’s second birthday party with her family. I met one of her other sons, and his wife (the parents of the granddaughter who had been staying with us for a month.) I also met her nephew and her daughter in law’s parents. My host mom’s son and nephew were hilarious. They knew some English, which was kind of nice and funny because they knew a lot of random words and phrases. Sometimes they would remember a word they knew in English and would shout it out at random moments. A few things they shouted out in English: “Hot dog!” “Okay!” “I am a pig, this is my baby kitten!” And her nephew knew about the Red Sox, so that was cool. Also her son said then when I go back to Boston, I should say hello to Boston from him. It was a great night. The next morning, they all boarded a bus back to Kyiv. I was so sad to say goodbye my host mom’s granddaughter. I hope I can see her again some day!

The other night, myself, my host mom, her sister and the neighbor were over having dinner. Recently, a Peace Corps volunteer came to visit our town to give us advice and talk about his experience being a volunteer in Ukraine. He finished his service last week and is already back in the states at this point, but when he left Ukraine, he brought his host mom with him back to the states and she will be in the states for a month with him! It’s very cool. So I told my host mom about this, and she said that in two years, maybe she will come back with me to Boston. I said maybe, but then she said that she can’t fly, so I said we could take a boat, and then she said that she doesn’t like being on the ocean. She suggested we ride bicycles to Boston, and I said sure! She said we would have very good figures after this long bike ride.

That same night, after dinner, I went to my room to do my Russian homework. Then the neighbor knocked on my door and said that she was going to show us a film of her son’s wedding, which took place over the summer. I have never met him, but I said sure, I’ll watch the video. So we all sit down to watch the wedding video. It was interesting and funny at times. Weddings in Ukraine last the entire day and are quite a big deal. There are many interesting traditions. The only thing was the video was THREE HOURS LONG. I am not even kidding you. Three hours long. I knew something was fishy when the disc finished and suddenly it said “Insert disc 2”. It became a party—suddenly the wine was out and we were all clinking glasses, watching this wedding video. It was a very interesting night.

The chickens at the house where we have our Russian class have suddenly become crazy. I think that now that the woman at the house is back to teaching, they feel neglected. The other day when I went out to use the outhouse, I got to the gate, and suddenly they rushed at the gate making crazy noises and staring at me, just waiting for me to open the gate so they could rush at my legs and peck me to death. This was the day after Jacob said that one of them attacked him. I chose not to go to the bathroom that time. And then on Friday, Kathleen went to the bathroom and when she came back, she said “Didn’t you guys hear me screaming?!?” We hadn’t. The chickens had rushed at her and three of them had attacked her. Now we are all scared of using the bathroom. Cait lives next door, so I used her outhouse on Friday after class, but the chickens at her house started rushing towards me as well. I think all the chickens in the neighborhood are devising some terrible plan to peck us all to death. Yikes.

We took an amazing walk on Friday after class to a part of town we had never been to before. We walked up a big hill, which led to a huge grassy field, and from there we could see the whole town, forests and the river. It was so cool to see a whole other part of town. We kept walking and we passed a couple of graveyards, which were really beautiful as well.

Let the two week countdown begin!