Здравствуйте!

So so SO much has happened since I left my training site. To go back a few weeks, the Saturday before we left, we had a wonderful host family goodbye party. It was a blast. Lots of delicious food, fun conversation and the families surprised us with some interesting Ukrainian traditions. This included something where we rode around on a broom, pretending it was a horse, and then had to run in circles, and then they hung a piece of bread from a stick and without using our hands, we had to try to get bites of the bread, and if we laughed, smiled, or could not successfully get a bite of bread, they put ash on our faces. It was hilarious.

It was a fun last weekend in training. It was sad saying goodbye to my host family and other people I had become close with, but I will definitely see them again, hopefully in the near future. On Monday we all had a big goodbye at the bus stop and we were off to Kyiv for 4 days. While in Kyiv the four days, we had many info sessions, seminars, were given a ton of information and then on Thursday we had our swearing-in ceremony. It was very cool. Many important Ukrainian people were there—people in charge of education, the new US Ambassador to Ukraine was there, as well as local media. The ceremony was only about an hour, but it was pretty neat. I am no longer just a trainee—now I am an actual volunteer. Hooray!

After the ceremony, we all began departing to our sites. Things got a bit crazy at this point. A big bus full of us volunteers and counterparts departed from where we were staying. It should have only taken us about half an hour to get to the train station, but we left two hours early. Alas, this was not enough time. We got stuck in the worst traffic jam I have ever seen. For 3 hours we were stuck in traffic just blocks from the train station. But we could not get out and grab our bags because we were surrounded by cars, and also it was in the negative degrees outside, so it was just way too frigid. So all together about 40 people missed their trains and we had to head back to the place we were staying. On Friday, they were able to book us new tickets—although when we left on Friday, some people were still waiting to leave because much of Ukraine was getting hit by bad snowstorms. We got to the train station—3 hours early of course, but that was fine. The train station is really beautiful in Kyiv, and a bunch of us sat in the magnificent café in the station, which was fun. Finally, it was time for my train to leave, and myself and my counterpart were off to Konotop!

Konotop is a big-ish city—about 100,000 people (just a little bigger then my training site of 8000 people!) in Northeast Ukraine. By train, I am only 2.5 hours from Kyiv. I am so thankful to be so close. It is so convenient, and super cheap to get to. My Ukrainian counterpart is Elena and this is her second time being a counterpart. Last year, her school had a volunteer, so she has had some experience in this role. She is AMAZING. So kind, so funny, speaks incredible English and has been teaching English for 15 years. She is married with two children, one of whom attends our school. I feel really fortunate to have such a caring, funny and helpful counterpart. I really like her, as well as the other English teachers at my school. They are all incredibly kind and helpful, so I think it is going to go very well.

I am living in an apartment pretty much right in the center of town. My apartment has one big living room with a couch that turns into my bed. And then a small but cute kitchen and a bathroom with… drumroll please… hot running water. I am really lucky to have this. The only real downside of the apartment is the non functioning oven, but I think once I get a bit more settled, I might look into seeing if it can be repaired, or maybe buying some sort of toaster oven that is big enough to bake in. But it is cozy, warm and convenient. I have met a couple of the neighbors, and they are really nice, and one really sweet pensioner has checked on me and when I was locked out of my apartment the first weekend (long story) she invited me in, made me some food and patiently attempted conversation with me.

Konotop is a really great town. It’s beautiful and has a lot of places to go and things to do. It has a few supermarkets, a few nice café’s, an internet club, and many other great places. It has a marshrutka (mini-bus) system, as well as a tram! Konotop is one of the smallest towns in Ukraine to have a tram. A tram is an above the ground subway system. Kind of like the green line in Boston. They go really slow, but they are fun and inexpensive, like most of the transportation in this part of the country. The origin of the word Konotop is kind of cool. Legend has it that centuries ago, Catherine the Great and her army attempted to attack this area, but since Konotop is on a swamp, the horses got stuck and they drowned. And that is why it is called Konotop—which literally means drowning horse.

My school is great. It is an intensive English and Mathematics school. It has about 700 or so students and 13 English teachers. I will work with the 7^th, 8^th, 9^th, 10^th and 11^th forms. Last week I observed classes and chatted a lot with my students. I am very impressed with the English level of many of the students. I met every student and class that I will be working with, and I did a little interview session with each class. They asked me a lot of questions; we talked about Ukraine, the states, school and all kinds of topics. Even though I love little kids, I am pretty excited to work with older grades. I think I will have a lot of opportunities to work with students in many different ways, not just as their English teacher. My school is already asking me to brainstorm ideas for outside projects and different kinds of funding we can get. Now the school is on winter vacation, so I have a little over a week free to get to know my town, maybe do a bit of local traveling, and begin preparing for teaching.

I am starting to feel more at ease, at home and comfortable in Ukraine. There was a period during training, to be honest much of training where everyday I was asking myself, why am I here? I felt very torn and confused about my role as a volunteer in Ukraine, teaching English. I saw all these things going on in my training community—insane amounts of drinking, underage drinking, trash everywhere and learning about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country. I was seeing all these things and asking myself, why am I here teaching students about holidays, and colors, and the present perfect tense when these other issues seem SO much more important? I was feeling pretty negative, and it sucked. It downright sucked. But then some friends gave me some positive advice, some real solid advice, which really, really helped me. Since these pep talks I got, and trying to just be more positive in general, I have been feeling much better. I was definitely sad to see training end, love my host family, love my cluster and love my training site. But I was ready for training to end and ready to embark on this new adventure, of actually being a PCV. Additionally, many of the problems that I see, I am looking forward to finding ways to get involved to address these within my school, and in other ways.

I feel good now. Looking forward for school to start but having this extended time off is allowing me to explore Konotop, get to know some local people and get settled into my apartment. I have said this before, but I am constantly amazed at the friendliness, kindness and hospitableness of Ukrainian people. I don’t know, maybe it is just because I am a foreigner in a new place, maybe not, but I have already made some strong connections with Ukrainians in Konotop, and I feel really thankful for them.

I had a great New Years. I went to my landlord’s house and spent the evening with her and her husband. It was really enjoyable. We ate, chatted, ate more, watched TV, knitted, looked at photos, ate more, drank wine, ate more, and then finally went to sleep at 2:30 in the morning. It’s funny how now that I have been living on my own, cooking food for myself, I forget that Ukrainians know how to eat. Especially on holidays. I forgot about the whole pacing yourself thing, since you pretty much sit for five hours straight eating. But it was delicious—my landlord is a great cook. The next morning we got up, had breakfast, and my landlord had me drink cognac… at 10 AM to help get rid of my cold. That was interesting… but yeah, it was a really great New Years. I cannot believe it is 2010. I mean really, it’s kind of insane.

Well that's all for now! I got internet this past week, so I will update this thing fairly regularly. Until next time...

До свиданья!!