"Daddy, I'm Freeeeeezzzing!!"

Two years ago, my friend Tillie was visiting me in Boston in February. We were sitting in the Boston Common, chatting and people watching. It was a really cold day, and this father and son walked past us. The father was dressed very appropriately for winter, but the son was not. As they walked past us, the little boy said to his dad in a sad, shivering voice "Daddy, I'm freeeeeeeezing!" We could not stop laughing. Okay maybe you had to be there and that is really cruel, but hey, it was funny at the moment. And now in Ukraine, I perpetually feel like that little boy. Freezing. No matter how many layers I wear of long underwear, wool socks, sweaters, mittens, it is SO DAMN COLD. So, little freezing Boston boy, wherever you are, I feel your pain.

This winter, Ukrainians are completely shocked at the amount of snow that Ukraine has been getting and how cold it has been, at least in my part of the country. One teacher at my school said that he thinks it has been about 10 years or so since it was this cold, this early in the year. He said maybe February can reach such lows, but usually not in January, and usually not this cold. And one older teacher in my school said that he does not remember Ukraine having this much snow since he was a child. I would call myself a winter person. I really do enjoy winter, but at the same time, this is getting kind of old. And I am fully aware that there will still be a couple more months of winter. So... that's nice.

I think that I have become impervious to embarrassment. I have fallen on the ice 4 times in public in my town. I would say generally I am not someone who gets embarrassed easily. But I think we all know, there is something just so mortifying about falling down or tripping in public. But I can say that at this point, after it happening so much in town, I just don’t even really get embarrassed about this anymore.

So the marshrutka drivers in my town keep thinking that I am a student, and keep charging me the student price. I have been correcting them and giving them the full amount for an adult, but should I just start paying the student price if they think I am a student? Or do I continue to insist that I pay the full price, since I am, in fact, an adult? I think I will keep paying the full price, since it is insanely cheap. But I always feel kind of weird when they stare at me, trying to figure out if I am an adult or a child. Sigh.

So, much has happened these last few weeks. First off, I have had some of my first experiences traveling alone. Not anything far away, but still, my first time navigating trains and marshrutkas alone. For the most part, they have been good. There have been some interesting occurrences and confusion along the, but in each case I arrived at my destination in one piece, and that is all that matters! I think it helps that I am not too shy when it comes to asking people for directions and help finding where to go. Even if I end up sounding like a crazy person, I would rather be a crazy person on the correct bus than a crazy person on the wrong bus. When it comes to asking people for directions in Russian, I have begun to learn who is the most helpful when it comes to getting help. So here goes. Lesson 101: Asking for directions with a language barrier. Best scenario is a woman with a child. They tend to be a bit more patient and helpful, even when I totally butcher the Russian language. If a woman with a child is not available to answer questions, then I would say a middle aged woman. But not one who looks like they are in a rush. Slowly approach and say “excuse me” and attempt to straight forwardly ask your question. If neither of those are available, I would ask a middle aged man. Of course, asking someone who is working at the bus or train station is best, but sometimes that person cannot be found, or they are busy, or they are just unapproachable. And word of advice, asking a police officer might seem like a good idea, but not always. They may want to flirt with you instead of telling you where your train platform is (although this particular police officer did point me in the right direction, only after flirting and being just a wee bit skeezy).

Something else I have learned. Sometimes it is necessary to have a Russian translator when trying to speak Russian. What do I mean by this? Sometimes I butcher Russian so badly that another Ukrainian person needs to translate exactly what I said, in Russian, to another Russian speaking person. When this happens, I just laugh and feel like a big dummy. This happened when my friend Cait and I were trying to buy bus tickets to a town just 40 minutes from her town. It was the most confusing interaction in Russian I have ever had, and it was going terribly until a nice Ukrainian girl came over and helped translate--in Russian--to the woman behind the ticket counter. Oy.

I am enjoying Ukraine. I really am. But sometimes I just feel so silly and so confused with what is going on. I don’t know exactly how to explain this, but there seem to be these unspoken rules of things that just happen. Many times when I walk into town, or get onto a marshrutka, or go into school there just seem to be these things that happen and I have absolutely no idea what is going on, but everyone else seems to know what is happening! I feel like a little lost baby, walking around aimlessly, just completely disoriented. Usually I just laugh off these moments. I can usually find the humor in these situations. But sometimes I just wish I could just leave my apartment and not feel so lost and confused and 2 years old. I know that this will get easier, and it doesn’t bother me that much. Just sometimes I wish that I felt less crazy!

One good thing though is that I tend to find one person, or they find me, who takes on the role of making sure that I am okay and that I am not totally lost. Well not always, but some of my travel experiences have been much better because there was one person who made sure that I got off at my stop, or showed me where my bus was, or protected me from drunk men who tried to feed me fish and then got into a fist fight practically on top of me. (That was a fun day…) I mean, even if these nice people had not been there, I could’ve handled it myself (at least I like to think that I could!) but having them there was nice.

Ukraine is big on nicknames. When I was in training, my host family and my host mom’s friends called me Rose, but in my site, from the minute I got here, I have gotten many nicknames. My favorite nickname is pronounced Rose-och-ka. Many teachers call me this, and just today, I ran into a babushka that lives in my apartment building. We have only spoken once and that was about 3 weeks ago, but she greeted me with “Hello Rosochka!” I really like it.

So, surprise! I’m a teacher! Well, I guess it’s not a surprise, but I have to admit it was kind of a surprise for me. I mean, obviously I have known since August that I was going to be a teacher, but it didn’t quite hit me until I walked into my first classes, the Ukrainian teacher left and there were my students, staring at me, waiting for something to happen! I am teaching 9 different groups of students. One 7^th grade class, three 8^th grade classes, two 9^th grade classes, one 10^th grade class and two 11^th grade classes. I am teaching 18 hours a week, which from what I have heard is average for Ukrainian teachers.

I like my students a lot. They have character, are funny, kind and for the most part, interested in learning English. And the teachers at my school are great too. They are friendly and helpful, and the teachers that I attempt to speak with in Russian are patient with me and actually praise my Russian! I did not think I was very good, but so many teachers have said that I speak good Russian and understand a lot. Starting soon I will have Russian tutoring 1-2 times a week. I have not met my tutor yet, but she teaches Russian and Ukrainian literature at one of the other schools in Konotop. I am really looking forward to starting tutoring. I hope that it is something that I will be able to stick with.

I made my first Borscht last Thursday. It was very exciting and very delicious. It lasted me 6 days—I just finished it tonight. Next time I make it, I am gonna try to make a spicy version. I think the next Ukrainian recipe that I attempt will either be Varenyky or maybe Golubtsy. I'll let you know how that goes...

Bye!

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!!