Back From Kyiv

Thursday night I took the overnight to Kyiv, hoping that it would be no colder than it has been here in N--. It has been something fierce, like -25 degrees Celsius. So cold, I knew better than to think about what it was in Farenheit.

My host mom packed me up, made me sit down and be quiet for about 30 seconds before we headed out to catch a marshrutka. This is apparently a Ukrainian custom that I had heard about, but never actually practiced.

Somehow, it did work. I had a lot of fears about who would end up in my coupe on the train, fearing that it would be three young men who've known each other for some time and would want nothing more than to drink vodka and harrass me. The other method of travel by train is the platzkarte, which I have taken before, but only with a group. I have heard it said that some volunteer women enjoy taking it more than coupe, because the whole train car is open, so if anyone bothers you, you can usually get an old babushka to tell them to knock it off. But before I left, I asked one of the volunteers in town, and he told me of a story where some dudes harrassed this girl and put toothpaste on her while she slept when she travelled platzkarte.

I decided that I didn't need to be that minty fresh.

My host mother at the train station handed me over to the dude who works in the car (the Russian word for it escapes me now) and made a point to tell him that I was a foreigner and didn't understand Russian. Thankfully, he was incredibly young and extrordinarily hot.

My coupe ended up being one middle-aged woman and two men, maybe in their forties. When the hot dude came to collect our tickets and ask what kind of sheets we wanted, I told him that I didn't want any, and before I knew it, one of the men in my coupe was buying sheets for me. I had explained to him and the other woman that I was American.

On board, I ended up getting a phone call from another volunteer and I talked freely. When I got off the phone, one of the men looked at me and asked in Russian, "you speak Russian or English?" I told him that I spoke English and he responded in English, "so do I." So we talked for some time. We talked mostly about our jobs, as many people have a hard time understanding what it is that I do here, and as he was a seaman, he had some interesting stories too--he was on his way to Africa. I believe he works for an oil company and that is why he needed to learn English, he works with a lot of Indians. And he's been to Philadelphia. Go figure.

He politely asked me if I drank beer, which I responded that I did, knowing full well that it would appear, as no Ukrainian man can resist drinking with a foreign woman.

In Kyiv, the weather was thankfully a lot warmer than it had been, and I had an opportunity to meet a lot of other folks, and see some others I had not seen in some time. I also got to collect some resources for my classes, as HQ has a nice resource center, and there are others in the city. The whole thing definitely made my trip worthwhile, considering that it was an extremely expensive trip for a volunteer to make. But of course, I didn't have to have Indian food, but man oh man, I wanted it!

On the way back I was lucky enough to have the company of another volunteer, so we could hang out in the restaurant car and discuss how hot some other volunteers are. I don't want to give the impression that he is shallow, because he's not. It's me.

So we arrived safe and sound back in N--, where I needed to tackle 2 lesson plans for Monday, my first day of teaching!