Off Again!

Today I am off to Ternopol to take part in the third week of the same camp I was at last week, missing out on the Donestk portion of it. My original ticket had me going to Odessa and arriving at 1:30am on Saturday, which I realized only yesterday would put me there before everyone else and without anywhere to stay.

After realizing this and freaking out, I went back to my favorite place to see if I could change tickets, which I did. So I can leave today from my own city. Why this ticket was not originally offered to me is up to speculation, such as the KACA ladies are perhaps evil. Especially considering that I offered her the same notebook paper with the same date, departure and arrival cities. Who knows.

I was also "successful" in getting my way to Uzhgorod, a boarder town I need to get to before ehading with some friends to Budapest later in August. Am certainly excited about that.

But back to camp--this time should not be as stressful, as it is only a day camp and I will not be teaching as much as filling in. The topics at this camp are also not as intense, but focus more on teaching creative thinking and the arts.

The city is supposed to look like a shrunk down Lviv too--so that helps, along with the fact that one of my linkmates will be there. Supposedly after camp we get a trip to Lviv and then those of us who so choose go back to Kyiv to evaluate the program, which I'd really like to do, as I'd also like to help with it next year. It also will seve as getting a free ride back to N-- as the women who head up the camp are RPCVs from N-- who spend their summers here at their dacha.

Overall, I am in better spirits about this camp and things in general than I was a few weeks ago. Probaly due to a little bit of relaxing and cleaning up a part of my apartment. I am also curious as to what all of you are doing (or have done) this summer?

You Can't Go Home Again

Last night my clustermate called me. She had just gotten back from a trip to the States and she wanted to talk about it. She had a glorious time. First home to Mass and then off to Orlando with the family.

She then told me about the trip back to Ukraine, which included crying uncontrollably in the security line at the airport. "What's wrong with me?" she asked, "I didn't cry when I left in October." "That's because you didn't know what to expect," I responded, knowing all too well the difficulties of coming "home" after settling in. "You're right," she said, "it was an adventure then..." Uh huh. It's reality now.

She then narrarated all the hardships she encountered once at home finding her kolonka turned off after getting into a cold shower and then accidently getting stuck in her bathroom, having to literally break down the door; going to the phone company to ask about her intnernet service only to find out she owed them something like $40 when she had paid before she left. And not getting information about how to reinstall her internet either.

Stuff like this happens all the time, but after coming back from the States it can be just a bit too much to handle and breakdowns are only natural. We all have our limits and they are almost always pushed.

My own personal trial is the train station. I don't mind waiting for trains and I'm pretty comfortable with the process, even when I have to go all the way to Odessa, which still a pain, is okay. I'm talking about buying the tickets, which several of you already know about (as I texted Leah about the agony I was going through and how close to death some on-lookers were). It just takes forever, and there are always people around breathing down your neck and even my cheat sheets that I always make (they look like this: 4 Август Ник-- --> Кривий Риг) and pass to the Kaca lady don't always work. Sure, you may not read Cyrillic but you get it. The date, where from and to. Never easy. So then, while I wait in an endless line that literally keeps getting longer before I get closer to the window, I become the most arrogant and impatient foreigner known to Ukraine. I hem and haw saying "This is ridiculous!" outloud to myself, wondering why I just can't buy my tickets online like a normal American in America would do. People come up to me and ask questions which I never know answers to, then someone outs me as a foreigner and it becomes funny to everyone there but me, as I just stand and scowl at them all.

I once had a kaca lady tell me she was on an "English break" and shut her window after I had been waiting in line for at least a half hour. Guide books muse that this is Eastern Europe's charm, these non-customer service oriented Soviet throwback work ethics, but I swear it is my kryptonite and I think at times it will break me.

The moral of this entry: While I may be having a great time here and learning a lot, it can still at times be a major pain in the ass, which is only made worse by thinking "in America..." Such comparisons are not fair and uncalled for and more times than not, ruin my day. It's not hard to go home. It's hard to come back.

Reflections

Vanity is definitely not respected in our culture. In America, we would somehow feel ashamed if someone caught us looking at ourselves in a mirror or the reflection of a store window as we were walking past, but here, vanity, or at least "mirror gazing" seems to be a national passtime especially for women.

Mirrors can be found in almost any conceivable place. They are standard on the dancefloor and almost always present at restaurants. They are mandatory in schools as well. It is strange for at least this American woman to see young girls preening themselves in an educational establishment, always reapplying makeup and brushing hair. I have tried to figure out where this comes from culturally--wondering if this is an old habit even from Soviety times, or if this is relatively new? There is certainly an emphasis on appearance here, especially for women. I barely meet any standards to be considered womanly, as I barely wear makeup or bother to iron clothes, brush hair, etc. Ukrainian women take pride in their looks and will always share the "fact" that Ukrainian women are known internationally for their beauty (if not their modesty).

My assumption has been that there (now as during Soviet times) has been an emphasis on looking clean and tidy and after the Iron Curtain fell, this somehow also got changed around to looking sexy, and the only acceptable concept of sexy is wearing revealing clothing, a lot of make up, stilletto heals, and every other stereotypical "sexy" thing you can imagine. (I have seen enough see-thru shirts and pants to last a lifetime).

On a side note, when I was visiting Izmael a while ago, we went to the beach. There, playing in the water we saw a little girl, maybe four years old. She called out to her mother to take her picture. The mom got her camera and the little girl, bez clothes, began making Playboy poses for the camera, jutting out non-existant hips and leaning over. This continued for several minutes, with the little girl changing up the poses, but never to any sweet little girl looks, always doing something she must have seen in a magazine. Another female PCV and I looked on in horror as a male PCV tried to convince us that it was normal, or perhaps we were misconstruing the situation. I don't know how anyone can say that who has seen a Ukrainian family's photoalbum, which is usually chock full of wives, daughters, sisters, girlfriends half clothed on their beds making near pornographic poses. No. I am not exaggerating. And yes, it does take most of us by surprise and we rarely know how to respond until by the third or fourth time you realize that this is normal.

All of this I suppose continues with an earlier entry about the hyperfeminity the women here seem to exude and my own thoughts about how this can be perhaps detrimental to the women here, as they learn that it is more important to look good all the time and act sexy than to say learn and be a good pupil. Why else would they put mirrors in a school anyway?

In contrast to this behavior that I noticed at camp, I never once bothered to look in the mirror there. When I arrived home and went to the bathroom (the first non-outhouse I had been in for a week) I noticed I had cut my nose. I asked the other PCVs who were staying at my place when this had happened and they noted they saw it yesterday.

Such are the cultural differences.

комари

I hate mosquitoes.

My legs look like I have the chicken pox and the damn insects show no signs of stopping. Only recently did I come to terms with the fact taht some mosquitoes are actually in my apartment and biting me when I sleep. It finally got so bad that I took out the mosquito net a former PCV gave to me before he COSed and tried to rig it up over my bed without success. So I just draped it over me and feel asleep this way resigned to the probablility that it would not keep them off me. (And oh, did I mention that this other PCV used to keep this net over his compost pile complete with worms?)

After my left let had more than 30 bites on it, I decided to try for real. Attaching the hooks to nails and other objects it sort of looks decent, coming down from my light fixture and stretching at least over 1/2 of my bed, which is huge.

I was also given a plug-in Raid device to use. I plugged it in in the living room and hopefully this combination will do the trick. I'm running out of places to be bitten!

Some funny things around town...

Today on my way to the university I was stopped by a young woman carring a microphone and a man carrying a video camera was focused on me. The woman asked me something and passed the microphone to me. "Uh, Я не пинамю руски узик." It took her a second to comprehend what I just said and then she said "understood" and moved on.

Some time ago, after my sitemate and I had gone to the train station to either buy tickets or see someone off, we were on a marshrutka and I saw a middle-aged woman outside wearing a sweatshirt that read: "Just another sexy bald guy" in English. That was priceless.

New Find!

N-- about a month ago opened this huge shopping center that has been supposedly in the works for years. Called "City Center" it has bowling, billards, a movie theater, a cafe, a grocery store, and numerous other little shops. It has escalators and five floors. Basically, it is like a real live mall. And I can't believe it.

I went for the first time recently, mostly because my sitemate told me I could get Heinz ketchup there and that it was cheaper than Oozhnee Boog, the Walmart-like shopping center. At the City Center grocery store I never made it out of the condiments isle because not only did they have Heinz Ketchup, but also about 15 other brands of Heinz products I have never seen including salsa, curry sauce, pasta sauce, mexican ketchup, and so on. I also saw about 5 different salad dressings there and decided to try the American Caesar (as the kind labelled American looked like our version of Russian dressing). I picked out a few other things, not having enough money to take it all. I then went home and tried the salad dressing, which tasted like creamy caesar dressing. The next day for dinner I tried the Heinz pasta sauce and was blown away. It tasted just like a spaghetti sauce from America!!!

I was impressed with City Center for sure and think that I'll be exploring it more in the future!

Camp

Camp felt like it would never end. That does not necessarily make it a bad thing, it just makes it tiring.

Taken with about 20 international students, 20 or so student counselors and ambassadors, and 10 PCVs by buses, we drove of away from my fair city down dirt roads until we got to "Rainbow" cam. Tucked away in the middle of nowhere, we female PCVs settled into one cabin with little rusty spring beds that sank in when you sat on them. Our cabin was also covered with sand and we had to duct tape a light to work.

The site though had a volleyball net, a gazebo, a little playground, access to a beach by a river, and was not far away from a football field (Americans: read soccer). We settled in for the day preparing lessons (I taught civic leadership and Sweden) and getting everything ready for the arrival of about 100 other students from the oblast.

The camp curricula was very challenging I thought, as everything was taught in context of a European Youth Parliament, so my students were not so much learning about Sweden as they were about what Sweden thinks about Ukraine joining the European Union, because on the last day, all classes would debate this (and the topic of human trafficking depending upon their class) in attempt to come up with a resolution. Sounds kinda heavy for native speakers, huh?

Our classrooms and dining area were held off site, at the local school, about a 15 minute walk from the camp. With the heat being what it was and never getting enough slee, it was a physically draining week, even though working with the students was fun and the teams too.

We PCVs though felt that it was successful from the point of view of the students and I decided that next week I would do the Ternopol portion of the camp, after they have made their way from Donestk. It should include (to my knowledge) a day trip to Lviv and also a wrap up session in Kyiv, where we throw in our two cents about everything. Because Ternopol is not an overnight camp for the oblast kids there, it should not be nearly as intense--even though it will still be long hours. I will also not be teaching there as much as helping out what needs to be done. So, my "travel" plans continue, but not before a few days of much needed rest!

Off to Camp!

Today was the last day of training that will be done at my site for the camp that I am participating in. It's an ambitious and important project that has about 20 international students participating in three different weekly camps all over Ukraine. I am doing this first week and perhaps the third week, which is in the west, in a city called Ternopol, near where one of my linkmates lives.

This camp focuses on teaching civics, debate, and country studies, and has the students participate in a mock European Youth Parliament debate where they have to study an issue from their country (in my case, I will teach students about Sweden and its position on Ukraine's potential venture to join the EU) and then discuss and debate it and come up with a resolution. Most of the international students are also from FSU countries, although there are two Americans.

Should be interesting and fun, of course.

Life has been difficult as of late, and I haven't figured out if it has been a lack of having alone time or time at home. My language has gotten the worst it's ever been and I'm tired and frustrated a lot more easily lately. I'm in need of a pick me up for sure, so I'm trying to think creatively about how I can treat myself when the camp is over.

I should be back home in a week, so again, there will be silence on the site. When I come back I should have time to talk about the language refresher, Kharkiv, and the camp!

Happy Independence Day

Today is a national holiday.

You are not at home reading this blog.

You are on the beach.

You are at a barbeque.

You are on a picnic.

Or on vacation.

Or with family.

Or doing a million other things other than sitting at home. At least I am hoping.

National holidays abroad cease to exist unless you are reminded of them, which we were. Perhaps this evening the small collective will get together to celebrate one of our nation's most important holidays (perhaps in my mind only second to Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday). I hope that wherever you are, you will be similarly engaged in good company.