My newest animal escapade...

While home in between a tutoring session and safety session, I received a phone call from Jamie (one of my cluster-mates). It went a little bit like this:

J: I think I just found your picture for today.
L: Okay...I already took a picture for today but sure, go ahead!
J: I was on my way back from the magazihn (store) and passed by 6 baby goats in someone's front yard. They're maybe a foot to a foot and a half tall
L: See you in a minute!

I grabbed my big camera and headed down to meet him. I haven't used my big camera as much as I would like to yet because I didn't want to feel like a complete tourist wandering through the streets of Oster. I always have my small camera on me (point and shoot) but this opportunity definitely called for the big camera.

here's the runt of the litter (do goats have a litter?)

3 of them...the runt is in the middle

each of them had their little horns started :) so cute.

If you click on the link below, you will find a video that I posted on Facebook of the little goat getting left behind. It was so much smaller and so much more wobbly on his legs that it couldn't keep up with his brothers and sisters. It was one of the cutest/most pitiful things ever! Jamie is also seen at the end of the video.



This was the gate that the goats walked home to...look at the big mama and papa goat!

As I was snapping the picture above this one, this little guy ran out barking his head off at us. I took that as a cue to leave :) he was quite cute too...looks like his name should be mop!

Have a blessed Sunday. Missing my church back home because today is Youth Sunday! I'm sure everyone will do a wonderful job :)

A Day on the Farm...

Because I can now upload pictures while using my host sister's computer, my posts are going to be out of chronological order until I get all of the first things uploaded...so while this drives me absolutely nuts, I still want y'all to see everything that I have been exposed to thus far! And many of these events require a post devoted to just that subject. Without further ado...A Day on the Farm :)

On Sunday, April 17, I was supposed to get together with Brendan and Jamie to lesson plan for the classes we would be teaching the next week. When arranging where we would meet and at what time, Brendan asked me if I would like to come to his house to lesson plan. Sure, no problem! Little did I know what else it would entail :) luckily, Jamie was along for the ride.

Brendan lives on what I would classify as a farm, in the middle of the city. Everyone in Oster uses their backyard as a place to grow food...and in some instances, to raise animals.

Here is the view of part of Brendan's backyard.
The far right patch of soil (by the building) is the spot where he and his host family just planted potatoes. Brendan's loving host family showed Jamie and I the video of Brendan planting...I only wish I could get my hands on it! Too funny :)

One of the main purposes of me going to Brendan's was to milk a cow. Yep...you heard me right. Brendan's host mom, Olga, wanted me to have the opportunity to do this, even though I have milked a cow before! I'm not sure whether it is uncommon for guys to milk a cow or not here in Ukraine, but Brendan and Jamie were not offered the opportunity to partake in this event. They did, however, have the pleasure of watching me milk it :) There was not much room to snag a picture of me milking the cow, but rest assured...I did milk it! Olga was of course MUCH faster and much more efficient than I was.
They have a mom and a grandmother cow. They are 5 and 7 years old if my memory serves me correct. And the newest addition to the barn was this cute little guy:

He was 2 weeks old at the time and the milk that we had just retrieved from the mom was then poured into a bottle for the calf.

Olga, feeding the calf...and the grandmother cow is in this picture I think.

In addition to the cows, they also had these loud guys :) This picture does them NO justice for how giant they are. Probably 5-6 feet long each...and I can't even guess at what they would weigh.


and a cute little baby piglet too. He was probably 2-3 feet long.

After doing our outside duties, we were given a feast and a first for me here in Ukraine: shashleek...aka, shish kabobs!

One more small detour was introduced to us before we could get down to lesson planning. Her name is Sasha...and she stole my heart she is so cute!

She's almost 1 year old...and a complete ham. So precious and so beautiful. She absolutely adores Brendan...and I can see why it's hard for him to get any work done with her there!


Pondering...



Oh, and I'll leave you with one other interesting animal the family ran inside to tell me about. The Ukrainian/Russian name for it has escaped me, but it was quite a site to see! His ears were amazing...and now that I think about it, he's the first squirrel I've seen here. Happy weekend!

Just a quick update for you!

Hello friends and family,

Just wanted to say hello on this wonderful Friday. The Kozelets group came to join us today in Oster for our second personal health day where we learned about what to do in certain situations involving injuries, etc. After that, we took a field trip to the Oster historical museum. It cost 13 grievna to go in (about $2)...and we had a personal guide telling us about everything on display Then, our teacher would translate. I'm not usually one for history...but when some of the items are hundreds of years old (think 900+), that's pretty crazy to think about.

Talking about my teacher...reminds me that I have yet to tell y'all that we have a new Russian language teacher! Her name is Maria and she is absolutely splendid. Peace Corps has got a lot of things down pat. After 4 weeks of language training here in Ukraine, all of the LCFs(Language teachers) switch around and go teach somebody else's cluster for 3 weeks. This not only gives the students somebody else's fresh and new approach to teaching...but it also gives us all a boost of (much-needed) energy. This event is called language rotation. Our lovely teacher Zhenya (my original LCF) went to Bogaslav to be with another cluster; Bogaslav is located about 2 hours south of Kiev. Last Friday night was her last day here, so we had dinner at her apartment and were going to watch a movie but never got around to it! Zhenya made fettunici alfredo for us :) quite tasty. We were also going to play bananagrams but never got around to actually playing it. Jamie was explaining the game when we had to do some schedule planning. Being a flexible person is a VITAL part of the PC :) So...we improvised:


Mark having fun by himself...

The lovely dinner spread: bread (of course), fresh cucumbers (which I ate!), spaghetti noodles, and then the alfredo sauce. The 2 white boxes are juice boxes...while the green and red thing standing up to the right of the pasta is ketchup!

The alfredo was about 80% cheese...sooooo good, but hard to get off the spoon.

Tomorrow morning, the Oster cluster will head to Kozelets for a cross-cultural session. Not quite sure what we're doing after that. A few of us from the Oster group have also have been toying with the idea of going to Chernihiv on Sunday. If we do, I could meet up with my dear Bama friend, Hayley! She is in a cluster that is located about 15 minutes north of Chernihiv.

On most days, I do not have any access to the world news to know what's going on. I check my email almost every day on my kindle, if not on my host sister's computer. Wednesday, I had about 20 minutes to check my email on the computer and was shocked to find a message from my family telling me that Tuscaloosa (the city where my brother and I were born and both grew up) was hit pretty hard by a tornado. If you go to the Tuscaloosa News website homepage, you can find videos and pictures of the devastation. The tornado was a couple blocks away from our old house there...pretty scary stuff. All of the giant, old trees that lined The Downs are no longer standing for the most part. Praying for our family and friends down there...

I've watched a beautiful sunset as I sat here at the computer writing this blog entry :) I woke up at 6:30 this morning to shower/bathe...and was greeted by the wonderful aroma of blinchiki. Actually...the things that I'm calling blinchiki are not blinchiki. My host mom makes these:

I think they are called amalya (sidenote: this is not my picture. I apologize for taking it off google!). Somebody please let me know what the correct name is (maybe Adam?)! My host mom calls them blinchiki though...so I do too. However, actual blinchiki are like crepes. Like this...

Our LCF Zhenya actually started this picture frenzy on Friday when we were eating together...and then she wouldn't be in the picture! From l to r: Lydia, Cassi, Mark, Jamie, and Brendan. And yes, that's blinchiki on our faces :)

So, real blinchiki is thin, pieces of batter that you fry for a minute or so. Then you put whatever topping in it you want...or just eat it plain. I love to eat the amalya just plain...except this morning, my host mom broke out some honey...and I mean REAL honey. The honey was in an old giant pickle jar (you save things here and reuse them) signaling that it is local...it is so thick that you have to scrape it out with a giant ladle. I'm usually not a honey person, but holy cow this stuff was good. I know that we get our milk from a local person who comes twice a week and fills up another old pickle jar full of fresh milk. My host sister adds cocoa to the milk and drinks it hot or cold...so it's like hot chocolate milk, or really cold, really fresh chocolate milk. However, first...my host mom boils the milk. I asked my host sister (in Russian!) last night why she boils it first. It apparently gets rid of the bacteria. Interesting! I hadn't tried it yet until a few nights ago...and it is truly to die for. I will try to take a picture of this process next time! I'm pretty sure I've eaten about 10-12 amalya throughout the day. Whoops. :)

Time to eat supper now :) much love to everyone. Have a great Friday!

Field Trip To Kiev!

Last Thursday, our cluster group went to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine! It is about an hour and a half bus ride from Oster...maybe 2 hours when all was said and done. There are days built into our busy PST (Pre-Service Training...the first 3 months that we're in country) schedule that are specifically for field trips. This first one had a few objectives:

1) find the Peace Corps office headquarters
2) ask directions to people on the street
3) go on a scavenger hunt to find 5 monuments/churches/other big tourist attractions
4) go to the bank to get our next months allowance
5) go to a cafe and order food

We left Oster on the 7:30 bus to Kiev...and had to immediately go to the metro (subway). There were times that I literally forgot I was in Kiev and not NYC. Think of how confusing the subway can be in NYC...and multiply that by about 100 because everything is in UKRAINIAN now...the language that I don't know. Luckily, Zhenya was our tour guide, and would help us if we were going to get on the subway going the wrong direction. We will go to Kiev again in a few weeks to practice how to navigate in the metro and train stations on our own...but we haven't gotten to that vocab. yet. After going about 10 stops on the metro, we took a 70 meter escalator (I think Zhenya told us it's the biggest in Europe) up to be on ground level. What greeted us was something very familiar...


This is our trash from it. See the golden arches?

The McDonalds is literally about 100 feet away from the metro and train hub. I was somewhat excited to use Russian when ordering my food (small fries and a coffee), but the lady then spoke to me in English. Bummer!


For around $2.50, I got a small fry and small coffee.

After our McDonalds break (which felt weird to be able to have fast food...I like my fresh foods now!), we were off to find the Peace Corps office. We had to ask people in Russian if they knew where Saksaganskova street was...quite the mouthful. There are not street signs on every corner in Kiev (or much of Ukraine) for that matter. Street signs are sometimes located on the corner of a building...but more often than not they are not visible at all. This means that you have to ask the locals walking down the street where a street is located. I'm sure I'll get used to this idea eventually...but I was definitely a little weirded out at first with this idea. We finally made it to the Peace Corps building...where we were given a tour of the 4 story building that runs PC Ukraine!


These are all of the PC Trainees that are in my group...group 41. There are 106 of us (one of the biggest...if not the biggest PC Ukraine groups) split up into 22 clusters. My piece of paper is the top right...I'm on the 2nd row on the left.

While at the PC office, we met with Lena (like my mom!), who visited our cluster earlier in the week. I believe she is in charge of language coordination...and for homework we had to come up with some more in depth questions to ask her.

Lena, Cassi, Lydia, Zhenya, Mark, and Jamie (Brendan had stepped out of the room for a bit)

After our tour of PC Ukraine headquarters, we were off to find our bank...which took quite some time. But...we passed a few neat things along the way!

Loved this cute clock as we were searching for our bank!

We ate lunch at this amazing, cafeteria style restaurant...I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head. Basically, every type of Ukrainian food you might want was available and you chose what you wanted and paid at the end. Totally forgot to take a picture of my tray. It was filled with potato pilmini (ravioli with potatos/onions/carrots), bread (duh), a chicken kiev type dish, and this amazing rice/veggie mix. Oh...and the best part: apple juice juicebox :)

After our filling lunch...it was time for our scavenger hunt. I'm not going to be able to remember some of these building/monument names, so forgive me. If you really want to know...I can find out! Just ask.


Loved the golden leafing...

adorable hotel in Independance square

St. Sophia's cathedral bell tower

St. Sophia's cathedral

Also in Independance Square (St. Sophia's is behind me, while St. Michael's is about 3 blocks beyond this statue)

St. Michael's cathedral, which we got to go inside (no pictures though). It was unbelievable...

A door for Dave!

The day ended with us sprinting to catch a bus. It was literally one of the funniest things I've witnessed in a while. We were on one side of the train tracks when we needed to be on the other...so Zhenya kept asking people standing around where we could go to catch our bus. I wish I had worn a pedometer to see how far we walked that day. I thought I packed mine but haven't been able to find it in my suitcases.

So, that was my trip to Kiev. If you, readers, have any subjects that you would like for me to blog about (questions about Ukraine, what a normal day is, food, etc.) please email me or leave a comment with the questions. I would love to know what y'all are curious about :) Need to work on some homework now. Night night!

Happy Easter!

Hello wonderful blog readers :) Sorry to have been out of touch this week. It was a very long and tiring week with little time spent doing things that were not on my to-d0 list. I'm uploading pictures on facebook as I type this of the surprise going away party that was held at McFarlin before I left Norman. I still have tons of pictures to upload to the blog, but I will do today's blog post on Easter and perhaps do other entries about stories and pictures that need explanations!

Yesterday (Saturday) was spent in Kozelets meeting with our link cluster...we had a technical session where we talked about the lesson plans we have all taught in classes here in Ukraine. After our technical session, we had a chai break (this happens a lot here!) and we had some Easter bread before Easter...one of the Kozelets group members stopped and got it at the bazaar before our meeting. Super nice of her! Remember that it is customary in Ukraine to take a small token (a box of coffee or tea, cookies, candy bar) to a guest that you are going to their house.

The Easter bread is shaped much like a giant cupcake...and some of them have hard icing on top, while others just have sprinkles.

After missing our bus in Kozelets, we sat at the bus stop for an hour and lesson planned for this weeks teaching at the gymnasia and the schkola. This past week I taught the 11th grade class with Jamie and one of the 7th grade classes with Brendan...so this week it is Brendan's turn to double up and teach both classes. More about those lesson plans in another post.

After arriving back in Oster on Saturday, I came home to find my host mom cooking in the kitchen...which had to have been 90 degrees. She was making homemade Easter bread in addition to other Easter dishes. I've mentioned before that she works once every 3 days for a 24-hour shift. That 24-hour shift I think goes from 8 am-8 am...and I think she works in Kiev (which is about an hour and half bus ride away). She usually goes to a super grocery store in Kiev (think Wal-Mart) after she's done with her work shift and picks up things like drinkable yogurt that is TO DIE FOR. She's gotten it now 2 weeks in a row...and there must be 10 different flavors of it...strawberry, peach, apricot, blueberry, grape, etc. I could drink it all day long, but have to limit myself! She also gets some other staple items (cheese, meat, cottage cheese, sour cream) and then heads home. She worked a 24-hour shift on Friday...and when I came home Saturday she was slaving away in the hot kitchen, not having slept in over 36 hours. I kept her company for a while until I had to leave to go finish lesson planning with Brendan. We met at the stadium and then headed to our technical teacher Lyuda's apartment to get our lesson plan okayed for this upcoming week.

While I was finishing lesson planning on Saturday early evening, my host sister went to church and got the Easter bread, meats, cheese, and hard-boiled eggs blessed (this is my understanding at least. Please correct me if I'm wrong!).

Saturday night I treated myself to a movie...first time in Ukraine! I watched 127 hours. Pretty incredible film. I definitely want to read the book at some point...hope it's available on the Kindle!

Breakfast this morning began around 9:30 am. We sat at the dining room table (first time for that!) and had quite the spread...


the store bought Easter bread

the spead! Juice, Liquor, 4 different kinds of meat, fish, hard-boiled eggs, apples, cheese, and the Easter read of course

A cross-stitch napkin that went in the basket that my host sister took to church

Lunch today was about the same as breakfast...with the addition of whipped mashed potatoes and a potato and rice soup. Super good!

After lunch, I studied some and went on a walk with Mark around Oster. Looking forward to dinner which will probably be soon :) happy Easter everyone!

The weekend!

Where did the week go? I seriously have no idea. This was one of the busiest weeks I've had in a very long time...and the part that drives me nuts is that I have NO control over when stuff is planned. I'm adjusting to it just fine, but my normal OCD self definitely wants to take control sometimes. And it's also weird because now when I do have extra time to do things, I have no clue what to do.

This morning I had my 45 minute language tutoring time with my teacher Zhenya. Every PC trainee has to complete a self-directed-learning (SDL) task during the pre-service training (PST). This is to help you advance in the language and culture in ways that could be "fun" in your eyes. What does mine have to do with? Pictures.... :) As if I would choose anything else. My idea before I even left the United States was to take a picture-a-day during my PC experience. I pictured this being done as a slideshow that I could then share with facebook and with friends and family back home. To tie in the Russian language part, I will have a caption on each picture in Russian and English so that people back home in the U.S. who do not speak Russian will also be able to understand it :) I plan on doing the videos in chapters based on the 27 months I'll be here! Here are a few pictures over the past few days...my cluster group members will probably kill me when they see some of the pictures :)

It is still cold here in the mornings (the thermometer outside my kitchen window usually reads in the 3-5 degree celcius range). We decided to have a little photo session this week that Jamie instigated when he put on his scarf like a babushka would. Brendan was a little perturbed that he was having to partake in this great photo op :) but he played along like a good sport.


Mark, Brendan, Jamie.


Our Oster cluster! On the front row: Lydia, teacher Zhenya, Cassi, Jamie, and on the back row, Mark and Brendan.

After I had my tutoring lesson this morning, our link cluster (from Kozelets) arrived at 10:15 am.

Kozelets group! L to R: Kim, Anne, Mary Katherine, Matt, and Maria on the front row

Together, we had a technical/cross-cultural session taught by our technical PC teacher Lyuda. Lyuda lives in Oster, but splits her time between my group in Oster and the Kozelets group. She is in charge of being in contact with the schools that we teach at, local clubs and businesses we will be doing community service projects with, etc. She usually spends Mondays and Wednesdays in Oster, Tuesdays and Thursdays in Kozelets, and on Saturdays we have joint sessions that alternate between going to Kozelets and Oster.

Also, I should probably explain why the Kozelets group has on bike helmets. If your host family has a bicycle that they are willing to share with you, you can ride it BUT you have to wear a helmet. None of the Oster group really needs bike helmets (it's always nice to walk), but the Kozelets group members live much more spread out around the city. Kozelets is also a bigger city, and if my memory serves me right, Kim actually has to walk about an hour to get from her house to their language teachers house.

I had some amazing borscht when I got home today. And I had green tea for the first time today. It definitely needed sugar in my humble opinion. However, I feel like I need to learn to drink tea without sugar here because I literally may have 3-5 cups of hot tea a day. I have one for breakfast, one during our snack/break time during the week, sometimes another at lunch, and definitely after dinner. There are also times when I now CRAVE it. Go figure!

Tomorrow (Sunday) will be spent doing some shopping at the bazaar, and then lesson planning with Jamie and Brendan. I will be doubling up this week teaching both 7th and 11th grade. Topic choices to come later. Oh...and I'll leave you with one more great photo from this week :)



the brick face.

my first time cooking in Ukraine!

Anyone who knows me...knows my lack of cooking expertise in the kitchen. I can make a pretty mean sandwich (complete with chips), some tasty Mexican food (in my opinion), and that's about where my creativity stops. For one of our language days, we were to cook a traditional Ukrainian dish. Our choice? Goluptsi...aka cabbage rolls. During your first day in your pre-service training city (mine is Oster), you are given approximately 15 books of all different shapes and sizes that include a cookbook, titled "Babushka's Cookbook." It has a bajillion different recipes (both Ukrainian and American) that are capable of being cooked while here in Ukraine. We somewhat followed the recipe in the cookbook...but mainly went off of the way that our language teacher, Zhenya, makes them. The ingredients, that we purchase for around 70 grievna ($8.85 to feed 6 of us with plenty of leftovers).

1 cabbage, 2 onions, 2 things of tomato paste, 1 cup of rice, 1 carrot, some seasonings, and minced meat (aka farsh). The meat was the expensive item...costing around half of our food budget. The rest of the items were the other half.

First, all of the ingredients got washed. The cabbage was then boiled in a pot of water for at least 30-45 min (can't remember). This makes the leaves soft enough to roll!

Mark was in charge of chopping the onions (that were then browned in a skillet with oil and some of the grated carrot). Sidenote: Don't you think Mark looks like one of the vampires in the twilight movies? Don't know which character, but he definitely has the hair!

Cassi was in charge of peeling the carrot first...this was done with a knife, not a peeler (which all of us brought with us here to Ukraine but did not bring to our cooking day! lesson learned). Then, it got grated!

After the cabbage is done boiling, you have to trim off the vein on the outside of each cabbage leaf. This makes it easier to roll...Zhenya was an expert in this area. Definitely an acquired skill :)

Jamie is now mixing the minced meat (uncooked) with the browned onion and carrot, and cooked rice.

Then, you line the bottom of the pan with cabbage pieces...and start filling little cabbage rolls! Didn't get any pictures of this part because my hands were not clean!


After you fill the pot with cabbage rolls...you make a soupy mixture that consists of tomato paste, the rest of the browned onion and carrot, and some seasonings. It is then poured on top of the cabbage rolls. This pot (with lid) went into the oven then for 45 minutes.

We had a lot of extra meat/rice/carrot/onion mixture left...so we made cabbage roll meatballs. After adding an egg to the mixture, you could kind of roll the food into a ball...

then in some flour...

and then into a skillet lined with oil...

and voila! I actually liked these better than the cabbage rolls I think.

Here is our beautiful goluptsi with our wonderful teacher Zhenya holding it (Jamie in the background). The soupy mixture on top of the cabbage rolls was TO DIE FOR. Seriously...so good. I ate it...onion and all!


And that, my friends, is my first cooking experience in Ukraine. I am excited to see what the next one holds. Since I am now uploading past pics, blog posts may go a little bit out of order until I get caught up with old pics! Exciting news we learned today...we are going to Kyiv next Thursday!! SO excited :) Goodnight!