Quick post while I'm online...

Greetings all! At work right now..so I may be whisked away to meet somebody else any minute, but I thought I would take this opportunity to tell you about my whirlwind of the last few days here in K-grad (Kirovograd's short name...). So, without further ado...

Friday, first real day in Kirovograd. After Olena picked me upat 10 am, we took a marshrutka to work...which would probably be a 15 minute walk otherwise. Not too shabby. I met SO many people on Friday I definitely didn't learn a single persons name. There are 100 people that work in the Oblast Center for Creative Youth...which I am still trying to figure out how to explain what the organization really does. More about that in another post. We ate lunch in the cafeteria that is in our building...I had a mini pizza, salad (cabbage, carrots, and oil...quite yummy), and a juice box for 8 grievnas...aka around $1.00 USD. After lunch, we had a meeting with people in Olena's department. 8 or 9 Ukrainians...speaking Russian...for an hour and a half. I could understand parts of the discussion, but as soon as more than one person started talking I completely lost track of what they were saying. With time, hopefully I'll be able to follow :) After the meeting, we headed downtown to the post office to mail some PC documents and open my PO Box. I will post the address tomorrow hopefully...which means I can start receiving letters and packages :) The PO Box cost 28 grievnas for 6 months...less than $5.00 USD. How much does a PO Box in the states cost? I've never had one...

Friday night was a fun night because I got to go have dinner with some fellow k-grad PCVs. PC has a program called Adopt-A-Cluster that during your 3 months of training, you are assigned a current PCV who usually comes to visit your cluster city. The Oster Adopt-A-Cluster person is Julia ...who happens to live in Rivne, Ukraine...about 30 minutes to an hour away from me by bus! She comes to k-grad quite often I think, so that was fun to learn that we would be so close together. Julia was in town on Friday, so I got to go to dinner with her and two of her friends, Ricky and Alex. Ricky and Alex (a young married couple!) live here in k-grad and are both teachers. We ate at one of the pizzerias downtown...quite scrumptious. The three of them walked me home (super nice because I live on the complete opposite side of town) and helped me rearrange a few furniture pieces in my apartment. HOORAY :)

Saturday was a day of cleaning and organizing. I had made a few trips to the big supermarkets around my house, but some things are cheaper if you get them at the bazaar. So, I headed to one of the k-grad bazaars...which was maybe 10 minutes away from my house (opposite the center of town). I had NO idea what to be expecting at this bazaar...it is at least 10 times the size of the Oster bazaar, if not more. I was specifically looking for a dish drying rack, a mop and bucket, a pillow, and some dish towels. I think that day I ended up finding the pillow, mop, and bucket. However, I got lost in the giant maze of tents and vendors...and literally wandered around having no clue which way was out for a good 30 minutes. It was neat just to look at all of the stuff for sale...my mom wants to know more about the bazaar, so I will do a post about it another day. Sorry mom :) At one point, I ended up in a giant building which had every kind of piece of meat a person could want for sale. Lydia was not exactly a happy camper...but I managed to hold my breath and get out of there quickly. For those of you who don't me very well...eating meat is not always easy for me to do...long story. But I had managed to avoid the meat houses here in Ukraine so far lol so...I guess it was just in due time I would wander into one eventually. I survived :)

I was invited out again on Saturday night by two more Kirovogradska oblast PCVs, but I was so tired that I decided to stay in for the night. I cleaned and got more stuff unpacked and organized.

Sunday, I went to the bazaar again to try to find my dish drying rack. I couldn't really clean my kitchen until I had something to let the dishes dry on. I finally found one I liked for 140 grievnas...which was pretty expensive, but I wanted one that I liked. They had plastic ones for sale that were around 80 grievnas...but I ended up getting a metal one that I love :) pictures later.

I was invited to my counterparts house to swim and have a cookout on Sunday as well...Olena told me what bus to take to her house, and I hoped and prayed that I got on the right one! Luckily I did...and she was waiting for me at the bus stop. It was a good 20 minutes marshrutka ride on a nice, stuffy bus. I bought some chocolate pechenas (cookies) to take to her house, which started melting on the way there. She also told me to bring over laundry to do...which was incredibly nice. Upon arriving at her house, we put my laundry in the washing machine, put on our swimsuits and swam while her husband cooked shaskleek (chicken schish kabobs) for us. It was lovely :) we ate an hour later and had kasha (a type of grain that I love...kind of like cous cous?), salad (cabbage, tomatoes, green onion, dill), grilled zuchini (with mayonaise and garlic on top), grilled chicken, and bread. It was delicious and much better than anything I could have cooked up. We put my laundry up on the line and got back in the pool then, only to have dessert...ice cream with fresh strawberry puree. She gave me a manicure later after we got out of the pool, and got to have fun translating between Russian and English. Olena wants to speak better English and I, of course, want to speak better Russian. So she asks me things in English and I answer in Russian. Pretty funny.

We talked about the two camps that I will be going to here in a few weeks. Get ready for a laugh...

The first camp that I am going to is called Ushnee byug. It's on a river...and I will be CAMPING for a week. Lydia...outside...for a week. Can't wait to write about stories from that. :) The other camp I will be going to is called Brigantina and is in western Kirovogradska oblast where another PCV is living. It's a 3 week camp that 20 kids from my work will be attending. Should be fun. I'm excited for both...even the camping one :) it's supposed to be beautiful...we'll see!

Guess I need to get back to work since I've written a novel here. Hopefully post again soon :) with pictures. Love love