Time to Celebrate!

LPI's (language profficiency interviews) are over and done with! Hooray :) I was the last of our group to do my interview this morning which was fine because it meant I got to do some laundry at my house before that! The past few days have included lots of times for reminiscing (sp? Since I'm on a Russian computer, every word I type is underlined in red so I can't really tell when a word is mispelled!) so I thought I would share some of them.

On a cold Friday in May, a bus filled with other PC trainees stopped in Oster at the aftostantcia (bus station). It was SNOWING...absolutely freezing...and I had about 24980 things to carry. Not really, but it helps the story. I was super jet-lagged still (took me about a week or more to get fully used to this side of the world's time zone difference.) and just wanted to go to sleep (I think we arrived around 5 pm ish?). My host mom and host dad picked me up in a taxi (I'm not sure why, seeing as to how my host family owns a car...maybe because of the snow?). This is what one of the rivers looked like on that day...


Anywho, I sat in the back seat with my host mom and wondered what in the world I was going to say to them that night. I couldn't even ask if they had any kids. We drove for what seemed like a while (in reality, it was less than 3-5 minutes I would guess) and finally stopped. I couldn't see out the windows because they were completely fogged over. We stopped at a big metal gate (guess I should take a picture of that part of my house before I leave!) and started getting my stuff out of the car. My host dad wouldn't let me carry anything, so my host mom quickly shuffled me inside. At that point, two tall, blonde girls came bounding the stairwell and said "hello!" in English. I was ecstatic. I remember eating something that night with my family...don't know what, but it was almost immediate upon arriving. My older host sister, Katya, who speaks English very well, showed me where I would be staying, where I could put my stuff, shower, etc. All that I wanted to do was go to sleep...and if my memory serves me correct, I slept for at least 12 hours that night.

The next morning, all of our host families took us to our teacher's apartment (since we had NO clue where we were going...) for our first Oster cluster group meeting. I remember where everyone sat that day in our classroom. Those became "our seats" for quite some time until we rearranged the room. That mornings meeting was to go over all sorts of cultural integration steps that we might need to know when living with a host family. However, the biggest thing that stuck out to me was that I was dying of thirst. Our teacher, Zhenya, had just made tea. It hadn't occurred to me until that point that I would no longer be able to get water straight from the tap, for two years. Wow.

I guess I never showed y'all what my house on the inside looks like...whoops. I took these pictures a very long time ago, but it just slipped my mind that I never posted them. I think they're on facebook...but I know everyone doesn't use that. So, enjoy!

Part of my living room/dining room. We've eaten at the dining room table for Easter...and that's it. Just like the U.S.!

The other half of the living room!

This is the laundry room where our clothes get hung up to dry! And my suitcases that I don't need are stored in here...

This is the upstairs bathroom! There is a half bath downstairs which is where we brush our teeth.

My bedroom! I believe this used to be my older host sisters room (who is now married and lives in Kiev).



The door into my room is on the left, and the door with the clothes hanging on it leads out to a balcony which is where we hang our clothes to dry in the summer!

In other news, I started watching Glee Season 2 last night. Just watched the Britney episode today. I was a die-hard Glee fan the first season or so, but then I became busy and never got a chance to watch all of the shows I had DVRed. BUT, rest assured, now I can watch them :) There were some pretty epic Sue Sylvester quotes in these two episodes. However, I'm too lazy to look them up online.

Today for lunch, Mark, Cassi, and I hit up the pizzeria here in Oster (one of the two or three restaurants we're aware of...). On my pizza, I had chicken, pineapple, black olives, and tomatoes, which I'm still trying to learn how to eat. It's a texture thing...we'll see if I ever like them.

The last thing I'll leave you with is my SDL :) enjoy it!

Let the countdown begin...

Really, the countdown has already begun. Last week (I think) Cassi made a paper chain out of some of our old posters for class...one for each of the days until we leave Oster. I keep meaning to take a picture of it, but also keep forgetting and it is definitely getting shorter as Monday approaches!

This morning I had to be up at 6 am (don't worry, the sun rises at 4:30 or something like that here in Ukraine during the summer...so I was already semi-awake) to get ready to go say thank you to the city administration in Kozelets. Our bus left at 7:30 am which made us arrive in Kozelets a good 30 minutes early. After many formal thank you's (in Russian and Ukrainian...the Kozelets group is learning Ukrainian...which makes communicating with each other in our new languages INCREDIBLY difficult), we had our FINAL technical session debriefing with Lyuda (tech. teacher). Sad day! But also exciting because it means we're that much closer.

We have our FINAL RUSSIAN LESSON today! If I could make that font any bigger I most definitely would because there have definitely been times in the past 3 months when I thought that day would never come. Half of today's class is going to be spent presenting our SDL's (self-directed learning projects) that we were supposed to have been working on the entire time of pre-service training. Most of us (or maybe all of us?) may or may not have done over half of the work last night or the past few days. Don't worry, our teacher is fully aware of this :) I worked on my SDL every week for the first month...but then we became busy teaching and planning lessons and community projects...and it was basically put on hold for 2 months. However, I am quite excited to show you my SDL...which is a video slideshow with Russian explanations of each picture...with some amazing Russian/Ukrainian (not really sure) pop music. My host sister helped me with the final Russian grammatical errors that I needed correcting last night...and she definitely like it. I will hopefully be able to post it tomorrow.

TOMORROW...is our LPI (Language Profficiency Interview!). In case you haven't figured it out, PC has a bajillion abbreviations that for the first few weeks of being a PCT (peace corps trainee ha) made me want to pull out my hair. However, you get used to them and I find us using them in our everyday life. If my memory serves me right, there was even a packet given to us at one point early on that had all of the abbreviations we would need. It's ridiculously long, take my word for it. Our LPI is from 10-noon tomorrow morning. EEK. For 20-25 minutes, each of us will be tested on our language skills, all verbal. The person giving the test will ask open ended questions that I have to be able to think quickly of an answer in Russian and be able to talk about. I will basically be talking the entire time...which is quite overwhelming to think about. There are different levels that we will be ranked, but the one that they tell us to shoot for is intermediate-mid. We'll see once we get to Kiev what profficiency I am! Wish me luck!

On Friday, our cluster is headed to Chernihiv to hopefully be able to do a few of the touristy things there. There is an old, old church that we want to visit, and equally old caves underneath the church. (Trivia time. What movie is the following quote from? "Who wants to go down the creepy tunnel inside the tomb first!?") Not sure what else will be on the agenda for Friday, but it will definitely be a day of celebrating and spending time together!

Saturday is our host family goodbye picnic. We are going to the Desna and maybe cooking out/having a potluck. Details are still being decided. You can bet that that post will come with pictures :)

Sunday is our last day here in Oster. There are a lot of things that I've meant to take pictures of the whole time I've been here, but I also try not to be the American tourist. For instance, every Saturday and Sunday morning, people line up outside the milk factory that is just up the road from my house. It is fascinating to see how many people will wait there...easily 20-30 each time. Is the milk/butter/whatever else they sell really that good? I also wonder why they get there so early...in my (American) head, if it's a dairy factory, they're not going to run out of products. Maybe when my Russian matures I will be able to ask my host family about this when I come back and visit.

Besides the LPI, the other thing on my mind right now is PACKING. AGAIN. I don't have Mitchell here to help me this time...however, Jamie and I did go buy big babushka bags (McFarlin people think Mexico mesh-y bags that you buy in Nuevo Progresso) at the bazaar on Sunday. We have about 15 pounds of Russian & Ukrainian books that we have to find room for, in addition to a medical kit. I also don't plan on using all of my space saving bags quite to the extreme like I did on the way over here. AND, once we leave Kiev on next Thursday, we will also be given a fire extinguisher, carbon dioxide and smoke detector, and a space heater that will load the bus or train with us when we depart for site! Luckily, our counterpart (the person who will be our contact at site) will be assisting us with all of our luggage. Mine will probably faint when they see how much I have :)

Okay...need to go to my LAST RUSSIAN CLASS!!!! YIPPEEEEEE :) Happy Wednesday!

A post because I can...

It was a good Saturday here in Oster. We had our last session with our link cluster (Kozelets). Today's technical session was on what our workload is supposed to look like when we get to site (10ish days!) and how we have to learn how to say no to doing things once we get there. We each had to do a little mini-presentation of this speech that we've been trying to memorize since week 1. It tells who we are, where we came from, what we studied in college, that we work for PC, what PC is, what we have done during pre-service training (teaching and assisting, etc.). All in all it's probably 25 sentences...which is a lot to memorize in any language...let alone a foreign language! But, we've all got it more or less memorized...which will come in very handy when we meet our counterparts for the first time on June 14 and they more than likely will not speak any English.

This is a little preview of the requirements of PC when we get to site:
-1 hour of class observation every day for the first semester
-3 hours of misc. activities in a school, daily
-2 hours per week assisting an English teacher
-3 different extracurricular activities regularly each week

Seeing those numbers down on paper for the first time today was good. I like having a routine...and I learned this past week how much I depend on a routine to make my life better and easier. Because we had summer camp Monday-Thursday, we had Russian language classes in the afternoon. It was just a jumble of not normal meeting times for me...and I completely forgot about my individual tutoring on Tuesday morning...even though I talked about it the night before. I was even awake plenty early Tuesday morning to get ready and go to tutoring...but it just slipped my mind because things were so out of the norm. I'm trying to adjust to this...but it's definitely hard for Lydia's OCD brain.

As pre-service training is coming to an end and we are all trying to cram as much Russian in our brains as can possibly fit, we also have to finish our SDL (self-directed learning) projects. This was something that we were supposed to have been working on all of pre-service training...but in reality it got put on the back-burner for the past few weeks. Since it is due sometime this week, I decided to work on it some today. I am making a picture slideshow of my time during pre-service training with Russian blurbs on each picture. Now all I needed were a few Russian/Ukrainian tunes to go with the slideshow. Cue music video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC7sE-lhVLg

This song gets blasted ALL around Oster. It is so catchy and upbeat that it was instantly the only song we have really been able to recognize. I've been dying to learn it and put it in the video slideshow...and I was finally successful today! Oora (That's Russian for hooray)! I told my host sister how excited I was about it and she of course died laughing at me. All of the kids here LOVE Lady Gaga and it then occurred to me to show my host sister a few of the music videos from Glee. She liked them and was quite intriqued by the idea of it! Sold :) another person addicted. One of my students actually asked me the other day if I listened to Lady Gaga and I said yes. She then asked me what Judas was...I explained that it's a name. At that point, I had no idea that was Lady Gaga's new song out right now...I am COMPLETELY out of the loop on what songs and movies are coming out. Feel free to let me know if there are new songs or movies that I need to download.

I read a book today on my Kindle (can I just say again how absolutely fantastic that machine is). It's called "Heaven is for Real," can't remember who it's by. I had seen it listed before but hadn't downloaded it...but one of my dear and sweet friends Britney told me it was worth downloading. Definitely a quick and uplifting read. It reminded me of the book 90 Minutes in Heaven...also a good one to download (or actually purchase a real copy of, ha).

I'll end with something I figure people might find interesting. Money. Money here in Ukraine is given to us by PC in a bank account each month. We have to travel to a big city to use an ATM (in Russian, bankomat) to get the money out using a debit card. We have a few ATM's here in Oster but it's not suggested that you use them. We give our host family's a monthly allowance for the meals that we receive in addition to the utilities that we use while living with them. It will be so different when we get to site and are completely in charge of our own bills, our own meals, etc. For pre-service training we receive what's called a "walking around allowance" that is for the purchasing of water and other misc. things we might need (a snack, school supplies, etc.) . I think that we get 15 grievnas a day...which is just over $2.00 USD. I can buy a large bottle of water (1.5 liters) for a little over 5 grievnas...just as something to judge by. If I buy a bag of cookies (enough to last my family for 3-4 days)...that might cost around 8 grievna. Just fyi! For lunches (which we as PCVs are in charge of) we receive 15 grievnas. Some clusters have been able to eat at their school cafeteria each day, other clusters eat on their own, while our cluster decided to pool our money together and get sandwich stuff for the week. We each chip in 50 grievnas every week or so to purchase meat, cheese, bread, chips (I would like to think that I contributed to the fact that everyone in my group now eats chips on their sandwiches like little kids...pretty amazing), cookies, coffee, tea, and sugar that is all communal food until we run out. If we want some yogurt or fruit, we each buy that ourselves (a banana or an apple usually costs around 3 grievnas, aka around 40 cents maybe). We also receive a travel allowance each month (not sure if we still will get that when we go to site). I think it was around 90 grievnas this past month...which is supposed to equate for our trips to Kozelets for technical training sessions, a trip to Kiev or Chernihiv, etc. A few prices to note for bus tickets:

one-way bus ticket to Kiev: around 20 grievnas (less than $3.00)...maybe 2 hours?
one-way bus ticket to Kozelets: around 5 grievnas (less than $1.00)...30 minutes
one-way bus ticket to Chernihiv: around 27 grievnas (less than $4.00)...around 2 hours as well

Chernihiv has a very good inner-city bus transit system. I think it costs around 2 grievnas (maybe a quarter USD?) to take a bus around town, and they are constantly going. Kiev has a metro system which I have only navigated once and was still completely overwhelmed by. It also cost 2 grievnas I think.

The exchange rate for the dollar to the grievna is usually around $1.00 (USD) for $7.95 (UAH-aka, grievna). I have exchanged money here in Oster at one of the banks which was a good cross-cultural thing to check off of my list. I think I've talked enough now so I'll go ahead and submit. Enjoy your weekend! Relax a little :) love love.

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.