Travelling

Krakow, Lviv, Velyki Mosty, Uzhgorod, Nova Vesela, and Budapest tomorrow

so many amazing experiences

will write later

cloudy, cool, aimless

Camp continues. Today was the Mr. Camp competition to match the Ms.
Camp competition last week. There were introductions, physical tests,
dancing, cooking questions and questions about how the modern husband
should act. I am not all here today, too much sleep combined with no
running (decided that the weekend in Kyiv combined with the upcoming
days in Krakow are a great excuse not to run for a few weeks, and
already my Achilles feels better, although I am starting to feel fat
and lazy. Should I go to soccer practice today? If I don't, I might
be really rusty for the game on Sunday) has left me with lights on and
nobody home. And then today there was really nothing to do. After
the morning game show thing, there was lunch, then a break dance
competition. Now I'm sitting around trying to get internet to send in
my lesson plans for the upcoming camp and see if Nina-Claire managed
to get off the plane on their Prague layover. Their plan was to only
have carryon baggage so they could make their Europe loop by arriving
in Prague and departing from Budapest even though their tickets were
round trip NYC-Budapest.
I cut my shin on a plow yesterday while crossing the river Rata in
the back of a bumpy horse drawn wagon while 18-wheelers and old soviet
cars sped around us on the narrow bridge. Distracted by truck
threatening to overrun us from behind, I lost my balance and fell into
the horse-drawn-plow which was sharing the back of the wagon with me.
Whodathought plows were so sharp. No pain on my soccer hardened shin,
but the blood started pouring immediately. I could see the bone as
Ira cleaned the cut when I arrived at Ukrainian tutoring. It stopped
bleeding overnight, but now has started to trickle again, down my leg
and into my shoe.
Just today I learned that I will miss a tour of the local castles
with the 7th grade class because I will be in Krakow next week. The
planning may happen ahead of time, but I never find out things until
right before they happen. I didn't even know there were castles
around here. Ok, maybe I'll try the internet again.

Why are we here?

Why does pc send volunteers to Ukraine? Everytime I come to Kyiv and see giant cars, new apartments, food prices I question why she needs peace corps. I guess there are some alterior motives that the state department has for sending us here. There are also great things we can do because we have so much more resources than our counterparts in Africa. But even so, that doubt never leaves.

Doctor confirmed today that I have achilles tendonitis, and recommended that I take 3 weeks without excersises that strain my achilles. This along with ice followed by heat and physical therapy if I can find it in my town. And 800mg ibprofen/day. If my plantar fasciitis went away, my achilles tendonitis should also go away. I just don't want to wait and I certainly don't want to stop playing soccer and running. I'm already down to 20 miles/week and 2 days of soccer, how much less could I do and maintain happiness/sanity? My upcoming travelling will certainly help.

On Saturday, I'll go to my neighboring oblast to meet Curtis and some other friends and cook shashlik(meet on sticks) in the forest. Then on Sunday, I'll catch my soccer game on my way to Krakow to meet Claire and Nina. The three Americans will procede to Lviv and other points south in Ukraine before making our way to Budapest. I'm really looking forward to sharing my new country and home now that the weather is beautiful and the vegetables and fruit are almost ripe, well, I guess they're really not even close to ripe yet.

I missed daycamp today with my doctors appointment in Kyiv. 4 more days of camp hanging out with my 6th graders and trying to remember camp games I havn't already shown them. Maybe we'll get to go to the forest and do a scavenger hunt. I don't know what I was going to say further about that.

So much time with computers this weekend, yet somehow not too much work accomplished. The environmental working group was productive, getting a lot of useful lesson plans and resources up on google docs where everyone can access them, but my preparations for camp have been procrastinated all day today. I need to write one more lesson plan, write a few paragraphs for the newsletter and a blurb for the weekly pc email. The deadline is really next weekend, so it didn't feel that urgent, even though my computer use may be dangerously small. I guess it was worth having a relaxing day to do what I wanted on the internet, between my two emails, facebook, couchsurfing, blogging, runnerunner, news and achilles research, I guess it was not completely useless.

The new pc office in Kyiv is really nice, shower, kitchen, lounge, and computer lab. Again, not what I imagined the pc to be like. On Saturday night I stayed with 14other environmentally oriented volunteers after our meeting in Kyiv in a 3 room apartment which cost $175 for the night. The floor with couch cushions was actually pretty nice.

On Sunday night I went down to visit Patrick about an hour south of Kyiv, nice town though way different than mine because it sits on the main highway. Tonight I will spend on the train on my way back home, kind of nice to get both travel and lodging in the same ticket. When the times work out so perfectly (10pm-6am), I don't mind that the train goes so slowly.

I'm watching another beautiful sunset outside the open window, weather so far equalling Seattle last June, but they say it will get hotter. Off to take a shower with water pressure before I walk to the train station.

A long time waiting...for them to upload

Motorcycle club stopping for lunch in the park outside my kitchen window.

The walk across town with my co-workers to Olena's welcome to the world party.

Another Olena comes into the world, amazing silver colored eyes. Iryna is my Ukrainian tutor and Olena is her 3rd child.

Graduation and the Day of our Town

Also the first day of summer! 

 

Friday was the last day of official classes.

Saturday was graduation for the 11th formers (high school ends at 11th grade here) and the weather was perfect as they had thier ceremony out in front of the school.  The major differences between my high school graduation and theirs were...

They didn't have to wear silly robes.

They played the national anthem twice rather than once.

Three students marched with the flag.

All the students marched around the square three times for good luck.

The orthodox priest gave a long speach and everyone crossed themselves multiple times.

Everyone let a baloon float into the air instead of throwing hats when the ceremony was over.

There were many more flowers here, many of my students gave them to me, other teachers got them, graduates got them, young kids, everyone.

There were many awards anounced, from the region, oblast, school, and other organizations.

The military band played a little award jingle for every award.

Only half of the students had University spots, the other half still awaiting test dates and other hurdles.

That's all I can think of, it seemed pretty normal all in all.

 

Sunday I let myself sleep in, waking up yesterday for graduation was a violation of my normal Saturday policy.

The day of Velyki Mosty started around 12 with speaches, a band, awards and dancing in the center park.  I was momentarily jealous watching the group of young people break dancing thinking how much cooler they are than me.  Then I realized that there are things I can do that they can't, and if I really wanted to learn to break dance, I could be good at that also, although I would probably have to sacrifice something else. Not that I want to start break dancing, but I do want to have a strong body and many of those moves showed body control, strength and flexability of which I am jealous. 

 

Then the celebrations moved to the stadium for the young soccer game, then my soccer game (we won 2-0, starting to realize that we are the only city in a division of villages).  Immediatily after my game, fake trees, tall obstacles, flaming hoops, bags with drugs and coats hiding guns were spread across the field.  It was a dog show with the german shepards from the local border patrol base. The highlight was watching them take down suspects who tried to run (wearing protective clothing of course).  I wonder what the wounds would look like if you were taken down by a german shepard wearing only a tee shirt?  It was cool to have my host dad there explaining the personalities of all the dogs I was watching because he is the veternarian for the base and knows all of them.

 

After the dog show, I stopped to do some tourniques (like pullups but you pull yourself up, invert, sticking your feet straight into the air and then rotate all the way around the bar before lowering yourself down) on the way home for dinner and a shower.  At first when my host brother showed them to me I couldn't do any.  Now my record is 3. I'm determined to do 10 by the end of July.  Back to the stadium to watch the band, felt decidedly alone because everyone was having picknics out on the field with their families and, well, I didn't have one there.

 

So I went back to my apartment to eat chocolate cake while listening to harry potter (talk about comfort eating/emotioal safe zone/reality escape) and eventually regained the social courage (because everybody knows me, everybody looks, points, says something to their neighbor about who I am, why I'm alone and what I do (I am starting to relate to Harry Potter, except I don't have two friends)) to go back out and see the fireworks instead of just falling asleep in my apartment.  Glad I did, found some of the soccer team (they were completely drunk) to watch the fireworks with and then danced for a few hours with the English teachers.  The band on the roof of the lockerrooms played an interesting mix of Ukrainian folk music, European disco and American pop while virtually the whole city danced in the dirt parking lot of the stadium (I was glad we weren't on the other side of the lockerrooms trampling the grass).

 

Today my achilles is especially sore, probably from dancing, and I am hobbling around school getting ready for the summer camp which starts tomorrow. Played games with my 6th form for a few hours this morning.  Now time to get some actual plans written up. #1, capture the flag...