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.