One of the best parts about Peace Corps is getting to learn another language. It helps with the second and third goal the JFK layed out for PC. 'To give citizens in other countries an better understanding of americans and to give americans a better understanding of other peoples'. The first goal is to provide trained men and women to increase technical capacity, and strong language skills obviously help in this respect also. I've already mentioned that the initial 3 months of language training was excellent. In continuing support of our language skills, PC Ukraine provides summer and winter language refreshers. Basically a summer camp filled with classes and fun activities in Ukrainian. The teaching was excellent, lots of 1on1 tutoring and generally fun activities including games with sticks, cooking, poetry, dancing, singing and acting. I have nothing but good things to say about the experience and am completely psyched to continue my language study. If I can get a good semester of study in this fall, I might start to study russian in the spring. That would be cool, although just a start of course.
I tried running again after a month of rest on my achilles. Little improvement. I timed a 4km run for the fun of it (I know, a great way to treat the achilles on the 4th day of running) and confirmed my suspicion that not running for a month really hurts fitness. Awesome games of soccer and volleyball, historical movies, sauna+cold plunge, generally living the life. Instead of going home after this vacation...
