Musings of an Ukraine Traveler

Rah Rah Comes Home

I have definitely made a nest here in Korostyshiv because like anytime I am away for a long time, I was glad to be home from Camp Rah-Rah. I loved the 3 weeks of training and working at the camp which was about a 30 minute ride from the city of Ivano-Frankisiv. The camp is not in the Carpathian mountains, but it is in the country in the hills near a beautiful large river. It is not a camp like we know in US.  There are 4 large dorm buildings, large cafeteria, stage, classrooms and sports fields. Like most places, it is worn and shabby, but the directors do their best to keep it clean, bright and they serve very delicious meals and have a 24 hr medical staff on duty. There is a sauna and pool (small so just for staff. We called it Roswell). The showers are in a separate building, one for women and one for men---all open so one just has to say to hell with body image. The camp location is called Camp of the Falcon. 

Our camp was called Rah-Rah (Youth Can) and we were sponsored by Ukrainian Citizens Action Network which is supported by several NGO's in Ukraine and the United States. We held two sessions of 6 days each during which teams of 3 (PC counselor, Ukrainian counselor and Ukrainian junior counselor) taught a group of 7-15 students various topics. I taught Environment with two of the greatest young women, Marianna and Dasha. Other classes offered were Civic Responsibility, Leadership, Drama, Debate,  Sports, Gender, Diversity. All students had to take sports and either Civics or Leadership. Besides 5 classes, the students, divided into teams, were involved in all kinds of team building activities like challenges, chants, tie-dying, making friendship bracelets, swimming, jogging, ultimate Frisbee, talent show, press conferences, electing a mayor. There were guest speakers on a number of topics from Human Trafficking to Reproductive rights. They also had to develop an action plan for a project for their community. The Ukrainian counselors will be following up and assisting them throughout the coming year. We all worked our asses off and loved every minute of it. To see the changes, some absolutely remarkable in these young people was thrilling. You see many did not expect that quality learning could be so much fun and that they would be challenged to their limit to get out of the box!

 Who were these students? They were 200 (100 per week) university or post graduate students chosen from 500 applicants. In other words, they were the cream of the crop of Ukrainian Youth. They all were supposed to be pretty proficient in English. Some weren't, like the young surgeon in my class, but the twinkle, smile and English "Thank you, thank you Connie" were enough for me. One called me Mama Nature; another remarked that is was amazing to see a grandmother with that kind of energy in Ukraine. Did we have a hard time parting with the "kids" Oh yeah! They kept getting off the bus for more hugs.

 Of course we were glad when it was over. We were as tired as they. We celebrated with shashlik (shish-ka-bob) and a bonfire on Saturday the 28th. I woke up with pretty bad food poisoning--the kind you don't know which end to put in the toilet. Took an all night train to Kyiv and pepto kind of delayed the full reaction until I got to Kyiv Voksall (train station). Talk about learning humility! Good thing I had changes of clothes with me. A day of rest, rehydration salts and Cipro and I am almost there.

Brought home an addition to my family--a kitten, named Rah-Rah. Yes, food poisoning and a stray kitten on a night train! He got out of the box during the night and went back through the car and slept with a complete stranger! I was not in a coupe. I was in a plat--open car. 

Pictures on the web site soon. Right now, just trying to get well, follow up on work for camp and get my wash done without any water for 10 hrs a day!

 Love you all much. more later.

Kyiv and Steak

Dear all,

 Well, it's back to work today. We just had our last big summer celebration this weekend--Ukrainian Independence Day. On Sunday, people were out all day visiting, walking in the park and plaza. In the morning there was a sparsely attended placing of a wreath on the poet Shevchenko's monument. He was the great exponent for Ukrainian freedom. Do you know they have only been free as an independent government once for 2 years in the 19th century and now for 12. It has been a long struggle.

 My friend Wini came up for the weekend. We always have a good time together. She lives way out in a town of 5000. She can't get mail there so needs to pick it up in Kyiv. She also has no shower and no hot water so she loves to come to take a hot shower at my place. You can realize how desperate she is when you remember that my showerhead is one of those hand held ones that I have hung up. The pressure is a slow dribble, but I can get the water hot for her with the kalunka!

 A couple of others of our group were to have come too, but they were pretty tired and overworked. Anyway, Wini and I made our usual trip to Kyiv and pampered ourselves. After checking into headquarters, we headed for a restaurant to have steak--Wini's craving.  Another woman from our group went. I am not a big steak eater, but it was wonderfully prepared and prepared. I scraped the raw egg yolk on the top off! I'm not sure of the purpose of that. We bought a bottle of Rothchild Merlot--you have to buy dry wine by the bottle in Ukraine. For three hours we dined and talked and it was in a restaruant in the middle of a grocery store!  Check out the picture on the web site. Of course, it was a very western chic store. We ended up buying two bottles of the wine to take home, some Brie and Ritz crackers! Crackers here are so sweet.  Then when we went upstairs, we explored cosmetic and perfume stores. High fashion stores. Nice. Jennifer's credit card probably hit the limit. 

Work goes normally. I have my PDM (project design management ) typed up and an abstract translated. Will start teaching in the schools 1-2 times a week as part of that. I will be basically teaching Environmental English. A woman who is building a great youth club wants me to come there too. I will be busy, but nothing like in the states of course. 

I have a new book for my Russian studies and really like it. Natasha and I get together for lessons twice a week. I am actually learning cursive now. I feel just like a 2nd grader trying to get the strokes correct. It is substantially different than English and what makes it even harder is that the cursive forms of the letters many times do not look like the printed letters! 

So far I have two trips planned for September. One to Bar for an festival and one to Kyiv for an environmental conference. Fall is definitely in the air here and the temperature is already dropping. I had to wear a sweatshirt yesterday and will wear a jacket today to work.Rah-Rah continues to grow and keep me between pure adoration and wanting to throw him off the balcony. I have not had a kitten in over 25 years! He is funny, very strong and very bright. Had to get a spray bottle!

 Love you very much. Miss you.

Connie

Labor Day

Hello everyone. It's 8 p.m Sunday here and I just finished hulling a little over a quart of fall strawberries. They are about as big as the end of your thumb and the most delicious, sweet berries. The babushkas and dedushkas love to see me coming because I always buy whatever they have in the way of berries or walnuts.And Asha is starting to load me down with tomatoes, beans, cucumbers and and of course Kortoshka (potatoes) as she harvests her kitchen garden. I think I am well taken care of.

 This won't be long. Just wanted to wish you a restful, fun Labor Day and let you know I will be thinking of you. Enjoy your families, your friends, hamburgers, cokes and beer.

Fall Evening

It's a perfect evening to be writing while the water is heating for my dishes and I am listening to Gene Harris playing Blues for Ste Chapelle. Finally I can really hear my CD's. Went to Zhytomer yesterday (20 minutes away) to their big department store and found all kinds of wonderful things including a department that has computer accessories so I bought speakers and some floppies. Now I know I don't have to make the 2-hour trip to Kyiv every time I need something I can't find here. 

I did buy a new table lamp here in Korostyshiv today. Wanted a better one anyway, but Rah Rah jumped on the shade of the floor lamp and broke it off its very flimsy metal hangers. This morning he pulled the landlady's potted plant off the windowsill TWICE so now I have to buy a new pot too! Please tell me why I have this kot!. 

Anyway back to the perfect evening. The plaza is filled with people especially children of all ages gawking at the carnival rides that have been set up in preparation for the birthday of Korostyshiv on Sunday. The rides look very new and I am loving this atmosphere. It really is like a small town in the US in the 50's. I have to leave for Kyiv and the environmental conference about 3 and hate missing the fireworks and the rest of the celebration. I hope the concert is early because the bandstand is right below my balcony. 

I get back on Wednesday afternoon and then leave again Thursday evening to take the Elektrichka (electric or fast train) to Mhyrograd. I volunteered to be part of a peer support group and we are doing our training there at a spa! Just having enough hot water will be a luxury!

 Yuri and Natasha have been over this evening fixing things--Natasha makes up “honey-dos” for him for me!  He fixed the telephone connection, checked out the lamp and is going to see if he can fix it and is putting up a rod in my closet so I can hang up more of my clothes. Can't tell you how much care people in this town give me in a hundred ways.

Blondes Do Have Fun

Dear family and friends, 

I haven't written one of these group letters in a while and decided it was about time. Everything went so slow the first 3 months, and now as promised by PC, I am moving into high gear. I work at the office in the morning on my project and grant writing, both of which are coming along well. Then after lunch, I stay home and work on office stuff or now my lesson plans. So far I have taught 3 classes and have two more this week. I am working with Natasha's 8th and 10th forms every week. Eventually I will be focusing on environmental issues especially those here in Korostyshiv. The English teacher of 4th form and I had a couple of glasses of wine the other night and we have her class corresponding with a class in Boise--Alex's. It should be great fun for both. I took pictures of the 4th form this morning and am going to make up a web page so the kids in the states can see them.

 I am really enjoying studying Russian from my new book. Natasha is keeping my nose to the grindstone by forcing me to talk in Russian whenever I can. She is prepping me for the PC language refresher seminar in November. Don't know what I would do without the friendship and help of her and her family. Yes she makes me do what I can, but she also helps me make vet appointments and hair appointments.

 By the way, I am as of today, a complete blond. When Ukrainians use the term "paint" your hair, they are not kidding. I brought my own coloring, but the cosmetologist was afraid to use it with the hydrogen peroxide they sell here so I told her to use her own color. She really is quite good and gives me wonderful haircuts but......to color the hair she brushed it on every strand. In the states coloring is brushed on but not on every strand. Some of the natural coloring comes through. Oh well, my hair needed body badly. Natasha and Asya have determined I'm fine and just have to get used to it.

 Rah Rah eats like a horse and gallops like one through the house. I have an old hair spray bottle that I am using to try to train him. It works pretty good. Of course I'm not here all day. So far nothing destroyed except the floor lamp. He hung on the shade and two of the cheap thin wires that held in on the lamp broke. I will replace it. I hated the damn thing anyway. The only way to turn it on was to plug it in and then it was on the wrong side.

 Did I tell you I have a new cordless phone. Love it. Got a bath mat in Kyiv and a shower curtain. Even though my shower just dribbles, the curtain does keep water off the toilet paper. The bathroom is a new area of play for Rah. He found he could jump into the tub. He loves hiding in and out of the curtain and since it's very thin and very cheap, I put it out of his way. When I wash clothes, I use 2 tubs and a bucket for washing and two rinses. I swear he is going to drown in one of them, but so far he has missed every time. He is one curious cat.

On Thursday, Wini and I are traveling to Vinnytsia to visit a friend there and to spend the days at a big green tourism festival in Bar. Both towns are very historical and I am looking forward to seeing them. Quite a few other PCVs will be there too. Then on the 21-24th, I go to Kyiv for an Environmental Sector conference and the last weekend of the month I go east of Kyiv to Myrhrod for a peer helper workshop.  So a busy month.I am working on some more pages for the web, but have a couple more pictures I want to get--maybe next week.

 Take care of yourselves. I love and miss you all, but know that I am content, happy and learning everyday about Ukrainians and myself.

Connie

Birthday Leisure

 First of all thank you for all the wonderful emails, packages (even those which didn't get here yet) and phone calls. This has been a lovely fall day and I have enjoyed every minute of it. Walked to the bazaar this morning since I was out of everything as I had been gone a week. When I got to work, my coordinator gave me a lovely bouquet of very large white mums touched with pink and a bag of avon skin products. About an hour later, the 10 girls in 8th form and Natasha walked in with a huge pink daisy, a wonderful card, a porcelain angel doll and a poem that each recited part of. Then my coordinator sent me home for the day. (Flowers must be in odd numbers 1, 3, 5 etc or it is bad luck).

 I have two pages yet to publish on our stay in Mirhograd. What an absolutely beautiful place. Fall here is so beautiful and the weather is so mild anyway, but this town is special. For one thing it is so clean! No litter or garbage dumps. There are 3 sanatoria where many tourists come to take the waters and enjoy the spas. They stay for 10-24 days! You can pretty much tell the tourists. They all have on color coordinated sweats and tennis shoes. Usually Nike.  

The PC chief medical officer Linda Wylie invited and paid for 12 of us--all women to go there. We are forming a peer support group especially for the new trainees coming in next week--100. Linda wanted us to take care of ourselves first and get some ideas for holding sessions in our regions. We were treated royally. We had an entire sauna with pool, showers, pool table, cots, massage chair for two hours the first night. We ate on a boat in the river. Wonderful. We walked and walked through wonderful birch groves the next day. I had a rosemary bath, some had a pearl bath and some had hydro massages. That night we had pizza! I didn't mention how we got there--on an electrichka--an electric fast train. It was wonderful. So clean, a modern bathroom, attendants, no stopping between major stations--like being on an airplane but with plenty of leg room and the ability to walk around. These are not sleeping cars so they are only used between a few big cities. I also got to know 11 more great women in PC.

 I did come back rejuvenated and I need it as I seem to be getting more and more involved not only in my project here but in PC stuff.  The peer support group and UCAN and now the HIV/AIDS group. I may want to come to the states just to rest. 

More Birthday

I meant to tell you how impressed I was with the fact that mail boxes etc had gotten the box to me in such a short time and quite frankly for a comparatively lower price than some of the envelopes that have come to me and the box weighed more!  I will definitely email you as soon as Claudia's box arrives. 

Alice and Wini spent the day with me yesterday and went home this morning. We really had a good time. Wini came in Friday night and got her usual hot water shower (dribble though it is) I had bought a new shower head hoping to surprise her. The connection was too large so as they say here so often  "zaftra" tomorrow!  We gossiped, looked at my web site, drank wine and ate fried chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy. They were in heaven. Natasha made me her special cake. I wish you could see and taste it. Unbelievable. It is definitely the best cake I have ever eaten bar none. Of course I have enough to feed the whole town of Korostyshiv!

We laughed ourselves silly when Alice, who had never seen my flat says, "Oh your bathroom is so beautiful!" Now that tells you something about the bathrooms that most PCVs have! They also were enthralled with mom's pictures and what she wrote on the back!

e hens under their arms to sell. My plan is to someday soon to do some pages on just the bazaar

 Anyway, today was my first time in the meat center because I wanted to buy a roast. It was absolutely incredible--not gross, but imagine a hundred butchers set up in a building, each with a scale--the old fashioned kind from my time as a kid. Each is dressed warmly, has a white apron on which is of course stained, but obviously was clean to start with. On each table are mounds of various cuts of meat. Each vendor seems to specialize in pork or beef. There is a type of fork that the buyer can poke, prod, turn over the piece to check for fat, quality, etc. I even saw bacon! Asha bought a beautiful piece of calf liver and a huge amount of sallow. Now sallow is pure pig fat, unrendered, and Ukrainians absolutely love it. They eat it raw, smoke it, spice it, whatever. Not me! She also bought two live fish. She's going to make fish soup for Natasha who has been sick and doesn't eat enough of anything. Fish are sold live or frozen. We (PCVs) don't eat fish here. Too great a chance of heavy metal contamination. Some fish now and then doesn't hurt, but a continual diet could be bad.

 I bought a very nice piece of beef and am making a rolled roast that I am going to bake this afternoon with as many of the damn potatoes and carrots that people keep giving me as I can. I will have meat for a few days and I really need more protein in my diet. I am also eating raw and cooking as many of the apples as I can. Thank goodness all these things keep. People in the blocks store their garden produce on their balconies or in the basement of the block (dom). Everyone has spaded their gardens which as I mentioned before are usually very large. Cabbages are still in the yard and will stay there as long as possible.

 Rah has to stay in so he sometimes literally climbs the walls!  He really is a good cat and I am fortunate I have him and such a wonderful family to take care of him when I'm gone. By the way, they finished their kitchen. It is so nice. I found out that it is a tradition to have a housewarming and bring gifts when someone buys a new flat or remodels. I bought a few little gifts for their flat and a teddy bear for Masha. You would have thought I had given them gold. In return I got galupsy (cabbage rolls) and a jar of dill pickles--No one cooks like Asha. I am in heaven! 

Curious Cat

Dobre Utro!

 Ok, it's 1 pm here so you are still sleeping soundly while I have washed a load of clothes, cleaned refrigerator, cabinets, bathroom and vacuumed! If any of you are sending packages could you throw in a few SOS, I could really use them.Why so much energy? Well it is lovely today. The past few days have been so mild and the sun (winter) has shone. I even had windows open today. Of course I have been giving all my Ukrainian friends and colleagues heart attacks because I have been going out without my hat and sometimes my coat.

 This morning, I was going out to buy water and on my way I dropped off some bones for Roma's dog. Well, first she thanks me and then gives me the third degree about whether I was dressed warmly enough. (I had put on my ASCA shirt just for her). I told her I was zharka (hot). She got this glint in her eye and then blessed me. I hooted all the way down the stairs and told her I need blessing. 

Rah has been into everything this morning. Climbs on the edge of the washtub, drinks from the faucet while I am running water, grabs at the rag while I'm mopping the floor and worst of all got the roll of toilet paper which he chewed and clawed into shreds. I put the roll up over the wash tub and then of course I hit it and knocked it into the water.

 I enjoyed working with the trainees last week. I feel right at home as it is the same training I gave to my students and to peer helpers. Tomorrow, I and Natasha will have a visit from the PC language coordinator and then I head back to Kyiv in the evening. On Tuesday and Wednesday I will work with the rest of the trainees. On Thursday morning I will take a bus to Gretsiv (Wini) and Alice, Wini and I will celebrate Thanksgiving with a pot roast. Friday evening, we are taking the train to Lviv. We will spend Saturday and Sunday sightseeing. I am really excited. It is so historical and of course I will take lots of pictures. We will also have turkey and all the trimmings on Saturday evening with a large group of PCVS--mostly our group 24. I won't get home until late Monday so will write after that about my adventures.

 I spent Friday with Teresa Golias, the trainee who will be here in Korostyshiv at the pedagogical institute. She will arrive right before the 25th of December. I really like her and she and it will be nice to have another American in town.

I will think of all of you on Thursday. Please do the same for me. I am happy here, but do miss all of you.

Love     Connie