I am back in America. For three days I have seen family and friends, surfed way too much internet and mulled my future. It's good to be back, but I already miss Ukraine. I had a purpose there and don't have one here. There I was somebody, and now I am anybody. I know this will change and within a few months I'll have a laundry list of projects but for now I feel adrift. This is partly pleasant and partly sad.
Things I immediately noticed upon arrival in America:
Friday, December 08, 2006
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Ukraine: Done
Wow.
Like everything in my life it was at the last second: I was supposed to check-out today but a series of events meant I got to Kyiv with only 90 minutes before the office closed and I was in need of a medical checkout, needed to close my grant (which normally takes a couple hours) and still needed half a dozen signatures from people who weren't in their offices.
And with quite a bit of help and good-will and at least one very annoyed financial manager (along with running up and down three flights of steps about nine times)...it's done. I'm done.
I am no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer.
I thought it would be more sad but the elation of getting the paperwork in under the buzzer and finally finishing everything put me on an adrenaline high.
Wow.
Done.
I fly home in five days.
Like everything in my life it was at the last second: I was supposed to check-out today but a series of events meant I got to Kyiv with only 90 minutes before the office closed and I was in need of a medical checkout, needed to close my grant (which normally takes a couple hours) and still needed half a dozen signatures from people who weren't in their offices.
And with quite a bit of help and good-will and at least one very annoyed financial manager (along with running up and down three flights of steps about nine times)...it's done. I'm done.
I am no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer.
I thought it would be more sad but the elation of getting the paperwork in under the buzzer and finally finishing everything put me on an adrenaline high.
Wow.
Done.
I fly home in five days.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Ukraine: Why I Almost Quit Peace Corps
Why I almost quit Peace Corps 12 days before finishing it:
Well, before we get to that I want to talk about my language proficiency test, which was one of many tests, exams, surveys and interviews that comprise the two page typed checklist that must be completed before I can close my service. It’s almost as hard to get out of Peace Corps as into it.
I thought my language test would be in the afternoon and toyed with the idea of drinking a “longehr” (a pre-mixed vodka and juice drink sold on any street corner in Kyiv) in order to grease the grammar. I have had it independently confirmed that my Russian is quite a bit better under the influence of alcohol, if only because I stop worrying about making mistakes, something which no doubt causes me to make more of them. Unfortunately, my test was scheduled for 10:00 AM and despite the Ukrainian belief that 100 grams of alcohol every morning is healthy for you, even after two-plus years of living here I still can’t stomach the idea of vodka for breakfast. So I went and did it sober.
Well, before we get to that I want to talk about my language proficiency test, which was one of many tests, exams, surveys and interviews that comprise the two page typed checklist that must be completed before I can close my service. It’s almost as hard to get out of Peace Corps as into it.
I thought my language test would be in the afternoon and toyed with the idea of drinking a “longehr” (a pre-mixed vodka and juice drink sold on any street corner in Kyiv) in order to grease the grammar. I have had it independently confirmed that my Russian is quite a bit better under the influence of alcohol, if only because I stop worrying about making mistakes, something which no doubt causes me to make more of them. Unfortunately, my test was scheduled for 10:00 AM and despite the Ukrainian belief that 100 grams of alcohol every morning is healthy for you, even after two-plus years of living here I still can’t stomach the idea of vodka for breakfast. So I went and did it sober.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Ukraine: Description of Service
Had my last day of teaching today. Felt good, actually. Also went and bought my first suit 'cause I know I need one and it's cheaper here. Everything's like that now: finishing this, getting that, all preparing to leave. And that includes writing my Description of Service.
What is it? It's the official record of everything we've done. Like a few other volunteers in my group, I've decided to post mine online. Why? To brag of course!
It's just the way such things are. A lot of it is boiler plate: they gave us the exact wording on most of the beginning and end and gave us examples of how the middle should go. Workin' for the government and all.
Thought I'd share.
***
Description of Peace Corps Volunteer Service
Name: Daniel Reynolds
Country of Service: Ukraine
Dates of Service: (December 2004 – December 2006)
What is it? It's the official record of everything we've done. Like a few other volunteers in my group, I've decided to post mine online. Why? To brag of course!
It's just the way such things are. A lot of it is boiler plate: they gave us the exact wording on most of the beginning and end and gave us examples of how the middle should go. Workin' for the government and all.
Thought I'd share.
***
Description of Peace Corps Volunteer Service
Name: Daniel Reynolds
Country of Service: Ukraine
Dates of Service: (December 2004 – December 2006)
Monday, November 13, 2006
Ukraine: Extreme Marathon 2006 (Pics)
A guy rode past me on his bike, popped up his front wheel, hit the brakes and stopped like that, balanced on his back tire. Then he started jumping up and down, using his bike like a pogo stick, the back tire thumping as it repeatedly hit the ground.
I thought: Q: Who the hell are these guys? A: People who think mountain-biking, rocking climbing, orienteering, paint ball, and carrying said mountain bike over countless streams, footbridges, embankments and outcroppings, all in sub-zero weather, is fun.
It was 9:00 AM and I was waiting, along with 19 other people, to compete in Zhytomyr’s Extreme Marathon, a multi-sport adventure race. This was actually only a mini-Extreme Marathon. The real one, in which I had competed the year before, was a 24 hour endurance race of running, swimming, climbing, ropes course challenges, orienteering, biking and rafting. Carrie (another volunteer) and I had lasted about 12 hours before dropping out. That had been the plan all along, because I had to be in Kyiv the following day and couldn’t afford to do the all-night trekking through the woods (which hadn’t sounded like a lot of fun anyway). Still, of the 32 teams from 6 countries, four others dropped out before us, which meant we weren’t complete losers.
Although Extreme Marathon was born in Zhytomyr, its increasing popularity and the addition of real corporate sponsorship (from Marmot, among others), meant a much larger Extreme Marathon took place this summer in the Chernitskava Oblast. Jon and I briefly considered entering, took one look at the gear list and the hassle involved of getting it all to another oblast and, with Run Across Ukraine taking up most of our energy, decided it wasn’t worth it.
So I was excited when I heard there would be a smaller version in Zhytomyr this year. Of course, I only heard about it 36 hours before the race itself. Jon couldn’t leave his town because it was his last weekend in Ukraine, so I asked my neighbor and 15 year-old climbing protégé, Igor, to be my partner. He accepted, and then told me he’d only ridden a bike once in his life and that, because of him, we’d probably loose.
“I’m not doing it to win,” I said to him. “I just want to finish.” I considered that for a moment, and remembered the last race and the pride of not being the first team to drop out. “And not come in last place,” I said.
It turns out, largely through my own mistakes, that while we did (sort of) finish, we also came in absolutely, dead-last place.
Here is a record of those mistakes.
***
Igor has an earnest can-do attitude, which is what makes him such a great student whether he’s in class or on cliffs (and I’ve had the pleasure of teaching him both places). As soon as he accepted my invitation to compete, he asked to borrow a bike to learn how to ride it. Giving him one, off he went, practicing for the next four hours, not wanting me to help him. When he returned it that evening, he asked to borrow it at 7:00 AM the next morning to practice some more. I woke up just long enough to give it to him before going back to sleep, trying to get in another hour before having to leave for the race. Unlike his lazy American partner, Igor was up with the sun, trying to teach himself to ride.
The race started near Zhytomyr’s only extreme sports store, a tiny, ten square-foot space crammed with skis, sleeping bags and backpacks. There wasn’t even room for a register or sales desk, and the salesperson sat in a chair between two aisles. If you want things like climbing gear, they pull out the catalogue and ask what you want ordered.
Teams arriving at the start point
I thought: Q: Who the hell are these guys? A: People who think mountain-biking, rocking climbing, orienteering, paint ball, and carrying said mountain bike over countless streams, footbridges, embankments and outcroppings, all in sub-zero weather, is fun.
It was 9:00 AM and I was waiting, along with 19 other people, to compete in Zhytomyr’s Extreme Marathon, a multi-sport adventure race. This was actually only a mini-Extreme Marathon. The real one, in which I had competed the year before, was a 24 hour endurance race of running, swimming, climbing, ropes course challenges, orienteering, biking and rafting. Carrie (another volunteer) and I had lasted about 12 hours before dropping out. That had been the plan all along, because I had to be in Kyiv the following day and couldn’t afford to do the all-night trekking through the woods (which hadn’t sounded like a lot of fun anyway). Still, of the 32 teams from 6 countries, four others dropped out before us, which meant we weren’t complete losers.
Although Extreme Marathon was born in Zhytomyr, its increasing popularity and the addition of real corporate sponsorship (from Marmot, among others), meant a much larger Extreme Marathon took place this summer in the Chernitskava Oblast. Jon and I briefly considered entering, took one look at the gear list and the hassle involved of getting it all to another oblast and, with Run Across Ukraine taking up most of our energy, decided it wasn’t worth it.
So I was excited when I heard there would be a smaller version in Zhytomyr this year. Of course, I only heard about it 36 hours before the race itself. Jon couldn’t leave his town because it was his last weekend in Ukraine, so I asked my neighbor and 15 year-old climbing protégé, Igor, to be my partner. He accepted, and then told me he’d only ridden a bike once in his life and that, because of him, we’d probably loose.
“I’m not doing it to win,” I said to him. “I just want to finish.” I considered that for a moment, and remembered the last race and the pride of not being the first team to drop out. “And not come in last place,” I said.
It turns out, largely through my own mistakes, that while we did (sort of) finish, we also came in absolutely, dead-last place.
Here is a record of those mistakes.
***
Igor has an earnest can-do attitude, which is what makes him such a great student whether he’s in class or on cliffs (and I’ve had the pleasure of teaching him both places). As soon as he accepted my invitation to compete, he asked to borrow a bike to learn how to ride it. Giving him one, off he went, practicing for the next four hours, not wanting me to help him. When he returned it that evening, he asked to borrow it at 7:00 AM the next morning to practice some more. I woke up just long enough to give it to him before going back to sleep, trying to get in another hour before having to leave for the race. Unlike his lazy American partner, Igor was up with the sun, trying to teach himself to ride.
The race started near Zhytomyr’s only extreme sports store, a tiny, ten square-foot space crammed with skis, sleeping bags and backpacks. There wasn’t even room for a register or sales desk, and the salesperson sat in a chair between two aisles. If you want things like climbing gear, they pull out the catalogue and ask what you want ordered.
Teams arriving at the start point
Friday, November 10, 2006
Ukraine: Uman (Pics)
"Do you think black cats know they cause bad luck?" asked Diana as we sat down on the bus to Uman. Apparently a black cat had looked at her on the way to the bus station and, just as she neared it, purposely walked across her path.
The bus left at 7:00 AM. Diana said it would take three and a half hours to get to Uman. This is what they had told her when she bought our tickets. They had lied.
"Nature takes her clothes off with dignity," said Diana several hours later, apparently in a poetic mood as she looked out the window. The bus was rocking down a road paved through the middle of a forest. On either side, trees blazed red and orange and yellow. Soon those leaves would fall and leave nature naked, but before then she'd have one last burst of glory.
At 11:00 AM, when we should already have been in Uman, Diana asked the driver if we'd soon be there and laughed at her. The bus kept on its slow way, stopping, it seemed, every fifteen seconds to pick someone up or drop them off on the side of the road. Diana and I were going to Uman on a whim. Uman is famous in Ukraine for it's park, reputed to be the Versailles of Ukraine (which, admittedly, doesn't say a lot). Neither Diana nor I had been there, but we thought it would be great with the fall foiliage. We were discussing this on Friday. Not having a lot of time, we decided to do it as a day trip on Sunday.
Finally the bus pulled in, six hours after we left Zhytomyr. It being near winter, it was already starting to get dark. It was raining. In the bus station we found there were no more buses headed back to Zhytomyr that day. Still, we knew we could still get back to Kyiv that night (all roads lead to Kyiv) and if we could get to Kyiv, we could get to Zhytomyr. We headed over to the park, which was in walking distance of the bus station and, when we got to the entrance, Diana found that she had lost her wallet, either on the bus or in the bus station. We went back to the station, but it was not to be found. I was going to find that black cat and kill it. Deciding to make the best of it, we headed back to the park.
The park was built in honor of a woman named Sophia. A little over a century ago, a nobel had fallen in love with a Polish concubine and built the park over several years as a gift to her. As with everything in Ukraine, much of the park was destroyed during World War II, but it was famous enough to have been rebuilt under the Soviet Union. And guess what? Even with the overcast skies and dim light, it was still beautiful.
A map of the park
The following photos show nature in her dignity (and show Diana and I being not quite as dignified)
This was kind of cool: there's a long tunnel that goes under the park. For 2 UAH you get in a boat and a guy pushes the boat along the tunnel using a stick. For most of it there's absolutely no light (except from idiots who can't turn off their mobiles and people like me who insist on taking pictures)
The trip back was shorter than the trip there: a marshrutka to Kyiv and then a marshrutka to Zhytomyr. Unlike buses, marshrutkas haul ass. Of course, the bus station and the train station in Kyiv (which is where one marshrutka arrived and the other left from) are on opposite sides of the city. Also, for all their really efficient Soviet planning, the bus station is inexplicably far away from any metro stops. Which, with it raining again and raining hard, meant we got pretty wet. I blame the cat.
The bus left at 7:00 AM. Diana said it would take three and a half hours to get to Uman. This is what they had told her when she bought our tickets. They had lied.
"Nature takes her clothes off with dignity," said Diana several hours later, apparently in a poetic mood as she looked out the window. The bus was rocking down a road paved through the middle of a forest. On either side, trees blazed red and orange and yellow. Soon those leaves would fall and leave nature naked, but before then she'd have one last burst of glory.
At 11:00 AM, when we should already have been in Uman, Diana asked the driver if we'd soon be there and laughed at her. The bus kept on its slow way, stopping, it seemed, every fifteen seconds to pick someone up or drop them off on the side of the road. Diana and I were going to Uman on a whim. Uman is famous in Ukraine for it's park, reputed to be the Versailles of Ukraine (which, admittedly, doesn't say a lot). Neither Diana nor I had been there, but we thought it would be great with the fall foiliage. We were discussing this on Friday. Not having a lot of time, we decided to do it as a day trip on Sunday.
Finally the bus pulled in, six hours after we left Zhytomyr. It being near winter, it was already starting to get dark. It was raining. In the bus station we found there were no more buses headed back to Zhytomyr that day. Still, we knew we could still get back to Kyiv that night (all roads lead to Kyiv) and if we could get to Kyiv, we could get to Zhytomyr. We headed over to the park, which was in walking distance of the bus station and, when we got to the entrance, Diana found that she had lost her wallet, either on the bus or in the bus station. We went back to the station, but it was not to be found. I was going to find that black cat and kill it. Deciding to make the best of it, we headed back to the park.
The park was built in honor of a woman named Sophia. A little over a century ago, a nobel had fallen in love with a Polish concubine and built the park over several years as a gift to her. As with everything in Ukraine, much of the park was destroyed during World War II, but it was famous enough to have been rebuilt under the Soviet Union. And guess what? Even with the overcast skies and dim light, it was still beautiful.
A map of the park
The following photos show nature in her dignity (and show Diana and I being not quite as dignified)
This was kind of cool: there's a long tunnel that goes under the park. For 2 UAH you get in a boat and a guy pushes the boat along the tunnel using a stick. For most of it there's absolutely no light (except from idiots who can't turn off their mobiles and people like me who insist on taking pictures)
The trip back was shorter than the trip there: a marshrutka to Kyiv and then a marshrutka to Zhytomyr. Unlike buses, marshrutkas haul ass. Of course, the bus station and the train station in Kyiv (which is where one marshrutka arrived and the other left from) are on opposite sides of the city. Also, for all their really efficient Soviet planning, the bus station is inexplicably far away from any metro stops. Which, with it raining again and raining hard, meant we got pretty wet. I blame the cat.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Ukraine: Orphans in Costumes (Pics)
So, on Halloween I was at the orphanage's costume party (but sans costume myself) and had a lot of fun. Here's the pics:
Tanya and I talking to the orphans about the history of Halloween and how it's celebrated in America. We were kind of put on the spot about this and I found myself lacking a lot of the necessary vocabulary
Playing limbo
I think she's supposed to be a cat
Tanya getting mobbed
Monsters everywhere!
Break dancing
A traditional Ukrainian game of passing a handkerchief in a circle
The break dancing boys. They asked me to show them some of my moves
So, yeah, fun all around.
Tanya and I talking to the orphans about the history of Halloween and how it's celebrated in America. We were kind of put on the spot about this and I found myself lacking a lot of the necessary vocabulary
Playing limbo
I think she's supposed to be a cat
Tanya getting mobbed
Monsters everywhere!
Break dancing
A traditional Ukrainian game of passing a handkerchief in a circle
The break dancing boys. They asked me to show them some of my moves
So, yeah, fun all around.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Ukraine: What's Been Going On (Pics)
Happy Halloween! I’m not celebrating it in any real sense, but I have been invited to the orphanage tonight to see their “Scariest Costume” contest. Should be fun.
Yesterday was the first snow in Zhytomyr. This might be more welcome if we had heat in my apartment building. Some parts of Zhytomyr have heat, some don’t and no one seems to know when the rest of the city will get theirs (this is the favorite topic of conversation at the institute, though). I have a space heater that keeps my bedroom warm and otherwise I just stay in my three layers of clothes. Yesterday I even managed my first multi-layer quick change. Since I had pulled off my “casual” layers (long-sleeve shirt, fleece, Harley-Davidson hoodie) all at once, they were still intact on the chair when I stripped off my “nice” layers (long sleeve shirt, dress shirt and tie, nice sweater) all at once and pulled on my casual layers as if it were one item of clothing.
***
Sarah left just ahead of the real cold, and now she’s back in the states. Soon she’ll be going to India where she has a seasonal job as a kitchen manager at a yoga retreat. In India, I don’t think they have a word for cold.
Since I was teaching we really couldn’t leave Zhytomyr, but here’s some of what we did:
Sarah was missing yoga while she was here, so we went with my friend Tatyana to her yoga class one evening. The instructor had not shown up (for the second class in a row) and an 18 year-old girl who said she knew a lot of yoga volunteered to teach it. What she was showing us was more of a warm-up for a dance class, though, including kicks. We’d be in a dance stretch and someone would ask what the pose was called and she say “I don’t really know, but it’s good for your legs.” The most yoga it got was mid-way through when she asked us to sit in a lotus position and chant “Om”. The problem was that one of the older guys in the class (who was one of several that spent the entire class telling her that she was doing this or that wrong) was trying to convince her that she was doing her “Om”s too quickly. Of course we’re following her, but then while we’re all going “Oooom” he’s doing “Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom”. He was literally trying to out om her. Finally the class broke down entirely due to their tug of war and Tatyana suggested that Sarah show us some things since she was very into yoga and had been doing it for a while. This is how Sarah, who speaks only English, ended up teaching a half-hour yoga class to Ukrainians…and doing a good job, too.
***
All the decked-out Ukrainian women convinced Sarah to attempt to beautify. Since they're so cheap, she got a facial, a pedicure and a manicure while here. My friend Irina took her to all these things and then taught her about the joys of make-up.
***
On my one day off we took a day-trip to Kyiv to see the Percheska Lavra (Caves Monastary)
***
I took both Sarah and Amy to visit both an old USSR collective farm and to the mass graves from the Holocaust. Above and the next three below are the remains of the farm, where villagers still graze their horses. During Soviet times, farmers were required to keep all their livestock and mill all their grain here. It was unproductive, but let the Soviets be able to take their cut.
Above and below are pictures of the mass graves
***
I got interviewed on television. The local news station had a camera set up by a statue of Sergei Korolov that’s near my apartment. Korolov, if you’ve never heard of him, designed Mir, the first manmade object in space, and also designed the ship that let Yuri Gagarin become the first man in space (yes, we did loose that part of the space race). Having been raised in Zhytomyr, Korolov is my city’s favorite son. They stopped Sarah and I as we walked past and asked me if I knew who the statue was of. It was Korolov’s birthday, and they were doing a piece on him, seeing what Zhytomyr residents did and did not know about him. I said I did and said who he was and they could tell from my accent that I wasn’t Ukrainian. They asked where I was from and I told them and they seemed excited to interview an American. They then asked if I knew why Korolov was famous. Here, my Russian ran into trouble. I didn’t know the word for “design” or “spaceship”, so what the citizens of Zhytomyr heard last night was an American telling them that their local hero had “prepared the first car to go into space.”
***
Sarah and I took two of the bikes we got with the grant and did a circuit across the condemned bridge, down to a path by the river, along the river to the man-made waterfall/dam (where sewage is also dumped) and then we carried the bikes across the river to ride up to the WWII momument (with the eternal flame that wasn't burning) and then back to my apartment. Done at sunset, the whole route was gorgeous.
Here you can see the WWII memorial in the distance as we bike along the Teatriv River
Me, carrying my bike in front of the waterfall
***
Sarah was kind enough to talk to a English-education group at the local library. She brought photos and told them about her work as a wilderness ranger in Alaska
***
This is what I have been doing since Sarah left:
It is the entire British Councils Recertification Curriculum (what we teach at the Institute), re-written. Since almost every teacher attending courses at the institute has already done the curriculm (they have to get recertified every five years), we needed a new one, which is essentially the results of me developing my lesson plans over the past two years. It took a week to get everything typed up and organized, but there you go: one copy for me, one for Peace Corps, one for the institute and three for the new Teacher Trainers that just arrived in Ukraine last month (and whom I worked with and gave feedback to when they came to give practice lessons at the institute two days ago)
Here's some pics from my lastest group of teachers:
Doing a reading/creative thinking exercise
Rewriting a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip
Working with flashcards
***
And that's about it! I'll leave with one final photo:
My friend Amy wanted to visit Zhytomyr to hang out and climb and asked to bring a friend. "Is she cute?" I asked, jokingly. Turned out she was. She was a New Zealander (Kiwi) named Livvy who was living in Prague and met Amy, who lives in Ukraine, when Amy was in New Zealand. Confused yet? Anyway, it turns out she actually was cute and I got to make out with my first Kiwi. Between her and "Lord of The Rings", I'd really like to visit New Zealand now.
Me, Livvy and Amy before going to a club
Yesterday was the first snow in Zhytomyr. This might be more welcome if we had heat in my apartment building. Some parts of Zhytomyr have heat, some don’t and no one seems to know when the rest of the city will get theirs (this is the favorite topic of conversation at the institute, though). I have a space heater that keeps my bedroom warm and otherwise I just stay in my three layers of clothes. Yesterday I even managed my first multi-layer quick change. Since I had pulled off my “casual” layers (long-sleeve shirt, fleece, Harley-Davidson hoodie) all at once, they were still intact on the chair when I stripped off my “nice” layers (long sleeve shirt, dress shirt and tie, nice sweater) all at once and pulled on my casual layers as if it were one item of clothing.
***
Sarah left just ahead of the real cold, and now she’s back in the states. Soon she’ll be going to India where she has a seasonal job as a kitchen manager at a yoga retreat. In India, I don’t think they have a word for cold.
Since I was teaching we really couldn’t leave Zhytomyr, but here’s some of what we did:
Sarah was missing yoga while she was here, so we went with my friend Tatyana to her yoga class one evening. The instructor had not shown up (for the second class in a row) and an 18 year-old girl who said she knew a lot of yoga volunteered to teach it. What she was showing us was more of a warm-up for a dance class, though, including kicks. We’d be in a dance stretch and someone would ask what the pose was called and she say “I don’t really know, but it’s good for your legs.” The most yoga it got was mid-way through when she asked us to sit in a lotus position and chant “Om”. The problem was that one of the older guys in the class (who was one of several that spent the entire class telling her that she was doing this or that wrong) was trying to convince her that she was doing her “Om”s too quickly. Of course we’re following her, but then while we’re all going “Oooom” he’s doing “Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom”. He was literally trying to out om her. Finally the class broke down entirely due to their tug of war and Tatyana suggested that Sarah show us some things since she was very into yoga and had been doing it for a while. This is how Sarah, who speaks only English, ended up teaching a half-hour yoga class to Ukrainians…and doing a good job, too.
***
All the decked-out Ukrainian women convinced Sarah to attempt to beautify. Since they're so cheap, she got a facial, a pedicure and a manicure while here. My friend Irina took her to all these things and then taught her about the joys of make-up.
***
On my one day off we took a day-trip to Kyiv to see the Percheska Lavra (Caves Monastary)
***
I took both Sarah and Amy to visit both an old USSR collective farm and to the mass graves from the Holocaust. Above and the next three below are the remains of the farm, where villagers still graze their horses. During Soviet times, farmers were required to keep all their livestock and mill all their grain here. It was unproductive, but let the Soviets be able to take their cut.
Above and below are pictures of the mass graves
***
I got interviewed on television. The local news station had a camera set up by a statue of Sergei Korolov that’s near my apartment. Korolov, if you’ve never heard of him, designed Mir, the first manmade object in space, and also designed the ship that let Yuri Gagarin become the first man in space (yes, we did loose that part of the space race). Having been raised in Zhytomyr, Korolov is my city’s favorite son. They stopped Sarah and I as we walked past and asked me if I knew who the statue was of. It was Korolov’s birthday, and they were doing a piece on him, seeing what Zhytomyr residents did and did not know about him. I said I did and said who he was and they could tell from my accent that I wasn’t Ukrainian. They asked where I was from and I told them and they seemed excited to interview an American. They then asked if I knew why Korolov was famous. Here, my Russian ran into trouble. I didn’t know the word for “design” or “spaceship”, so what the citizens of Zhytomyr heard last night was an American telling them that their local hero had “prepared the first car to go into space.”
***
Sarah and I took two of the bikes we got with the grant and did a circuit across the condemned bridge, down to a path by the river, along the river to the man-made waterfall/dam (where sewage is also dumped) and then we carried the bikes across the river to ride up to the WWII momument (with the eternal flame that wasn't burning) and then back to my apartment. Done at sunset, the whole route was gorgeous.
Here you can see the WWII memorial in the distance as we bike along the Teatriv River
Me, carrying my bike in front of the waterfall
***
Sarah was kind enough to talk to a English-education group at the local library. She brought photos and told them about her work as a wilderness ranger in Alaska
***
This is what I have been doing since Sarah left:
It is the entire British Councils Recertification Curriculum (what we teach at the Institute), re-written. Since almost every teacher attending courses at the institute has already done the curriculm (they have to get recertified every five years), we needed a new one, which is essentially the results of me developing my lesson plans over the past two years. It took a week to get everything typed up and organized, but there you go: one copy for me, one for Peace Corps, one for the institute and three for the new Teacher Trainers that just arrived in Ukraine last month (and whom I worked with and gave feedback to when they came to give practice lessons at the institute two days ago)
Here's some pics from my lastest group of teachers:
Doing a reading/creative thinking exercise
Rewriting a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip
Working with flashcards
***
And that's about it! I'll leave with one final photo:
My friend Amy wanted to visit Zhytomyr to hang out and climb and asked to bring a friend. "Is she cute?" I asked, jokingly. Turned out she was. She was a New Zealander (Kiwi) named Livvy who was living in Prague and met Amy, who lives in Ukraine, when Amy was in New Zealand. Confused yet? Anyway, it turns out she actually was cute and I got to make out with my first Kiwi. Between her and "Lord of The Rings", I'd really like to visit New Zealand now.
Me, Livvy and Amy before going to a club
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