Forty-six new Peace Corps trainees just got in and are on their way to their training clusters. I'm no longer a newbie! Man, it's hard to believe I've been here for more than five months.
For whatever reason, Peace Corps has the trainees go straight from the airport to Prilosok and from there to clusters, so I probably won't meet any of them for three months, when they get out of training. It was the same for us; I only met three current PCVs while in training: our two cluster mentors and the guy that happened to be engaged to our language teacher's roomate.
I remember how excited and nervous I was when I first got here: nothing made sense, everything people said to you was gibberish because I didn't know one word of the language. And I got here at the end of fall, when it was beautiful and all the trees were orange and yellow and the sidewalks were full of people pushing strollers. Their first impression of Ukraine is this bleak, ice-covered country, everyone huddled into their jackets and walking fast.
Of course, a month into training, it's going to start getting warmer and by the time they go to site, it will be beautiful. I had to watch it get progressively colder and darker, which was a bit of a morale killer. In any case, I'm excited and nervous for them, knowing they're about to go through everything I went through, the good and the bad. Of course, they missed the revolution! Best of luck to them!