Ever heard of the Canada Corps? Well, neither had I. You may not have heard of couchsurfing.com, either, but between both I ended up with two girls I had never met before staying the weekend at my apartment.
Couchsurfing.com is a networking website that lets people offer their couches for travelers to crash on and vice versa. I offered up my couch willingly, but never thought anyone would come to Zhytomyr.
Canada Corps is like the Canadian version of Peace Corps, except their volunteers serve only six months, have no centralized leadership in country and get next to no language training. Two girls, Shelley and Amy, are Canada Corps volunteers that live in the oblast next to mine and, finding me on Couchsurfing, came in for a weekend of climbing and clubbing.
It was a rock star weekend: John, a good friend of mine and fellow climbing enthusiast from the same oblast as Shelley and Amy, came in with them and the four of us went nonstop. Three hours after John and the girls got off the marshrutka we were at a rave and stayed there until 4 AM. We were up four hours later and on the rock (wet from a rainstorm and cold) but still had a great day of climbing. We all took a two hour nap, had a pre-party at another volunteer’s apartment (and discovered that there were even more volunteers in town) and then fifteen of us took over a club and didn’t go to sleep until 5:30 AM. The next day: we were woken up by SUNLIGHT! Overcast days have been the norm and John and I were shouting “Blue sky! Blue sky!” and were back on the rock by that afternoon. I don’t think I was really awake while I was climbing, but I’m pretty sure I had a lot of fun.
It was also, sadly, the last weekend of climbing. It’s simply too cold. My hands were numb halfway up any given route and it especially sucked when I was lead climbing. So I’m done for the winter. That is, until we get the climbing wall finished!