At this point both Andys and I are excited to FINALLY be leaving D.C. and start our Eastern Europe experience. The 2 always make fun of my oversize luggage, which the lady in Lufthangsa was SUPER nice to excuse the excess 4lbs in each bag. When we arrived in Frankfurt for our connection, we experienced the most random things. Security lines closing down for 15 minutes and dozens of people angrily waiting to be the first back in line, and taking a shuttle to the plane (no terminals in Frankfurt, you literally take a tram to the plane) were by far very interesting. Andy is hilarious though and always kept me laughing so the 12 hour flight wasn’t all that bad.
The cool three-
Yeah, it sucked being the only 3 left behind, but it had its advantages. When we arrived to Kyiv, we didn’t have a bus waiting for us to take us to the retreat center… we had a PC SUV pick us up and take us to a hotel in Kyiv, blocks away from the PC office. That same day we met Ukrainian PC staff, one who was Dr. Valerie and was happy to stab us with Hepatitis A, B, C shots. Afterward a volunteer getting ready to complete her 2 year service took us out to dinner and gave us all these tips on survival in Ukraine…. Must thank her greatly for that.
It’s now Friday September 24, 2010 and somehow it doesn’t even feel it’s the weekend. Granted, we lost a whole day on the plane, and we’re still jet lagged so we don’t know what’s going on anymore, except today we’re going out to our villages to meet our host family… we’re both excited and nervous.
I learn that Andrew & Tammela are in my cluster group along with 2 other, so there are familiar faces and I feel at ease. We’re going to be 2 hours out of Kyiv in a “town” called Kolychivka, studying Ukrainian & teacher training for the next 3 months.
My host mom is this 52 year old woman named Valentina, a very nice and humble woman. Her husband on the other hand…. I didn’t meet him until Saturday, (I’m curious where he was) and he didn’t give off a good first impression. Maybe it’s because he’s sick, or that’s what she says. By the way, I DON’T understand Ukrainian just yet so our communicating methods are sign language and some form of Pictionary. We manage though and we’ve both learned about each other.
The next day was Andrew and I’s first day at our cluster group and I meet the other 2 people I’ll be seeing a lot of. Kate and another Andrew, both really nice & chill people. Today we went into Chernigov which is a 10 minute bus ride from our town (Chernigov is a bigger city with a lot of amenities I don’t have access to in my village) and to my surprise, we run into at least 4 other clusters. I’m so happy to see some of these people and we quickly exchange numbers as soon as our phones are activated. Unfortunately I didn’t get to run into some of the people I would have liked to have seen and ask them how they’re doing. But I’m sure they’re doing great. Perhaps someday it’ll happen and we’ll get to discuss the content of this awesome book I’m reading.
What awesome book were you reading?
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