PST Update #2

I have, again, pretty negligent of my blog. My apologies! I am going to take a page from a fellow PCT and update you via FB statuses and random thoughts I have had since last posting :)


April 19: "Someone write out my lesson plan for me? My motivation has gone missing."
April 22: "My host mom either just told me she is cleaning my room tomorrow or doing my laundry tomorrow.  To whichever one, I responded “No, I’ll do it” in Russian. We went back and forth a bit on this. It ended when she bear hugged me from behind telling me she would do it while I was at school tomorrow.

Either way, I am tidying my room tonight so I don’t feel like an ass-hat.

Also, my host mom is rather awesome."

Visuals for 2nd grade.

April 23: "I am going to be a sweet artist when it comes to teaching materials by the time I am done with Peace Corps!"
April 24: "This morning's breakfast consisted of: mashed potatoes, fish, cabbage and cucumber salad, and a really sweet cheesecake type of dessert. Yum! Well, minus the fish (kind of)."
April 25: "Today I decided that I will probably not be cutting my hair for the next two years. Hippie hair, here I come!"
April 28: "Today I taught English to 2nd graders with minimal English skills. Keep in mind I have minimal Russian skills and far less Ukrainian skills. So hard, but it went fairly well."
April 28: "Ukraine has the best apple juice I have ever tasted. Plus it comes in a juice box!"

In the Metro! Didn't get lost once :)

April 30: "And tomorrow I shall go to Kyiv to meet up with other Group 41 trainees for a day of whosits and whatnots.  It will be interesting to navigate the Metro with my having only been on it once.  Heck, even that once was my first time on a subway ever! Yay adventure!

Also, I don’t like writing lesson plans so much.  Do it for me?"

May 1: "Как по-русски "My feet are killing me!"? Because they are. Ouch!" (The result of walking around Kyiv all day...)

Me and some PCTs from another cluster in Kyiv.

May 4: "Host mom just told me I eat like a cat with the small amounts I eat. Good thing I like cats :)"

May 4: "I got my first piece of mail today! Funny thing is that is came from Malawi (from Miss Renee). You are slacking, family and friends!"

May 8: "I love salad. Radishes, cucumbers, parsley, green onion, a little salt and sunflower oil= party in my tummy."

May 10: "‎3 shots of vodka at 6pm? Okay, host mom, okay. Also, it was nice to see a cluster mate peer pressured with me. There is no "I" in team? :)"

May 11: "I watched 2 and 3 year olds practice a dance to this song today at the House Of Culture in my training town.

ADORABLE.

And then I found myself surprised that out of ten Americans, I was the only one who had heard the English version. Perhaps I am an internet nerd."

May 13: "I am going to make the host family banana pancakes and scrambled eggs for breakfast tomorrow :)"

TEFL PST University

May 15: "PST University tomorrow! See you there, TEFLs!"

May 17: "Vomit. Motion sickness can die now. I usually don't get it, but I was not smart and did lesson plan tutoring on the marshutka ride home. Reading+writing+moving vehicle=unhappy body."

May 19: "I WILL be tattooed by this man before I leave Ukraine. Holy shit this is amazing work. Who wants to start contributing a new tattoo fund? :)http://www.facebook.com/pages/

Dmitriy-Samohin/169637926412966?sk=wall"

May 20: "YES! I have access to my movies again! All it took was taking both hard drives out of their cases and changing out a piece! Good thing I will never have to use both at once..."

Picnic in the forest above town!

May 22:" I love that I have been hearing thunder throughout the day. I also attended a pretty sweet picnic today. Obukhov clusters for the win!"
May 23: "Teaching 10th grade about Las Vegas tomorrow. Should be interesting if I can find a sweet video!"

May 25: "Site placement interview was today!"

May 26: "Who knew one sentence could be so hard to say!? мы желаем выпускникам всего наилучшего в будущей жизни. I will master this by tomorrow for school!"

May 27: "I could get used to this getting flowers from students thing. Also, I didn't bomb my Russian sentence!"

I guess that nearly brings me to today.  This weekend has been spent preparing flash cards for my Language Proficiency Interview (LPI) which is happening on June 9 and doing some final prep work for my cluster's English Summer Camp on Healthy Lifestyles. Since we were split between two schools, we get to do a 3 day summer camp twice! In addition to spending 4 hours a day this week at the schools, I have 3 hours of Russian each day plus 2 one-hour Russian tutorings and a visit from the PC office. In between this I need to continue to work on studying for my LPI. I am not so confident in my Russian speaking abilities, so I would really love to do well on this. One thing I am pretty awesome with in Russian: grammar. My LCF (Language and Cultural Facilitator) has dubbed me the "Queen of Grammar." All I need to do is commit words (and more importantly, how to say them) to memory! 

I only have 2 weeks of PST left and I have a feeling it will fly by! I believe the following is my tentative plan of events:

This Week:

Monday- Gymnasium Summer Camp with 8th graders (9-1p); Russian (2-5p)

Tuesday -Gymnasium Summer Camp/Comm. Project with 8th graders (9-1p); Russian (2-5p); Tutoring (5-6p)

Wednesday- Gymnasium Summer Camp with 8th graders (9-1p); Group Interview w/ PC office (2-3:30); Russian (3:30-5:30); Safety and Security Session (5:30-6p)

Thursday- School 1 Summer Camp with 10th graders (8:30-12:15p); Russian (2-5p): Tutoring (6-7p)

Friday-  School 1 Summer Camp/Comm. Project with 10th graders (8:30-12:15p); Russian (2-5p)

Saturday- School 1 Summer Camp with 10th graders (8:30-12:15p)

Sunday- Day off! *phew!*

Next Week: (throw in 2 hours of tutoring sometime in here plus some other administrative things)

Monday- 2 hours of Russian

Tuesday- 2 hours of Russian

Wednesday- 2 hours of Russian

Thursday- Language Proficiency Interview; Self Directed Learning Presentation (?)

Friday-Trip to Kyiv to go to the English Teaching Resource center.

Saturday- Packing

Sunday- Say goodbye to host family!

Week After That:

Monday: Start of Swearing-In Conference!; I find out where I will be living for the next two years and where I will be teaching!! (1-7p)

Tuesday: Meet my counterpart; info sessions (8-7p!)

Wednesday: HIV seminars (8-7p!)

Thursday: Info sessions and Swearing In as a PCV (8:45-3p); Leave for site!

Day Four

I managed to catch my brother online today and he forcefully convinced me to video call him with Skype despite the fact that video chat mildly freaks me out due to my own insecurities in regards to not photographing nicely.  I sucked it up though.

I haven't seen Matt in a couple years, not since he visited Las Vegas with a friend of his from Boston College, and even then I didn't see him much.  Matt is my unstep, never step-brother brother, and yes, that makes sense :)  When my family first moved to Las Vegas when I was three, Matt and his family lived across the street and we became instant buddies since he was only a few month younger than I.  A few year later my mom and his dad wound up together despite the upset it caused with our other parental units.  I also managed to inherit two other brothers from the situation, one older and one younger.  Our parents were together for over 15 years and never married and then split a few years ago.  Hence the unstep, never step-brother brother label.


Anyway... He has been living in Columbia doing various internships in regards to their government for the past 15 months, which I think it pretty awesome of him.  He is one person who has been over the moon excited for me to go into the Peace Corps, which makes me feel better knowing I have someone beyond excited for me without telling me they are going to miss me (I never know how to quite respond to that one....)  We got to talking about integrating into a new community and culture and I found it amazing that despite his 7 years of studying Spanish, he couldn't understand a thing anyone was saying.  This actually makes me feel pretty good about the language aspect of things.  I also find myself amused that he has a hard time speaking English on the occasions that he does because he conducts every piece of his life in Spanish.  He even goes so far as to not hang out with Americans or other native English speakers he encounters because he wants that language and cultural immersion.

That is how I want my PC experience to be.  Obviously I want to be friends with other PCVs, but I don't want it to get in the way of my immersion like I know it can.  I have the ability to be a loner and homebody on far too many occasions, so I am glad I am taking on this whole 365 thing since it seems like a great way to get me out of the house and interacting with people while in Ukraine which, too, will help with the immersion thing.

I bought my first thing for Ukraine today.

A hat.

It has balls on it.

 I am not quite sure how I feel about having giant balls on strings attached to my hat, but they sure are fun to play with! I love my easily amused nature.



This made me wonder... What was/will be your first Peace Corps purchase for service?

Obviously, mine is probably not the first thing someone declares that they need to buy when going to Ukraine, but damn it, this purchase was a matter of circumstances.  Work circumstances.  As I was walking to the backroom to clock out after my shift, I passed by this nifty hat.  "Well, that should keep the babushkas off my back about wearing a hat" I thought.  Not to mention that it should help with the whole not-having-my-ears freeze-off thing as well.

Spreaking of buying stuff for service, I have totally been building up a Favorites folder of things I will be needing/wanting.  But mostly needing :)

Ukraine (no "The")

So today will be the day I actually sit down with my big blue packet as it is my first day off since receiving it.  I am going to tackle the resume and aspiration statement first and then begin filling out forms.  Is it weird that I enjoy filling out forms? 

I am really stoked that I got my invite so far in advance, however it also means that I haven't gotten around to ordering a certified copy of my birth certificate, so getting my visa and passport stuff in will take at least a month! Le sigh.  Upside is that Kortni informed me that I could do my own passport pictures as long as they follw certain guidelines! Sweet deal since this photographer is by no means photogenic herself.

In other news...
Since getting my invite, I have been sharing the news of where I'll be heading off to March and have been telling those who repeat my desination "no 'The'!"  It doesn't work so well though :)

To any other Ukraine March invitees, SHOW YOURSELVES! :)  There is a Facebook Page for our groups (41 & 42).  I would have created a Group, but apparently those are now only for people you are already friends with.  This is kind of a bummer as I dislike that I cannot post as myself! Oh well!

I was invited on the 9th and received my invitation on the 24th!

And so I shall be heading off to Ukraine in March as a Secondary Education TEFL Teacher!

I was so stoked to see the UPS man (well, I heard his truck first) that I totally teared up with excitement. 

And now, for some invitation kit exploration..