March & April

Spring is here! but really spring here means a lot of rain and still the occassional snow. but more and more everyday i see green popping up and that atleast, makes me happy, even if i still have to wear multiple layers.

much has happened in these past 2 months, so lets see what i can remember.....

MARCH

• the 8th of March is international women's day. which is celebrated in pretty much every country except for the USA. mmmmhmmmmm. yea. we got days off from school, students bring you presents, you eat a lot of cake. might just be the best holiday ever. to celebrate this marvelous day i ventured to a neighboring PCV's site where the 5 of us lovely ladies celebrated our womanhood ( read: booze, food, and science experiments)
• I tried to stay low key for most of march because spring break i went to istanbul!!! i went with 2 other PCV's (Kimberley and Kristin) and we met up with some more there. Istanbul is a beautiful city with so much culture! beautiful mosques everywhere, delicious food, friendly people. We ventured to the asian side of the city and found this great bazaar and even did a turkish bath. pretty much a turkish bath involves many half naked people, hot stone tables, and shampoo. ill leave it at that.
• and of course i had my usual routine of teaching and clubs. 

APRIL (first half-ish anyways)

• April started off great with Emma! my first niece was born! yay! 
• Pesach:
• i was invited to go to kyiv to celebrate Passover with friends of some PCV friends i have. we celebrated the first 2 nights with 2 completely different seders. one was super orthodox and strict the next was super ukrainian and liberal. both were equally enjoyable!
• after the seders i got to go back to my friends super tiny village ( 650 people!) and experience his village. the highlight: milking a goat! or at least attempting too. its not as easy as it looks. 
• last week was ukrainian easter ( they are orthodox and run on a different calendar). i experienced this last year and this year was pretty similar. i woke up at 3 am to go to church with my counterpart and her family. after standing in the rain and getting blessed by the priest we went back to their house and had breakfast. but its not really breakfast when you are drinking wine and eating all kinds of meats and veggies right? then i came home and slept for hours only to wake up and feast some more with my host baba and her family. 
• ive also discovered the "sercret" jewish population of my town! im pretty excited. and when i say "secret" i mean it was a secret to me because i didnt know they existed before now. oh and one of the woman of the group ( yea theres a group) reassured me that there are some young unmarried nice men in this group. so i guess our fears of me returning old and alone are no longer!! 

this weekend we are holding a seder for volunteers in kyiv and im pretty excited. hopefully it turns out well, especially since we are cooking all the food ourselves. but dont fear, ive already volunteered to only boil the eggs. i think we are safe. 

Brocclichka!

finally, my littlest broccoli has entered the world. i couldnt be happier! actually if i was there i couldnt be happier. everyday there is a moment or two when i miss home. you know something reminds you of a person, or a specific memory. but usually it passes. now that shes here and so far away i miss home everyday and it lasts longer than a moment. luckily i live in the time of internet and can see pictures of her whenever i want. 

brocclichka, i love you more than words. <3

peace corps.

what did you think i do?

cont....

January!

in the month of january i think taught classes for a total of.......8 days. 

school was canceled the last week of jan due to the freezing temps. i cant say i minded not having to walk to school with the fear of losing my limbs to frostbite. 

besides that january also was the month of language refresher. pretty much it was a week camp for the volunteers to come and practice/work on their russian/ukrainian skills. or... be reminded that you have no language skills ( as in my case). though it was really nice to be the student instead of the teachers and i have to say the pc peeps put in a lot of work and it was a good time! not to mention that the facility had hot showers and free internet! also a week of free food... yes please!

also in jan is my bday. it happens like that every year it seems...

after language refresher a lot of the volunteers went to kyiv for the weekend. the original plan was for ballet and bagels with my friend who's bday is the day after mine. but.. after going out the night before it didnt really happen so we just settled for bagels. and that was just fine. BAGELS!!! we also went to a great falafel place that was discovered by another volunteer. the owner in fact speaks no ukrainian or russian and perfect english. he even claims to have lived in laguna hills! what!!!! yea it might just be my new favorite place. that and the bagels of course....

feb!

feb has also gone by really fast and that might be in part because i havent taught that much this month either! the first week myself, my counterpart and one my students went to a pepfar (presidents emergency plan for aids relief) conference. on a more serious note HIV is a huge problem in ukraine. it has the highest infection rate in europe. i would have said before that i knew a lot of hiv/aids but now i really feel confident in my ability to talk to others about it and educate and spread actual factual information. i can also talk about it in ukrainian now! hopefully my school and i will be starting a project in this field soon. 

since then i went to a sauna with some friends and gotten sick :( the temperature is rising and im hoping that soon it will be constantly above freezing and i wont need to wear 4 layers of tights and leggings and socks to go outside!  i cant wait for spring and sunshine and fruits and veggies! 

oh and im at 11 months! 

and now you have been...

UPDATED!

pow. 

oh hey 2012. 

there you are. 

its been 2ish months since i posted anything so heres a sum up of the happenings and hopefully the beginning of more frequent posts ( ill say it until it becomes a reality)

trips

BUDAPEST

budapest is an amazing city that i highly recommend to everyone! being that it was the first place we had ventured to while being here, we of course tried to soak all things hungarian and of course anything else we could find that is not available in ukraine. this led to .... many many bags of cheetos, subway ( as in sandwiches!) thai food, and spices! our many budapest(ian) adventures including: walking tour, the baths, underground(literally) club, a romanian band, ruin pubs, locals, london teenagers, and sandwiches! 

SERBIA and ROMANIA

the trip i took over winter was pretty awesome. first we flew to belgrade, serbia on the tiniest baby planes ever invented. if you know me and my "love" for flying then you can just imagine how fast my heart was racing and how much i must have sweat. but its winter so.. i considered it like exercise.... 

belgrade is an awesome city. i also highly recommend it! its alittle harder to get to but it hasnt become a tourist trap that other big western european cities. the people were great, the food was pretty good ( not for vegetarians though....) and we met some cool people in our hostel. there are still bombed out buildings from the war and hearing stories about it from our walking tour guide was unreal. 

we took the train from belgrade to romania and got stuck at the border for 3 hours! they ripped apart our train in search of cigarettes and alcohol. and they ended up finding like 1000 cartons. cigarettes are super cheap in serbia and romania is an eu country ( or becoming im not entirely sure where they are in the process) so cigarettes are much more expensive. needless to say smuggling is huge!

once we actually got into the country we we visited 4 cities. Romania is a beautiful country for sure! we went to dracula's castle (ooooooooooooooooh) and saw the narrowest ( or one of) streets in europe (highlight of the trip!) on our way back to ukraine we missed the one bus that goes between the 2 countries and had to hitchhike back. 

after that we headed to l'viv. there we met up with a few other volunteers, had some doughnut for ukrainian christmas then headed home!

and of course on my 8 hour train ride i got to share my wagon with a school field trip. 30 something 11 year olds running around on a train. gloriousssssssssss. 

potatoes!

In September my school gave me about 50 kilos of potatoes. 50 kilos... 100lbs? i think... anyways its alot. Now winter has hit and veggies and fruits here are at a minimum. That combined with my extreme laziness and i think you can guess what i eat for dinner every night!

You know the scene in Forest Gump when Buba is talking about all the things you can do with shrimp? Ive always thought that potatoes are the shrimp of the veggie world, yet i still find myself only eating maybe 3 variations of potatoes. 1. mashed. 2. roasted 3. boiled.

Why am i devoting so much space to potatoes? some deep, thoughtful metaphor, right? that maybe just maybe potatoes represent more than just what i eat for dinner every night. That potatoes represent Ukraine and why ive come here and what im doing, and overcoming?

......... no. i just eat a lot of potatoes.

As promised here is a pic. We made these for thanksgiving at Caitlyn's. Can you guess which one is mine?

This weekend i "rearranged" some furniture in my room and i feel revitalized! 

i dont know what happened to november. it was here and gone before i realized it. I have a post written about Budapest but ill wait til i can upload it with pics and then there is thanksgiving too! 

ive discovered a favorite ukrainian candy and also that i have the ability to skype! pretty good things for the cold dark winter nights that have descended. 

the semester is over in less than 3 weeks and that seems crazy to me. im approaching my 9th month in Ukraine and i feel like i just got here. The next group of volunteers get to site in a few weeks and i will no longer be a newbie. I will be expected to actually know how things work here...though i dont think that will ever happen. 

i think every time i post something i say something to the effect that ill try and be better about posting. but... i dont really think that will happen.  

so heres to potatoes, positive attitudes, and 2012!