a bit of grace in our plunder.

A christmas holiday in three parts:

I: Christmas day. I spent the day observing classes in school and then was able to watch a christmas program put on by the younger kids. After the program I got everything ready and took an hour mashrutka ride to Susnivka a village an hour north where I enjoyed a fantastic dinner party with a fellow volunteer in community development annnd her ukrainian co-workers. We laughed, ate, drank limoncello and vodka and had a fabulous time.

II: the day after christmas. I return to Lviv opting to walk home from teh bus station (good choice) the snow was melting and it was puddly and beautiful and there was much teh fresh air. I hung out and skyped with the family in the afternoon and then puttered around the house. Until later in the evening where I dropped my beautiful terabyte harddrive which is now out of commission. I'm taking donations for a new one. My parents called again at 4 in teh morning and I got to hear a little from Amanda my college room mate and the other kiddos in the house. Very very nice.

III: Two days after christmas. I hung out doing chores in teh day like shopping getting ready for a party and other stuff. I did some more laundry etc. etc. etc. ANd then went to Linda's house where I met lots of cool and interesting people and had a fabulous time with fabulous food. I did walk to Linda's which again good choice for teh walk but bad choice forgetting my directions. I got a little lost but nothing too horrible. It ended up taking me an hour and a half to get there instead of about the hour or 1:15 it should have but I'm ok with that. I had a fantastic time. I enjoyed a cab ride back (15 hrivs) aka a third of my daily allowance but worth it for the luxury of a car ride at 10pm. I talked to the homies at the house again on skype and enjoyed a wonderful evening.

With the crashing of my hard drive I've begun to get really creative with my time as i can't sit down and watch a 30 min tv show or movie everyday. I'm budgeting myself with books, draw, clean, read and have started doing pilates and tae bo as they're the only videos I had teh sense to drag over to my computer and aren't on my hard drive. I'm looking into the exciting world of theraband exercises that the peace corps gave us. I haven't brought much else in teh way of hobbies other than crosswords which I'm planning on doing tonite. But we'll see how exciting things can get. I'm on a 45 griv (aka about 6 dollar budget) for each day. So I can't really go and buy things to help me with my hobbies. I have a crochet hook but no yarn. I brainstorm a lot. Any ideas are gladly appreciated. Especially as on Thursday vacation starts and I won't even have classes to fill my days for at least half of it.

Love you all!

Have a Happenin' Holiday

Hope all of you that celebrate are having a wonderful time with family and friends.

I have successfully completed one whole week here at my new site. I've started meeting the kids, and I forgot how much a small child saying hello to you and making the effort to speak English when it's not their native language can brighten your day. Either way, I'm really happy at the new school meeting new teachers. My vice principal even brought me some delicious home made pickles one day. I feel so very safe and taken care of here. Tomorrow, I'm venturing on my first small travel to a village called Susnivka to visit a volunteer there for Christmas. And hopefully, I'll get back on Saturday so that I can go to another christmas party on Sunday with people here in L'viv.

Part Two: New Adventures of Kari and the modern conveniences she lives without.

Today for the first time in my peace corps service I washed my clothes by hand. yes folks that's right by hand. And I didn't even have a bucket or a tub. I have a platform shower and I washed my clothes right in there. Granted at the moment they're hanging on my radiators and other doors in my bathroom to dry. This was my Christmas Eve accomplishment. So while you all are sidled up next to teh fires in your homes I'm hanging with my fresh clean laundry and a crossword puzzle loving life and missing my family.

Part Three: Where Kari learns about Great Britain via the amazing cultural source that is the 8th grade textbook.

Nothing says I love English speaking culture like reading a textbook about learning English. I always like to see the differences between what I find in my own actual experience and what the textbook describes. This being said the characters in my French textbook in high school were pretty lame. And most of the people I know can agree about their foreign language texts. However, here at my school we have pretty recent books aka published after 2000. I mean let's be honest they aren't the most acurate and they are concentrated on Great Britain but I'll take it. My favourite quote being one describing the differences between the types of bands you listen to and how to tell if you're rap, pop, indie, metal etc. The indie description: you listen to new british bands that not everyone likes. you buy your clothes at a street fair or second hand store (this makes me laugh) the Rap description: You listen to black bands. You wear bright sunglasses and a hat. (this makes me laugh harder). All in all, I probably couldn't encapsulate the essence of those musical and thus cultural styles in a sentence, but I can't help but get a good giggle out of what was presented.

well happy ribbons and decoration and all that. I miss you all ! xx

A new home for all

Hello everyone! Well, it's official i'm sworn in as a peace corps volunteer and I'm at my new site!! so, the drum roll for all including me last week is where is my new site. WELL, I live in LVIV! Not many of you know about Lviv, understandable, i don't know anything really. Other than the fact that, when I was doing research about Ukraine i found all these articles about the interesting and artful city in the west.

for the record here's my new address:
Kari Stromberg
м. Львів
бул. Липиського 16
індекс 79058
Ukraine

So, what can i tell you in only a few short minutes? i live in an apartment attached to the cantine/cafeteria of the school where all my basic needs are met. The staff here is wonderful and friendly and glad to have me and I'm glad to have them as well. My room is cold, but beyond anything I could have hoped for. I'm grateful to have running hot water and a flush toilet and use of the cafeteria kitchen when i need to cook. They provide me with everything including letting me use the school internet whenever i need. I am the luckiest PCV this side of the Dniper. So, in short, I'm happy I'm excited and I'm spending my birthday today with the PCV in my town who has been here for three years as I venture out and try to navigate the bus system to get to the center of town using limited ukrainian.
love and hugs to all

So here we are. . .

Here it is, my last blog before heading to Kyiv for swearing-in and site announcement where I will become a so-called official peace corps volunteer.

Not much has changed in the last few days, only that I wanted to post some pictures before time ran out. Oh yes, well, I've passed all my tests save for one big one tomorrow. The Language Proficiency Interview. Other than that, life moves and undulates and keeps me busy and I continually miss you all.

Here's a pic of my host family to keep things interesting: that's my host father Yuri, host mom nina and host sister Nastiya

the silver storms that lie ahead

So, I'm coming down to my last week in training here in Nosivka. I will soon be leaving the comfort of my host family, cluster and overly planned schedule and will be heading into the real unknown.

Yesterday, I went to the "Big" city of нижин with Linnea in search for shoes as mine, (the ones babusiya took earlier) are falling apart. The thing about it is, I have big feet. even for the US, I mean a size ten is pretty standard and you can find it anywhere, but still selections etc. can be limited. I knew coming into the Ukraine deal, as I did going in to France, that finding shoes to fit my said large feet would not be easy. But I had been lead to believe that if I made the trip to the big city I would be able to have said larger sized shoes. So, let us begin with getting to the city. We got off at what we thought was THE bazaar, turns out it was a tiny bazaar about a 30 minute walk away from teh bazaar we really wanted to go to. This being said, we walked the rest of teh way to the bazaar, no big deal. Along the way, a woman walking by us tripped, in my sadistic humor of laughing at her, instant karma came along and I ALMOSt, and by almost I mean my foot was less than an inch away, I almost stepped on a dead cat. Yes, a dead cat, on the sidewalk. I took this as well as one can when they almost step on a dead cat. I will say that the day was considerably better than if I had actually stepped on dead cat. All the same, I have learned my lesson in indulging my desire to laugh at others for tripping, now all I see is dead cats.

Second, we go to the bazaar. There are so many booths. I am so excited I see lots of different kinds of boots in so many colors and styles. This is a good day, there are so many more boots than I have ever seen at the bazaar in my home city. After finding a couple booths with styles I liked I asked for a size 10. No luck, I try a few more, still too expensive or no size 10s. I go to the last booth and ask for a boot in a size 10. She legit says to me, "Size 10 (or in this case 40 b/c it's europe) no I don't have that, seriously, go to a store" awesome. So no luck in the shoe department.

After that, Linnea and I went onto the street where there were three men dressed up in furry costumes. One as ALF (yes the 80s tv show puppet), one as from what linnea tells me the squirrel from Ice Age and the other as spiderman. I'm not sure if any of you know this, but I do not in any way appreciate people dressed in furry animal costumes, masks freak me out and I don't know what they're thinking or doing and I just don't like it. I've found that furry people can sense this fear and thus always come after me. I hate this. Alf snuck up on me and I ran away like a three year old child scared of santa. They were trying to pass out puppet show tickets, but i was not having it. Oh well, we did have a nice time at the cafe afterward.

Let's see that's life for now. My final week. A lot of tests etc. coming up. My final lesson with my favourite 6th grade class. AND other awesome stuff. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone at our swearing in retreat in Kyiv and I'm sure that all will be well and happy. I'll try and post just once more before i leave Nosivka or Kyiv in case of no internet at teh site.

How long will you ramble?

OK, so an update a tad overdue. Well, here we are in December. What has changed? Not much. We're all off quarantine now so it's back to the grindstone of language class, teaching class, teaching sessions, our community project (which went off yesterday!) and any other thing they decide to dump on us.

I am happy to say that I have made wonderful friends and am getting along quite well with my host family. I have enjoyed another thanksgiving abroad, for which (with the help of others of course) I made a full thanksgiving dinner, minus gravy because we didn't have any drippings from our obviously free range turkey. As I told my mother, free range is the only option. I try to cancel out the bad environmental policies of Ukraine with the good ones. No one is near as wasteful here as in the US. For the most part, it's all locally grown food, as everyone pretty much supports themselves in the vegetable in fruit department. Everyone composts. And most people walk or bike wherever they may be needing to go.

Beyond that, the redo of our kitchen and most of the downstairs of my host family's house is almost finished. This is great because it means there's a chance that I won't have to stare at topless women as I make my way down to the bathroom. Apparently, Ukrainian papers are filled with topless ads which are now littering and protecting the woodfloor of the bottom floor of teh house.

Ah yes, my host mother and I have had many great conversations over the past few weeks where she has begun to joke with me. A couple days ago when there were no lights and I went into the root cellar to find a jar of pickles she joked with a friend to close the door on me and then she said, "bye bye kari!" Thanks Nina, you're a peach. Actually, she makes me laugh a lot and I am pretty happy to have her around!

In the boring department for you and exciting department for me, I finished my interview and will soon find out where I will be placed. By soon I mean, I'm actually leaving in two weeks so I have to find out where I'm moving because I can't live here anymore. They tell us three days before we leave for our new site where we are to live. Again, I said this before I leave. In peace corps, I know pretty much everything that's going to happen it's just a matter of specifics like where, when, etc. These specifics are very important to American life, and I'm learning to live without them in my life here. Also, in my interview I stressed I wanted to be somewhere creative and so I'm hoping an art like school pops up my way. Harder to place us TEFLers in some ways. Specialized schools in arts etc, like the YD people get generally also don't specialize in English and thus don't need us. But I really would like to be somewhere with some kind of art or music program. Drawing albeit corny and middle school pictures has become a great stress relief here.

The highlight of my day, I received a package from my parents containing wool socks and another containing Emergen C of teh raspberry variety. I consider this a small victory over the Ukrainian mail system which I'm not going to lie I have a hate hate relationship with. I appreciate teh fact that it gets mail out and all but my thoughts on pricing and effectiveness have yet to be addressed. I don't plan on changing this, but it's one of those things I'm finding harder to adapt to.

So that's that, a small post about nothing really at all. Oh yeah, I mean, I'll probably post pictures before I leave this city as I won't necessarily have internet at my new site, I'll work on it. I'm slow it happens!
love and hugs

what happens when we all wake up?

Another few days have passed here in Ukraine. We're awaiting the return of our original LCF (language teacher) and getting ready to come back from the quarantine that has given us this nice three week break from teaching.

I wanted to write a couple things out so that I don't forget them.

ONE: a story about the cat that lives at my host family's house. His name, as I've been told is Bucks, but it varies. Everyone but Tato call him Bucks, Tato calls him Peter Petrovniya and Patrick American Boy. This makes me laugh, really really hard. I know that it is not their purpose to confuse me about the cat's name but that's what's happened. I figure the cat is just as confused as I am considering Half of the family calls him bucks half calls him Peter and I speak to him in English and not ukrainian. Regardless, Bucks has become one of my favourite parts about living here. In fact, I used to hate cats, no longer. . . Bucks is selfish and generally unwilling to give love, but he does enjoy being around me, probably because I scratch under his chin and feed him sausage when no one is looking. I am considering adopting a cat when i get to site mostly becuase I'd like the company and I've heard it's pretty easy to get them back the US if you so choose. Bucks also likes to sleep with me sometimes (as I've found out from talking with my host sister) he will begin the evening in her room and then come to mine in teh middle of the nite. She called him a pervert, I thought it was pretty appropriate. I'm beginning to resent him if only a little because he has decided 1. to hog the bed and 2. to lay on top of me while I'm sleeping sometimes I notice, and sometimes I do not. He however, insists on lying on me but refuses to lay on my feet where I could really use some extra warmth. I think that he doesn't want to lie there because my feet are cold and this negates both the process of me wanting to be warm and him searching for warmth.

Story two: Last nite i watched a movie at a friends house. When I went to leave I noticed my shoes were missing. No one was home, I figured someone in her family had mistaken my shoes for their's and put them on. We couldn't find anyone and as I had to get home I had to put on my friend's shoes (who luckily wears a size 10) and was about to make my way home when the gate was closed. My friend ran back up to get the key when grandma( who only speaks russian) comes strolling along to say goodbye to me, lo and behold grandma is wearing my shoes. Now, this doesn't bother it's just that, I don't know how to say excuse me but I think you're wearing my shoes in Ukrainian let alone in Russian. So, when my friend comes downstairs I explain to her that her grandmother is wearing my shoes and so I would really like to change with her, considering i have to walk back home. . . and then we kind of awkwardly smile at her and point at the shoes to let her know that in fact she is wearing my shoes and I would really like them back. We finally do exchange shoes and I am able to walk home on the dirt road to go home. . . but at least I had my shoes returned and no one was hurt.

That's all for now I'm being surrounded in the computer room! love and hugs

johnny's in the basement mixing up the medecine

U.S. Peace Corps

Ukraine PCV Kari STromberg

PO Box 298

01030 Kyiv, Ukraine

that's my address for the time being. You all can just keep sending things of the flat envelope or bubble mailer variety until my permanent address is posted on this blog.

For the time being, here's the update. . . Tomorrow is my mid-session with my training director where they tell me whether or not I'm really bad at life or just sort of bad, or maybe if at all possible somewhat decent. Let's see not much has been happening since we're all on quarantine. I still have four hours of language and am successfully using 6 cases in Ukrainian, including adjectival endings (for some of them and generally not as successfully) you should be very jealous of this and by very jealous I mean you should not be jealous at all, but I'm one to relish in my grammar triumphs of the day.

Let's see what am I looking forward to you ask? OH my site interview which is in about two weeks where I tell them what I want what they think i'd be good at etc. we look at my resume together. Nevermind that I won't be finding out my real site until oh 3 days before I go there I just really am excited for teh interview. New things I experienced this week, let me see. . . My mom made ratatouille for breakfast one day which was delicious.

We had a health day in which in all seriousness our dr. told us if we were ever in the position where we felt threatened by sexual assault we should, among other things, poop our pants. I, being the only 5 year old maturity level person in the room, immediately started cracking up and got a mean look from a very serious medical doctor. Hopefully, he'll treat me if I get swine flu, i'm sure he will, peace corps Ukraine is most always accomdating and wonderful. HM, what else can I say? We had a nite at a cafe with another volunteer who came to visit where I was delighted to hear drunk Ukrainian men singing Ukrainian pop, things I could listen to every nite and not stop giggling, this same scene.

I have arranged with my peace corps next door neighbor, aka another trainee who lives two houses down to see the massacre of the geese when it comes in a couple of weeks. He has explained to his host mom that I want to see this and I'm pretty excited for the invite. let's be hoenst, I'm not one for blood and gore but seeing a goose slaughtered just makes me want to watch. I'm not sure I'll join in though I may be forced. I'm all up for this cultural exchange. I want to add slaughter a piece of poultry from start to finish on my list of resume skills. My host mom can crack a chicken's leg off like nobody's business and every time it happens I feel a little more plasticine american.

I have taken to eating raw garlic quite often now that flu season is here. Ukrainians say that you should eat onions lemon and garlic when the country is sick. I'm following orders, and starting to love garlic more than a used to which a. is a lot and b. kind of takes the idea of good breath of away

Well, I'll leave it at that for now. Someday I'll have a funny story about how my host dad walked in on me in the bathroom while I was in a towel, oh wait that happened, and it wasn't funny.

LOVE AND HUGS

Another Day, Another Way for me to open up to you

OK: so let's see what to include in this entry.

Let's see the last few weeks have been at the very least interesting.

Let's start with the fact that Ukraine is on swine flu alert aka quarantine. Which means as a peace corps trainee I'm not allowed to travel, etc. The schools are also closed for three weeks which means I don't get any time to teach in the classroom. Not so bad for me, well, because I'm used to being in a classroom, really bad for some other people in my cluster who have never been in a classroom and may not get much experience before heading out to site. SO, this all has caused an uproar and between bouts of utter and simple joy and frustration with the whole situation I find myself at a pretty even keel.

WHY, you may ask are things so great; BECAUSE winter is coming. This morning I woke up to beautiful frost covered fields with a nip in the air and rosy cheeks. I walked down teh street albeit a touch too early to my PCT neighbor's house listening to Jamie Liddel and thought it doens't get much better than this. (excuse the fact that i'm an efl teacher and don't use punctuation. I use it in class.) Either way, I'm ecstatic that snow and winter are on their way, and with them come the excitement of my site interview (i'm brainstorming what I want to say as far as what things I would like to be involved in) the inevitable sadness and excitement that comes with getting halfway through training and thus that much closer to site, and the fun times that came with halloween.

A girl who used to live with my family, named Jenny, came for Adopt-a-Cluster, but alas she did not get to fulfill her duties as our classes were cancelled because of quarantine. BUT because she was living with my family I inherited some awesome resources and had quality time to talk with her about what life is like post training. AKA post the time where peace corps plans every minute of your day so much so that you don't know what to do with yourself. Not true, exactly. I have lots of free time on weekends but when I'm teaching I use it to do visuals and lesson plans with friends. Mostly, I'm glad to have the social network, however small, I do while I'm here and hope it will last through the duration of my service.

UM, in other news, things that are under-rated; LETTERS! I absolutely love when the peace corps car comes and with it comes a letter for me. Mostly, because I like showing off about how much people love me back in the states to my cluster mates and ukrainian teacher, I kid. A LITTLE. BUT if you have the time and want, I would love a letter from you, and once we cover post office vocabulary sometime in the next two weeks in ukrainian class, I promise I'll get a letter out to you. With a beautiful stamp here from Ukraine. You should want this, you should send me letters.

For those of you going for gold medals in friendship, peace corps ALSO allows us to receive flat envelope mailers. When I get my perma address I'll probably publish this again!

The following is my current wishlist of things from the states that I would love to have here:
Long underwear tops (I have one, this was not enough I wear it to bed every nite)
theraflu (see above text on swine flu epidemic)
Winter hats (again it's cold I have one, maybe I should've listened to cheryl and brought more)
scarves (cheryl only let me bring two)
glue (i don't know where to buy it here)
masking tape(i use it a lot when I teach)
awesome markers and colored pencils (i draw a lot)
books (I'm almost half way through the books I brought including a couple I stole from other PCVs)
a friend received perfume samples, I'm jealous, send them to me b/c i can only shower every other day
cumin and/or tapatillo hot sauce
long underwear bottoms
wool socks (I hear smart wool rocks the world)
as you can see most of this is either teaching or winter stuff, I feel like I underpacked by only bringing 100 lbs, buuut this is what I think about most days
OH YEAH, TEA!! there's tons here buuuuut I'd love some from the states. Irish Breakfast??

a carnival of peace

Ok, so the latest from life. I'm still in Nosivka, though today I'm in Kiev visiting the peace corps office and then heading off with my cluster to see the rest of the city, or at least whatever we can see in a couple hours. Mostly, I'm excited to have a weekend off. we had a VERY long week. I taught two classes and tried my best to keep it together with fifth graders who were generally rambunxious and rowdy. I'm happy to have had the time with them, and I really do love the school I'm at. I'm going to try and take some pictures and such. i always promise these things but never seem to get them on a jump drive to transfer them onto anything, but I'm really going to try. It's hard to encapsulate my days into any kind of cohesive thought. But I'm happy to have close friends to laugh with and a family who is kind enough to let me live with them. I worked all week either learning Ukrainian or lesson planning (type a personality comeback) and we welcomed a new volunteer to our cluster who was supposed to go to Turkmenistan, but the assignment was cancelled. I am experimenting every day with using more and more ukrainian with my family and hope that by the end of this training I may be able to extract some valuable information about their lives and not just how to make crepes. . . we're working on this.

ok, love and stuff to all. I know this is a throw away type of post, but it's one to say I'm doing fine. Busy, but good. I am excited for the time when I can share more.

WElcome to Ukraine

Ok, so it would be hard to put the last few weeks into any kind of perspective or cohesive blog entry, but I think that I will have regular access to internet now that I've figured it out at my house. I asked Nastya my host sister to show me how it's done and as soon as I talk to Mom about it I think I'll be able to get on at least once a week. Ok, so I arrived in Kiev a couple weeks ago. Everything went smoothly except for some awkward moments on the plane with this crazy guy I was sitting next to.



I don't know how to put Ukraine into words. I live in a town called Nosivka, which is typically, post-soviet (we still have a lenin statue) but at the same time it's charming. And desipte the fact that I have regular and heated encounters with livestock, everything is going ok. I have a cell phone and will publish the number soon so everyone can see it and/or have it. Everything is going well, and after waiting about a week and a half (i was living only with my 12 year old host sister) I met my host parents. They're wonderful and I'm glad to have people looking over me. Last nite, I got to meet Grandma and Grandpa, who are probably my favourite people to date.

The good news is, my cluster, for the most part, is great. We have five people, and maybe one coming from Turkmenistan (long story) and the best news, Linnea, my friend from before actually is in my cluster. I live next to a guy named Joe who is hysterical as well.

Well, I'll try and be better about all this but that's it for now. LOVE to you all!

This time maybe I'll be bulletproof

Everything is wrapped up, literally and figuratively. I have two nites left here in Naperville, and I have but only three left in the states. Warm wishes come from every angle. I cannot help but feel that I don't really realise I'm leaving. My bags are mostly packed save the debacle that is the suitcase filled with my clothes and toiletries and my book bag.

For the record, I still don't know too terribly much about Ukraine, so I'm kind of on a learn as you go program. Here are my plans thus far as to how I can charm the rest of my group into undying adoration for my sardonic and dry sense of humor, and like all my good friends pleasure in the inevitable random things that tend to go horribly and hysterically wrong in my life.

Here are some quotes/clips/well wishes from others that I would like to include for comic relief and by comic I mean my friends are funny in writing, as well as in person. I, however, come off like an emo cutter whenever I try to blog. Here's to hoping this blog won't be like that and I'll actually share fun stories, like those from France.

really I should make this a quiz, I will number the quotes, try and guess who they came from . . . if you don't know anybody in my life it'll make it even more pointless and thus entertaining.

1. "Is it wrong that I'm already planning your hotel de ville wedding to some hairy Eastern European man named Sergei Ivanovich (is that even Ukranian?)"

2. " I guess we're going parka shopping"

3. "Doors open soon, so i'm going to leave you now. And i'll drink my pint thinking of you!"

4. "Why don't Ukrainian men want to date American women? is it because of Bush?"

5. " Keep happy and remember, alcohol and good music soothes all. Well, in my case, add a lot of chocolate to that equation!"

6. "stay safe and don't forget to pack scarves to protect yourself from radiation"

7. "i'm going to miss you. stay away from Chernobyl."

8. "don't forget to pack your crazy pills! ;)"

Come down from the mountain; you have been gone too long

So, of course, time is waning and goodbyes are coming in droves. It's hard if not impossible for me to imagine my life beyond all this. Most days, I get into a groove, do some packing, think about what it is that is absolutely necessary, etc. I'm what's the english word for nulle at this. Wordreference is telling me the best translation is hopeless or worthless, but the French connotation seems to have a bit more involved in it, a touch harsher than hopeless, barely functioning might be the most appropriate translation.

Either way, my godmother is coming this weekend to say goodbye to me. She makes this whole experience seem comical, as she does most things. She asked me a few weeks ago, what exactly I needed to get before I left for Ukraine. I told her the things still left on my list: a compact sleeping bag, an oven thermometer, yaktrax, etc. Upon explaining to her what an oven thermometer and yaktrax were, she exclaimed, "Kari, you cannot go there! Are you kidding me?" She, of course, is kidding. But it doesn't stop me from laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. I mean, honestly there are a couple of things I never thought I would need in my life, yaktrax is one of them. They would have been useful in Marquette, of course, BUT somehow in the states for all its excess, you do without, because you know in the end nothing bad is going to happen because you slip and fall. Now the thought of falling, somehow invokes this primal fear of bad injury and thus removal from the country and/or death. Like I'm in some kind of victorian England drama where I've a bad cold or I've twisted my ankle and somehow everyone is worried for the state of my well-being. Nevertheless, the thoughts of this life are all passing and fleeting.

I'm excited to see what awaits me in these months to come; to start feeling my soul in another language again. French has been therapeutic in a lot of ways, I found myself in French/France. I hope that either Ukrainian or Russian will bring me into new ways of being.

yesterday, when you were young, everything you needed done was done for you

Today, I got all my travel information for staging and for leaving the country.

I'm officially booked to leave at 6:20am from Chicago to head towards Philadelphia for staging for one day. Staging is actually a lot quicker and less time than I thought. I will arrive in Philly at 9:15am, and then I can head to the hotel, where I will register at 12. Our sessions start at 2pm and go until 7pm where we cover any number of things. And then, we are free to spend our last evening in the States. We get picked up at the airport at 6am the next morning and are taken to the airport where I have a 355 flight from Philly to Frankfurt and then I fly the rest of the way to Kiev.

Enough of the logistics, I'm starting to get really excited. It feels real, and as if it's coming on fast. BUT all that aside. . . I'm mostly excited to see everyone meet new people.

I've met some girls who I am going with already, and as far as I'm concerned everyone is fantastic. I really like a girl named Linnea who is originally from Champaign. We seem to get along really well and she's a francophile too so that's nice.

I don't think people really understand the peace corps process, this of course, is inevitable. In the end, the process of the bureaucracy and all that doesn't really bother me. Similar to everything I had to go through in France, except it's more papers and less having to go to the consulate, sous-prefecture, etc. All in all, I think it's pretty easy. I seem to be the only one. . .

OK I probably won't write until it's closer to the date. woo!

a new start

Ok, so a false start on the blog, but here's a real one.

We are exactly one month away from my leave date, or at least the most recent leave date they've given me. I've met some of the girls I will be going with, and I am more at ease and definitely more excited about the group I'm going with to Ukraine. I've gotten most of the things I need to be able to survive everything save some yaktrax and thermal underwear. I could also use an oven thermometer, but that's easy enough to get.

As far as how I'm feeling, I'm uneasy, generally excited and decently nervous. While I know I'm capable in some vague sense, in as far as I know I can make it the two years, it's hard to imagine how effective I will be. I'm hoping that I will be able to create a good synergy among colleagues and that I will be a good teacher as well.

All in all, my emotions aren't anywhere off the map of where I think I should be. I should probably be putting more effort into language learning, but I find myself at most only slightly motivated most days. I'm working on that as well.

So, here I am working on getting ready, filled with anticipation, but mostly just ready to go.