Wednesday, November 4, 2009

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??

2 comments:

  1. i could probably find it without too much work but my borrowed internet is being weird.

    what's your address? how long do i have to send stuff?

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  2. let me know when i can send a package of goodies your way!

    XOXO

    ReplyDelete