Originally my goal was to try and post once a week (but who has time for that?! well, actually I do). In PC it either feels like you're insanely busy and don't have time to shower or you're just walking from room to room in your house, trying to figure out what to eat for your next meal and thinking of ways to avoid showering. So it's kinda like prison, or do I mean war? I mean war. Then I told myself for the love of god finn, at least post something once a month. And then April happened. Then May almost got away from me too. Goodbye June. Hello July! I actually do write pretty frequently, but it's just in a jumbled up 'notes' file that I never organize.
Let's start with March:
Once Brendan finally got here it was HEAVEN! After 6 months of only being around people who've known you for a handful of months, it's so so refreshing to be around someone who actually KNOWS you. Plus I've missed him like crazy and hadn't seen him in over a year. He's been a big shot precious metals man in London for the past year (now working for the same company, Deutche Bank, in Jacksonville, FL).
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| All that beautiful snow |
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| After Brendan's overdose on Ukrainian food |
My landlords still talk about how fun he was. We went over for what we thought would just be tea on a Wednesday night and it turned into a 5 hour eating/drinking/hide and seek fest. At the end of the night all my landlord wanted to do was show Brendan how powerful the flashlight on his massive gun is and kept shouting to him "Look! You can see the houses over there!" pointing across the fields. After I translated this to my brother, he could not stop laughing.
So that was March. Here's a quick update for what's been going on with me the other months:
April: food poisoning, adopted Lermontov (or Lera if you're Ukrainian, Larry if you're Kristen), hosted a teacher training on HIV
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| Torturing lil Lermontov |
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| English teachers from all over the region gathered for our health seminar |
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| Kristen giving her healthy living shpeel |
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| Makin 'em work |
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| Welcome to my life |
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| Now learn something about HIV |
May: Ukrainian Easter, travel to Crimea and Odessa, site mate left me high and dry (she COS'ed so I couldn't be mad at her for reals. But I was livid with her for fakes), last bell at school, hosted my Free Kick camp at school
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| All of the graduates being welcomed into the 'last bell' ceremony |
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| On a mission to sash a student |
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| The French maid outfits are actually traditional. And not supposed to look like French maid outfits. |
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| One of my fav students, 5th former Vika, receiving some academic award. Hopefully English |
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| The graduating seniors |
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| Dancing around their 'class master'. Basically it's their homeroom teacher for their entire time at school |
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| The literal ringing of the last bell. One of the oldest students and two of the youngest students circle the entire event ringing the bell. |
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| T and I after the ceremonies |
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| The Free Kick summer camp. A camp for teenager in our village to learn about HIV while incorporating soccer activities. |
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| The whole gang |
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| My russian tutor (also the Russian teacher @ the school) and our gym teacher (who volunteered to help with the event) nailing a board to a tree, after the wind picked it up and landed it on my head |
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| The local medical workers who were there to give free HIV tests and talk to the students. |
June: Two summer camps, helped out at another PCV's Free Kick, 1 big travel trip
July: celebrated 4th of July on July 6th at the Budapest airport by eating KFC and Burger King for lunch. Definitely not the worst way to spend an American holiday.
Travel haps: Crimea (Yalta and Sevastopol), Azov Sea, Odessa, Budapest, Croatia, Bosnia (for an hour).
Yalta was a dream come true, as any history nerd can guess why. Unfortunately I was not visited in my dreams by any of the Allied powers leaders giving my tips for a future in diplomacy, but I did get some great pictures with random cats and castles.
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| Made it to Sevastopol. |
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| Reads something like " Glory to the Russian Navy". We're still on Ukrainian soil BTW |
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| Sevastopol |
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| An ancient city next to Sevastopol that we wondered through. |
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| The bus ride to Yalta was...well you can see for yourself |
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| A castle! |
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| I don't even want to admit how many times we ate there within 48 hours. |
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| T took me to this awesome fairy tales park up in the mountains. I met some interesting 'characters'. Wompwomp |
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| This is the real babyaga. A folklored witch character that haunts Ukrainian children's dreams. She flies around in a trashcan and her house is built on chicken feet. |
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| I was hitting on him |
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| T and ya |
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| Cat and ya |
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| Another castle! |
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| And another! This is called the sparrow's nest, or the swallow's nest; it's a bird's nest |
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| Up close |
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| I found a first edition Pushkin |
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| Odessa's Opera House. |
Budapest in July: We (PCV Cody and I) had to stop there in order to get a train to Croatia, so we just decided to stay a few days there too ( I had been there 2 years ago with my dad and brothers, but Cody had never seen it). Let me tell you how different an experience Budapest was the second time around… I actually wasn't too excited about going back to Budapest because of the feeling I got from the city the first time (awe inspiring architecture, but a little dingy and depressing, and felt like we were roughing it a little). After living in a Ukrainian village, the conditions in Budapest felt like first world, first class, every second. Everything felt SO luxurious. Our hostels were great, food was amazing (one even had Tabasco sauce!), and people actually kinda followed the rules in a line. Customer service was alive and well and I could order american style coffee at the cafes. I also couldn't believe how much English everyone knew. I didn't want to leave, ever.
Croatia: Pretty much the most beautiful place I've ever been. I can't believe it's not visited more often by Americans. It's cheaper than Italy (its neighbor across the Adriatic) but has all of the fabulous Itialian food you could eat. It's cheaper than Greece but just as beautiful with all of the islands. And it has this UN World Heritage sight called Plitvice lakes. Walked around it for 4 hours and couldn't get over what I was seeing. Waterfalls and lakes clear as air everywhere, with a suspended wood plank bridge that winds its way through all of it. You feel like you're in a fairy tale. The trip ended in this game of thrones-esque city called Dubrovnik. There's this entire walled in "old part" of the city that's straight out of the Renaissance. We also took a Balkans war walking tour through the old part of the city. During the '90s the city was shelled by the Serbians for like a year. Most people abandoned the city but about 7,000 people stayed and the Croation army managed to keep the city from being occupied. You can still see all of the holes where the shrapnel hit the buildings. Most of the buildings burned, but because they're all made of stone, only the insides burned and left the actual buildings in tact. So everything looks as it did before. We took lots of pictures but they may or may not be on a disposable camera because ours died.. GO TO CROATIA.
It usually takes me 2 full days of post travel blues recovery (lots of mindless TV & mac n cheese, which I had thanks to Restaino & Sarah Wilkins) to start feeling like a normal person in my life again. But I leave for another summer camp in 2 days so I didn't have time to put off the 6 loads of laundry that I need to do, research for other camps (like Camp MUN that I'm doing in August where I'll be leading the Bosnian delegation. During my full hour in Bosnia during my trip to Croatia I discovered there were a lot of German tourists), circumnavigating summer train schedules for camp travel, and...opening up care packages that I've had sitting in my house for the past few weeks (I was only home a few days in June! I need full days to open the boxes of joy, catalogue everything, put everything away in its proper place and write long thank you emails for all the joy and happiness brought into my life).
Some examples:
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| CP from Uncle JR and Harriet |
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| CP from Su |
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| CP from Lermontov |
P.S. I updated my CP wish list tab after inventorying all my sweet swag and discovering/running out of other things in ze village.
Book update...That's TMI right now. I'll include that in a shorter blogpost.
It usually takes me 2 full days of post travel blues recovery (lots of mindless TV & mac n cheese, which I had thanks to Restaino & Sarah Wilkins) to start feeling like a normal person in my life again. But I leave for another summer camp in 2 days so I didn't have time to put off the 6 loads of laundry that I need to do, research for other camps (like Camp MUN that I'm doing in August where I'll be leading the Bosnian delegation. During my full hour in Bosnia during my trip to Croatia I discovered there were a lot of German tourists), circumnavigating summer train schedules for camp travel, and...opening up care packages that I've had sitting in my house for the past few weeks (I was only home a few days in June! I need full days to open the boxes of joy, catalogue everything, put everything away in its proper place and write long thank you emails for all the joy and happiness brought into my life).
