With that said, I’ll relate to you a concise version of my very busy month of October. I’ll even include headings so you can read them topically (because there is a lot here). I’m using the events of the weekends as a springboard to write, so I’m going to include a lot of tangents, thoughts, and seemingly unrelated topics. But it will be for the most part chronological.
Ecology Camp
The first weekend of October, I had the privilege of joining a UN volunteer worker, Sasha, with a local project of hers. It was a camp that was dedicated to teaching ecology to college and high school students. It took place in a town outside of Kharkiv called Liubotyn, which happened to be her home town.
The setting was absolutely beautiful. I’d been pining to witness some autumn foliage in Ukraine and had yet to see it until this particular weekend. We couldn’t have picked a better location to hold an ecology camp. Ty, a fellow PCV, and I arrived at our destination and caught the tail end of a cleaning session. Equipped with gloves and burlap sacks, we combed through the lush hills amid large trees, losing ourselves in the effort.
Our next activity was to paint wooden signs with messages about taking care of the environment. The next day, we’d hang them up on tree branches.
At night, we set up camp and cooked dinner over the fire. We snacked on sardines and bread, had some interesting conversations and even sung songs together.
The next day, we played a game called “quest”. Ukrainians love this game. I get the impression that any chance they have to combine pedagogy with fun, the default is a game of quest. It consists of finding clues, which lead to more clues. After a series of clues, which usually require a good distance of walking and/or running, the team to finish the quest first wins. It is essentially a scavenger hunt. In this case, the idea was to teach how to use a GPS, for we had to use them to find our checkpoints.
Collaborative, Kharkiv, and Couchsurfing
The second Saturday in October, I went to the city of Kharkiv for a meeting with other PCVs in the area. We got together to discuss several topics, exchange ideas, and offer help where needed. It was here that I got the idea for a viable small project. I’d put in an application for a Darian Bookaid and promptly received feedback that I’d be receiving a free shipment of books for my school in the next 3-6 months. My plan is to create a sustainable program in which the older students read books in English to the younger students so that they are exposed early on to the language. I know that in my personal experience, simply having a Spanish teacher teach us some very basic vocabulary in Kindergarten gave me a huge advantage in my Spanish studies, especially with pronunciation.
Kharkiv is the second largest city in Ukraine and fortunately, I’m only an hour and a half bus ride away from it. As a result, I make frequent trips into the city and have familiarized myself with it. I’ve grown to love the city. Recently I’ve discovered there an ice skating rink, bowling alley, 2 huge bazaars, a shopping mall, several great food places, bars, shwarma stands, hookah bars, restaurants, cafes, and a place called chateau ledo, which has paintball, arcades, ice-skating, roller skating, a 4D theatre, and a bunch of other neat things. I’m making it a goal of mine to explore the surrounding area of every metro stop and to know the ins and outs of the city by the end of my service. If anyone is ever in the area and needs help/suggestions, you know who to contact.
As I’m cruising through November, I’m more and more looking forward to my vacation home, which at this point is in less than 2 weeks. When I booked my airline tickets, I found that I have a 20 hour layover in London so I figured that this would be the perfect time to try out couchsurfing. I’d heard so many good things about it and the idea of it intrigues me. So I signed up for couchsurfing and put in several requests for a couch. I have yet to get accepted but hopefully it will serve as a good blog entry in the future and a success story. Who knows? Maybe it’ll trigger a newfound passion for travel within me. I have considered opening my apartment up for hosting anyone that comes this way. I’d be a great guide for the city of Kharkiv. I just might make it a new hobby.
Football in Kiev
On the third weekend in October, I made a trip to Kiev to play American football with fellow Americans. It was co-ed flag football but it was still fun. We played on a turf field, which was not significantly bigger than a basketball court. But it may have been for the better because I think a lot of us were simply out of shape. It was 4 on 4, with 2 girls and 2 guys on each team. My team came in last place, but we still had fun just being there and having the opportunity to play.
Living Libraries
On the fourth weekend in October, I made a trip to the city of Zaparozhia, the 6th largest city in Ukraine. I was there to join other PCVs in a very interesting project called Living Libraries. It is an event that fosters multi-cultural exchange. People of different backgrounds are brought together (in this case, PCVs) and act as “books”. There are groups of “readers” sitting at different tables and every fifteen minutes the books rotate. For fifteen minutes at a time, Ukrainians ask questions about the books’ lives, opinions, and essentially get to interact with people whom they normally would not. It’s a great way to break down barriers and prejudice. All the PCVs that attended received training on how to organize a Living Libraries event and I’m hoping to organize such an event in my region at some point in the near future. I think it’ll be great for some of my students to be exposed to different cultures. So to my readers, PCVs and America-dwellers alike, if you are interested in participating in such an event, contact me. I open this to American residents too because I am hoping I get some visitors in the next 2 years (hopefully this is not too much of a far-fetched idea).
Halloween
The weekend of Halloween, I hosted my cluster’s second reunion. There were 4 from my cluster and 4 other friends that came as guests to my humble town of Shevchenkove. The eight of us crammed into my small apartment. It was one of the most fun weekends I’ve had thus far. Anytime you have a spontaneous Youtube session, you’re bound to have a good time. I showed my American friends to some of my students with the goal of cultural exchange in mind. We threw the football around.
The next day we went to Kharkiv for the Halloween party. What can I say about Halloween? It was a good time. A whole bunch of American travelers getting together for a celebration usually spells disaster, but as far as I know, everything went smoothly. I was a ninja. I got the costume in the mail with a care package the previous day. I almost had to come up with a costume on the fly.
Brothers Karamazov
I recently finished reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. It was probably the hardest book I’ve ever read and one of the best pieces of literature I believe I’ve ever come across. This is one that I’ll come back to over and over again. Dostoevsky spends tremendous energy writing on character development and plot devices are in fact secondary to it. Yet, none of the plot is lost in it. In a way, it’s as if Doestoevsky is hinting that character psychology is what drives a plot. To take it a step further, it’s as if he’s built in the age-old paradox of free-will vs. predestination right into the story’s plot mechanism. If the author is analogous to God and the characters to created beings, who is indeed acting?
I’ll stop before I give anything away. Anyway, the reason I even bring this up in my Peace Corps blog is because I must acknowledge the privilege I’ve had of reading this for the first time in Ukraine, in which parts of the book takes place in. It mentions places such as Kiev and Kharkiv and I could be wrong, but I think that Ukraine was part of Russia at the time this story takes place. Regardless, much of the cultural aspects of the novel would have been completely over my head if I’d read it in America: things such as compote, квас (kvass), the usage of “ты” (you – singular informal) vs, “вы” (you – plural or singular formal), the card game “дугок” (fool), religious icons in corners of rooms and a host of other things. Everyone should read this, particularly Ukraine PCVs.
