Me and YouKraine

This update has been a long time coming, but due to my work filled days and a lack of reliable internet service, I am just now getting the opportunity.  It's been a few weeks since my last update, so I could pretty much write you guys a novel of an update now.  Instead of that, I'll just go with a short and concise list :) Here we go....

What I've been up to:

1.  I have now been in Ukraine for exactly one month.  Although I liked it immediately, I am really starting to feel at home here.  Of course I am still learning to read and write Russian so I kind of feel like a child most of the time, but I'm still starting to feel more comfortable.  My language skills are getting better every day thanks to an amazingly patient language teacher and host family.  I've made a few embarrassing mistakes (such as telling my students to "pee" their names instead of "write" their names), but I have gotten really good at laughing at myself (as if I wasn't already pretty darn good at that).  

2.  I taught my first lesson, along with my partner Becky, on Thursday.  It was a 9th grade class with about 20 students in it.  The class is currently working on healthy lifestyles so we decided to teach on the different aspects of health.  Did I mention that we did the whole lesson in Russian?  Haha don't be too impressed! We did a lot of it before hand and had the phrases we knew we needed.  Their were a couple of moments where I had no idea what some of the students were saying, but it didn't affect the lesson.  It is crazy how creative you can get when you know that their is a language barrier.  

This week I will be teaching another healthy lifestyles class for my 9th grade students, and I will also be teaching a 10th grade lesson!  It takes a lot of preparation to get ready for the lessons, on top of studying the language and trying to work on other assignments, but I know the pay-off will be well worth it.

3. Last Tuesday, we went on a field trip to Kiev (Kyiv) which is the capital of Ukraine.  If you haven't ever seen pictures of it, you need to go and google it right now! It was absolutely breath-takingly beautiful.  We left Cherniv around 9 a.m. and had to ride a small, cramped bus for 2 hours to get there.  Once we arrived, our language teacher divulged that we would be in charge of finding the Peace Corps Office, which was the main point of our excursion.  It sounds like an easy task, but you take an extremely confusing metro system and add to a city of around 500,000 people, and you have yourself one frustrating adventure.  Considering that I'm from one of the smallest towns in the world, you can imagine the confused look on my face when it came to navigating the metro and the busy streets.  After a few hours, I picked up on the pace of the city and felt like I was able to keep up with it.  We found the Peace Corps office quicker than I thought, and then we were able to do a little sightseeing! Unfortunately, we weren't able to go into any of the museums or galleries because of the time restraints we had, but we did get to do a lot of walking around, so we got to see a lot.  They city is huge, but so gorgeous.  All of the buildings are colorful and exotic.  Some of the buildings are so old, and therefore make for fascinating pictures.  It feels as if overnight, Spring has shown up so everything is green and bright.  It definitely is prettier than the dull grayness of leftover winter that I witnessed when I arrived.  The trip was short, but left a huge impact on all of us.  We will get to return in June when we have our swearing in ceremony.  I will definitely be seeing some more of the sights then :)

That's pretty much all I can think of right now guys.  The busy cafe that I am bumming internet from doesn't serve as the best blog-writing environment, but I promise to try and do better and updating!  Until then, here are a few pictures of what I've been seeing lately!

 Church in Kiev

 View of Kiev

 My group in front of Baturon (an old Kosac fort)

Jeff, Edward, Becky, Me, and Zach

 Me with a statue of a famous Ukrainian poet

 My Dom (home) :)  It looks a lot different now that Spring is here!

Church in Cherniv.  One of my favorites!

More updates soon!