Привіт з України!
(Hello from Ukraine!)
I wanted to give a few quick updates about what things have been like here in Ukraine so far!
There’s a LOT to catch up on.
So here’s how this whole adventure started. I arrived in Kyiv on Aug. 19, after a crazy long series of flights. I flew from Detroit to Los Angeles for 22 hours of Staging (basically orientation) and sleep, then from Los Angeles to Kyiv, with a short layover in Frankfurt, Germany. Once we arrived in Kyiv, we were immediately shuttled from the airport to a hotel in a nearby city called Irpin for what was called Arrival Retreat.
I keep saying “we,” and that includes all the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) volunteers. There are just short of 60 of us total, teaching at both the secondary and university levels. We’re joining a few other sector volunteers — like Youth Development (YD) and Community Economic Development (CD) — here in Ukraine. Regardless of our sector, we’re all considered “Group 54,” which is basically our “class,” as you will — those of us that arrived in the calendar year 2019. There are so many of us that we were split into two groups. The YD and CD volunteers arrived a week before us, and we’ve had limited interaction with them thus far.
At Arrival Retreat, we spent about four days adjusting to the time change and learning about Peace Corps policies, codes of conduct, emergency procedures, etc. Basically? If it’s something you need to know to stay alive in a foreign country, they teach it at Arrival Retreat.
On our last day of Arrival Retreat, we were assigned to “clusters,” and were then given information about our training site and our host families.
Now, for some fun technical jargon. Our “clusters” are small groups of three to six people that go through PST together. Each cluster has a Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitator (LCF), as well as a Technical and Cross-Cultural Facilitator (TCF). Both our LCF and our TCF help us acquire language and technical skills, as well as cultural knowledge. My cluster is comprised of three volunteers (me, James and Ryan). Our LCF is named Yuliya, and our TCF is named Lena. Yuliya teaches us between four and six hours of Ukrainian language every day, and also works as an intermediary between us and our host families, to smooth out any communication errors and make sure everything is going well. Lena works as an intermediary between us and the Ukrainian public school system. She coordinates our “internship” (observations, lesson planning, co-teaching, teaching, English club planning and teacher meetings) so we don’t have to navigate the public school schedule — or language barrier. Our cluster is part of what’s called a “link,” which is basically our cluster plus another cluster. We both share Lena, so we often have joint technical training sessions as a way of saving time while making connections and fostering professional relationships.
We got all this information at the end of Arrival Retreat. I was placed in the city of Житомир (Zhytomyr), and assigned to a host family. The next day, all the TEFL volunteers loaded up a small fleet of buses. While a lot of volunteers were in Zhytomyr with me, a lot of volunteers were also placed in surrounding towns and villages.
Anyway, I honestly can’t even express how completely terrified I was during the bus ride from Irpin to Zhytomyr. I was so jetlagged and exhausted. I didn’t speak a word of Ukrainian. All my worldly possessions were piled up underneath me in the bus. I was on my way to fully move in with a family of four I’d never met, and probably couldn’t communicate with. I didn’t know anything about them! The bus ride was miserable because it was so hot, but I remember wanting it to last forever because I had absolutely no idea what was waiting for me on the other side.
But, if you follow me on social media at all, you know that all my worrying was for absolutely nothing. My host family is AMAZING. They greeted me with chocolate and flowers and I immediately started bawling. I live with Olya and Sasha, who are just a few years older than me, and their kids. Masha is 8 and Roma is 4, and they are SO energetic and fun. Olya is an international-level competitive dance coach, and Sasha owns a wallpaper store. Masha is headstrong and shy, and Roma is so goofy and silly. Sasha is incredibly animated and jolly, and Olya just might be the sweetest woman I’ve ever met in my life. She studied English in school, and while she isn’t fluent by any means, she’s got a really great grasp on the language. We use a loooottt of Google Translate in this household. My house itself is pretty modern. We have indoor plumbing, running water, a dishwasher and central heat/ AC. We even have a swimming pool (it dismantles in the winter), a trampoline and two cars. My “bedroom” is a ground-level playroom — complete with Disney princess wallpaper. Olya and Sasha have raspberry bushes, apple trees, tomato plants and cucumber plants, and have a pet dog and pet snails. My family is so social and Olya is an amazing cook, so we spend a lot of time hosting friends for dinner and going out and about to parties and get-togethers on weekends.
Anyway, this post is getting super long, since I have eight weeks’ worth of foreign country shenanigans to update you all on! I’ll start posting more in the future — about the food I’ve eaten, the cities I’ve seen, the people I’ve met, the Ukrainian language learning process, etc. — but for now, I’ve got some stuff to run off and do.
До побачення!
This post was originally published October 17, 2019. Its timestamp has been updated to better reflect the timeline of my Peace Corps service.
