My mom came over at one point to dog-sit Duchess, my sister’s golden retriever, when she remarked “Kelly, Dutch has more toys than you had as a child.”
Well, without missing a beat, my sister was like “Duchess IS my child.”
Seriously, my sister spoils Dutch.
The world’s in chaos so here’s a lighthearted post featuring Duchess and some of her toys.
Have you heard teamwork., Loote and John K’s song “Wasted Summer?”
If not, you should listen. It’s pretty good. It’s a nostalgic bop about wasting the summers of your youth on doing drugs, sleeping in cars, falling in love and listening to music.
I’ve had it stuck in my head pretty much constantly this summer because, well, there’s a pandemic, I’m unemployed and I’m essentially wasting my summer. It’s just nowhere near as fun as teamwork., Loote and John K make it seem.
I will say though. Like I said in my camping trip recap, the one good thing about this pandemic is that it forced me to get outdoors and enjoy the nature of my home state.
It also forced me to develop closer relationships with a smaller number of people. Because I had the tiniest social circle ever, most of my summer memories were made with Kelly (my sister), Lexi (my cousin), Kayla (my sister’s best friend) and Zach (a friend from high school).
Now that it’s Labor Day Weekend and my summer is coming to an end, I kind of wanted to share a few odds-and-ends of the random (pandemic-safe) things I did during my wasted summer in Michigan.
I guess the cool thing about COVID (jk, there’s really nothing cool about COVID) is that it’s forcing me to spend more time exploring the outdoors here in my home state.
This past weekend, my high school friends Zach and Kevin and I booked what was literally the last public campsite in the entire state of Michigan and went up north to spend a few days camping in Traverse City.
Yep, we’re out here protesting too. BLACK LIVES MATTER.
Man. Things have been… weird.
I’ve been doing a whole lot of nothing lately. Waiting to reinstate? I guess? Coming up with contingency plans if I can’t? Maybe? I’ve been doing a lot of job searching, hoping to find something temporary like contact tracing or freelance reporting so I can bide my time until this all passes over and I can go back to Ukraine.
In the mean time, I just keep crying looking through old photos, talking to my host family, studying Ukrainian…
…pretending this will all be over soon.
I think this is the first Peace-Corps-but-post-Peace-Corps post I’ve written since our evacuation (parts one, two and three) happened. It’s been hard to really think too deeply about.
But, I digress. I wanted to take a second to share a few of my favorite places in Khmelnytskyi with you. Yunno. Just in case you ever find yourself in Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine.
OK so I definitely didn’t think reverse culture shock was a REAL thing.
Like, what do you mean reintegrating back into U.S. society will be jarring, hard and strange? I spent 30 years here! How uncomfortable can it be?
Um, well, turns out, it CAN be hard.
OK, well, where’d we leave off in the traumatic saga that was the COVID-19 global Peace Corps evacuation? I think we were just taking off and leaving Ukraine’s borders.
In case you missed it, part one of the evacuation saga (detailing the process leading up to evacuation and leaving my actual site) can be read here and part two of the evacuation saga (detailing our week-long attempt at getting out of country) can be read here.
So, that leaves us at part three: leaving Kyiv, and stopping in Madrid for a short layover, Washington D.C. for one night, Detroit for all of 30 seconds and then finally back to Ypsilanti, where my sister lives.
In case you missed it… this is a continuation of my Peace Corps evacuation story. I published part 1 — about getting the call to evacuate and booking my train out of Khmelnytskyi — yesterday.
Today’s post will talk about how — what should have been a simple flight out of Kyiv — ended up as day after day of COVID-induced delays, flight cancelations and hotel shuffling.
Well, here we go.
I gave you guys a short post explaining that I was evacuated from Ukraine and my Peace Corps service was closed out due to COVID-19. I wanted to elaborate more on that and talk about the evacuation process, now that I can almost, kind of, collect my thoughts.
This is a long one, folks. I’m going to split it into a few posts for the sake of both brevity and my sanity. Buckle up.
This is the hardest post I’ve had to write.
I’m still numb. Shocked. Confused. I’ve written and rewritten this post and I can’t seem to find the right words to say. None of this feels real.
But, my Peace Corps service is apparently over, 20 months early. Every single volunteer worldwide has been evacuated from their country of service and given COS status.
