One Month in Less Than 1,000 Words

Well, so much for weekly updates lately, eh?

Things have been busy here, with the never-ending holidays that keep Ukrainians busy from the beginning to the end of January. And of course, “American Christmas” (as Peace Corps Volunteers tend to call it) is the week before New Year’s, so I’ve been running around since December 25th.

I was really worried about Christmas this year, as many of my friends had gone back home (either for good or for a visit), including both my sitemates and my best friend in the country. I was afraid I’d end up sitting at home alone, missing my family and friends more than I usually do on the holidays. But it was actually surprisingly fun! Those of us who were still around celebrated in Chortkiv. Festivities included not one, but two banjos, spaghetti, tacos, and a hilariously tacky “Dirty Santa” gift exchange.

The next weekend I went to L’viv with some of the same friends for a wonderful New Year’s celebration. We stayed at a cheap hostel, drank a fair amount of champagne, danced our butts off, and watched fireworks at midnight. Ukrainians love New Year’s Eve – it’s one of the biggest holidays here — and it was a lot of fun to be in a big city to celebrate.

After that I finally went to Chernivtsi — a beautiful, old city just two hours south of Chortkiv. Pictures of that are up in my Picasa albums. Then I came home for a few days, only to turn around and go back to L’viv to hang out with some friends. While I was there on the 31st, I kept thinking about how I should have spent more time in L’viv. Now that my time here is starting to wind-down, I suppose I’m getting preemptively nostalgic and thinking about all the things I might regret not doing while I was here. So when a friend invited me back to L’viv to hang out for a few days, I decided to go. I had two weeks of vacation from school, so I wouldn’t have been doing much at home anyway. On my way to L’viv (which is about 5 hours away), I stopped at my friend Brendan’s for a few days and spent Ukrainian Christmas there with some friends of his. And then it was back to L’viv for a few days, and then finally home again.

School began this week and this semester my schedule is so much better than last semester’s. I have no more than four lessons on any given day and I have the majority of Monday off (with one pair [a set of two 45-minute lessons back to back] in the afternoon). Although vacation is always nice and I usually wish I had more time off, I’m also always excited to go back to school. I’ve been having so much fun with my students this year, and I think (I hope!) the feeling is mutual. Yesterday my English club lasted for two and a half hours! It usually goes for about an hour, but we were having so much fun playing Apples to Apples that nobody noticed how much time had passed.

In other news, I’m starting to freak out about what to do when I leave Ukraine. I don’t know where to go, what to do, or how to even begin making those decisions. I try not to lose too much sleep over it, but lately I’ve been so stressed out about it that sometimes I quite literally can’t sleep at night. In another month or two, I’ll start looking seriously for jobs, but for now I’m just trying to get a grip on what exactly I want to do, so that I can at least figure out what kind of job to look for when that time comes. Ужас.

The next few weeks are going to be ridiculously busy. I’m leaving for Moldova tomorrow night (I have to leave the country to get my visa renewed) and I’m not 100% sure when I’ll return (probably sometime by the end of next week?), and then I’ll have one week at school before I’m off again — this time to a week-long HIV/AIDS training conference. I’m really excited to be bringing both a colleague and a student leader to this training. I’m hoping that, with their participation in the training, our HIV/AIDS project will be truly sustainable once I’m gone.

In other student-related news, check out this map and click on “Chortkiv” to view a list of my students who participated in my friend Melissa’s “A Day in the Life of Ukraine” project. When you click on the name of the town, their names should appear and you can click on each of their names to see their compositions. I’m really proud of them — they’re so creative, interesting, and funny, and I’m really honored to see their work included as a part of this project. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did.

I’ll try to get back to my weekly updates when I return from Moldova, whenever that may be!