Kittens are life savers.

Ah, so 6 weeks have already gone by. Let me catch you up on some technical stuff. So I’m living in a Village called Seminivka outside the Oblast Center Obooheave. These are (of course) spelled phonetically. I live with a really nice family; I’ve got parents and two brothers, Al(yoha) and Yuri. My brothers are students at Kiev’s University and they’re both involved with the military, Al is a tank driver and Yuri I believe is a mechanic, but they only do that part time, I think it’s kind of like ROTC, but more awesome. My parents both have degrees from Kiev, my dad is an Agronom, which is Ukrainian for Agriculturalist and my mother has a degree in Economics. They’re really wonderful, I’m very lucky to have such a sweet host family.

I live in a one story house but the land that my parents own also has a barn built out of bricks which houses: 30 chickens, 15 geese, 4 pigs, and 1 cow. At first the cow didn’t like me, but I think now we’re on good terms, or at the very least I don’t terrify the cow anymore. I still terrify the geese though, I came home late one night from class and as I turned the corner, I guess I freaked out the geese. They did something I thought only existed in cartoons. For about a second, all I could see was white wings flapping rapidly in the darkness, 15 geese fleeing in unison and when my eyes readjusted from a white blanket of feathers to the darkness and my heart slowly made it’s way back down my throat to my chest, all that was left of the geese were feathers in the air. This really happened.


Oh by the way, my family also has two dogs and a kitten. The small dog Topeek didn’t like me for about 4 weeks, but he’s finally warmed up to me, just like the cow. The other dog Twossik contains the energy of a thousand supernovas. If I walk by him while he’s chained up, he’ll do flips from jumping while chained. When he’s not on the chain he runs around my legs, jumps up, falls down, rolls over, and then runs back through my legs. He’ll also play-chew on my shoes while lying on his side, as I try to walk. In short, he’s a big ball of happy.


The kitten is my favorite though, she’s this little black kitty with white socks named Ponka. When I first came here, this was my first friend who understood less Ukrainian than I did. She’s a real cute kitten. Everyday when I come home she darts out from under wherever she’s been hiding and I pet her for 5 minutes while she purrs. She’s fallen asleep twice while I’ve petted her, it’s the only time she stops purring. Having this kitten here has been really great, it’s nice to know that here in Ukraine there’s someone here that’s even more vulnerable than me.


During the first 3 weeks I knew less Ukrainian than most three years olds, which was rough on my ego. I wouldn’t be able to express simple statements like “I’m not sick.” Or I’d try to express a want at the store and instead of saying “Excuse me, I’d like to purchase a loaf of bread” I’d say “I to want bread”. Here in Ukraine, or at least early on, I was as capable as a first grader and that’s being generous. I’ve gotten a lot better, I can communicate all my needs or wants, but they sometimes require quite a bit of miming, drawing, or extraneous explanations. My family and the people here have been great though, their patience has made communicating possible.


My family and I get along great, almost everything I do is funny to them and understandably so. I’ve been able to communicate some funny stories to them and just the way I interact with animals, people and them is funny. I told my host-mother about one of the times my dad tried to raise chickens in Nepal and I told her how my mother found out about it and put an end to it after a good day or two. That’s how long it took the rooster to crow at 5 am; which is coincidently when my mother found out about the chickens and then told me dad to get rid of them. Today, I met this woman while I was asking for directions and I got my directions and then decided I should introduce myself. So I asked her what her name was, she said Larissa, then I said my name is Sam and she said “I know.” I’m sure everyone here knows who I am, mostly because I’m American but also because I’m the only male PCT in my village.


I’m here with four other girls and for the most part they’re good people. Jillian lives down the street from me and she seems pretty awesome. Heather is very intelligent and lives closer to the school. Joyce is a sunny spot on a cloudy day, she made me laugh out loud the other day because our Language teacher asked her to translate a sentence that had and open parenthesis and she said “I don’t know how to say sad parenthesis in Ukrainian!” The last girl Skylar, is from Washington State.


I started teaching at the school about 3 weeks ago and I think it’s been going well. My students think I’m really strange but I think they like me, we play four square soccer during the breaks, but they play a little differently than we do in the states. Instead of a president, VP, treasurer and secretary; everyone is equal and no one has to leave if they miss a pass. I thought that was funny, its okay if you didn’t laugh though. The students are great, they’re enthusiastic and eager to learn but they’re very shy which impedes the learning process. I’m very happy planning and executing lessons, it’s a lot of fun.


Here are some things I’ve experienced since I’ve gotten here. I’ve cut corn with a scythe, fed corn stalks through a chopping machine, fed the animals with the chopped up corn stalks. I helped my host day move bags of beets, grain, cement and a lot of other stuff around farm. I helped him start his old truck up, helped my mom peel potatoes and cook other stuff. I watched and now know how to cook a chicken from scratch and by scratch, I mean you have to catch the chicken by the wings. My parent’s think that my squeamishness is hilarious. My host mom laughed as I shied away when she started pulling chicken intestines out of our recently deceased chicken and to be honest; I may have played it up a little bit since it makes her laugh. Every evening at dinner I have a shot of Vodka with my host Dad and occasionally on some mornings, we’ll have a shot in the morning. It’s step up from black coffee. That food here is awesome too, I’ve never eaten so much summer sausage and cheese in my life. They also do this thing where you put butter and honey on bread and eat it and I’ve got to say, that’s my new favorite dessert. I don’t eat a lot of it, but I do enjoy it occasionally. They’re also big on tea here too which is good because I love tea, and when I say I love tea, I mean I love rooibos tea, it’s my comfort food here. I will say though, I miss pizza. The tomato sauce here generally comes from a ketchup base, so the pizzas taste different. They’re still delicious, it’s just a different kind of delicious.


Let me tell you about my village. There are 600 people who live here. Being this close to Kiev, a lot of young people travel there to work but a lot of people stay here too. We’ve got two shops, a bar, and a school within a two mile radius of my house. We also have a library, post office and club but they’re somewhere far away and I haven’t been there yet. It’s beautiful here, they’ve got three gorgeous lakes and the leaves here are similar to the foliage we’ve got in Virginia. Oh and something really awesome, Seminivka is in a little valley, when you get up on the sides of the hill you can see everything. Blue skies and fields of wheat all the way, hilly with patches for crops, and beautiful leaves everywhere.


Along with pizza I miss everyone back home. If you give me your address online I’ll mail you a post card/letter with something Ukrainian back, I’ve never been huge on snail mail, but I think being here in Ukraine is going to change that. I’m super busy with language classes, homework, and teaching and basically living but I promise to respond promptly. Next week we go to the post office, so I’ll mail all the letters I’ve written then.


That’s everything I think you need to get up to date. I have a lot more to say but I don’t think it belongs in this blog post. I promise to post more often, I’ve been hesitant to do so though for a few reasons. Firstly, Peace Corps has a very strict policy about what you can and cannot say on your blog. If I violate any of their rules, they’ll boot me out of the country. Secondly, Internet access is shaky and unreliable at best. Lastly, I’m just very busy here, there’s always something to learn, someone to talk to, or some word to look up in the dictionary. For fun, I watch movies in Russian or I pet the kitty outside. More to come in a week or two. Give me your address so I can send you silly things.

Oh and today on the metro someone stole my camera. Sadface. I wouldn't be as bummed but I wasn't able to unload the pictures I'd taken to my computer. Oh well. Live and learn and lose cameras. On the sunny side, I haven't gotten lost yet... of course there's still time for that too.

The Days Are Winding Down...

The days are winding down. Soon it’ll be time to transition. I’ve been selling and giving away pieces of my life, my Fender Strat, clothes and various paraphernalia from my life. It’s interesting to think about what I can’t give away: the coconut monkey drinking a cervesa that I bought after the Ziggy and the Wailers concert in Salvador, the Pakistani wooden camel my host family gave to me while I was swimming in the South Asian International Schools Association swim meet, old Tae-Kwan-Do belts that are longer than I was tall when I earned them, a plethora of school t-shirts detailing my athletic prowess in cotton goodness. These symbols of memories and experience, firmly rooted to my book shelf, my record player, my closet. Then there are my photos of it all. My life in still fits in a little cardboard box that’s 4x6x4 inches.

Earlier this summer, my family went through our house and tried to get rid of the junk we’ve acquired after twenty years and three continents. As one among many pack-rats I have to admit, we don’t do well with extra space. Corners of our house lose their right angles to junk, chairs become a source of storage space, and abandoned artifacts wait for us in dark corners. We met with some mild success. I found out that every member in my family has at least one weak spot for a very specific kind of junk. My mother has two, yarn and clothes. I found clothes in her closet that had never been worn, tags peeking awkwardly from pockets, as if the clothes were aware and ashamed of their uselessness. We found yarn in four separate rooms in my house, scattered into secret heaps so that at any point in time my mother was no further than ten feet from a spool of yarn. It reminds me of New York and rats. My father’s hunting and gardening supplies grow like weeds, sprawling out from the designated spots in the garage and the basement until they take over. My brother had the least amount of trouble, because I don’t think he got rid of anything he really cared about, but that’s alright because he’s always kept a tidy room, something he didn’t inherit from my parents and to be honest, he’s better for it.

As for me, I found that I had the most trouble getting rid of my books. I had amassed a veritable armada of classics, 101 text books, Far Side comics and fantasy novels. They adorned my book shelves like big game trophies, proof that I had read them, dissected them and could talk at length about all of them. The shelves held my books and my books held my self-esteem, to a certain extent. What struck me profoundly was my attachment to the books before and after I moved them out of my room. Before they were all artifacts, afterwards they were pounds of pages, nothing more than paper and binding. I found myself losing interest in keeping them as if I knew that bringing them back into my room was an act of finality, that if they moved back upstairs they’d never leave.

My friends are moving in masses back home and who can blame them? We’ve graduated into the worst economic climate since Reagan was in office. It’s gotten so bad that part of the Hispanic population is moving back to their country of origin because of the lack of employment, a sure-sign of the economic apocalypse. They say it’s getting better, but I feel we’re sticking

band-aids on arterial wounds. We need a tourniquet, not Neosporin. We need to do a little spring cleaning, and cut off dead limbs. I fear that our economic instability will only entrench ourselves deeper into the safe havens we know, until one day when the fear lifts, we may not have the strength to follow through with our adventures. Roots only grow deeper with time.

Joining the Peace Corps is a gamble, in exchange for two years of my life; I’ve been presented with the opportunity of a life time. I haven’t felt this excited about anything in years, not since I played in the state championship. I feel very fortunate to be in this moment. The possibilities of what I can do with the next two years are more than enough to keep me

up at night. When I leave Ukraine I want to accomplish several goals: I want to be fluent in Russian/Ukrainian, I want to become proficient in writing grants, I want to write as much as I possibly can, I'll do my best to update this blog regularly, respond to letters promptly and most importantly, I hope to impact the lives of the people I work and live with in Ukraine for the better.

My personal evaluation upon leaving Ukraine will be simple. All I need to hear to know I’ve done a good job is "Sam, I am glad to have known you." It's not very ambitious but that's all right, it doesn't need to be ambitious. Henderson had it right, "I need human voices and intelligence. That’s all that’s left. Kindness and love” (316). This is what I intend to bring with me to Ukraine, kindness and love. However, I'll have to temper my optimism with realism. The days ahead will be difficult, very difficult but I am ready. I am ready for the challenge... or at least as ready as I can be. Of course who has ever been “ready” for the great journey ahead of them? Was Frodo ready? Was Henderson ready? I've been given the tools I'll need to reach my destination. The only qualities I need now are courage and determination.

...

Saul Bellow once wrote, "Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door." After it's all said and done, when I return from Ukraine I know it'll be worth the loss of two years here in America because I’m preparing the house that will hold my memories. My parents provided the foundation, my friends have provided the walls and my experiences have hammered, screwed and welded them together to create a shelter from storms. This summer has been about cleaning up the clutter; it’s about finding those memories that will always have a place to stay in my house. And so I’d like to take a moment and thank everyone I’ve called friend. If the only decent thing about me is that I’ve loved certain people in my life, know that you are among them. Friends and Family, I am glad to have known you, I’m a better person for having known you and I hope to see you again as soon as I’m back with a stunningly attractive accent… and maybe a wife. We’ll see what happens, that’s what’s so exciting about life.