Merry Christmas to all

T’was the night before the night before Christmas,
And all through Ukraine, not a creature was warm,
Not even a Seth.
Okay, while Eastern Ukraine has not hit the -20s,-30s that Minnesota has faced the last week or so, but I would assume that all those hearty mid-Westerners have living establishments that don’t level out at 48 degrees… (the temperature of the inside of my apartment last week) I really can’t complain too much. The school has had recent heating troubles (i.e. the heaters don’t work, and in an attempt to put in new ones the contractors succeeding in flooding 3 classrooms), but I have purchased another (yes Peace Corps, the one you gave me is NOT ENOUGH) heater, so life is good in my one little tv room. I don’t venture out of it too much except for class as the temp drops about 10 degrees every week we get closer to January.
Besides it being almost Christmas, which I will get to in a second, I have yet another thing to be thankful for this December the 23rd… IT’S GETTING LIGHTER!!!! Somehow the Winter Solstice escaped my notice last Sunday, but I woke up Monday somehow knowing that the day that every (I think) Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine, person who lives in Eastern Europe, and Minnesotans look forward to, when the days start just getting a little bit longer. As the sun has been setting at about 3:45 in the afternoon, this is a pretty big deal to me.
Well, now that the semantics of heating and light are out of the way, I will get down to what this letter is really all about….
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!! I can’t believe this is already my second Christmas here in Ukraine, yet I am pretty sure I will NOT be spending this one the way I did last year (sitting in my host-families apartment watching some dumb movie and wishing I was at home). While I won’t be able to be on some on glorious sunny beach (yeah, I’m talking to you Bjorn!!) this Christmas, I will be able to head over to the next oblast west of here to my girlfriend’s site, where she will be creating (I may attempt to help, but it probably won’t amount to much) a delicious Christmas feast (yes, I am expecting a lot of you Megan). We will be joined by at least one other Peace Corps Volunteer, so I am very excited for that.
The semester will be over (at least for me) tomorrow, and I am very excited about that. Some things have gone really well with teaching this year, but some are just as frustrating as ever. But, I really have nothing to be upset about, because after my wonderful Christmas celebration, I will be heading to Kiev next year for some Peace Corps stuff and… GULP, meeting Megan’s parents… I am not nervous at all. We will spend New Years in Kiev (which I am very excited about) and then heading to Krakow Poland for 3 days, and then heading to Budapest for around another 3 days, to visit my parents. Its going to be a whirlwind tour for all of us, but I am looking forward to traveling with Megan and her family and seeing my parents during the holidays.
After that it will be back to Lugansk where I will start the 2nd semester of the school year. I know this will fly by faster than I expect, and by this time next year I will be back in Minnesota (almost 100% for sure).
Love to hear from all of you! Have a safe and happy holidays!
With Love,
Seth

Second addition-Books I have read in Ukraine!

51.“Made in America” by Bill Bryson *** A little dry at times, but overall an interesting look at why Americans speak the way we do.
52.“ A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian” by Marina Lewycka **** Wonderful look at Ukrainian immigrants in England and what happens as your parents get older.
53.“Hot Six” by Janet Evanovich ****
54.“Seven Up” by Janet Evanovich ***
55.“Neither Here Nor There” by Bill Bryson **** great book about traveling through Europe by a very funny author.
56.“A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain” by Robert Butler*** interesting stories about post war Vietnam.
57.“A Season in Hell” by Jack Higgins *** mystery/action
58.“Dark Justice” by Jack Higgins *** mystery/action
59.“ ‘A’ is for Alibi” by Sue Grafton *** mystery
60.“Congo” by Michael Chrichton *** suspense thriller
61.“How to be Good” by Nick Hornby **
62.“Dark Light” by Randy Wayne White **** great thrillers
63.“Prey” by Michael Chrichton ***
64.“Key West Connection” by Randy Wayne White ***
65.“The Audacity of Hope” by Barack Obama **** a little thick at times, filled with interesting info. on the way Washington works.
66.“Three to get Deadly” by Janet Evanovich ***
67.“To the Nines” by Janet Evanovich ***
68.“Dead of Night” by Randy Wayne White ***
69.“Naughty Neighbor” by Janet Evanovich **
70.“The Overlook" by Michael Connelly **
71.“Blood work” by Michael Connelly ***
72.“The Talbot Odyssey” by Nelson Demille ***
73.“Nightfall” by Nelson Demille **
74.“The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini **** look at why
Afghanistan is the way it is today.
75.“Code to Zero” by Ken Follett ***
76.“Zlata’s Diary” by Zlata Filipovic **** young girl’s point of view of the Bosnian/Serbian war in the early 1990s
76 ½ “The Clue of the Hissing Serpent” by Franklin Nixon** Don’t ask…
77.“N is for Noose” by Sue Grafton ***
78.“R is for Revenge” by Sue Grafton ** 07/23/08
79.“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” by J.K. Rowling **** 07/26/08
80.“Lost Light” by Michael Connelly *** 07/29/08
81.“The Constant Gardener” by John Le Carre **** 08/03/08
82.“The Pardon” by James Grippando ** 08/04/08
83.“Wild Thoughts from Wild Places” by David Quammen *** 08/17/08 interesting look at how you can find wild things everywhere around you, and maybe why they are there.

84.“The Appeal” by John Grisham ** 08/20/08
85.“The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri **** 08/27/08 great story following an Indian family through their ups and downs in America, a look at how deeply our parent’s lives really impact us.
86.“McNally’s Dare” by Lawrence Sanders *** 09/03/08 another intriguing mystery novel.
87.“McNally’s Luck” by Lawrence Sanders ** 09/05/08
88.“Montana 1948” by Larry Watson **** 09/06/08
89.“While my Pretty one sleeps” by Mary Higgens Clark * 09/12/08
90.“Conviction” by Richard North Patterson *** 09/18/08
91.“Dancing at the Rascal Fair” by Ivan Doig **** 10/03/08 interesting story about trying to create a life in 1900 Montana
92.“The White Masai” by Corinne Hofmann *** 10/09/08 true story about a CRAZY Swiss woman who travels to Kenya, falls in love with a Masai warrior,and thinks she can live a normal life with him in the bush.
93.“Come Ride with me, Mariah Montana” by Ivan Doig *** 10/18/08 3rd of a series about Montana, good stories
94.“Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown” by Dan Brown *** 10/24/08 prequel to the Davinci Code
95.“Flight of the Old Dog” by Dale Brown ** 10/27/08 high-tech war between USSR and America
96.“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” by J.K. Rowling **** 11/04/08 as always, good book.
97.“Puerto Vallarta Squeeze” by Robert James Waller * 11/06/08
98.“Accordion Crimes” by Annie Proulx * 11/25/08 not one of her best
99.“Mad Cow Nightmare” by Nancy Mean Wright * 12/01/08
100. “Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer *** 12/08/08 story about Jewish-American man trying to follow his grand-father’s roots to Western-Ukraine, horrors of WWII.

Thanksgiving extravaganza

It started off as a simple invitation from my girlfriend Megan; “Why don’t you come spend Thanksgiving with some of my friends in Odessa?” and turned into one of the cooler things I have done while here in Ukraine.
The trip started off with a 2 ½ hour bus ride from Lugansk to Donetsk on Wednesday the 26th of November, through the pouring rain. This was an inauspicious start, seeing as I was headed to my first ever Champions League soccer game between Shakteur Donetsk (Ukraine) and FC Basil (Switzerland.) I rolled into Donetsk just as the rain was finishing… there I met up with Megan and we headed into the city to meet up with some other volunteers who live in or around Donetsk. We had some dinner, and at 9:45 were walking through the gates of the Donetsk soccer stadium. Probably most of you don’t know this, but going to a Champions League game has been on my top 10 list of things to do in my life for about 5 years, so this was a big deal for me… the stadium was only 1/3 full, due to both teams being towards the bottom of the rankings and the weather beings o miserable. But, over the 90 minute game, with the temperature hovering around 35 degrees, rain for only 10 minutes, and 5 goals scored… all by Donetsk Shakteur, the team I was supporting. It was a blowout, but even more fun because due to a misunderstanding by the person buying the tickets, we were supposed to sit in the first row but got to sit only 5 rows up, high enough to see everything but low enough to hear the players talking too.
Thursday morning was spent walking around Donetsk, as I had never been there before. Its about Ukraine’s 5th largest city, so even though the weather was a little chilly, it was fun to walk through the parks and eat some good, greasy burgers at a local fast food-chain. At 5pm Megan and I jumped on a train to begin our 16 hour journey down to Odessa, Ukraine’s largest port on the Black Sea. Again, I had never been there and I was very excited.
We entered the beautiful Odessa train station at around 9am and set out to try to find an apartment, because we were going to spend the night with one of Megan’s friends and her brother and dad. Finding an apartment in Ukraine is often much different than anywhere else I have ever been. There is the option of booking on-line in many cities, but the much more popular approach is to immediately be set upon by about 5 babushkas (older women/grandmothers) asking if you need an apartment, how big, how much you want to pay, etc. Now, I am definitely used to new experiences, but I was extremely thankful Megan was with me (as my sister so gracefully put it when on the phone with me, “She sounds smart…” and yes, she is, her Russian is excellent) to take over the entire negotiations. After the first failed attempt when we set out with a woman only to find 5 minutes later that the apartment wasn’t ready after all, we met up with some other volunteers who were waiting at a bus stop to head to the tiny village where Megan and I would head the next day for Thanksgiving dinner. We (as in Megan) eventually found an apartment that was big enough for a very good price, and after a quick shower we headed out to explore the sights, and to fix Megan’s Falafel needs. She suggested sharing one as we would eat lunch with her friend in about an hour, but seeing how good they looked I denied. 10 minutes later, after ingesting what seemed to be about 5 pounds of potatoes, falafel, tortilla, and mixed vegetables, I thought I might pass out and explode at the same time… it was excellent though. We headed to Potemkin’s steps, one of the most famous sites in Odessa (which is famed for its port, red-light district, and its nightlife) and then headed to meet Megan’s friend.
That night we were able to get tickets to another soccer game between Odessa and a different Donetsk team. The Donetsk team was supposedly much better, but Odessa played well, and with it also being the last game at the stadium before it was rebuilt, the fans got a little carried away and started ripping chairs off the benches and setting flares on fire (it felt like a real European soccer game at this point) and when Odessa won 2-1, almost the entire stadium flooded the field and started having a party! Very cool.
Saturday morning we jumped on a bus to go to a volunteer’s site who lives about 2 hours away from Odessa, but we had to take one bus, and then a taxi to get to her very, very isolated site. It was really cool pulling up in the taxi after driving through farmland and seeing a bunch of our friends chopping wood, cooking in the summer kitchen, and just hanging out. The rest of the afternoon we chopped wood for the girl’s two fireplaces, helped begin the Thanksgiving feast, and just catch up with people we hadn’t seen in a while. We eventually headed out to play some American football on the remains of a soccer field, and we took care to miss the cow pies and not hit the geese that were waddling nearby. As there were only 8 people playing, we were soon exhausted and ready to head back and get ready for dinner.
The feast was begun around 7 pm, and consisted of a turkey (donated by the next door neighbors and killed the day before) cranberries, mashed potatoes, amazing stuffing created from mixes sent from America, gravy, delicious pumpkin bread, and I’m sure a few more things I am currently forgetting. For having limited means to buy American goods, it was a truly amazing dinner. I think the highlight of it was when we all went around (including the host’s next door Ukrainian neighbors,) and said what we were thankful for. It showed me how important family traditions are, how proud we all were to be Americans, and how close you can become to your ‘Peace Corps family.’
The night was spent playing some hotly contested charades between the men and women… lots of fun!
Megan and I got up the next day and with a few others started to head back to Odessa to catch our train around 3pm. At about 10:45 Megan had called a cab, and after a while a old-looking car pulled up and said he was our taxi-driver. The guy was a little crazy and it was a little unnerving when he would turn around to talk to us in the back seat. We arrived at the town were we needed to catch a bus with no problems, but then sat there for an hour due to few buses on Sundays. We were a little worried that we might miss our train, but after our 2 hour ride back to Odessa (passing through Moldova for about 10 minutes) we arrived with an hour to spare, at the wrong bus station….
We had been told this might happen so weren’t too nervous, but jumped on a bus that got us to the train station with 20 minutes left. I headed to buy a bunch of waters and Megan went to get us some food for the 17 hour train ride back (why it slower on the way back, I don’t know…) We were able to play a lot of cribbage (a game Megan has excelled at and now beats me regularly) and gin rummy. Arrived in Donetsk this morning and hopped on yet another bus back to Lugansk.
With about 46 hours travel time to and from, it was still a wonderful Thanksgiving, and definitely won’t forget it! Hope your holiday weekends were as memorable! Miss you all.
With love,
Seth
p.s. will try to add photos soon

Check another country off the list!

Well, I figured I should finally send out some details about my last two weeks, sorry it has taken so long!
So, it’s a little strange writing a note on November 4th, and not being in America right now. All I can think of is when I wake up tomorrow, America could be an entirely new and different place to be from, or… it could be exactly as it was for the last 8 years. Exciting, and scary at the same time.
Anyways, on the 18th of October I took off for Turkey for a week long trip to meet up with my parents and my friend Bjorn Betzler from Duluth.(yup, that's right, another country off the list, and another chance to get out of Ukraine for a bit) You can see his blog on my list of links to the right and down a bit on my page.
I arrived in the afternoon, and set out to find my things and wait for Bjorn was supposed to be coming in shortly after me, but… as fait usually works out, I kept staring at the computer screen for incoming flights as the minutes delayed message kept flashing next to his flight from Casablanca… 20 minutes, 40 minutes... arrived… still waiting. Finally saw him in line, and we just kept laughing to ourselves thinking how cool it was that two guys from a smallish city in Northern Minnesota would be living in two completely different countries halfway round the world, and meeting up in Istanbul, Turkey.

I have to say that I didn’t do a lot of research for the trip, so didn’t have a lot of expectations about what Istanbul or Turkey in general would be like, other than I knew that I would be going into Asia for the first time in 9 years. I was pretty excited.
We jumped on the wonderfully easy public transportation, and after a few wrong turns, and a guy randomly asking, “are you lost,” “sort of” came our reply “are you guys from Minnesota?” he then asked. WEIRD, we eventually made it to the hotel. Since Bjorn had been out of civilization for the past year, we needed to get him some good kebabs and a beer, so we headed out on the street. We got a little lost again, but eventually made it back that evening to meet up with my parents. Even though I have seen them more than 3 times since I’ve been in Peace Corps, it was great to see them again.
Sunday was spent on an awesome ferry ride up the Bosporus Straight to the beginning of the Black Sea. The weather was beautiful (a little windy) but great to see both sides of Istanbul. Incredibly huge, over 15 million people!



Monday, we headed to the Asian side of Istanbul to buy some bus tickets for our 10 hour bus ride on Tuesday down the eastern coast of the Aegean, and also were able to get our hair cute/great shaves all at the same time. (Bjorn looked like h had lost 5 years in about 20 minutes, after his beard was shaved off)
Tuesday evening we arrived in the beautiful little town of Celchuk, near the ancient ruins of Effus. Effus is the 2nd largest set of ruins in the world, and the capital of Roman Asia over 2000 years ago. Celchuk is the site of Peter’s Basilica, where Jesus’ disciple Peter came and built his church and was later buried in. Very cool to see where all of this history actually took place. The city was also only 10 minutes from the Sea, so after a 13 month hiatus, I was able to go swimming in something other than a dirty river. It was great. Friday we took another long bus ride back to Istanbul, and spent Saturday morning doing some last minute gift shopping, walking around the beautiful spice bazaar, and eating some more great food before we all needed to head our different ways.
It was great to travel with my parents, and was awesome to spend a week with Bjorn as well. The food was delicious and the people were always friendly and willing to help. I would definitely recommend Turkey for your next trip.
Sorry this was so scrambled, but a lot went on, but also don’t want to bore you. Will try to be a little more frequent with my ramblings!! As always, miss you, and always great to hear from you!
-Seth

little battles

Seth, 5-Rat, 1
I hope… I recently had a small run in with a rat in my kitchen, hall-way, bathroom… it started off as a fairly calm Tuesday night, and then I heard it; a small rustle was coming from my kitchen, my cupboard to be more specific. So I walked over to it, opened it up, and to my surprise what should jump out, a RAT. I was angry, and disgusted, and afraid of getting bit on the toe (why the toe, I’m not sure, but it was a real fear at the time) yet I had to get the dang thing out of my kitchen so I spent about 20 minutes chasing it around my kitchen with a broom. I had it cornered in my hall-way and the rascally thing snuck under a closed door, into my kitchen and then, just disappeared!! I gave it at least one point because it had ended up eating some of my rice, which is very expensive these days.
I kept seeing it the rest of the night but whenever I would chase it back into the kitchen it would disappear again. I thought I knew where, so I emptied my ENTIRE cupboard the next morning, AND… no rat. Or hole, or any thing to make me thing it could have gotten in there. So I thought it might be in the back of my fridge, but wasn’t sure how to go about digging through the back of a 20 year old fridge, so I asked my counterpart what we should do. She said they would call a company, and then told me that the school and the company had a falling out, so we should just go buy rat poison in the market. As I stood there buying 3 little packets of rat poison I had to be sure to understand, “DON’T TOUCH THIS WITH YOUR HANDS, EVER!!!!” that made me feel really reassured. So, using a plastic bag I was carefully to place one of the packets behind my fridge, and after 24 hours there was no sign of a live, or a dead rat….
So, enough about disgusting creatures. On Thursday evening I was lucky enough to jump on a train and head to the center of Ukraine for a semi-annual softball tournament hosted by other Peace Corps Volunteers. After a 15 hour train ride myself and another volunteer arrived in Krivvy Rig, which is supposed to be the longest city in Ukraine, somehow being about 40 miles long… or so I’ve been told. We then hopped on a marshutka (big bus/taxi) to the bus station, where we took an express bus to Kirvograd where the tournament was, and then another marshutka to a volunteer’s apartment. I was 3/3 that day on attempting to be understood speaking Russian, so I was very happy with my efforts.
Friday night was spent playing kickball and going to the center of the city to have some delicious beer and some very satisfying beers. Early Saturday morning we all met up at a REAL baseball stadium (I didn’t know they even existed here, but I guess Ukraine even has a baseball league) to play 3 games each. There were 3 American teams (all peace corps volunteers) and 1 Ukrainian team.
The Americans were split up pretty evenly, but my team had some rough spots so we ended up losing 2 games and winning 1 on Saturday. It was fun attempting to peace in a softball game, because honestly I have no control over how I pitch, so there was some good-natured joking about my pitching skills. Saturday afternoon was spent sleeping, eating more pizza and drinking more beer. Saturday night almost all 50 volunteers ended up going to a club, and it was one of the most fun nights I’ve had in Ukraine. It was cool to be at a place where you don’t have to worry about making a fool of yourself, cause everyone is making a fool of themselves, and there was some good music to.
Early Sunday morning we headed back to the stadium to play the championship game, just a best out of 3 tournament between the ‘all-stars’ of the American team (whoever wanted to play just subbed in and out) and the Ukrainian team from the day before. We had played poorly against this team on Saturday and none of us wanted to lose at our national sport so there was a bit of pressure, especially when the 2nd play of the game I threw the ball from 3rd base way past 1st base for a wonderful error. Luckily we had some good hitters on our team so the 1st game we won 10-6 and the 2nd 15-2. (softball is really only about making good catches and not throwing the ball away, but one Ukrainian did hit a home-run)
After the game we headed to an orphanage close by to play with the kids for a bit. They put on a bit of a show for us, and it was really cute watching 5 year olds do gymnastics wearing hand-me down Dallas cowboy sweatshirts.
I was able to buy someone’s ticket for a Sunday night train, and took a train to Donetsk where I jumped on a bus to Lugansk. Difficult place to get to, but a great weekend. Now its back to teaching, and in a couple of weeks, Turkey!
Hope things are great wherever you are!!

time flies by

September 21, 2008
11 ½ months down, 15 to go! Very rarely do I think about how much time I have left, other than when people ask me how long I will be in Ukraine, but as my 1 year ‘anniversary’ in Ukraine approaches, its very strange to sit back and think about what I have been up to.
The new school year started 3 weeks ago, and while there have been the usual bumps in the road; no idea what my schedule is, students who think they are to cool for school, different English skill levels, it has been a pretty good beginning. During the past 3 weeks I have also been able to go to Kyiv for and Environmental Working group I am part of, which basically just tries to spread environmental education across Ukraine.
Also, there have been some big celebrations in Lugansk. Ukrainian independence day was on the 24th of August, and then Miner’s Day the 29th of August, and then Lugansk Day, the 19-21st of September. All of those basically consist of lots of speeches, parades, and then on Friday/Saturday night a big concert in the central square (with a background of the Russian theatre and ‘Uncle Lenin’ watching over in the back. I have been able to see 2 fairly big names of Ukrainian pop culture, Tina Karol and Verka Serduchka. Tina Karol is just another good looking pop diva, while Verka Serduchka is a man, who dresses like a woman, with fake breasts, make-up, and giant star on top of his head. Its kind of funny when people refer to him as him, her, it. For a country that is extremely homophobic, they love this singer.
I was able to go and watch Serduchka’s concert last night with a couple of my students, so it was interesting to see them outside of the classroom. Next week I will be going to another volunteer’s site for big softball tournament, so that should be fun.

Nothing huge to report, but I love hearing from all of you. Take care!
With love,
Seth

RussIAN strikes again

Yes, another enthralling tale of how Seth’s attempts to understand the world around him is thwarted by his worst enemy… RUSSIAN.
The story starts off safely enough; 10 days ago I got on a bus to a city about 4 hours north of here for a 5 day English/Leadership camp that another Peace Corps Volunteer was leading. This was the 4th session of this camp that he had run, and he did a great job getting funding and getting kids to come. The past week it has been the hottest weather yet, so luckily there was a big, ‘clean’ river in the city, so Sunday I spent most of the day throwing a football around in the water with other volunteers. The camp started on Monday, and there were about 20 students ages 13-22. There were 12 volunteers, so I only had to teach 4 classes the entire week. (I taught American Tall Tales- Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed) the rest of the time was spent playing volleyball and singing songs with the kids.
Wednesday our group was lucky enough to go to a Russian “Banya” (banya means bathroom in Russian.) I had thought that a Sauna (which they also have here) and a banya were the same thing, but boy was I wrong. You go into a small room two at a time, and its HOT, much hotter than I have ever felt a sauna to be (when I first went in, it was 120degrees Celsius! You get in there and you lie down on a board, and then someone (a friend or the guys who run the place) proceed to ‘whip’ you with birch branches. This causes the air around you to get even hotter, and sweat even more! When you can’t take any more you go outside and jump in a very cold pool of water, which causes a person (well, me in particular) to get very dizzy. You only do this about two times, and then of course… the food comes out. Their was salad, potatoes, bread, AND samaghon (a special Ukrainian moonshine, that has quite a kick to it.) It was a wonderful way to spend time after the camp.
Well, as I told some of you, I was supposed to go straight from this camp to another camp where I would be working in a national park, helping clean it up. I found out last Monday that it was cancelled because the park director brought to the news evidence that the government was using it for unauthorized purposes, so it was a big scandal. It was switched to another location, but my friend who was going to come with and I didn’t find out till Thursday so we decided not to go.
This meant that I had some free time before I had to go home, so on Friday I jumped on another bus for Harkov (biggest city in the east of Ukraine) to meet my friend Zach, then took a bus to his village which is right on the Russian border. His place is much different than mine, so it was fun to hang out there for a day.
One sad piece of news, on the way to his site my phone seems to have slipped out of my pocket, with all of my numbers, so I had to buy a new one on Saturday.
My new number is
(380) this is the country code 938270978
Whole number 380938270978

So now the real tale begins…
One of our friends who used to be in Peace Corps had been working in Harkov as an English teacher but is heading back to the U.S. in two weeks, so I knew this would be the last time I would get to hang out with him. We decided to have a “malchichnik” (a boys night) so about 9pm we headed out to a club that our friend had been to. Now, I have to explain that because he doesn’t work for Peace Corps, our friend makes A LOT more money than Zach and I do, so whenever I hang out with him I know I will spend more than usual. So… the club had a cover charge of 40 griven (only 8$, but that will get me a good dinner in Lugansk) Once we got in, we decided to order some drinks and snacks. Because it was a club, things are of course over-priced, so the cheapest thing was a bottle of vodka. I normally don’t drink vodka, but I thought what the heck. So we ordered juice, bread, and an assorted cheese platter. It was very funny for the waitress to take our order because our friend knows some Ukrainian, Zach and I know some Russian, and there was another American there who knows neither.
We just talked, drank a little, and ate. So, we finished our cheese, and our friend Adam said, we should get the fruit platter. We were all like “okay, that sounds good,” since all of the afore-mentioned food had only been 100 griven together. So about 5 minutes later the waitress brings some more bread and a platter of lemon slices with sugar. We all kind of looked at it, and were like “this is it?”
We asked the waitress and she said, “oh, no, your platter will be out shortly.” She then preceded to clear off a large portion of the table, and I though to myself, “this is ominous.”
The waitress appeared again… with the largest platter of fruit I have ever seen. It had pineapple wedges, pear slices, grapes, bananas, apples, grapefruit, and of course, kiwi. We all just looked at each other, and went, “dang, she must have thought we were rich Americans or something,” and begin to curse our lack of truly understanding any conversation in Ukraine. The check came out, and the damage was done, 250griven for a fruit platter, luckily split 4 ways, but still… I normally spend 75 griven every 4 days on food in Lugansk.
It was a good night though, and as I fell asleep at 3 am last night, I went dang, maybe I shouldn’t have gotten a bus ticket for 6:30 the next morning. I woke up today at 5:30, cursing myself for eating so much citrus fruit, sat on the bus for 8 hours, and now am back in lovely Lugansk!
Always great to hear from you all!
Miss you,
Seth

It's the little things

So, summer is more than half-way over, and I want to rewind back to October of 2007, 2 weeks after I arrived in Ukraine. One of the firs things Peace Corps Ukraine (and probably Peace Corps anywhere) tills trainees is that you will have your up days/weeks/months/ and your down days/weeks/months. What you hope is that your ups are for longer and more frequently than your downs.
After almost 10 months in a country, that while it has many similarities to America, is still very, very different, I look back on that big piece of knowledge. I can agree, you will have times that work and your language is going great, and times that your week pretty much stinks and you can’t understand a word someone is trying to tell you…
But isn’t that life in general? There will be ups, downs, backs, forwards, times you understand your work and the people around you, and times that things just don’t make any sense.
My point… today, today is an up day. Why? That’s a little harder to explain. The weekend started like many others. I went out to a nice sushi place with a new volunteer and his host sisters. Saturday was spent reading and ‘studying’ new words of the GRE. When plans with some American University teachers fell through, Brian (from Lugansk) Adam from a town near-by, and Jeffrey from the Crimea came over to just, hang out. And it was great. So I wake up on a lazy, and I mean lazy, Sunday morning. Rain is slowly making its way down under a dark grey sky. Adam has spent the night and I ask him, any plans, “nope, another great day in Ukraine.” So why have our Nesquick Chocolaty Pebbles (yes, they do have that here) and just watched some classic American tv dubbed over in Russian. 1pm rolls around. “you hungry” Adam asks. “Sure, lets get some Shaurma.” (excellent, greasy food) So we headed downtown, got our delicious meal, and then headed to the library where I putted around, briefly reading “The GRE for Dummies.” Got some movies and headed on home. About 5 pm the rain started coming down a little harder. Popped in the North Country, though it might remind me of home…
Excellent movie, kind of depressing. Realizing that it was going to be day of no productivity what-so-ever, I popped in Pocahontas right after… don’t ask. By that point it was 11ish, and I could hear the rain really coming down, and see brief flashes of lighting. “Sweet, a storm is coming in.” So I made a pot of tea, opened up my window in my kitchen, looked out over my big parking-lot across the street, and watched the best storm I’ve seen here roll in. A bold about every 30 seconds. Sipping on my Celestial Seasonings, felling the mist blow through my window, listening to the thunder rumble its way across my valley, I thought “this ain’t so bad” (and yes, these days I think in non-grammatical English.) Reading a recent Sam Cook article about a trip to the Quetico, it helped me realize something. We all need time to connect with ourselves, time to realize who we are as people and what we stand for. Be it looking out at a beautiful moon over a still lake in Canada, or watching a storm roll over a dirty neighborhood in Ukraine, make sure you have that time to remind yourself what is important.
Miss you all! Love, Seth
P.S.
To really put a kicker on it, as I was typing this, the closest bolt yet hit and set off all of the car alarms and dogs in the area. Pretty good.

back...

So, after 10 days in the mighty west I am back... well, at least in Kyiv. The last time i wrote i was on my way to a 10 day summer camp in just outside of Kosiv, in far-western Ukraine, and now I am finished with probably the best week I have had in Ukraine.
Kosiv is in the south of Ivano Frankivsk Oblast, and right in the heart of the beautiful Carpathian Mountains. I took a train out there with some other volunteers and we arrived Sunday, June 29th in Kosiv. From there, we had to hike the 80 minutes to our camping site. Now, you have to remember that for the last 6 months i have basically just been in Lugansk, where a. it is flat, b. its kind of dirty and c. its dry So i was blown away by hiking up the side of a fairly steep, wet, but absolutely beatiful hillside to our camp for the next 10 days.
Now, I'm not sure how many of you usually go camping with 50 people, but let me tell you, they do it a little differently here. The theory of "leave no trace" is unheard of, so when we arrived at the top of the hill we bypassed the already set up campsite to go into the maddle of a large meadow, and immediately started cutting grass with a scythe (seen in pictures). That stuff is hard work. We had to cute places for the tents, paths to water, etc. We also had to build 3 different toilets (digging toilets and foodpits in thick clay is a good time!!) We also designed some pretty cool firepits and made sure everything was ready for the campers to arrive on Tuesday. Over the next 9 days we taught about 3 lessons a day to 30 campers, ranging from camping, to ecology, to first aid. The rest of the time was spent hiking up and down the hill to a beautiful (well, the water was clean, even if there was trash everywhere) river or hiking into town to prepare food for 50+ people, always a good time.
We also were able to hike Pip Ivan, the 4th highest mountain (2,023meters) in Ukraine, which tooks us 8 hours in total (hiking with 50 people is an entirely new experience. While we were there we were fortunate enough to celebrate a holiday called Ivana Kapala, kind of like a mid-summers holiday which celebrates love. We had some great roasted meet and practiced our jumping over there fire to create good relationships between people.
About 4 days it poured, and many of the students tents failed to pass the test of keeping them dry, but overall, it was amazing. I am exausted as well, and am looking forward to going back and resting a bit in Lugansk before my next big camp in August.
Great to hear from you all.
With Love,
Seth

another update

so, its been a few weeks since I gave you an update on what life is like in "the" Ukraine. First off, for some reason, it is no longer, "the" Ukraine, but just Ukraine. I believe it is because when Ukraine was part of the USSR they were a region, so it was the Ukraine, the Latvia, etc. but now, they kind of take offense to it, so JUST DONT DO IT...
anyways, after the great trip to Budapest to see my parents I headed to another volunteers site about 2 hours away from Lugansk for a camp. The camp had about 100 campers from 5th-7th grades. From 9-2 every day for 5 days we had 2 1/2 hours of english class (let me tell you, its hard to decide what students should study for 2 1/2 hours and not be bored as heck. But the weather was great and the kids loved having Americans there to help teach. It went by really quick, but i was ready to go back to Lugansk and relax. And thats what I did for 5 days. Woke up, read, walked around, read, thought about running, read, and then would turn on the Euro 2008 Soccer championships. Good days!
It has gotten a little warmer each day in Lugansk so by now the average temp is 85-90, which meant that i really wanted to buy a fan. Which i did, for about 12$. It is plastic, and deffinitely looks like it was worth 12$. Anyways, putting it together was an experience, because even though the instructions were in English, they didnt really make any sense, so I ended up with 3 extra plastic parts...
On Thursday i took the trian to Kyiv, and Friday took a bus to Rokytna, my staging sight to see the family i stayed with for 2 months back in the winter. It was great to see my host mom and host brothers. The food was excellent and Rokytna is a lot prettier than Lugansk.
Now, i am just sitting in the Peace corps office waiting to go to another summer camp for a week.
Should be fun.
Miss you all,
with love,
Seth

a GOOD way to make your mom and sister cry

So, it started off as a typical Wednesday night... Me, sitting in front of my computer, clicking a way at espn websites, listening to music, and drinking a good Ukrainian beer. And then I get an e-mail from my dad. "Why don't you come to Budapest on Saturday..." I thought, yeah, right, like i can just get up and go to Budapest in 2 days, I am in the Peace Corps, come on. And then I thought again, yeah, thats right, I am in the Peace Corps, and im done teaching for the year, why the heck can't I go to Budapest in 2 days! (of course, I needed to get permission from the head office in Kiev, but that was a simple phone call and one form to fill out) so there I was, Thursday morning, 10 am, with one plane ticket to Budapest from Kiev, and now I needed to get a train ticket there for Friday night.
So, its always a little tricky for me to get the exact time, train, date, etc. that I want, but after a wave of panic going through me when the lady at the ticket counter told me there were not any seats left on the first train, she was quick to inform i could get on another train that left only 2 hours later. So, i e-mailed my dad back, told him i was coming (couldnt tell my mom or sister of course) and then waited till Friday, when i got on the 16 1/2 hour train ride (its kind of boring, but not that bad) to Kiev, where i went to the Peace Corps office for an hour, jumped on the bus to the airport, took the 1 1/2 hour flight to Budapest, jumped in a taxi and only 24 hours after I left Lugansk, was at the house in Budapest.
My dad, at this time, had just come back from a school party which both my sister and mom where at, under the guise of "getting some whiskey." So when i pulled up in the taxi, we hugged, i jumped in the shower, and we were off. The party was only 10 min away, and as we were approaching we saw my sister walking around the side of the house. My dad swerved to the side of the road and i jumped out at my sister.
She, hearing the sound of the car door turned, and it looked as if she had ran into a wall, she immediately started crying and gave me a huge hug. It was a great reception. My dad told me to wait, because he wanted to see my mom's reaction. She was in the back of a very crowded living room, so i waited outside as my dad ushered her over. He stepped outside next to me and she came out and just looked at him.
"What" she said,
"Look to your left" he said.
She turned all just shouted
"OH MY GOD" and also burst into tears and gave me a huge hug. It was a great reception, and its great to be back in Budapest for a week again. Great city.
So, my dad definitely earned brownie points for this one, and he earned it!
Hop all is well wherever you are.
-Seth

SCHOOLS OUT... Almost

So, last week of school approaches, but since I am not teaching classes I would like to think tha tmy summer holidays have started now. (I gave all my students their exams last week, so now I am just hanging around making sure nobody needs anything from me)
And as summer approaches, I am filled with mixed feelings. The weather is beautiful in Lugansk now, almost 80 for the past week, the trees are green and people jus tlook happier. I will be travelling around Ukraine to do some great summer camps, but their is a part of me that still wishes I could be back in Minnesota, working at Camp Warren, going to the cabin, hanging out with friends and doing a canoe trip or two with the family... But, this is where I should be.
I have been filling my time with reading even more books, and last weekend I was 'lucky' enough to experience an American football game between two Ukrainian times. TO put it lightly, neither team was very good, but it was fun nonetheless.
Would like to say that there has been some really interesting things happening lately, but, this is my life in the past couple weeks.
Miss you all,
Love,
Seth

Spring rains

Another 3 day weekend, and with only 2 weeks left of 'real class,' the semester has gone by very fast so far. Also, the weather has been beautiful the last couple of weeks and its been hard to get my students focused enough to want to learn some new English words...
But other than that life has been pretty good, however, I have had 2 of the strangest encounters with Ukrainians since I have been here. Wednesday night I got a knock on the door to find a friend of my host moms with another friend who supposedly spoke some English, and wanted to learn more, but all i could get out of him was very fast Russian and some random French words (I guess he had lived in Algeria for a while). So we had a broken conversation for about 20 minutes, not really sure what I ended up agreeing to, that is often the way here. Thursday night was even better. After nto really doing anything productive the entire day, i got another knock on the door at about 8 pm. Since my school is a boarding shcool there is a woman who 'guards' the door when the students aren't there. Anyways, this woman (who i think I had only said hi to once before) proceeded to ask me "do you want to drink wine?" or at least thats all i understood the first time. So i asked her, "what, now?" and she said "yes, now"
So, i followed her into the school were I proceeded to sit in the secretary's office and drink home-made wine out of a plastic beer bottle and listen to her explian why NATO WAS a good thing for Ukraine, and how George Bush was the best president ever because he took care of Iraq and Iran (not sure how, but he did...) and also how bad it was that Americans got paid so much more than Ukrainians. Time went by quickly ( i think the wine helped) so i spent an hour there... It was extremely bizarre.
Friday i spent at a picnic with Brian, Adam (another PCV) and a bunch of people from the church Brian goes to. it was a lot of fun, and the first time I have been around that many people the same age as me.
Now i am sitting in an internet cafe in Lugansk following the scores of the Chelsea and Manchester United games to see who win the English league. I was going to go to a Lugansk Zarya game, but the weather is not so great at the moment, again, Spring Rains.
Hope all of you are having a wonderful May, and its great to hear from you.
-Seth

Books I have read in Ukraine.

Just thought i would make a list of books I have read since I arrived here 7 months ago today. Some of them were good, interesting, and some were just plain bad. Hope you enjoy.
Books I have read in Ukraine- 1 out of 5 stars
1.“Friendship Fires” by Sam Cook **** reminds me of home
2.“Assorted Poetry” by Walt Whitman ****
3.“Charmed Lives” by Michael Korta ***
4.“The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger * not as good as the
1st time I read it.
5.“Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides ***** Great read
6.“The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho ***
7.“Wolves Eat Dogs” by Martin Cruz Smith *** detective
story about Ukraine
8.“Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury ***
9.“The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald ****
10.“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle: by C.S. Lewis ****
11.“The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway ***** 1of my
favorites
12.“The Great Gatsby” 2nd time
13.“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle” 2nd time
14.“From Russia with Love” By Ian Fleming *** much different
from the movies
15.“My Brother Michael” By Mary Stewart ***
16.“An Apple from Eden” by Emma Blair **
17.“The Promise” by Danielle Steel **
18.“The Middleman:and Other Stories”by Bharati Mukherjee ***
19.“The Shipping News” by Annie Proulx ****
20.“Java Spider” by Geoffrey Archer ***
21.“Deception Point” by Dan Brown ****
22.“Rainbow Six” by Tom Clancy **
23.“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”
by. C.S. Lewis ***
24. “Motherless Brooklyn” by Jonathan Lethem ***
25.“Vanished” by Danielle Steel **
26.“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling **** (guilty pleasure)
27.“Rabbit is Rich” by John Updike * Not a fan of Updike
28.“Postcards” by Annie Proulx **
29.“Twisted” by Jeffery Deaver **** intriguing Short Detective stories
30.“The Perfect Storm” by Sebastian Junger **** excellent look about “The Storm of the Century”
31.“The Secret Agent” by Joseph Conrad *
32.“Where the Red Fern Grows” by Wilson Rawls **** A classic!
33.“Dreams from My Father” by Barack Obama ***** Wonderful!!
Makes me truly hope
he will become the
next President of the United States.
34.“Go Tell It On the Mountain” by James Baldwin **
35.“Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain ***
36.“ Plains Song” by Wright Morris **
37.“ May I Cross You Golden River?” by Paige Dixon ***
38.“Hill 568” by Zack Emerson *
39.“ The Hermit’s Story” by Rick Bass *** set of short stories, many about Montana. Interesting
40.“About a Boy” by Nick Hornby ****
41.“The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair ****
42.“The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien ****
43.“Philadelphia Fire” by John Edgar Wideman *
44.“For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway ***
45.“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” by J.K. Rowling *****
46.“Debt of Honor” by Tom Clancy **
47.“The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain ***
48.“Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin *****
49.“The Man Who Invented Florida” by Randy Wayne White ****
50.“A History of the World in 6 Glasses” by Tom Standage **** interesting
look at what has shaped the course of the world!

Parents, they're an interesting bunch

Parent’s are an interesting thing, aren’t they. Most of us ‘young adults’ probably grew up trying to obey them as much as possible, but occasionally rebelling when we didn’t exactly agree with their point-of-view or rules. I wonder if every person reaches a point when they think, wow, my parent’s were really screwed up, or in my case, damn, they really had/have it together!
I would say that I listened to my parent’s advice fairly well growing up, but its not till I’m almost 23 Ѕ before I truly realize how much I owe to them. See, I am sitting here at a paint-covered table in my nice sized apartment just outside of Lugansk, Ukraine, yeah UKRAINE! A country that not so long ago was not exactly on most Americans available travel destinations, let alone having ‘tourists’ come visit you. So, after over six months of attempting to teach students here as a part of my Peace Corps experience, its kind of interesting to sit down and think about how exactly it is I wound up only an hour from a country that struck fear in many people’s hearts only a generation ago….
And I could ‘blame’ it on my sending in an application over 18 months ago to the Peace Corps and hopping on a plane from Philadelphia to Kiev, but it’s a little more complicated than that. I would have to say that some of it even goes back to my grandparents (so thanks Grandma and Grandpa). If it hadn’t been for both sets of grandparents setting out, working hard, pushing their kids, trying to give them the best, making them think independantely, there’s no way that my dad could ever have convinced (let alone thought it was a good idea himself) my mom to pick up our lives and move to Dhaka. (where the heck is that, I thought only 9 years ago) But again, here I am in a foreign world (still speaking very little Russian, languages aren’t exactly my strong point) with my parents only another foreign country away, my sister studying at a wonderful school in Minnesota after seven years overseas, my brother working for a wonderful company and married to the best sister-in-law a guy could ask for, and I have to say that yes, we are individuals who make decisions, but it goes back to Nurture vs. Nature. Nurture in this case definitely wins.
Another thing I wondered recently; parents often say how proud they are of their kids achievements and efforts, but do parents ever know or care how proud their kids are of them? Maybe its something I don’t say enough. If so I apologize. All parents, whether they don’t always get along with their children should know that at least a little, their kids are proud of them. Hey, I’ve made it this far, I am not addicted to drugs or alcohol, I have a job, life is good. So, I’ve got to say, Mom, Dad, I am proud of YOU. I always hear how you are proud of what all of us kids have achieved so far, but again, none of it would be possible without you!
I wonder how many parents of Peace Corps Volunteers realize how proud their children are of them, whether they be 23 or 79. Their parents must have done some good over their growing up to want to go out and give at least a little something back, huh?
While I would like to say that all of this was just random wonderings, but I have to again blame it on my parents, especially their recent (they are actually still on a train back to Kiev, which they will arrive to tomorrow morning) trip to visit me in Lugansk. I mean, come on, its not like Lugansk is on most tourist hot spots, but nevertheless they arrived in Ukraine last Saturday. I was sitting on a street corner near the apartment they had rented for the night because I couldn’t figure out how quite to open the gate, and there they were, after not seeing my mom for 9 months and my dad for 6. I was able to give them a brief tour of Kiev Saturday night and Sunday before heading off on the night train to Lugansk on Sunday. While the weather was pretty ugly almost the whole time they were here, they didn’t complain (well, not to much) and even were okay with sleeping on my couch for 4 nights. I was able to show them around Lugansk a couple of days, but I still worked two days, so they entertained themselves by walking around my neighborhood.
Again, it goes back to being proud of your parents… I understand that they have lived overseas for a while and traveled to almost 30 different countries, but it still takes a little courage to walk around (and run, which my dad did on two occasions with only a few Ukrainians giving him grief for wearing skimpy shorts while being out and about) eastern Ukraine without and language skills. I am sure they will send out an e-mail with even more description, but it was great to have them see where I live, how I live, etc. As I discussed with my dad, its one thing to try to picture where someone is living and what they do everyday, and quite another to experience it yourself.
I think that’s all for now, but again, thanks mom and dad for coming!!
With love,
Seth

Spring

SPRING IS HERE!
So, its been a few weeks since I wrote a real entry, so thought I would sit down and try to give you a little of an update about what I have been up to. Last week I was invited by one of the other teachers to tag along with some of the 10th and 11th grade students to go see a very famous monastery in Donetsk Oblast, Svyatogorsk. After a two hour bus ride of watching a Russian movie about boxing and having my students be slight unruly, we pulled up at the parking lot to the monastery. As we crossed over the Donetsk river, you looked ahead of you and saw a huge statue of Artyom (I think his name is, a famous hero of Ukraine) overlooking the river on a bluff, and the monastery to your right. (I will try to add pictures as well.
First of all, churches in Ukraine are a little different than back in the states… they are gorgeous. Not that churches in the states are ugly, they just usually don’t have a lot of color to them, and Ukrainian churches have blues and golds and reds, beautiful. So we met the tour guide and she instructed us on the correct way to cross oneself when you enter the church (3 fingers together to represent the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and they cross top, down, right, left.) not really sure if that’s different than Catholic, but I was told it was. The inside of the church was just as beautiful as the outside. Their was a ceremony going on, so I just walked around, lit a few candles, and then headed out.
We were met by a Orthodox priest, and giving a bit of a history lesson of the monastery, and then told we were going to climb 900 meters up a hillside in an underground tunnel. We all bought candles so that we could see, and then proceeded into the side of the hill. It was a very cool experience, but a little uncomfortable as I didn’t really know what was going on and what I could and couldn’t do (which was apparent when I was directed by the priest to take my hand out of my pocket, nervous habit) When we got to the top off the hill, the view was amazing. We could look down over the river valley and the monastery. It was probably the 2nd most beautiful place I’ve seen in Ukraine (after the Carpathians.) It was a great trip overall.
Then the next day, Thursday, I taught a few classes, but headed out early to catch a train at 6pm to some Peace Corps training in Harkov. Brian, the other volunteer in my city was supposed to accompany me, but he ended up getting sick and wasn’t able to make it. The train I was on was probably the slowest one I’ve ever been on. It takes about 6 hours to get to Harkov by bus, but after a nice conversation about why an American ‘kid’ who doesn’t speak much Russian was teaching English in Ukraine, we arrived in Harkov at 6am the following day. I walked out of the train station with only a few directions as to what metro stop to get off at, but I felt in a walking mood, so that’s just what I did. I started walking away from the station in what I thought was the best direction (slightly downhill.)
A brief history lesson… Harkov used to be the capital of Ukraine when it was a part of the Soviet Union, only for 2 years, but you can still see remnants of its ‘glory day’s’ in the 2nd largest central square in the world (after Red square in Moscow) and the largest Lenin statue I have seen. It also is the largest university town in Ukraine, so it was cool to see many young and foreign people there. After the meeting I hung out with a few other volunteers getting to know the city a little. Then I met up with 2 volunteers that I had been in training with. It was the first time I had seen them in over three months, so it was a great reunion. It was a friend of theirs birthday’s Friday night, so we celebrated it in the typical way. Eating lots of food, drinking a little more vodka then is recommended, and dancing. We took the next morning pretty slow, but then headed to the largest bazaar in Ukraine to get a friend of mine some kickboxing gear. It was a beautiful day so we were able to throw a football around, and I learned the rules to Russian billiards (a lot harder than pool). Because my Russian isn’t so great and I always get nervous when buying train tickets, I mistakenly bought tickets for the train that leaves Harkov at 2am coming from Kiev. So I spent the evening hanging out with my friends and then around 1 walked the short distance to the train station and immediately fell asleep. The conductor also took my ticket before I got on the train, so I kind of forgot what bed number I had, so kept waking up hoping that nobody was going to kick me out cause I was in their seat. The ordeal was finished when I arrived in Lugansk at 9am and was back at my apartment 30 minutes later. Not a whole lot else to report besides my parents are coming to visit me next week! I am very excited to see them.

real Football!!

So, report from Ukraine. (yes, Ukraine, even though people often refer to, and it often feels like... RUSSIA, but its not...) anyways, wonderful day here in Ukraine. 70 degrees, almost want to wear shorts, but I think I get enough strange looks besides wearing shorts in March, when all the babushkas would be telling me to put more clothes on or I will get sick. No school this week... surprise surpise. had a great weekend, was able to go to my first professional league football game ever! it was between Lugansk Zarya (sunrise) and another Ukrainian team (Zaparoshya). Went and bought tickets on Friday, wanted good seats. (best seats cost 5 bucks!!!)
Anyways, woke up Saturday at 8ish, was cold, kind of rainy. Thought, oh great, this will be fun, im going to freeze my butt of watching football. But by 1 the sun had come out and it was beautiful.
Met 4 other volunteers and a friend from Lugansk at 2, and stood around watching people get ready for the match (i.e. drinking a lot of beer and vodka and do cool chants, Lugansk is the best, Lugansk is the best) So bought a beer and tried to walk in, only to realize we had to get the tops of our plastic bottles cut off so we couldnt throw them onto the field or hit anyone with the caps. So the game started, and it was cool to see about 2,000 people really excited about football. About 30 min. into the game one of the other team's players was sent off witha red-card, so i thought, hey, Zarya has a chance here. But about 10 minutes later the other team scored. Zarya had a chance late in the game with a pentalty kick, but of course missed... (they are 12th out of 16 teams in the league) Ended up going to a bar called Chelsea afterwards (not really a Irish pub, but still fun) and order some Hoegarden (my favorite Belgian beer)
Was a good day overall. Talk to you soon,
Love,
Seth

a real hello

A real hello!!
Sorry I haven’t written anything very interesting the past few weeks, but that is sort of because not a whole lot super interesting has happened over that time. As I said before, my school was closed for two weeks due to much of the student body being sick, and we didn’t start school again till last Monday. It was a little difficult getting the students focused back into studying and remembering all those English words they learned, especially since they were preparing for yet another concert on Friday morning, this one being for International Women’s day, which Ukraine (with many other countries around the world) celebrate on March 8th. Because the holiday was on a Saturday, that meant that there was no school on this Monday (today). So I really don’t work a whole lot here.
But because of all that free time I have been able to do some pretty fun things the last week or so. On Friday I finished all of my work early and took of at about 1ish for what I thought would be a short 30 min. run across the main highway towards where I thought my counter-parts house was. I started running, in shorts and a long sleeve shirt (it was about 50 degrees but windy) and as soon as I crossed the highway I looked out over a wide valley that reminded me of Missouri, Bangladesh and Africa all at once. It reminded me of Missouri due to the types of trees and the winding river that cut into the banks just like the Eleven-Point and the Buffalo Rivers. It reminded me of Bangladesh because there was garbage EVERYWHERE. Plastic Coke bottles, glass beer and vodka bottles, rotten food, and as I ran past a water-treatment plant it definitely reminded me of the smell of Dhaka. And finally, I was reminded of the plains of Africa (even though I’ve never been there and don’t have to worry about Lions, jackals, or cheetahs getting me) because as I ran down this long-straight rode I was not really looking at anything, but caught a slight movement out of the corner of my eye. A shiver ran down my spine. I stopped immediately and didn’t move. DOGS… STREET DOGS…
Okay, now you may be thinking, wow Seth, big deal, dogs. But as many people in Eastern Europe can agree to, dogs here are not quite the same as the fluffy, warm, clean man’s best friend of the States. These are dirty, mean, ready to track you down and bite you if you even pretend to run. They can smell fear. So, one foot at a time, keeping my eye on all 3 of them, I slowly sneaked away. I made sure never to make eye-contact, and once I thought I would have a chance of out-sprinting them, I took off again.
Well, this valley is special in my area, because instead of being a valley between two plateaus about 10 feet higher than the low-point, there were ACTUAL HILLS on the other side of the valley, so I was pretty ecstatic.
Let me also explain, I am fairly out-of shape. Those dang Печеняs (cookies) (for those who speak Russian, I am sorry for the spelling) and lots of fried food has made me not be as ready to run around as I want. But anyways, 20 minutes into my run I was in a part of the area I’d never seen before, running down a mud (and I mean MUD, 3-4 thick) road, stopping every 5 minutes to walk (more like tip-toe) past the dogs rummaging through the garbage piles. It was actually kind of pretty looking back across the valley towards my apartment, with the hills behind me, and the river snaking its way through Lugansk. Well, I kept going on the trail, but had a difficult time finding a way to go back towards my apartment other than turning around, which I hate doing, so what was supposed to be a 30 min. run turned into an 70 min. run with 20 extra minutes of walking due to dogs and to much mud. But running along the river/stream and feeling the wind at my back (mixed with rain) was well worth it. Good day.

Saturday I went to see a new American movie (Blond with Ambition starring Jessica Simpson) dubbed over in Russian, with some friends. Also found out that the Ukrainian football season has started again, so hopefully in two weeks I will get to see my first ever professional football (soccer) game. Other than that nothing new. Great to hear from all of you.
Love,
Seth

Quick update

Don't have a lot of time to write, but just wanted to let you know that I am still alive and things are going well. After two weeks of no school, I was finally back working on Monday, just trying to get my students to speak English again. This Monday we don't have school again due to International Women's Day on March 8th which is a National Holiday here in Ukraine.
Also, Peace Corps recently passed a rule that we have to have our blogs password protected, so look for me changing how to access my blog in the next few weeks.
Other than that, the weather has been up and down, rain, snow, etc. and nothing to exciting or new.
I will keep you all up to date though.
Miss you all, love,
Seth

Quarantine it is

So usually not a lot happens in 4 days in Ukraine, but like I’ve said before, every time you fall into any sort of routine, something happens that turns all your plans upside down. So after writing on my blog on Saturday I went to the main library where they were having a movie showing in English, but since I was basically the only one there, and didn’t like the movie they were going to show, I got to pick, and decided to watch Grumpy Old Men to remind me of Minnesota. About half-way through the movie (which the Ukrainian girl who was running the program thought was pretty funny) I looked outside and it was snowing, so that made me feel a little better. Didn’t do a whole lot on Sunday, just did some lesson plan and some reading.
So woke up on Monday to go teach some 3rd grades at another school close by. Walked in a couple minutes early, and quickly noticed that there weren’t really any students about, but I thought hey, maybe they are all in class. So I stood there for about 5 minutes looking completely clueless, till luckily the teacher I was going to be working with walked in and said that the school was on quarantine due to a flue going around (which happens at least once a year in Ukrainian schools, the school closes for about a week so the virus doesn’t spread, and almost all of the schools in the region closed on Monday but ours stayed open) and while she had said something about it a few days before, in English, I still didn’t quite the message, so I was like, woops, oh well. Went back to my school and decided to say hi to my counterpart. She quickly told me that AROUND 1 or 2 we were going into Lugansk to go meet with a boy and that I would probably miss some of my classes.
“What boy” I asked. “Just some boy that is the son of one of the headmistress’s friends.” She replied.
“Why are we going?” I asked. “When the headmistress tells me to do something, I don’t ask questions,” my counterpart replied.
“Ok, good enough for me.” So at about 1 I got a call from my counterpart to meet her in front of the school. So we got on a marshutka and took it to almost the complete opposite side of Lugansk, near the largest university in Lugansk. There we met up with the headmistress who had been downtown shopping. We went to her friends apartment, but no one was there, so went to a nearby cafй. Well, I don’t usually eat breakfast (sorry mom) so when the first thing we ordered was a beer, I thought “this may be a problem, I haven’t eaten anything today, and I have to teach after this.” But my headmistress said Сhu-Chut (a little) so of course we got 1/.2 litres of beer and I got some crab salad (which is amazing here) and my counterpart and headmistress proceeded to talk for about ? hour occasionally with my headmistress asking me questions and my counterpart translating…
“Do you have a girlfriend? Why not? How old women do you like?” it was an interesting conversation. Then we went to the friend’s apartment where I was introduced to who I thought was the friend and her son. So we sat down and had the usual chai, and was told to speak English to the boy to get him to practice. So my counterpart and I asked him a few questions, and after about 5 minutes, the actual mother, uncle, and 2 aunts showed up. I learned the woman that I’d first met was another aunt who had lived in California for 4 months almost 20 years ago after a horrible earthquake in Armenia (which is where the whole family is from, and they moved here 13 years ago to study at the university and stayed) where she was crushed under the school she worked at and was taking for rehabilitation. They are an inspiration to me because when they first came to Ukraine they didn’t speak any Russian, but now they all speak fluently.
So, as a guest, I was force fed tea, Coke, cake, and then later champagne. I found out that I was brought to meet the boy and maybe practice English with him a couple of times awake in exchange for speaking Russian with the rest of the family and awesome Armenian food. So we left after about an hour, and with a slight buzz (even with the cake and salad I hadn’t eaten a whole lot during the day) I went back to school and had about 20 minutes before I had to teach a class. So I taught the class, and when I went to find my next one, there were only 3 students in school so I cancelled class. I found out that of 250 students that go to my school, 120 of them were at home ill.
So, day 2 of my adventure… I woke up at 7 this morning to teach my class, and waited Ѕ hour to find none of my students came to class… good times. Then at 10 I was picked up by the uncle of the boy I am working with and we drove through horrible traffic to the apartment (apartment #2 though, the whole family lives together but they have 2 apartments a few blocks away from each other that they go in between) and I worked with the boy for about an hour on English. After that tea was brought out again, and then the meal began… (after of course they let me use the internet in their house, which is really fast) there was baked chicken, potatoes, sausages, and of course bread. I didn’t want to offend them by not eating it all but they gave me so much, it was so good. I was able to speak some Russian with them, and we talked about Armenia a little and America more. Very interesting. Then I was told Thursday they were going to make me Armenian Shashlik (like Shwarma or Kebabs), so I am pretty excited about that.
Got back to school about 10 minutes before I was supposed to teach a class, and of course my students were late, but I taught a pretty fun class, I think they enjoyed it even though they were all half-asleep (I think a lot of them were sick) and while waiting for my next class I found that MY school had been put on quarantine. My students were really happy (I guess for the healthy ones its just a big party for a week) So in the last week I’ve taught about 4 real classes, and were not sure when school will open again…
So that’s my life over the last 4 days in Ukraine, hope all is well, miss you all.
With love,
Seth

it's actually winter

It’s a typical Saturday night in Ukraine. Reading another book from the library. As another volunteer said, you could get your master’s in classical literature if you stayed in Ukraine long enough, what he meant basically, as a volunteer you have A LOT of free time. While I teach 18 hours a week, and English clubs and planning, there is still a lot of time to read Newsweek (which is sent to me every two weeks) and a bunch of novels.
Speaking of Newsweek, I recently got a package from the Peace Corps and got the last 5 copies, and spent a day just getting my news up to date. It is really exciting (and a little surreal) to see how big of a deal Barak Obama is making. Well I was really excited that Hilary Clinton was running 3 years ago, its amazing to think what would change in America if an African-American former Muslim was elected President. (well, maybe not Muslim, but he has lived all around the world, and that is just cool!)

But it’s really interesting to be over here and hear what people are saying about our elections. I had one slightly unnerving conversation with a very educated young Ukrainian woman on Thursday about the upcoming elections. We were talking about Clinton and Obama and she basically said that the Republicans were for sure going to win because she didn’t think women made good leaders (even though I tried to point out that a fair number of countries have female leaders and are doing pretty good) and that she would NEVER vote for an African-American, because as she said “you can see it in their eyes that they are just ready to do something bad…” My mouth almost dropped open when she said that. I knew many Ukrainians were racist, but jeez… so that will be one of my goals over here, to make Ukrainians a little more aware…
But anyways, today I had a conversation with my counterpart about the elections and she said she had never heard about Obama but that she thought Clinton would be very good because she was so powerful. So its interesting to be over here in preparation for November. Also, I started talking about Vladimir Putin (current President of Russia, and supposedly going to step down in March when his term runs out, but who knows?) and my counterpart went on to say what a great leader he was, and how he was much better than Bush, (she likes J.F. Kennedy though) and how everything he does is good for his people. So it’s a little different from what I would experience back in Minnesota…

But now I will try to run you through a typical Saturday for one Peace Corps Volunteer in Lugansk, Ukraine.
Wake up at 7:00 to my alarm, turn it off, go back to sleep, till 9:30. Read a little, listen to music, at 10:30 take a marshutka downtown for my 3rd viewing of the circus. I get off at the central bazaar, and decided to walk a little before I head to the circus. I walk slowly, looking around me, stop and briefly look at the booth for the Communist party of Ukraine, with many newspapers, pictures of Lenin, and the Hammer and Sickle proudly displayed in front. Walk a bit more, see the Adidas and Nike stores, the American music blasting from speakers, and head to the circus to meet my counterpart and her daughter.
So, the circus, as I said before this is now the 3rd time I have gone, but luckily each time has been a new show. Anyways, today there were a lot of young kids, and the typical toys, balloons and snack food you find at any American circus. And yes, Ukrainian circus’s have some gymnastics, people doing things with and to their bodies that should be not normally possible, but beyond that, this is definitely a different kind of show. It starts off with 10 women in very skimpy clothing coming out and doing a kind of cabaret sort of dance (I think for the older crowd, but never can be sure, and they do this about 5 times throughout the circus) and then the very Ukrainian looking juggelers, dog-trainers, and clowns come on. You know it’s a real Ukrainian/Russian circus when the brown bear in a skirt comes out and precedes to skip rope, sit and read the newspaper, and catch rings with his legs… then the chimpanzee in a suit comes out, etc… It was quite a show. Went to a very glitzy café already decorated for Valentines Day next week to have ice cream, then home to make some early dinner.
Tried to do some lesson planning but mostly read. Good day.
Will try to write again soon.


ALso, snowed quite a bit last night, we are having at ypical Minnesota spring. its nwos at night, gets really warm during the day, then cold again at night. Not a whole lot has happened since last week. Hope everything is good where you all are!
With love,
Seth

another week bites the dust

4 months down (20-22 months to go)! This is also the start of my 4th week of teaching. I will be showing all my students the current grade they are getting in class, so that should be pretty interesting. Also, started an English Club last week, where we played Bingo. Not sure what I will be doing with them this Wednesday, but I will think of something.
People back in Minnesota, has the weather warmed up at all this week for you? Yesterday the temperature here must have at least gotten up to 40f, and I was thinking, what the heck, this is February!! Ohwell, at least it hasn’t been pouring or anything out here.
So this weekend I headed over to Servodonetsk, which is a city of about 150,000 two hours northwest of Lugansk. There is another volunteer from my group posted there and she invited me and two other volunteers up for the weekend. I only have one class on Fridays so I headed up there at about 12pm. Got in at 2, and she showed me around the main city for a bit. She had recently picked up a small puppy off the streets and decided to adopt it. There are tons of stray dogs here, and I have definitely started to like cats a lot more than I ever thought possible, since dogs are just not so friendly over here.
Anyways, she showed me a wonderful indoor market that reminded me of the one in downtown Budapest, and then just walked around for a bit more.
At 7ish we went back to the bus stop to pick up another volunteer, and spent that night eating pasta, drinking beer, and listening to some good bluegrass. The next morning we woke up about 3 different times for the little puppy to be taken outside (every time I was very glad that I had not let my occasional loneliness to make me so rash as to get a dog) and then at 11ish we hopped on a marshutka to go horseback riding. Marnie (the volunteer in Servodonetsk) know a teacher at her school who’s daughter rides about once a week, so headed out to the stables. While I worked in the stable at my summer camp off and on this summer I still don’t know exactly what I am doing on a horse, so luckily I got a good one that just kind of plodded along. We got tested first to see if we were good enough riders to go take a walk through the woods, and luckily we were cause we got to walk down a sandy path through aspens and Jack Pines… very beautiful. Was the occasional group of Ukrainians having a little picnic in the woods, and even got my picture taking by one such group. Was kind of funny.
Spent most of the rest of the day just relaxing, and in the evening went to pick up one final volunteer who came late cause he had to teach classes on Saturday. We all went out to a very nice restaurant that had cheese balls, and buffalo wings (it was a nice break from borsch and vareniky) and then went to the movie theater that was close-by and after some hesitation decided to go see Alien Vs. Predator 2 (for all of those who don’t know, this is a series that started off with just Alien, then just predartor (with Arnold schwarzinager) and is basically Hollywood horror at its worst) but it was a cultural experience watching it in a huge theater and having everything be in Russian. IT was strange going to bed that night, thinking, THIS IS NOT WHAT I EXPECTED THE PEACE CORPS TO BE. Horseback riding, nice restaurants and American movies, its surreal at times, but always interesting. Took off early the next morning to get back to Lugansk and spent most of yesterday just reading and getting ready for the week.
Will write more soon. Miss you all.
Love,
Seth

new address

Сэт Спенсер
Областной Многопрофильныи Лицей
Ул. Ленина 12 Пос. Юбилеиный
Луганск 91493
Украина
So here is my address that should actually work from now on. You can send packages here, and anything else. Sorry there was such confusion before. The best way to do this is just copy and paste it into another document and then print this and tape it to a letter.

Anyways, I will try to fill you in on what I have been up to the past week. I am now on my third week of teaching, and have already learned a lot of very useful teaching skills, the main one being learning how to get your student’s to shut their mouths and listen to the immensely important information you are about to bestow upon them! This is of course a learning process, so for all those teachers/educators out there, any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.
Last week was pretty exciting, what with tea with my 11th grade students, where we talked about anything and everything they could think of to ask me. Very interesting to hear what 11th graders think/want to know about Americans in general, but specifically American movies, music, and American men. The next day I was asked to write a letter in English about what I was doing at the lyceum for one of the teacher’s masters thesis she was presenting the next week. I thought this was kind of cool, so I wrote something up, not knowing that the next day I had to have a fully staged photo shoot with about half the students, many of whom I don’t even teach. We did a couple ones were I was ‘pretending’ to teach them, and so I just started speaking English, pretty quickly, and you could see a look of complete confusion pass over all of the student’s faces. It was interesting to say the least. My counterpart (Albina) has been very sick over the past two weeks, so I have kind of just been on my own. I come to class when I am supposed to, read a lot in my spare time, and plan for class. Not always the most exciting life, but I can’t really complain.
Last Thursday I went into Lugansk to write some e-mails and check out some more books in English, and I ended up meeting 3 different people who speak English at the internet café. The first one was a guy from Syria who is in Lugansk studying accounting. He has a friend who I have also met from Iraq, actually from Baghdad, who was basically forced to leave by insurgents… very interesting talking with him. Another one was a Ukrainian English teacher who just wanted to know why an American was in Ukraine, and the last one was probably the most interesting, basically cause I had heard so much about this problem, but had never met anyone who caused this stereotype. Basically what I mean was that he was a retired businessman in his mid-40s from somewhere in New York, and when I asked why he was in Ukraine, he immediately responded, “looking for a girl.” While I admit there are many beautiful women here, I still can’t imagine people coming here purely to find a wife… its not hard to figure out why not all Ukrainians like America all that much.
Anyways, spent the weekend going to the library to talk about brainteasers in English, and then Saturday night going to a Ukrainian family’s house who is a friend of Brian, the other volunteer here in Lugansk. It was a great night, and very cool to meet more people in the area. Not a whole lot going on this week, except going to a party that Brian is having tonight, and this weekend going to a city about 2 hours away from here, where another volunteer is placed.
I think that’s all for now, sorry not to exciting. Love to here back from all of you.
Miss you all,
-Seth

time flies

How time flies by when you are in another country and trying to figure out how life really works… I would first off like to thank everyone who has written to me or talked to my family about me, a. it makes me miss home a little less knowing that people are still thinking of me, and b. it helps me accomplish one of Peace Corps goals, which is to make Americans and Ukrainians a little more aware of each other.
As one of my 10th grade students showed me; when I had them draw a picture of what America meant to them and he drew a picture of the War in Iraq and wrote next to it DEMOCRACY, it is important for me to be here and paint a little different picture of America than they are used to from American movies such as American Pie, Terminator etc. and American Music such as Eminem, 50 Cent, and Nelly Furtado.
I especially would like to thank all of my friends from school, summer camps, other peace corps volunteers etc. it really makes it not as hard to be over knowing that you all are going through the same day to day struggles, from figuring out what time to wake up in the morning, to what to cook at night, to "WHAT THE HECK AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE!!" I would also like to thank Bjorn Betzler, a friend from Duluth who is currently a Peace Corps Volunteer in The Gambia (Northwestern Africa) who stated that while our experiences were "Completely different," the peace corps life still rocks. I would have to agree with him
This experience has definitely helped me figure out a little more about who I am, and while at times I find myself doubting whether I could ever be a teacher full time, in actuality I am pretty content right now.
I wrote about a week ago, and since then quite a lot has happened. On the 13th of January I moved into my new apartment. It has 3 rooms (my bedroom, a living room and a kitchen which currently has no stove, but besides that could be a cheaper apartment in any big city in America) and while at first was chilly, is quite warm now. I begin "the real life" on Monday. I have a fairly crazy teaching schedule. I teach 0 hour at 7:25, then don’t teach again till 2:25 in the afternoon, then teach at 4, 5, and sometimes 6. I teach 9 lessons of Conversational English, where I am trying to get my students to understand the basic structure of English and become comfortable speaking with a native English speaker. It is a little strange at times since they have always studied British English and I find myself about to correct them when I realize that, hey, maybe that’s actually the right way to say it in England. Another 9 classes a week is spent teaching my 9th-11th students Country Studies, which includes America, England, and Australia/New Zealand. I got America down, but I have the feeling that I will be learning a lot of new information about England over the next 4 months. So, technically I only teach 18 lessons a week, but this week there was a bad flu going around the school and on Wednesday night my counterpart (the teacher I work with, Albina) got very sick and Thursday morning called to ask me to take her classes over. So Thursday I ended up teaching 9 classes, and overall in the week 27 classes. I am not sure what the usual work-load for teachers in the States is, but I can tell you, I was exhausted at the end of the week. As another Peace Corps volunteer told me, it will build character.
Overall, it was a good first week, the usual bumps and disrespectful students, but I am trying to be fairly strict with only speaking English in class and once when the class was really bad, afterwards two students came up to me and apologized for their classmates… it is little moments like that that I know will get me through the next 2 years. So Friday rolled around, and after going to the local supermarket and grabbing some bread, bear, and vareniky (kind of like ravioli) I came back and fell asleep at about 4 in the afternoon. My usual dinner has consisted of delicious fresh bread (they certainly know how to make bread here) and a large bowl of vareniky (all I do is boil it, even easier then macaroni and cheese… I have been fairly lazy with cooking so far). Saturday morning I woke up, lounged around and at about 12 went into town (Lugansk) to go to the bank and try to get on the free internet that the Main Library offers due to an American grant that gives money to libraries all over Ukraine for internet and English books, movies, etc. (I am glad my tax money is going to something useful) So sorry if I wasn’t able to get off an e-mail to you last time, I only had 30 minutes and spent most of it just reading e-mails. After that I went to an English meeting that the library holds every Saturday and this week they were watching "The Breakfast Club" (a slightly ridiculous movie from the 80’s about 5 teenagers who all have detention one Saturday. I sometimes wonder why Ukrainians view Americans they way they do, and then I watch an American movie and I figure it all out again.)
Well, I could go on and on, but I think I will end it by saying that my first week of "THE REAL LIFE" is over, and every week that goes by I will get more and more confident. As my Dad recently said in an e-mail, "its strange to think that we are in the same part of the world, doing the same sort of thing." It was cool to have lived in Bangladesh and Belgium with my parents, but I think I finally have at least some sense of the everyday struggles and difficulties that my parents face and other ex-pats face living overseas. It’s not always an easy life, but its definitely not one I am quite ready to give up either. Miss you all,
Love,
Seth

I'm BACK!!!

So, the adventure in Ukraine continues as the days till “the real world” count down. By this I mean that I will actually begin teaching full time this coming Monday!! My schedule will be a little strange, with one class at 7:30am, one class at 2:30pm and 1-2 classes between 5-7pm, because they are adding on English classes to give the students more practice. So here I am sitting in my host-families apartment (which I will be sadly living in about a week and a half and moving into my own apartment) and thinking that I am rather tired and glad that I am not outside right now, as it is -18F out, with no snow.
I am also thinking that I should now try to describe how truly amazing my last 8 days were. Most of you know that I was able to go on an excursion (as they like to call them) with 15 of my students and my vice-principal to the Carpathian mountains, which are located in the far western part of Ukraine on the boarder with Romania. To truly explain what western-Ukraine is like (and those living in Eastern Ukraine really can’t get a picture of this until they go there) I would like to take some quotes from Lonely Planet Ukraine (a famous guidebook) since they put it much more eloquently than I ever could.
“The west is a special case in Ukraine. It likes to think of itself more quintessentially Ukrainian than the rest of the country; at the same time it considers itself more European. Thanks to its different history, it manages to be both. Having kept the nationalist home fires burning during centuries of Polish, Lithuanian and Austrian rule, it still shows greater pride in Ukrainian traditions and language than elsewhere. Yet overseas visitors will find this one of the most familiar feeling and friendly regions of Ukraine- poorer than, but not so different from, neighboring Hungary, Poland or Slovakia. Here where Moscow rules for only 50 years, there’s less of that surely ‘no-can-do’ Soviet bureaucracy that still permeates Eastern Regions.” (Lonely Planet Ukraine) I would like also to use the Carpathian mountains quote, which states “Those who know Ukraine regard the Carpathian mountains as a byword for hiking and skiing; they also call them a land that time forgot. Here horse-drawn carts clip-clop along potholed roads as weather-beaten folk till the neighboring fields, and babushkas (grandmothers) herd their geese home or take their solitary cow to be milked.” (Lonely Planet Ukraine)

I hope these descriptions can give you at least some sense of the wonder and beauty that the Carpathians hold. After a 28 hour train ride (dad, mom, and Morley, I am not jealous of your 40 hour adventure to Istanbul) my group arrived in Lyviv (the sort of capital of the west) and took a 3 hour marshutka (mini-bus) to Yaremcha (2 hours south of Ivano-Frankivsk on the map). Yaremcha is basically the Steamboat springs or Vail of Ukraine. Not quite as flashy, but still the entire town seems to base its survival on tourism. Only 40 min. from Bukovel, which is the best skiing in Ukraine, and right next to an amazing white-water river, it is definitely a place I would have liked to live for 2 years. (oh well, can’t have it all) The first day we were in Yaremcha (January 4th) our group walked around the city, climbed large hills that reminded me exactly of western-Austria, and saw some ‘wild’ elk and boars. (as wild as you can call something in a large gated pen, but it was still cool to see Ukrainian elk, I forgot the Russian word for them at the moment.) That night all of the students wanted to go to the local cultural palace, where they hold a disco every weekend. Lets just say that as the young teacher of the group, I was elected to go and show off my American moves. It’s a little strange to know that you are least 6 years older than a majority of the other people in a discothèque, but that didn’t stop me from dancing to a few Russian songs and to all the English songs I knew.
Saturday we went to a ski hill close by. It definitely reminded me of Spirit Mountain (at least in size anyways). I had rented skis for the day in Yaremcha for 10 dollars, and then went to the ‘ski’ hill, which had one ‘run’ which was basically glaze ice with rocks sticking up everywhere, and you paid 5 griven (1$) for a ride up the chair-lift. Most of my students had rented skis and snowboards, but as most of them had never tried either, didn’t do a whole lot of what you would call skiing. I went down a curvy glaze iced pathway and then thought it would be a good idea to walk back up the hill instead of paying to take the chairlift. (I didn’t make that mistake again, I fell about 5 times trying to a walk up a stair case with ski boots on) The 2nd time down I skirted a little fence and immediately saw movement to my left. (A little side-note before I go on: I love dogs, most people know that, but I have to put a little asterisks next to that, I love dogs: in America; dogs in Ukraine are… just downright mean. They would rather bite you then lick you. Dakota and Canoe would not exactly fit in here.) so here I am trying to stay in control on glaze ice going down this hill knowing that there are 2 dogs coming very quickly after me, so I basically just start bombing the hill, a little out of control but realize that one of the dogs is still gaining on me, so I take off one of my poles to give him a good wack in the face. I took a swing when he got a little to close and he immediately stopped. (I think he had had this experience before). So my adrenaline was a little high, but I couldn’t quite explain in my limited Russian or with my student’s limited English what had happened. It was good times…
On Sunday we went for a long hike the in the woods nearby Yaremcha, which are famous for having great caves, high cliffs, and beautiful trees. It was an amazing place, and as we were about 10-20 km from Ukraine’s highest mountain, definitely a good workout. (sorry, but another side-note. Not sure how many of you have traveled to eastern-Europe, well actually this is probably true in Europe as a whole, but in Ukraine women, especially young women do not dress… whats the word… practically. They wear tight pants and heels when they know they know they are going to be hiking up hills in snow, so a good part of the 3 hour journey was spent in trying to make sure my students and other teachers didn’t fall on their faces as they slid up and down the very hilly terrain.)
Anyways, I would highly recommend this area to anyone with future travel plans to the Carpathians. Sunday night was Christmas eve. and we spent it singing Russian songs and playing games. It was a nice way to celebrate the holiday.
On Monday we were able to go to another ski place, Bukovel, which I guess is where all the “New Ukrainians” (a term for all those who became rich and famous after the collapse of the Soviet Union) go. Anyways, it was a real mountain, and while fairly expensive (80 griven for ski rental and 20 griven per ski lift up) was definitely worth it. It reminded me very much of Steamboat Springs in CO. My students were not yet willingly to test their skills on a real mountain so I was the only one who ventured out. I was able to ski down the mountain with all my students cheering and clapping, very interesting. Later that day, on our way back to Yaremcha, we turned off onto a dirt road, and I kept hearing the President of Ukraine’s (Viktor Yushchenko) name, and as we approached a huge log-cabin mansion I realized that we were about 30 meters from his home. (somehow I don’t think you could get those close to Bush’s house in a large mini-bus full of student’s with cameras) But we continued down the dead-end road till we came to a gorgeous water-fall that was all frozen over. It reminded me exactly of Minnesota. While I have missed home at times, I was the most and least homesick right then. Most cause I missed the smell of pine trees and the water and snow that Lugansk seems to lack, but least cause I know it will still be there when I get back.
Tuesday we woke up at 3:30am to take the 7 hour Electrichka (electric train) back to Lyviv where we spent the day walking around, seeing a very famous graveyard which many famous Polish and Ukrainians are buried and looking around of the Lyviv McDonalds (luckily we never found it). We stopped in a couple amazingly beautiful churches (which I later learned where Catholic, not eastern Orthodox like a thought, I really need to learn the difference in architecture) and in one very beautiful church where a small mass was going on I lit some candles, for Uncle Tom, Aunt Cindy, and everyone else I love who has passed on.
Tuesday night at 1am we got back on the train and headed back to the other side of “the Tinfoil curtain.” It was an awesome experience, and know that if anyone wants to find a northern-Minnesota in Europe, (besides Slovakia, which I have also heard is beautiful) head to the Carpathians. Hope everyone’s New Years was wonderful and are living the winter up. Miss you, sorry this was so long.
Love,
Seth