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