Wow, the countdown has begun! I will be back in America in about 3 months, but only about 2 months of Ukraine left! The last two years have gone by faster than I ever thought possible. While there have been weeks that have seemed to slowly struggle along, months seem to flash by.
As I think I said last year at about this time, summer in Ukraine is amazing. My sister had decided to come visit Ukraine last June, and she had talked to my parents about their trip to Lugansk, and they had said that it was kind of dark and depressing, so it was great to hear Morley say, “Lugansk is not so bad” by the end of the trip. Of course, it helped that the weather was beautiful every day and we saw a bit more of the country then when my parents visited. The rest of the summer was again spent traveling around the country doing summer camps. There were 4 camps, in 4 different parts of the country, lasting a total of 6 weeks, so my summer was over before I knew it. The camps were great, and made me realize that it is something I really enjoy doing, and may try to pursue a career in environmental education or something else working with kids in the outdoors.
As my time is coming to an end, I had a look back at projects I wish I had started, or lesson plans I wished I had made better, but overall, I am still satisfied with the work I have done and hope that at least a few Ukrainians feel the same way. As I am sure you realized, I have been able to travel a lot Ukraine doing different camps and seeing different volunteers. One place I had not had the chance to visit was Crimea, which, besides Lviv and the Carpathian Mountains, is one of the most highly suggested places to visit in Ukraine. Because it takes 18 hours just to get there, it isn’t simply a weekend trip. I had a few offers to go with different people, including my counterpart and her family, but hadn’t followed through on these plans, so didn’t think I was going to have a chance. But about a week ago my friend Brad, another volunteer who lives close to Lugansk said that he had plans to go to Crimea for a week and try to see some of the sights down there.
I decided to tag along; so we took the long, slow train ride down to Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, which is its own autonomous republic , meaning that it is still part of Ukraine but has a lot of its own laws and keeps to itself a lot. We hopped off the train and were struck by how many people there were. We had thought that half-way through September there might be less people, and if this was true, I would hate to be there when there are a lot of people, it was crowded. Brad and I both agreed we needed to get out of there as soon as possible so we hopped on the 1st bus we could find to Kacha, the town we were going to stay at for the week. We had to stand the entire hour and a half, but it wasn’t too bad. We arrived in Kacha Saturday afternoon and Yuri, our contact in the town showed us a bit around. Kacha used to have a Russian Air-Force base until last year. Our ‘hotel’ was about a 10 minute walk to the Black Sea, and about a 45 minute bus ride to Sevastopol, which is where the Black Sea Fleet is based. (The Russian fleet that patrols the Black Sea, and which Russia rents part of the Sevastopol Bay from Ukraine. It is an area of dispute for many Ukrainians since the mayor of Moscow even said that Sevastopol still belongs to Russia. There are Russian sailors all over the streets and Russian flags flying everywhere.)
Saturday afternoon Brad and I went and got some lunch at a restaurant overlooking the sea, then went down and swam a bit. The water was pretty cool, but since everyone said it was supposed to be cold all week we felt pretty lucky that it was 80 degrees, and so the water felt good. Sunday we headed into Sevastopol to meet up with another volunteer who lives just outside the main-part of the city. We first headed to a panorama of the Crimean War which was fought in the mid 19th century between Russia and a coalition of Turkish-British-and French soldiers. Even though it was all in Russian, with the help of Brad’s wonderful translations and the occasional English plaque I learned a lot about something I had no real previous knowledge. It was an incredibly bloody battle and many poems and books have been written about it. We went to a wonderful Tatar restaurant (an ethnic group specifically from Crimea, which Stalin tried to purge over 2 million of them in the 1950s,and only 200,000 of them still remain in Crimea) and then walked around the city and saw a bit of the port and the Russian ships stationed there.
Sunday morning Brad and I got on a bus to Bakchisarai, a town about an hour north of the sea, which holds one of the largest Tatar palaces in the world. It was really interesting learning about the khans (Tatar kings) that had lived there and how they had shaped Crimea’s history. We walked 45 minutes up a rode to try to find the path up to a very famous fortress that is built on top of a huge bluff and is riddled with caves. After a very hot walk up and a few unexpected ticket booths we got up to the top and were treated to some incredible views of the valleys around us. Overall it was a wonderful day, even though Brad and I both were pretty tired by the end of the day. Tuesday morning we woke up early and jumped on a bus to Yalta, which is probably the most famous city in all of Crimea. Yalta is one of the most popular resort towns in Crimea, and just driving along the spectacular coast-line rode with sheer cliffs to your left and right, you could see huge hotels which reminded you of any other beach-town in the world. It made it hard to remember that Ukraine is still a developing country.
We got off the bus and hiked straight down a hill to find the Livadia palace, which is famous for two reasons. One, it is where the Romanovs ( the ruling family/Tsar in Russia from the 17th-early 20th century) held their summer residence, and where the Tsarina went to get over TB. The upper part of the palace is dedicated to their memory, and it was interesting to see pictures of Tsar Nicolas II and Alexi his son, as well as pictures of many of the royal families throughout Europe which in those days all seemed to be related. (King George and Tsar Nicolas were cousins and the Kaiser of Germany was their uncle.) The lower part was dedicated to the Yalta conference, which was where Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met in February of 1945 to decide what would happen to post-war Europe. This is the main reason why I wanted to see the palace, and was very interested to see the way everything was set up. There were pictures everywhere of the conference, and many of the rooms were set up the same way they were during the conference. The 3 representatives of the different countries all stayed in different palaces near Yalta, but Roosevelt stayed in the Livadia, so there was a lot of information about him specifically. After the palace we went down to a wonderful board-walk that is filled with tourists from all over, and then hiked our way up hill to find Chekhov’s (famous Russian author) Yalta residence. We finally caught a bus back at 7 and were pretty exhausted when we got back to Kacha at 9:30 that night.
Wednesday was spent mostly relaxing and a little more time at the beach.
Thursday Brad and I decided to hop on two different buses to reach a marina town called Balaclava, just south of Sevastopol. Balaclava is famous for 2 things. It is where the term balaclava (like neck-warmers or ski masks you put around you entire head. They were designed by British women who sent them to soldiers stationed there in the Crimean War) came from, and it was the home of a secret nuclear-submarine base during the Cold War. We arrived in Balaclava and decided to hike around and just see what there was to see.
We eventually headed to the submarine base, where we were allowed to just, “walk around.” This is very strange since if you speak Russian you are almost always with a tour group and have to go at their pace, so it’s nice to be on your own.
The submarine base was designed in the 1960s as a secondary-strike response to the American nuclear threat. It was built in the side of a mountain, in the bay of Balaclava. There are two entrances, so the submarine could go in one door, have repairs done or missiles put on board, and then go out the other door. It was also built so that an entire group of workers and military personnel could live there for up to a month in case of a nuclear strike. It was very interesting to see how prepared both sides of the war were for a nuclear attack. The base was only shut down about 15 years ago, so it was interesting to see the pictures from not so long ago.
After lunch, Brad and I decided to hop on a sort of water-taxi (a small boat with a slow engine and some characters for captain/workers) out to one of the most spectacular beaches I have ever seen. The beach was surrounded on all sides with mountains, and when Brad and I decided to walk back to town, we were treated to some of the best views of Crimea there are.
Overall, the trip was amazing, and as my time comes to an end, it again shows me what Ukraine really does have to offer!
Hope to see you all soon,
Seth
Monday, September 14, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
4 months left!!
I am currently sitting in my room, with the air conditioning blasting because its been over 100 degrees the past 4-5 days!! But its nice to just be relaxing after 3 weeks of summer camps.
I started off with my 2 week Survivor Camp in Western Ukraine, in the heart of the Carpathian Mountains. Again, it was a great 10 days; hiking up and down the mile climb to our camp site, cooking over a fire, and enduring the huge thunderstorms that rolled in every 2 days! I was also able to join the campers when we went to hike Mt. Heverla, the highest mountain in Ukraine, around 2,036 meters. Not that high, but still a good climb up! It was a very surreal experience, because as we reached the top the clouds that had been slowly building collapsed on top of us and we were enveloped in a mist that surrounded the mountain and made you feel as if you were in another planet.
Overall, the weather was great, with one or two huge storms rolling through and flooding our fires and most of the students cheap tents. The classes went great, and we spent most nights around a campfire after playing some great American camp games. Another highlight was firing off REAL fireworks (the big ones are easy to buy and cheap here) and hearing the booms echo off the mountain sides for July 4th! By the end of the camp all of the counselors were dirty, exhausted, but glad that we got the chance to spend 10 wonderful days in the mountains, doing some actual camping. It made me realize how different the landscape around Ukraine can be. It was a great time!
After that I headed to Ivano Frankivsk, which is a city in western Ukraine, and reminds me more of Europe than any other Ukrainian city with its big boulevards and beer tents everywhere. It took me 2 days to get to Lugansk from the west, and I had only one day at home before I headed to Kreminna, a town in northern Lugansk Oblast ,for Camp IKNOW (a ecological-based camp that had been done in other parts of Ukraine but never in The East before). On the 13th we got all the counselors and kids (7 Americans, 16 students, and 2 Ukrainian adults) to the camp. It was set in a beautiful red pine forest, yet was a little dirty because it was near the main city beach, so there were tons of beer bottles everywhere. The point of the camp was to teach students about the importance of the environment, and to learn how to plan and implement environmental-based projects in their communities. So the days were spent having lessons, and then after lunch playing some games and going to either the dirty lake nearby or the great river about 40 minutes walking away. Due to a misunderstanding (by me) we didn’t have a cook to help us at the camp, so we did all our cooking (again) over a far using very, very dirty pots and a grate. The meals took a little longer, but after some awesome chili and Shashlik (Ukrainian kebabs/barbeque) I thought we did a good job. The students also put together a community clean up for the rode to the lake, and after we were done I think they were pretty proud of themselves. I put some pictures up on face book of both these camps, and will put a few on my blog as well.
These camps usually fly by, and with another two camps coming up, my summer will be gone before I know it. I have left then 4 months left, and my anxiety about coming back to America and what to do when I get there is slowly growing… but for the moment I will relax, take in the heat, and enjoy the wonderful Ukrainian summer (with some watermelon of course! Less then 2$ for 12 pounds!)
Talk to you all soon!
With love,
Seth
I started off with my 2 week Survivor Camp in Western Ukraine, in the heart of the Carpathian Mountains. Again, it was a great 10 days; hiking up and down the mile climb to our camp site, cooking over a fire, and enduring the huge thunderstorms that rolled in every 2 days! I was also able to join the campers when we went to hike Mt. Heverla, the highest mountain in Ukraine, around 2,036 meters. Not that high, but still a good climb up! It was a very surreal experience, because as we reached the top the clouds that had been slowly building collapsed on top of us and we were enveloped in a mist that surrounded the mountain and made you feel as if you were in another planet.
Overall, the weather was great, with one or two huge storms rolling through and flooding our fires and most of the students cheap tents. The classes went great, and we spent most nights around a campfire after playing some great American camp games. Another highlight was firing off REAL fireworks (the big ones are easy to buy and cheap here) and hearing the booms echo off the mountain sides for July 4th! By the end of the camp all of the counselors were dirty, exhausted, but glad that we got the chance to spend 10 wonderful days in the mountains, doing some actual camping. It made me realize how different the landscape around Ukraine can be. It was a great time!
After that I headed to Ivano Frankivsk, which is a city in western Ukraine, and reminds me more of Europe than any other Ukrainian city with its big boulevards and beer tents everywhere. It took me 2 days to get to Lugansk from the west, and I had only one day at home before I headed to Kreminna, a town in northern Lugansk Oblast ,for Camp IKNOW (a ecological-based camp that had been done in other parts of Ukraine but never in The East before). On the 13th we got all the counselors and kids (7 Americans, 16 students, and 2 Ukrainian adults) to the camp. It was set in a beautiful red pine forest, yet was a little dirty because it was near the main city beach, so there were tons of beer bottles everywhere. The point of the camp was to teach students about the importance of the environment, and to learn how to plan and implement environmental-based projects in their communities. So the days were spent having lessons, and then after lunch playing some games and going to either the dirty lake nearby or the great river about 40 minutes walking away. Due to a misunderstanding (by me) we didn’t have a cook to help us at the camp, so we did all our cooking (again) over a far using very, very dirty pots and a grate. The meals took a little longer, but after some awesome chili and Shashlik (Ukrainian kebabs/barbeque) I thought we did a good job. The students also put together a community clean up for the rode to the lake, and after we were done I think they were pretty proud of themselves. I put some pictures up on face book of both these camps, and will put a few on my blog as well.
These camps usually fly by, and with another two camps coming up, my summer will be gone before I know it. I have left then 4 months left, and my anxiety about coming back to America and what to do when I get there is slowly growing… but for the moment I will relax, take in the heat, and enjoy the wonderful Ukrainian summer (with some watermelon of course! Less then 2$ for 12 pounds!)
Talk to you all soon!
With love,
Seth
Thursday, June 11, 2009
summer strikes again
Well… as summer approaches, I felt I should stop and take a bit of a look back over the last few months and the craziness that has ensued. I believe the last time I wrote I had just returned from a great trip to Egypt with my girlfriend Megan. When we returned Ukraine was still tightly in the grips of winter, but soon the spring showers and budding trees that Ukraine allows for about a week showed up. School was crazy for the last two months of school, with constant schedule changes and confusing as to whether I even have class at that time. But I have been able to get around Lugansk Oblast a bit and see more of the area and where other Peace Corps Volunteers live, so that’s been nice.
Probably the biggest thing that has happened is that I was able to go back to America for about 9 days. My grandfather had been sick for quite a while and my family decided it was time to come home, and shortly after that decision he passed away. While my family was of course very sad, it was very nice that we were all able to get together and celebrate his memory again. While home I was able to get up to the Brule for a day, and have a great burger and some beers at the Brewhouse in Duluth. It was nice to have a little R&R, but it did make coming back to Ukraine a little bit harder.
Since then, I have had my sister Morley come to visit, which was great! She arrived on Sunday and I was able to pick her up at the airport, when we then headed to the train station to catch a train to Lugansk. I had not been able to buy the second-class tickets that we had used when my parents had come, so we were in third-class seats where there is no privacy and it was very, very hot! We arrived tired and a bit frazzled in Lugansk on Monday, and were able to take a bit of a walk around my neighborhood and downtown Lugansk, when we then headed to Indian food for dinner. Tuesday was filled with seeing a bit of an actual Ukrainian village, and having some great Armenian food. Wednesday we head to Slavyansk to see where Megan lives, and Thursday we headed to one of the most famous Ukrainian monasteries, where we got a tour from a Ukrainian priest. Thursday we headed to Kiev and Friday Morley got a great speed-walking tour of Kiev, with most of the main attractions being hit up. Morley headed off to Budapest again on Saturday.
Megan heads home in about a week, and the rest of the summer will be filled with summer camps and traveling to visit friends.
Hope all is well!!
Miss you all,
Love,
Seth
Probably the biggest thing that has happened is that I was able to go back to America for about 9 days. My grandfather had been sick for quite a while and my family decided it was time to come home, and shortly after that decision he passed away. While my family was of course very sad, it was very nice that we were all able to get together and celebrate his memory again. While home I was able to get up to the Brule for a day, and have a great burger and some beers at the Brewhouse in Duluth. It was nice to have a little R&R, but it did make coming back to Ukraine a little bit harder.
Since then, I have had my sister Morley come to visit, which was great! She arrived on Sunday and I was able to pick her up at the airport, when we then headed to the train station to catch a train to Lugansk. I had not been able to buy the second-class tickets that we had used when my parents had come, so we were in third-class seats where there is no privacy and it was very, very hot! We arrived tired and a bit frazzled in Lugansk on Monday, and were able to take a bit of a walk around my neighborhood and downtown Lugansk, when we then headed to Indian food for dinner. Tuesday was filled with seeing a bit of an actual Ukrainian village, and having some great Armenian food. Wednesday we head to Slavyansk to see where Megan lives, and Thursday we headed to one of the most famous Ukrainian monasteries, where we got a tour from a Ukrainian priest. Thursday we headed to Kiev and Friday Morley got a great speed-walking tour of Kiev, with most of the main attractions being hit up. Morley headed off to Budapest again on Saturday.
Megan heads home in about a week, and the rest of the summer will be filled with summer camps and traveling to visit friends.
Hope all is well!!
Miss you all,
Love,
Seth
Saturday, March 28, 2009
spring warmth!
March 29, 2009
Well, its only 7am and I am already awake, on a SUNDAY!! Not usual for me, but it may be because for the past week I fell asleep at about 9 and woke up as the blazing sun worked its way through our curtains as it climbed over the mountains of Saudi Arabia…
Yes, I just got back from Egypt for a week! It all started about 3 weeks ago when my girlfriend and I started to discuss what we should do for our spring break. Egypt was thrown out there but I wasn’t very serious about it because of money, logistics, etc. We also thought about Norway but we didn’t really want more winter. Eventually, after confusion about where to reserve tickets for Egypt, etc. we booked a week-long trip to Nuweiba, on the Sinai Peninsula for 7 nights, at a 3 star hotel right on the beach. We had friends that had gone to this hotel back in December, and they had only good things to say about it. I went to Egypt about 4 years ago with my parents, so I sort of knew what to expect, but was a little off.
So on March 20th Megan and I headed to Donetsk where our flight was leaving at 6am Saturday morning. We stayed with another peace corps volunteer who lives close-by to the airport, which was nice because the weather had decided it didn’t want to be spring quite yet and was snowing and windy… we were ready to head to Egypt. Our first snag was when I tried to go through passport-control on the way out of Ukraine, and found out I didn’t have the required departure-form which you fill out when you come IN to Ukraine. The immigration officer kept asking in Russian where it was and I stubbornly kept saying, I don’t know, but I have a visa… After I went through he told Megan that he had noted this and I might have problems in the future…
So we arrived into Sharm Al Sheik after a 3 hour flight south, and started driving… (we thought North-west, but again were a little off) Megan and I had originally thought we would arrive at an airport only 40 minutes from out hotel, but I think due to not enough people wanting to go there we went to an airport over 2 hours away. We got off the plane, bought our visas, and headed out into the glorious Egyptian sun. We found a guy with a sign for our tour company, and he directed us towards a bunch of tourist buses, which of course we thought we were going to get on. Oh no, as we headed over a guy with what looked to be a brand new Audi, asked, are you the ones going to Nuweiba (in Russian), after we said yes he directed us to get in the car. Both megan and I were thinking, “what the heck?!” We realized that no one else was going to where our hotel was so we had this fancy car all to ourselves. After briefly talking with a tour agent in the front (who spoke very little English but excellent Russian, which was common there and which I was VERY surprised about) and driving over 200km an hour as I held tightly onto the “oh crap” handles in the back, we got to Nuweiba.
We pulled up to our hotel and they showed us to our room. The view was amazing, with beautiful shades of blue in front of us and mountains in all directions. I was a little confused though, since I thought Hurghada and the rest of Egypt would be straight across from us. After looking on a map of Egypt, Megan and I found out we had not gone north-WEST of Sharm, but north-east, and were now looking at Saudi Arabia, with Jordan and Israel less than an hour away. Very cool!
Our first trip out was to find some water, and of course the hotel didn’t have a place close by or cheap. We kept asking for bazaar, bazaar (international word for market) and kept being directed to single shops with very over-priced merchandise. We then wanted a taxi and first asked a worker at the hotel how much it would cost. 50 pounds round trip he said. That was almost 9 dollars so we then asked the front desk how much it should be and they said no more than 10 pounds one way… we needed to get into bargaining mode!!! We headed into the small town of Nuweiba, and found what we needed. Water, snacks, and snorkeling stuff. We walked the hot, dry 5 km back to our hotel and immediately went to the beach. At first I thought the beach wasn’t that cool because it seemed very shallow and it wasn’t easy to get out to deeper water, but as I explored more and more, I realized that we were incredibly lucky to stay at a place with such a great reef only 300 feet from the shore. Over the 7 days that we were there, I spent about 3 hours a day swimming back and forth along the beach, seeing all sorts of fish, corals, Moray eels, and what I am really hoping WASN’T a Sea Snake! The water was cold at times, but over-all it was great to swim and then come back on-shore and get warm but not too hot.
Most of our days evolved around the schedule of waking up at 6:30 due to the very bright sun, slowly moving around till 7 when we headed straight to the buffet breakfast, then back to our rooms for a bit of reading, getting ready for the beach; then snorkeling, sun-tanning, maybe a little beach volley-ball till about 11, then back inside from a break from the sun. We would then play some cards, read, take a nap, eat some food, then maybe take a walk into town and buy some more snacks, then repeat the beach excursion till 5, when it was time for showers, clean clothes, and another buffet dinner! Then maybe a movie, and falling asleep by 9:15!! Megan and I both got a lot of sun, but she was a little smarter about applying the sun lotion, so I eventually ended up burning my forehead, the top of my head, somehow my lip, and the back of my thighs when I wore a new Ukrainian ‘speedo’ which left some pretty white skin exposed!!
This was our life for a week, except for two very exciting exceptions. When Megan and I first decided we were going to Egypt, we talked about different things we wanted to see there, and we finally decided that we had to go to Cairo and see the Pyramids, since you can’t go to Egypt twice and not see them, and also do a sun-rise hike up Mt. Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God.
So our first job was to find out how to get to these places and after some research on the internet we had thought the trips would be VERY expensive, but upon arriving in Nuweiba we were flooded with offers for taxi rides and other one day trips to both locations. We settled on an actual tour-group for Cairo because we wanted to feel more secure about this trip because it was expensive, long, and in Cairo, a CRAZY city! Tuesday night we woke up at 2 and headed out in our private mini-bus (not sure why we had such a big vehicle for only 2 people) with our driver and a ‘tour-guide’ whose Russian and English were incredibly hard to understand. After 6 hours of driving through desert we arrived on the out-skirts of Cairo, and it took us another 90 minutes to get to the Cairo History Museum. (We heard about 5 different numbers, but it seems that there are around 17 million people who live in Cairo, with another 3 coming in every day for work, and over a million cars on the road!) We had a great guide from Cairo nick-named Cassanova, who had worked as a tour-guide for over 25 years, knew everyone and carried a plastic gavel which he used to hit people on the head so they would get out of his way!! Pretty funny. The museum was huge, with pieces from a bunch of different Pharaohs, and some pieces over 5000 years old!
We then headed west towards the pyramids, and as we crossed the Nile we got out for a quick photo shoot. After another crazy drive though horrible traffic we could see the pyramids in the distance. Of course we had to stop at the papyrus factory and do the usual tourist thing of pretending you are interested in buying something when you are not at all! After another huge buffet lunch we finally headed to the Pyramids. As most people, Megan and I of course had seen the pyramids in tons of pictures, but you really do have to be there to truly understand how amazing it is that something like that could be created without modern machinery so long ago!! Breathtaking. We walked all around the 3 pyramids, took a brief tour down into one of them, then down to the Sphinx (which for some reason I thought was far away from the pyramids, not less than a kilometer away) and of course took hundreds of pictures. Definitely a worth-while experience. After that we were both exhausted, but we had another stop at a perfume shop, which Megan I were both leery about because we didn’t really expect to buy anything and we both get uncomfortable in these positions. But after some great tea, good sales pitch and smelling over 6 different scents I bought Megan a VERY small bottle of Sweet Pea extract for baths and stuff. I know my dad would have loved it, as we sat on plushy cushions and there were hundreds of bottles with all different scents which were eventually sent to Perfume companies all around the world! After another 6 hour ride back, taking a tunnel under the Suez cannel, he made it back our hotel around 11pm.
24 short hours later we woke up and headed out on a 2 hour drive to Mt. Sinai/Moses (whatever you want to call it) for a supposedly 3 hour hike up to see the sun rise over the mountains. We had hired a local taxi driver so we didn’t have a guide and didn’t really know what to expect from the whole experience. Megan and I arrived at the base of the mountain at 2am, and started climbing. Within 10 minutes we were asked by another tour-guide, ‘where is your guide, you have to have a guide or you will get in trouble with the police.’ This is the first we had heard of it so we chose to ignore it. We had been told by others that had climbed it that it was very cold so Megan and I were bundled up in everything we had brought with us.
As we sluggishly followed the numerous paths up the mountain, with only my head lamp and the lights of other groups above us to follow, I got warmer and warmer and started shedding clothes. We had to occasionally get out of the way for groups of camels coming down the mountain, and it was a challenge to not get run over by them or pushed off the trail. We slowly worked our way up, passing other, larger groups, and only stopping for some water and to turn of the light so we could see all of the stars. The view was amazing and it was probably the most stars I have ever seen. Megan said it was one of her favorite moments of the trip. After two hours of switch-backs and loose gravel, we realized we were almost at the top and it was only 4 am. We stopped at a tea shop (which there were over 20 along the trail almost the whole way up) and got some hot chocolate and tea. We decided to rent a blanket since by this point Megan and I were both freezing. At around 4:30 we headed to the actual top of the mountain, which was slow going because by this point it was single-file up the stairs to the small monastery on top of the mountain. We got up there and right away found a good place that we could see the sun rise. About 5 min. after we got there we could see light on the horizon, but it took over an hour before the sun was actually visible. It was a pretty cool experience, as he huddled to keep warm, and listened to a group of Russian Orthodox priests sing as the sun rose!!
A difficult climb down, but overall, awesome. After we got back we only had another day and a half left, and it flew by. On our flight home, which was delayed over 30 minutes, the captain announced in Russian that it was only 33 degrees F back in Ukraine. Both Megan and I thought he had to be joking, but when we finally landed, we looked around us and saw wet, slushy snow and fog, a great welcome back to Ukraine!
Sorry this was so long, hope you enjoyed it, will post pictures on facebook soon!
With love,
Seth
Well, its only 7am and I am already awake, on a SUNDAY!! Not usual for me, but it may be because for the past week I fell asleep at about 9 and woke up as the blazing sun worked its way through our curtains as it climbed over the mountains of Saudi Arabia…
Yes, I just got back from Egypt for a week! It all started about 3 weeks ago when my girlfriend and I started to discuss what we should do for our spring break. Egypt was thrown out there but I wasn’t very serious about it because of money, logistics, etc. We also thought about Norway but we didn’t really want more winter. Eventually, after confusion about where to reserve tickets for Egypt, etc. we booked a week-long trip to Nuweiba, on the Sinai Peninsula for 7 nights, at a 3 star hotel right on the beach. We had friends that had gone to this hotel back in December, and they had only good things to say about it. I went to Egypt about 4 years ago with my parents, so I sort of knew what to expect, but was a little off.
So on March 20th Megan and I headed to Donetsk where our flight was leaving at 6am Saturday morning. We stayed with another peace corps volunteer who lives close-by to the airport, which was nice because the weather had decided it didn’t want to be spring quite yet and was snowing and windy… we were ready to head to Egypt. Our first snag was when I tried to go through passport-control on the way out of Ukraine, and found out I didn’t have the required departure-form which you fill out when you come IN to Ukraine. The immigration officer kept asking in Russian where it was and I stubbornly kept saying, I don’t know, but I have a visa… After I went through he told Megan that he had noted this and I might have problems in the future…
So we arrived into Sharm Al Sheik after a 3 hour flight south, and started driving… (we thought North-west, but again were a little off) Megan and I had originally thought we would arrive at an airport only 40 minutes from out hotel, but I think due to not enough people wanting to go there we went to an airport over 2 hours away. We got off the plane, bought our visas, and headed out into the glorious Egyptian sun. We found a guy with a sign for our tour company, and he directed us towards a bunch of tourist buses, which of course we thought we were going to get on. Oh no, as we headed over a guy with what looked to be a brand new Audi, asked, are you the ones going to Nuweiba (in Russian), after we said yes he directed us to get in the car. Both megan and I were thinking, “what the heck?!” We realized that no one else was going to where our hotel was so we had this fancy car all to ourselves. After briefly talking with a tour agent in the front (who spoke very little English but excellent Russian, which was common there and which I was VERY surprised about) and driving over 200km an hour as I held tightly onto the “oh crap” handles in the back, we got to Nuweiba.
We pulled up to our hotel and they showed us to our room. The view was amazing, with beautiful shades of blue in front of us and mountains in all directions. I was a little confused though, since I thought Hurghada and the rest of Egypt would be straight across from us. After looking on a map of Egypt, Megan and I found out we had not gone north-WEST of Sharm, but north-east, and were now looking at Saudi Arabia, with Jordan and Israel less than an hour away. Very cool!
Our first trip out was to find some water, and of course the hotel didn’t have a place close by or cheap. We kept asking for bazaar, bazaar (international word for market) and kept being directed to single shops with very over-priced merchandise. We then wanted a taxi and first asked a worker at the hotel how much it would cost. 50 pounds round trip he said. That was almost 9 dollars so we then asked the front desk how much it should be and they said no more than 10 pounds one way… we needed to get into bargaining mode!!! We headed into the small town of Nuweiba, and found what we needed. Water, snacks, and snorkeling stuff. We walked the hot, dry 5 km back to our hotel and immediately went to the beach. At first I thought the beach wasn’t that cool because it seemed very shallow and it wasn’t easy to get out to deeper water, but as I explored more and more, I realized that we were incredibly lucky to stay at a place with such a great reef only 300 feet from the shore. Over the 7 days that we were there, I spent about 3 hours a day swimming back and forth along the beach, seeing all sorts of fish, corals, Moray eels, and what I am really hoping WASN’T a Sea Snake! The water was cold at times, but over-all it was great to swim and then come back on-shore and get warm but not too hot.
Most of our days evolved around the schedule of waking up at 6:30 due to the very bright sun, slowly moving around till 7 when we headed straight to the buffet breakfast, then back to our rooms for a bit of reading, getting ready for the beach; then snorkeling, sun-tanning, maybe a little beach volley-ball till about 11, then back inside from a break from the sun. We would then play some cards, read, take a nap, eat some food, then maybe take a walk into town and buy some more snacks, then repeat the beach excursion till 5, when it was time for showers, clean clothes, and another buffet dinner! Then maybe a movie, and falling asleep by 9:15!! Megan and I both got a lot of sun, but she was a little smarter about applying the sun lotion, so I eventually ended up burning my forehead, the top of my head, somehow my lip, and the back of my thighs when I wore a new Ukrainian ‘speedo’ which left some pretty white skin exposed!!
This was our life for a week, except for two very exciting exceptions. When Megan and I first decided we were going to Egypt, we talked about different things we wanted to see there, and we finally decided that we had to go to Cairo and see the Pyramids, since you can’t go to Egypt twice and not see them, and also do a sun-rise hike up Mt. Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God.
So our first job was to find out how to get to these places and after some research on the internet we had thought the trips would be VERY expensive, but upon arriving in Nuweiba we were flooded with offers for taxi rides and other one day trips to both locations. We settled on an actual tour-group for Cairo because we wanted to feel more secure about this trip because it was expensive, long, and in Cairo, a CRAZY city! Tuesday night we woke up at 2 and headed out in our private mini-bus (not sure why we had such a big vehicle for only 2 people) with our driver and a ‘tour-guide’ whose Russian and English were incredibly hard to understand. After 6 hours of driving through desert we arrived on the out-skirts of Cairo, and it took us another 90 minutes to get to the Cairo History Museum. (We heard about 5 different numbers, but it seems that there are around 17 million people who live in Cairo, with another 3 coming in every day for work, and over a million cars on the road!) We had a great guide from Cairo nick-named Cassanova, who had worked as a tour-guide for over 25 years, knew everyone and carried a plastic gavel which he used to hit people on the head so they would get out of his way!! Pretty funny. The museum was huge, with pieces from a bunch of different Pharaohs, and some pieces over 5000 years old!
We then headed west towards the pyramids, and as we crossed the Nile we got out for a quick photo shoot. After another crazy drive though horrible traffic we could see the pyramids in the distance. Of course we had to stop at the papyrus factory and do the usual tourist thing of pretending you are interested in buying something when you are not at all! After another huge buffet lunch we finally headed to the Pyramids. As most people, Megan and I of course had seen the pyramids in tons of pictures, but you really do have to be there to truly understand how amazing it is that something like that could be created without modern machinery so long ago!! Breathtaking. We walked all around the 3 pyramids, took a brief tour down into one of them, then down to the Sphinx (which for some reason I thought was far away from the pyramids, not less than a kilometer away) and of course took hundreds of pictures. Definitely a worth-while experience. After that we were both exhausted, but we had another stop at a perfume shop, which Megan I were both leery about because we didn’t really expect to buy anything and we both get uncomfortable in these positions. But after some great tea, good sales pitch and smelling over 6 different scents I bought Megan a VERY small bottle of Sweet Pea extract for baths and stuff. I know my dad would have loved it, as we sat on plushy cushions and there were hundreds of bottles with all different scents which were eventually sent to Perfume companies all around the world! After another 6 hour ride back, taking a tunnel under the Suez cannel, he made it back our hotel around 11pm.
24 short hours later we woke up and headed out on a 2 hour drive to Mt. Sinai/Moses (whatever you want to call it) for a supposedly 3 hour hike up to see the sun rise over the mountains. We had hired a local taxi driver so we didn’t have a guide and didn’t really know what to expect from the whole experience. Megan and I arrived at the base of the mountain at 2am, and started climbing. Within 10 minutes we were asked by another tour-guide, ‘where is your guide, you have to have a guide or you will get in trouble with the police.’ This is the first we had heard of it so we chose to ignore it. We had been told by others that had climbed it that it was very cold so Megan and I were bundled up in everything we had brought with us.
As we sluggishly followed the numerous paths up the mountain, with only my head lamp and the lights of other groups above us to follow, I got warmer and warmer and started shedding clothes. We had to occasionally get out of the way for groups of camels coming down the mountain, and it was a challenge to not get run over by them or pushed off the trail. We slowly worked our way up, passing other, larger groups, and only stopping for some water and to turn of the light so we could see all of the stars. The view was amazing and it was probably the most stars I have ever seen. Megan said it was one of her favorite moments of the trip. After two hours of switch-backs and loose gravel, we realized we were almost at the top and it was only 4 am. We stopped at a tea shop (which there were over 20 along the trail almost the whole way up) and got some hot chocolate and tea. We decided to rent a blanket since by this point Megan and I were both freezing. At around 4:30 we headed to the actual top of the mountain, which was slow going because by this point it was single-file up the stairs to the small monastery on top of the mountain. We got up there and right away found a good place that we could see the sun rise. About 5 min. after we got there we could see light on the horizon, but it took over an hour before the sun was actually visible. It was a pretty cool experience, as he huddled to keep warm, and listened to a group of Russian Orthodox priests sing as the sun rose!!
A difficult climb down, but overall, awesome. After we got back we only had another day and a half left, and it flew by. On our flight home, which was delayed over 30 minutes, the captain announced in Russian that it was only 33 degrees F back in Ukraine. Both Megan and I thought he had to be joking, but when we finally landed, we looked around us and saw wet, slushy snow and fog, a great welcome back to Ukraine!
Sorry this was so long, hope you enjoyed it, will post pictures on facebook soon!
With love,
Seth
Friday, February 27, 2009
Back again!
Yeah, so I disappeared for a while… Well, not really, I just got lazy, and writing about my life was not up there on my to do list… Sorry.
But anyways, got plenty of time now to think back over the past month and see if anything new has occurred, and besides one big thing, not a whole lot has. The past month has seen about 5 ups and downs in the weather, cold/snowy, warm/muddy as heck, cold/snowy, etc. I am kind of getting ready for spring actually.
Teaching has been going okay, but still face a lot of problems with my schedule and actually getting time to teach my students, oh well.
On the 14th I was able to be in Kiev for an Environmental Working Group meeting where we talked about future environmental projects we want to start in Ukraine, as well as planned a few summer camps based on ecology, one of which I will probably be leading in July. Luckily enough, my girlfriend Megan was also able to be in Kiev that weekend so we were able to go out for a nice Valentines Day dinner at a ‘fancy’ Indian Restaurant. Very good!
On the 15th I took a bus to the airport and took a plane to… Austria! About 3 months ago my dad had suggested that I meet up with him, my mom, and my brother Jeremy in Ramsau, Austria, to do some cross-country skiing for a week. Sounded good to me. After the 2 hour flight I was ahead of schedule and hoping to make a train quickly so I wouldn’t have to wait 2 hours in Vienna, but luck would have it, I got a ‘little’ confused as to which train I should get on to go to the station so I ended up going all the way into Vienna, then back on the metro another 20 minutes to the train station I needed… I wasn’t mad at all!
After a 4 hour ride west with one change, I jumped off the train to see my dad, Jeremy, and my mom all waiting for me at the station. That night we just went back to the beautiful hotel and went to bed, cause Jeremy and my dad were both exhausted after skiing 25-42 km races that morning! Monday we got up early and headed out UP the valley (for someone who hasn’t skied in 15 months or really exercised in about 3, it was a ‘little’ taxing. But let me tell you, it was gorgeous! Tons of snow everywhere, beautiful mountains, just great. Tuesday we were pretty tired so we stayed and watched some biathlon in the morning, then about noon headed up on a bus to ski back to the chalet. It had started snowing the night before so the tracks were pretty slow, and the wind was only ‘sort of’ howling down the valley. We took the bus about as far as we could go, then we began to walk INTO the wind to try to find the trail (in typical Spencer fashion, none of us knew exactly how to get onto the trail, so we ended up bushwacking through about 2 feet of snow and me down a face dive into the snow) The ski was cold, but good.
Wednesday was one of the more beautiful skies I’ve ever had. The snow was as pure and white as you could possibly ask for, and we did a great 15 k loop with some great downhills and some BIG uphills. I also should say that after ski we were able to use the wonderful sauna room at the chalet, and then had about a 4 course dinner with some great beer. Not a bad life for a ‘impoverished’ Peace Corps Volunteer in Eastern Europe.
Thursday was another beautiful ski, with a great 17k loop up and around a small mountain (for any of you who have also been to Ramsau with my parents, you may remember this loop (ANDREA)) and then my Dad, brother and me decided we weren’t quite done yet so we did a 8km out and back loop up part of the mountain, after which (including an incredibly dive I took with my face that created about a 6 inch crevice in the middle of the train and some great goulash soup) we were all very tired.
Friday the weather had turned against us and our ski was kept to only about 90 minutes cause of snow and that we had to drive back to Vienna for the night so I could catch a flight home. The driving was pretty crazy, but my dad did an excellent job not getting run over by the crazy Austrian truck drivers.
Got back to Kiev on Saturday, and while there was snow in Kiev, it just wasn’t really the same.
Over all, the trip was great, and it was wonderful to see my parents and Jeremy!
(I will put some pictures up soon)
Hope to hear from you all soon!
With Love,
Seth
But anyways, got plenty of time now to think back over the past month and see if anything new has occurred, and besides one big thing, not a whole lot has. The past month has seen about 5 ups and downs in the weather, cold/snowy, warm/muddy as heck, cold/snowy, etc. I am kind of getting ready for spring actually.
Teaching has been going okay, but still face a lot of problems with my schedule and actually getting time to teach my students, oh well.
On the 14th I was able to be in Kiev for an Environmental Working Group meeting where we talked about future environmental projects we want to start in Ukraine, as well as planned a few summer camps based on ecology, one of which I will probably be leading in July. Luckily enough, my girlfriend Megan was also able to be in Kiev that weekend so we were able to go out for a nice Valentines Day dinner at a ‘fancy’ Indian Restaurant. Very good!
On the 15th I took a bus to the airport and took a plane to… Austria! About 3 months ago my dad had suggested that I meet up with him, my mom, and my brother Jeremy in Ramsau, Austria, to do some cross-country skiing for a week. Sounded good to me. After the 2 hour flight I was ahead of schedule and hoping to make a train quickly so I wouldn’t have to wait 2 hours in Vienna, but luck would have it, I got a ‘little’ confused as to which train I should get on to go to the station so I ended up going all the way into Vienna, then back on the metro another 20 minutes to the train station I needed… I wasn’t mad at all!
After a 4 hour ride west with one change, I jumped off the train to see my dad, Jeremy, and my mom all waiting for me at the station. That night we just went back to the beautiful hotel and went to bed, cause Jeremy and my dad were both exhausted after skiing 25-42 km races that morning! Monday we got up early and headed out UP the valley (for someone who hasn’t skied in 15 months or really exercised in about 3, it was a ‘little’ taxing. But let me tell you, it was gorgeous! Tons of snow everywhere, beautiful mountains, just great. Tuesday we were pretty tired so we stayed and watched some biathlon in the morning, then about noon headed up on a bus to ski back to the chalet. It had started snowing the night before so the tracks were pretty slow, and the wind was only ‘sort of’ howling down the valley. We took the bus about as far as we could go, then we began to walk INTO the wind to try to find the trail (in typical Spencer fashion, none of us knew exactly how to get onto the trail, so we ended up bushwacking through about 2 feet of snow and me down a face dive into the snow) The ski was cold, but good.
Wednesday was one of the more beautiful skies I’ve ever had. The snow was as pure and white as you could possibly ask for, and we did a great 15 k loop with some great downhills and some BIG uphills. I also should say that after ski we were able to use the wonderful sauna room at the chalet, and then had about a 4 course dinner with some great beer. Not a bad life for a ‘impoverished’ Peace Corps Volunteer in Eastern Europe.
Thursday was another beautiful ski, with a great 17k loop up and around a small mountain (for any of you who have also been to Ramsau with my parents, you may remember this loop (ANDREA)) and then my Dad, brother and me decided we weren’t quite done yet so we did a 8km out and back loop up part of the mountain, after which (including an incredibly dive I took with my face that created about a 6 inch crevice in the middle of the train and some great goulash soup) we were all very tired.
Friday the weather had turned against us and our ski was kept to only about 90 minutes cause of snow and that we had to drive back to Vienna for the night so I could catch a flight home. The driving was pretty crazy, but my dad did an excellent job not getting run over by the crazy Austrian truck drivers.
Got back to Kiev on Saturday, and while there was snow in Kiev, it just wasn’t really the same.
Over all, the trip was great, and it was wonderful to see my parents and Jeremy!
(I will put some pictures up soon)
Hope to hear from you all soon!
With Love,
Seth
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Back again
Well, I am back, in Lugansk, again. No really, I am happy to be back here, kind of…
It is good to be back in my own apartment, not rushing off to catch another train, and know that I will not be sleeping next to someone who snores louder than you ever thought possible (there are many of those people out there, not just you Dean). But… I did catch a bad chest cold on my way back here, so I am not really teaching or anything, which is kind of boring…
Anyways, yes, I am in Lugansk, but where was I you may ask? Well, on Dec. 24th I was able to head to Megan’s site and spend Christmas with her, which was much nicer than spending it at home, alone. On December 30th we both caught a night train to meet her parents in Kiev (gulp). After a Peace Corps medical check-up I headed to the apartment which Megan’s parents had rented (it was right on the main street in Kiev and only a few blocks from the center square, great!). We spent the day of the 31st walking around Kiev and checking out the Chernobyl Museum there. While you hear about it all over Ukraine, I think most of the volunteers living here don’t have a clue as to what it was like for all of Ukraine to be so impacted by a single event. It was their September 11th. Truly moving, but I was very glad that I was able to experience it.
On a happier note we were able to meet the New Year in the center square of Kiev surrounded by thousands of others, popping open a bottle of champagne and dancing around like crazy people trying to keep warm… definitely up there on best New Years I have had. The next day was spent again walking around Kiev, in the Peace Corps office trying to keep warm, and eventually catching a train to Lviv, in the western part of Ukraine. Before I go on, I must explain one thing… traveling in Ukraine around the holidays can be a very interesting experience (i.e. all the tickets are gone more than 3 weeks beforehand, and when you don’t believe Ukrainians telling you this, it can be slightly panicking when you have tickets out of the country, but NONE back in) Luckily we were able to buy some of the tickets we needed before we headed west.
Lviv is a beautiful city in western Ukraine, much, much different than the eastern cities. Unfortunately we didn’t have any time to search around that day so we searched around the train station for a bus to the Polish-Ukrainian border (more like I searched because Megan was trying to buy us some very useful train tickets,) and the search was slightly unnerving when I had a 10 minute conversation with a bus driver about whether the bus would leave in 35 minutes, or 7:35am (7minutes from then) It turned out to at 7:35 so there was a rush to catch the bus on time. We took a very packed bus to the border, which consisted of a line of shops and signs pointing you to a fenced in walking section to the customs inspection, where Dean(Megan’s dad) and I (not the women) had our luggage searched and the inspection lady was very interested in a copy of “The Life of Pi”… probably more interested than I was…
After the 15 minute walk we tried to get on a bus to another city to catch a train to Krakow (we didn’t like doing things the easy way) we found out that we had to large of money so we had to try to get it changed in the next 2 minutes. Luckily, the bus driver was Polish (not Ukrainian, no offense to any Ukrainians reading) so he waited for us, caught the train with time to spare and made it to Krakow in 7 hours. We realized we had been very lucky in our connections, and Megan and I were already amazed at 3 things.
1) How organized and coordinated everything seemed to be in Poland
2) How much English Polish people spoke
3) How nice everyone was…
Anyways, we spend the rest of that day (Thursday, the 2nd) walking down streets with Megan and I literally (at least for me) drooling at the foods that we hadn’t seen in months… good pizza, kebabs, Burger King!!!
Friday was a lazy morning, but eventually we caught a bus to Auschwitz and Berchanau, a truly depressing, yet necessary to experience part of Poland’s history. Advice: give yourself the entire day at these two sites. We didn’t know that the museum at Auschwitz closed at 3 in the winter so we felt rushed and didn’t get to see all of the different exhibitions about the horrors that occurred there. Berchanau can be described in one word, sickening. It is row after row of brick buildings were hundreds of Jews, Poles, Russians, were stacked, awaiting execution. You wonder at how anyone could have survived what could only be hell on earth. Again, a must see, but know that it will blow you away.
That night was a little stressful with Dean realizing that he had lost his passport (we at first couldn’t believe this was possible, but after a frantic search of the hostel we were staying realized it was) and after panicky calls to the American Consulate in Krakow we found we could get a new one on Monday, but that would mean we would have to postpone our train to Budapest to stay with my parents. The next morning we were thrilled to discover that the passport had been found at Auschwitz, and that a woman had given it to her friend, who had given it to two police officers in Krakow, who had dropped it off at a station, where it was then delivered to another station where we picked it up only 16 hours after realizing it was lost!! The rest of the day was spent seeing the salt-mines of Krakow, very beautiful as your crawl your way over 440 feet into the earth!
We woke up at 5:30 Monday morning, which was WAY to early for me, but had a nice train ride through the Czech Republic where we switched trains to Budapest, and after being a few minutes late we met up with my dad and where on our way to seeing another European city. Monday was spent having a wonderful home-cooked meal prepared by my mom and eventually crashing into bed.
So, I haven’t mentioned this up till now, but some of my friends have asked this question… “You are traveling with Megan’s parents for 10 days, and are staying with your parents for 4 of them… are you crazy!!” Now this not against either parents, but I haven’t heard of too many couples doing this after 3 months of dating… Not sure about Megan, but I can say it was ultimately a success. I don’t know about Megan’s parents, but I know that I was glad they were there, so that any time Megan and I got frustrated with each other about how turned the wrong way or how we were ever going to find a way back to Ukraine, there was someone there telling us it would be okay!! So thank you everyone involved, for making it a lot easier than it could have been.
Okay, on again (I promise I will be done soon) Tuesday Megan, her parents and I headed out to visit the Buda castle (where the Austro-Hungarian empire use to have its summer palace) and after a lot of walking we headed to my 2nd favorite restaurant in Budapest, the 4 sale pub, for some wonderful Hungarian Goulash. Visited a very cool closed-market than back to the house for another delicious meal of enchiladas.
Wednesday my mom took time off from school to give us a guided tour of Budapest, with stops at the beautiful Hungarian Parliament, and a very interesting museum about ethnicities in Hungary. That night Dean accompanied me and my dad to the Rudas baths which that night was men-only. The place is over 400 years old and as Dean perfectly phrased “felt like you were at a Mafia hangout.” Dark, musty, but very very cool.
Thursday was spent relaxing, until Megan, Dean, Ellen and I headed to the Szechenyi baths in the center, which is the same concept as the Rudas but is co-ed and the main hot-pool is outside. Very cool to see everything steamy due to the cold weather.
Friday we headed to my parents school to show everyone around and then caught the 4 hour train to the Ukrainian border, where we waited for an electric train to Ukraine. It was a very interesting experience as we had no idea how it was going to work, but we weren’t really surprised as we saw a one-car train pull up, and as we crowded in and sad in the dark, Megan and I both felt like we were almost home! We got into Ukraine and this is where our no buying of tickets beforehand became a problem… We found a train that left in 7 minutes (dang 7s!!) but the clerk messed up and by the time she reprogrammed it the computer told us the train had already left, even though we could clearly see it standing there. The next train didn’t leave till 4:30 am, but luckily we found it arrived at 2am so we could sleep and we would get back to Lviv (yes, we made a big circle) at 10. (this train was coming from Budapest, so technically, we could have just taken it all the way… woops) Saturday was spent sleeping, reading and having one last amazing meal in Lviv before I had to catch an overnight train to Kiev, wait in the office all day and catch another over-nighter back to Lugansk. Vacation went by in a flash, but it was truly and awesome trip, and again want to thank Dean and Ellen for letting me tag along, and for Megan for putting up with me.
I hope all of you Christmas Holidays went well, and look forward to hearing from you soon!
With Love,
Seth
P.S. Happy 2009
Oh, and yes, I still have heat, not sure for how long though…
It is good to be back in my own apartment, not rushing off to catch another train, and know that I will not be sleeping next to someone who snores louder than you ever thought possible (there are many of those people out there, not just you Dean). But… I did catch a bad chest cold on my way back here, so I am not really teaching or anything, which is kind of boring…
Anyways, yes, I am in Lugansk, but where was I you may ask? Well, on Dec. 24th I was able to head to Megan’s site and spend Christmas with her, which was much nicer than spending it at home, alone. On December 30th we both caught a night train to meet her parents in Kiev (gulp). After a Peace Corps medical check-up I headed to the apartment which Megan’s parents had rented (it was right on the main street in Kiev and only a few blocks from the center square, great!). We spent the day of the 31st walking around Kiev and checking out the Chernobyl Museum there. While you hear about it all over Ukraine, I think most of the volunteers living here don’t have a clue as to what it was like for all of Ukraine to be so impacted by a single event. It was their September 11th. Truly moving, but I was very glad that I was able to experience it.
On a happier note we were able to meet the New Year in the center square of Kiev surrounded by thousands of others, popping open a bottle of champagne and dancing around like crazy people trying to keep warm… definitely up there on best New Years I have had. The next day was spent again walking around Kiev, in the Peace Corps office trying to keep warm, and eventually catching a train to Lviv, in the western part of Ukraine. Before I go on, I must explain one thing… traveling in Ukraine around the holidays can be a very interesting experience (i.e. all the tickets are gone more than 3 weeks beforehand, and when you don’t believe Ukrainians telling you this, it can be slightly panicking when you have tickets out of the country, but NONE back in) Luckily we were able to buy some of the tickets we needed before we headed west.
Lviv is a beautiful city in western Ukraine, much, much different than the eastern cities. Unfortunately we didn’t have any time to search around that day so we searched around the train station for a bus to the Polish-Ukrainian border (more like I searched because Megan was trying to buy us some very useful train tickets,) and the search was slightly unnerving when I had a 10 minute conversation with a bus driver about whether the bus would leave in 35 minutes, or 7:35am (7minutes from then) It turned out to at 7:35 so there was a rush to catch the bus on time. We took a very packed bus to the border, which consisted of a line of shops and signs pointing you to a fenced in walking section to the customs inspection, where Dean(Megan’s dad) and I (not the women) had our luggage searched and the inspection lady was very interested in a copy of “The Life of Pi”… probably more interested than I was…
After the 15 minute walk we tried to get on a bus to another city to catch a train to Krakow (we didn’t like doing things the easy way) we found out that we had to large of money so we had to try to get it changed in the next 2 minutes. Luckily, the bus driver was Polish (not Ukrainian, no offense to any Ukrainians reading) so he waited for us, caught the train with time to spare and made it to Krakow in 7 hours. We realized we had been very lucky in our connections, and Megan and I were already amazed at 3 things.
1) How organized and coordinated everything seemed to be in Poland
2) How much English Polish people spoke
3) How nice everyone was…
Anyways, we spend the rest of that day (Thursday, the 2nd) walking down streets with Megan and I literally (at least for me) drooling at the foods that we hadn’t seen in months… good pizza, kebabs, Burger King!!!
Friday was a lazy morning, but eventually we caught a bus to Auschwitz and Berchanau, a truly depressing, yet necessary to experience part of Poland’s history. Advice: give yourself the entire day at these two sites. We didn’t know that the museum at Auschwitz closed at 3 in the winter so we felt rushed and didn’t get to see all of the different exhibitions about the horrors that occurred there. Berchanau can be described in one word, sickening. It is row after row of brick buildings were hundreds of Jews, Poles, Russians, were stacked, awaiting execution. You wonder at how anyone could have survived what could only be hell on earth. Again, a must see, but know that it will blow you away.
That night was a little stressful with Dean realizing that he had lost his passport (we at first couldn’t believe this was possible, but after a frantic search of the hostel we were staying realized it was) and after panicky calls to the American Consulate in Krakow we found we could get a new one on Monday, but that would mean we would have to postpone our train to Budapest to stay with my parents. The next morning we were thrilled to discover that the passport had been found at Auschwitz, and that a woman had given it to her friend, who had given it to two police officers in Krakow, who had dropped it off at a station, where it was then delivered to another station where we picked it up only 16 hours after realizing it was lost!! The rest of the day was spent seeing the salt-mines of Krakow, very beautiful as your crawl your way over 440 feet into the earth!
We woke up at 5:30 Monday morning, which was WAY to early for me, but had a nice train ride through the Czech Republic where we switched trains to Budapest, and after being a few minutes late we met up with my dad and where on our way to seeing another European city. Monday was spent having a wonderful home-cooked meal prepared by my mom and eventually crashing into bed.
So, I haven’t mentioned this up till now, but some of my friends have asked this question… “You are traveling with Megan’s parents for 10 days, and are staying with your parents for 4 of them… are you crazy!!” Now this not against either parents, but I haven’t heard of too many couples doing this after 3 months of dating… Not sure about Megan, but I can say it was ultimately a success. I don’t know about Megan’s parents, but I know that I was glad they were there, so that any time Megan and I got frustrated with each other about how turned the wrong way or how we were ever going to find a way back to Ukraine, there was someone there telling us it would be okay!! So thank you everyone involved, for making it a lot easier than it could have been.
Okay, on again (I promise I will be done soon) Tuesday Megan, her parents and I headed out to visit the Buda castle (where the Austro-Hungarian empire use to have its summer palace) and after a lot of walking we headed to my 2nd favorite restaurant in Budapest, the 4 sale pub, for some wonderful Hungarian Goulash. Visited a very cool closed-market than back to the house for another delicious meal of enchiladas.
Wednesday my mom took time off from school to give us a guided tour of Budapest, with stops at the beautiful Hungarian Parliament, and a very interesting museum about ethnicities in Hungary. That night Dean accompanied me and my dad to the Rudas baths which that night was men-only. The place is over 400 years old and as Dean perfectly phrased “felt like you were at a Mafia hangout.” Dark, musty, but very very cool.
Thursday was spent relaxing, until Megan, Dean, Ellen and I headed to the Szechenyi baths in the center, which is the same concept as the Rudas but is co-ed and the main hot-pool is outside. Very cool to see everything steamy due to the cold weather.
Friday we headed to my parents school to show everyone around and then caught the 4 hour train to the Ukrainian border, where we waited for an electric train to Ukraine. It was a very interesting experience as we had no idea how it was going to work, but we weren’t really surprised as we saw a one-car train pull up, and as we crowded in and sad in the dark, Megan and I both felt like we were almost home! We got into Ukraine and this is where our no buying of tickets beforehand became a problem… We found a train that left in 7 minutes (dang 7s!!) but the clerk messed up and by the time she reprogrammed it the computer told us the train had already left, even though we could clearly see it standing there. The next train didn’t leave till 4:30 am, but luckily we found it arrived at 2am so we could sleep and we would get back to Lviv (yes, we made a big circle) at 10. (this train was coming from Budapest, so technically, we could have just taken it all the way… woops) Saturday was spent sleeping, reading and having one last amazing meal in Lviv before I had to catch an overnight train to Kiev, wait in the office all day and catch another over-nighter back to Lugansk. Vacation went by in a flash, but it was truly and awesome trip, and again want to thank Dean and Ellen for letting me tag along, and for Megan for putting up with me.
I hope all of you Christmas Holidays went well, and look forward to hearing from you soon!
With Love,
Seth
P.S. Happy 2009
Oh, and yes, I still have heat, not sure for how long though…
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
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
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
Monday, December 8, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, December 1, 2008
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
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
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
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
Monday, September 29, 2008
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!!
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!!
Sunday, September 21, 2008
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
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
Monday, August 18, 2008
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
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
Sunday, July 27, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
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
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
Sunday, June 22, 2008
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
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
Sunday, June 1, 2008
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
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
Friday, May 23, 2008
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
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
Sunday, May 11, 2008
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
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
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
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!
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!
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