http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-me-adv-mars-launch-20111127,0,1070468.story

This has been an interesting month. (Though obviously not as awesome as October). My memory slips me about this month in general, but the most recent news is from yesterday.

Conor and I went to the planetarium with a group of kids from our local orphanage. (Also Ola and Serguy from Conor’s organization went with us.) They are super cool volunteers and Ola is one of the leader’s of the NGO Conor works with. Anyways, at first it was super hard to talk to the kids. They seemed really ’empty’? and obviously didn’t understand why we were there. Conor and Serguy went to a group of the kids and started to talk to them and the group of kids just walked away. Didn’t say a thing. The wall was hard to break, but it turned out that just being super goofy and stupid was the way in. I managed to remember a few names, (Nastya, Vika, Alona, Ola, Colia?) and then just randomly called out their names and made funny faces. The older kids thought I was an idiot but it worked with the little kids. As we were leaving I bent down and asked the kids for a hug and everyone just stared at me!!! Conor started giggling and of course the kids thought it was the most hilarious thing ever so they started laughing too. I said to them, “Come on guys, that was terrible! NO ONE is going to give me a hug, and then youre just going to let him laugh at me. Ok…one more time; ONE….TWO…..THREE!!!” And then they all ran to me!!!! Seriously, it was the most amazing thing ever!!! I wanted to cry. We had a huge long tight bear/group hug and their smiles were SO BIG! I truly hope I see those kids again!!!! (Conor will give me pics to upload soon I hope!)

Next week I get to execute an awesome HIV/AIDS project. For those of you who don’t know, December 1st, Thursday,  is international HIV/AIDS day, so please wear a red ribbon. Over the summer I took 13 students to an HIV/AIDS themed camp. For my project, I will use 6 of these students to teach HIV/AIDS to my classes. All the classes will be in Russian to ensure that all the information is understood. The coolest part about this project is that we are the only school in our town that has been given permission to demonstrate how to use a condom. Conor is also doing this project through the US government’s PEPFAR program, but the head of all the schools in our town has told him that he can only teach abstinence. Since I am teaching only in my school though, I only had to get permission from my director, and she said yes! I am making posters to demonstrate the need of HIV/AIDS education in our oblast. FYI: Donetsk oblast has the 3rd highest number of HIV infections in Ukraine, and Ukraine has the highest percentage of HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe; Russia is the second highest

Johanna, my german friend, will be coming to my town to help me out with these training’s. I’m super stoked and I will update ASAP about how it went!

I’m still having problems with my grant but I REFUSE to give up. However, on Monday the teacher who is supposedly supposed to to be the #1 help on this project returns from a month training she has been on so maybe after talking to her she will start helping a little more. The problem is that she agreed to help me with this project and then immediately left town for a month to do a teacher’s training which would increase her position. Argh…would that happen in America??? And then I was never able to find another teacher who would be able to contribute their time to the project. This is common in Ukraine by the way. What to do, what to do?

I forgot I also organized an HIV/AIDS competition on Vkontakte, (the Russian version of Facebook). The competition is between 7 other PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) in Ukraine. Each PCV has a page on Vkontakte dedicated to HIV/AIDS. The competition is to see who can have the biggest page/most supporters on their page by December 1st. However, in the ideal competition, there would be at least two or three groups close enough to 1st place that there would even be a competition. As it is, my group is kicking arse. The closest group is 100 people behind us. AWESOME and FAIL all wrapped up into one online package.

Well…saddest news last…Conor and I are headed to the city to wish off Margo. Her service has ended and she is going home. So sad. We  will celebrate her last night by taking her out for some drinks and then going dancing. She was so generous to give me so many goodies but that doesn’t make it any better that she is leaving. Now all I have is Johanna and Conor. Johanna is cool, but Conor…tee hee.

So off I go…pictures shorly. 🙂

Book Project

As you all know, I am doing a project to purchase new English textbooks for my school because our current books are terrible. They are old, (FALLING APART LITERALLY [sometimes even missing pages!]), impractical, (They teach useless subjects), and contain words that are not even used anymore (in British-English too!).

The grant I am using for this project is not funded. It is only a grant that basically gives me permission to raise money, (more or less saying that that my project is a worthy cause, which it is).

So far, I have raised $450USD. I need a total of $4123.71. That means I have $3663.71 left to raise.  And it took 1  1/2 months to raise the first $450, and we have until January 1st to get the rest.

Please donate if you can, and if not, please tell everyone you know about this project and show them our awesome video!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h64EFNCMIwk&feature=related

 

Also, recently, we went to the planetarium and my student Mary (once again) made a video for that too, so enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGaJWHpaKgg&feature=related

 

Thank you for all the support!!!!!!! 🙂

Mars has 15% of Earth’s volume and 11% of the mass

I love October. My birthday of course but this year I realized I am only getting older. Halloween is why I love October. This week, I had a Halloween party in my school and it was great! All my students came in costumes and we had a costume competition. The funniest costume was my students Katya, who came as Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. Her costume was an exact replication, completely homemade. I was impressed! The best costume was a girl named Dasha, (not from my school), who came as Sherlock Holmes. I was a flower child, mostly due to my business and inept time to prepare an awesome costume. And maybe also because of the inappropriateness of my first idea, (which I will now go on to explain and ask for opinions about).

As many of you already know, I have TB, (Tuberculosis). Before anyone freaks out, it is only the common form that is in the blood, which is neither dangerous nor contagious. PCVs, as a precaution, are required to take medicine for it so that it cannot move to a stage 2 of the disease, in the lungs. Actually though,  about 90% of Ukrainian also have TB in their blood, though only about 10% actually have it become stage 2. So, DON’T WORRY!!! Anyways, for this reason, and the fact that I cannot drink for the 9 months that I am on the medication, I decided to be TB for Halloween. (As a joke of course). I thought it would be hilarious and many other volunteers agreed with me. When I told my Ukrainian friends and students though, they were extremely offended by the costume and took it as a personal attack/joke against Ukrainians.  Of course, this is not how I had intended the costume but I changed it anyways to no offend. Thoughts? Opinions?

Now I am on my way to a big Halloween party for all the volunteers. There is supposed to be about 170 volunteers there and I am super stoked to see all the costumes! Yay!

Sadly, my friend Margo goes home in a month. She has already been in Ukraine a little over a year and her group is about to finish their service. Sad day. I will miss her.

So, I did get a cat. Not the one I posted on my blog actually, but a new one. About a month ago, a little tiny kitten showed up at the front area of my apartments without a family and she was crying everyday. For three days straight I listened to this and then I thought of the cold winter. It was terrible and I finally I couldn’t take it anymore. I took her. I am really happy with my decision…now…At first though…oh man. I could of thrown that cat out about a million times that first week. Firstly, the cat started off by peeing and pooping all over my floor within an hour of taking her in. I forgave her and even congratulated her for missing my carpet. She was even potty trained within a week. But then she couldn’t figure out how to clean her butt after a messy poop, so she solved this by dragging her butt across my blanket, pillow, chairs and table. She also wouldn’t let me sleep, and on several occasions would start biting my feet or toes in the middle of the night. The worst night was about a week ago when she was finally starting to learn not to bug me in the middle of the night. So I was surprised and moody when she jumped up on my bed and woke me up. I roughly pushed her off the bed and rolled over….RIGHT INTO HER POOP! Needless to say, I was up for an hour cleaning myself and I finally considered whether or not I would be able to live with myself if I put her back on the streets. I couldn’t. She learned. And now we are getting along great. Its been about a week without any problems. I think once I made the choice that I would definitely keep her, we got along much better. 🙂

My birthday was fun and a little stressful. In Ukraine, it is tradition that the birthday boy/girl puts on their own birthday party, pays for it all, and does all the cooking. So, considering I had all my teachers, my students and my friends, I was stressed. I decided to have separate parties; one for my teachers, one for my English club and then at night I simply had a bottle of win with my girlfriends. For both parties I made my favorite American cake: Carrot Cake! They loved it! I also made American Salsa and Banana Bread for my teachers. I was up all night the night before preparing everything and I thought it would all turn out terrible, but actually they love everything. I was also worried because I made a choice to go against Ukrainian tradition of buying alcohol for my party!  We instead drank traditional American Apple Cider and tea. It turned out well and none of my teachers commented. My students of course did not present this problem.

The best thing ever happened at my student’s party! I was on the Russian version of facebook one day and I saw that my students had made group for our Halloween party. I went to the group and in Russian, I saw this conversation:

Person1 : Who is going to present something to Ms. Daniela?

Person 2: Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this on this group?

Person 3: What? Ms. Daniela can’t understand. We can say what

we want about her and she won’t understand.

ME: Yes Polina, I understand. Mary is smart not to talk about this here. But while we are talking about it, I want 1 million dollars.

So my students brought me One million dollars with my face on it. AWESOME. I LOVE MY STUDENTS!!!

On my birthday I also planned a Skype-date with the Jeremy Gilley, the man who created World Peace Day (September 21st). This day is 14 years old and is the only official day in the world when all wars stop and in some areas, hostile zones are opened only for this day to allow organizations to make important vaccines. Unfrotunately, my students were used to my American accent and had trouble understanding him, but his passion was evident and they stayed interested throughout the 30 minutes. (PS: Please hjoin the Global Truce Campaign on Peaceoneday.org. This is an action to make the biggest group/petition of people in all the world to support peace!)

Off to Kharkiv now to celebrate Halloween. WOoot WOoooT! 🙂

Do you think the Aliens on Mars would donate to my book project?

Summer is officially over. Its cold. Sad. But not so bad…Fall is my favorite season, as I may have already mentioned. There were a few birthdays last month in my family! My Dad had a birthday on the 3rd of September; My little sister Stacy turned 19 on September 20th; My little sister Elisa turned 16 on the 28th; and finally my “adopted” sisters Nikki and Maria turned 19 on the 29th. And then this month is my birthday!!! (I’m not too old to still love a birthday. Tee hee.)

So last night I got some bad news that my Grandfather on my Dad’s side passed away at the age of 90. Please send a thought out for him. 😦

Now, a brighter side: I took my English club out for a picnic and it was fantastic! We all met up at 12pm (1pm for some of us!!!) and we headed to a nice spot on the edge of the forest where we were able to overlook the entire Khartsizsk. Conor and Johanna joined us and Conor made a nice little fire for my students to cook marshmallows over (strawberry flavored). We played Frisbee, Twister (Твистер), He-Ha-Ho, and a strange Ninja game that Conor taught us. If you need an explanation of any of these, it may be best to personally ask me…(demonstrations via Skype $5 each).  What else did we do….? We made a man-made pyramid, (apparently the first time my students have ever done that) and then we finished by singing songs around the camp fire. My lovely student Mary made a wonderful video to show you our awesome picnic! Please enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBZb9mIQdc8&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

In the news last week, there was a very important article about how women in Saudi Arabia can now vote and run in elections for the Shura Council, (The advising council to the king). For those of you who do not know, women have little to almost no rights in Saudi Arabia, including the right to drive and divorce. I decided to teach this article in my classes this week and then follow up by having a discussion. To allow for an open discussion, I told my students that they could speak in Russian, as long as they spoke slowly and allowed time for other students to translate for me when I didn‘t understand. Wow! It was awesome! Some girls who never spoke were suddenly passionate and talkative to protect their rights and defend against the few off comments that indicated women were not equal. What really blew my mind is that I started off the discussions by asking if the student thought women were equal in Ukraine. Almost always, all the students answered yes. I would then say I disagreed, giving examples of women getting paid less, receiving promotions slower than men, and even men abusing women in jobs that they thought were only for men, (e.g. police, army, miner).This blew the students’ minds. They had no idea.

This last weekend, Conor and I went to a Jewish festival in Dnepropetrovsk to celebrate the Jewish new year. It was fantastic! A wonderful volunteer, Avital, arranged it all and she did a great job. The festival began with being paired up with a random person who you would spend the rest of the day with. I was paired with Adam. He was great and hilarious. We were supposed to ask each other serious questions about life, such as “What is your worst and best memory of the past year?”. While we did do this, we also managed to have a conversation about how babies are made, (apparently they come from watermelons). Ps….check out this funny picture. This is how baby carrots are made.

Anyways, the day was intense….the questions got deeper and deeper. It was cool though to see how this was normal for Jewish people. Every question was intertwined with a type of food which also had a deep message and then a blessing to go along with it. (complicated much?) For example, they dip apples in honey to represent the sweetness of upcoming year, and then we talked about something great we hoped for in the new year.

After the festival, we headed to a bowling alley. Unfortunately, we were a little late after grabbing a bite to eat so I didn’t bowl. Then we went to a comfy little restaurant that proceeded to fill up with strippers. Actually, back up, let me tell you all about this restaurant. (Which PS, at night turns into a bar, but to clarify, I am not drinking obviously as I am on medication for TB [the non-active/non-dangerous kind]). Anyways, American volunteers have a reputation for liking to dance…(blowing off steam from failed projects?), so when the music started, we pretty much took over the dance floor. The Ukrainians didn’t really like this. Firstly, the night we chose to come was apparently also the same night 2 strippers would compete to be the best dancer, (allowed in a public restaurant? yes.). Secondly, though we all like to dance, we cannot dance. As is we dance badly. Compared to Ukrainian girls, who take pride in their ability to sexy-dance and may also spend hours in-front of the mirror practicing. This is a cultural difference, not an insult, to clarify.

So, we are all dancing, having a good time and enjoying being away from site, when we were kicked off the dance floor!  Then they had the two strippers dance. Crazzzzy revealing outfits and dancing literally like they were in a strip club. (Legs over shoulders, splits, on the talble, etc). Some of the volunteers started to get angry, (as many volunteers are strong feminists). I’m not sure how I felt….surely it is not ok to have this dancing in a public restaurant, but I guess they seemed to be having fun…Curious about responses.

Lastly, BOOK PROJECT! The grant was approved and it is now on internet. For your convenience, you can follow this link: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=343-264 but it only lasts a week until they update the website. Permanently, you can go to Peacecorps.gov/donate (Project #343-264)

My student Mary made a very lovely video to promote our project so please follow this link and enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h64EFNCMIwk&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

As I already said, this project is super important and we need these books so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE donate! If possible, can you please repost this video on any internet networking sites you have and show this video to everyone! WE NEED HELP!!!!!!

THANK YOU AND AS ALWAYS I LOOOOVE COMMENTS!!!! 🙂

September Equinox: The Sun will shine directly on the equator and there will be nearly equal amounts of day and night throughout the world.

Back to school. Not as bad as I thought it would be. I don’t even have a bad schedule and I still have Fridays off to work on what I want. Tuesdays are my worst with a full day of classes and on Mondays and Wednesdays I have English Club. Not bad at all. I also have joined a fitness club which I am making an effort to attend 3-4 times a week. I don’t think I am going to have time to rock climb this semester. The problem is that the guy who organizes it is always late and we end up waiting for 30 minutes. Then we have a 30  warm-up and then we rock climb for an hour. That is TWO HOURS every time I want to climb. The fitness club always starts on time and it never runs over and hour. But I love to climb….decisions decisions decisions. Back to School Pictures:

The water is off in my town today, which of course means classes are shorter today. Its a funny thing about the education in Ukraine; they can pretty much use ANYTHING to get out of school early. Not that I hate it from a teacher’s point of view, but yah, make your own conclusion. I remember one day we were celebrating a birthday, (the directors?) and school ended early for it! To be fair, is there anything better than ending a day short of screaming children then opening a bottle of wine and feasting?

Fall is here. I’ve decided it is my favorite season. I was never sure if I had a favorite season before, but I love fall. It smells so wonderful. The colors are sooooo beautiful. And I love the feeling of the wind and wearing just enough warm clothes that you can still feel the wind, but you are neither cold nor hot. Oh, and its my birthday in the Fall. 🙂

I finished the wall! YAY YAY YAY! I mean kind of. I finished the map, but during fall break I will write all the names of the countries. Now I just want to be as far away from paint as possible. It took me two weeks to get all the paint out of my system! Hehe. I am also still thinking of adding hands on the side red parts. Maybe….we will see. 🙂

So while traveling this summer, I saw many t-shirts that had English written on them, but were somehow not understandable or just plain stupid. Engrish we call it. BAD ENGLISH. I decided to decorate my classroom with paper replicas of some of the t-shirts I saw and then I also assigned it as homework for my students to find their own examples. My wall is covered. Here are some examples:

I am thinking about getting a cat. I am not sure yet but I am definitely seriously considering it. The cat is a little kitten that is always sitting outside my house and every time I it outside to study Russian or to drink some tea, the cat come over, plop itself in my lap and sit peacefully and purr. So adorable, almost like it has adopted me. One day I brought her into my apartment and she just played with me and snuggled and rubbed her cute adorable head into my head, and how can I say NO to something so adorable???? Except I go home in 15 months and I travel so much so where would the cat go and then there is the costs and what if the cat gets sick???? What to do what to do…the Babushkas (old women) outside my apartment suggested I just play with it in the day and then put it on the street after…but then in the winter….what happens then???? And what to name her if I take her????

 

 

 

Oh! I almost forgot! I just submitted a grant for new English Textbooks for my school, (which are currently old, terrible, impractical, and have several words that don’t even exist!) . The grant is not yet funded. It is only a request from Peace Corps that I can begin to ask for money. All they do is provide a place where people can go to make donations. When the grant is ready online, I will post a link here and on Facebook where YOU, my readers, if possible, could go to make a donation. Normally I would be shy about asking for money and I would say $1 is even enough, but I am BEGGING YOU ALL to please make a donation, as much as possible. If the grant is not fully funded, then we can not even receive the amount of money we raise, which means we need to be fully funded.  We are asking for about $4000 dollars. WE NEED THESE BOOKS. PLEASE! If you would like to see a copy of the grant, I can easily send it to you! Spread the news!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Anyways, English Club time. Comments are always appreciated. And name suggestions? Thanks for reading!!!

There was a full moon the day of the Meteor Shower. Damn.

I have almost…and I mean literally almost finished the map project. (DAMN world map project, which I have ALMOST had finished for 3 days now. haha…) My German friend Johanna came out to my town last Monday to help me with the project and to keep me motivated. Turns out I had to keep her motivated too. 😉 hehe. So…We started the project by drawing hundreds of tedious lines to make a graph. Using the blocks we drew, we then transferred the mini version of the world onto the wall in a much bigger form. (3m x 5m). I had 4 students from my English Club there. There help was great, but one girl had a little trouble transferring the images and therefore made 10x extra work for Johanna and I. That is pretty much how the entire project has gone from the start; most students did great but one students didn’t keep in the lines with the paint or drew all of Central America as one country, and then Johanna and I were left to fix it. There was one point in the week when Johanna frustratingly turned to me and said, “I need to laugh to keep from crying, Daniella.” That quote pretty much sums up the project. By the end of the week I told my students that we no longer needed them. Johanna and I quietly worked side by side, listening to music, thinking, and occasionally talking about what was on our minds. It was so pleasant. This week, I am working alone and it is wonderful! (Though I do miss my little German friend). All the countries are done so I have just been correcting mistakes and painting a border. I wanted to put hand-prints around the outside of the map but it looked really horrible. As it stands now, the countries are not labeled. My director says it is prettier without labels, but I am still debating. I don’t have pictures yet of the final project, but here is the process.

(P.s. Turpentine and paint makes you giggly…and gives you a headache.)

As far as other things go, there isn’t much going on. There was another German volunteer here and we threw her a goodbye party this weekend. She leaves on Saturday. Sad. 😦 At least Johanna is staying though. She is awesome.

School starts on Thursday, day after tomorrow. I’m not sad about it, but I am definitely not excited. I guess it’ll be nice to see my English club again, and I do love my students. Its the schedule thing that I am not looking forward too. Its been nice just playing it by ear all summer. I am decorating my classroom with short jokes and pictures of the USA. I am also thinking to maybe make a poster with all the t-shirts my students should never wear, (because of the bad English). For instance, the most popular shirt in English is “Say Me Yes”. It has become the goal of most volunteers to purchase one of these shirts before returning to the US. Another interesting shirt that I saw recently said “Don’t Ignore Me Just Because I Love My Cats”. Hmm…proper grammar but WTF???? There are many shirts like this in Ukraine…it has become a game to find the best  ‘bad-English’ t-shirt. (I constantly get Facebook updates with a new shirt a volunteer has seen. 😛

I went “home” to see my host-бабушка (Grandmother). Oh how I love that woman. (haha. WOMEN Danielle!!! [ask Conor or Johanna]) Anyways, yes, I love her very much. Her home is like my home in Ukraine. This time when I visited, her daughter and granddaughter were there too. The granddaughter was absolutely amazing and she immediately claimed me as hers for the trip. Ha, so I went to visit my babushka and instead I spent the whole time hanging out with a 10 year old. It was great! She took me to the river to swim, braided my hair, made me pose for photographs (Ukrainian style where a girl poses in a pretty position and changes position a million times), took me to a шашлик (like a BBQ), and then made friendship bracelets. She also gave me some of her own. Ha…the best part was picking potatoes. Wow…this little 10 year old girl knew exactly how to find the potatoes and how not to waste time digging where there are none. But DAMN she was bossy.  I’d dig in the wrong place, and she’d be like “I told you so, now listen to me.” I was being told by a ten year old!!! Haha…She was right in the end though, so who was I to argue with her? At the end of the trip, I had to get up at 5am to catch my bus. The evening before she asked me if I could wake her up to say bye, but I honestly told her I’d be sleepy and I’d probably forget. So the little lady wakes herself up at 5am and gives me the biggest  hug ever good bye. I teared up. Oh dear. I’m a big baby. 🙂

So, School is starting. I guess this means I’ll be busy again. 😦 But I won’t forget to write. Apparently the opening day to school is a big holiday, so I am sure I will have pictures and something more to write about soon. Thanks for reading and as always, I LOVE COMMENTS!

Current favorite song: Amy Macdonald: “This is the Life”. Pretty Awesome.

Current Book: Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan. Awesome as well. 🙂

Of course there is a full moon the day Perseids Meteor shower peeks.

Hey! Most important news first: My little sister had a beautiful baby girl named Cheyenne Lynn! 

In other news, this summer has gone by WAYYY too fast. I have almost started dreading the start of school. But, it will happen. So…I was hoping to get the world map project done before the end of the summer but it may not happen. My Director volunteered that she would get the wall ready for me by painting the base color blue, but every time I called her to ask if it was ready, she would tell me, don’t worry about it, it’ll get done! So, then I was on vacation out in the west, and I get a call that it is ready. Unfortunately though, the rest of my summer is already crowed with trainings and summer plans, which leaves me a total of 10 days before school starts to get the wall painted. But I already have so much to do in those ten days; I just don’t think its going to get done! Normally I like the lack of scheduale in Ukraine, but this one time, I’m thinking, arghhhh.

On other fun notes, Camp H.E.A.L. was AWESOME! So awesome that my team, named JUST NINJAS, got 2nd place (out of 8 teams, and the 1st place team was all university students whilst the rest of the groups were high school students…felt like 1st place). I took 13 students along with me and they were so sad when camp was over! So sad that while we were in the train station, they started to reenact the camp by playing games and singing songs. We created quite a crowd by the time we got the singing “Here I Am Riding My Pony”. My favorite though was a team -building game they played where they had to “cross a river” using 4 sheets of paper and the pieces of paper had to have at least one foot on them at all times. By time they got all 13 students “across the river”, the crowd started clapping and taking pictures. Made me proud actually. I also have to add for the benefit of my students that even though I brought the most students, none of my students were part of the trouble makers who ended up getting in trouble. My students were constantly commended for their great behavior and their participation. Yes, I am bragging, because when I was heading to camp, I was  super nervous that there I was, 21 years old, responsible for 13 students only a few years younger than me and capable of all sorts of trouble. But when camp was over, I was glowing with pride. Thanks Guys! 🙂

Ok…enough of the icky stuff. I finished my diary and started a new one. Boring news if you don’t know me, but I write. A Lot. Now on to my 17th diary. (This is a hint to family that I need a new diary. 🙂

What else? My oblast (regional) bestie, Margo, and I went on a long trip around Ukraine. It was super fun! First we went to Kiev for an awesome language refresher. (Where we study up on our Russian and learn new cool things about Ukraine.) Then we went to Lviv. Lviv is a city FAR out west near the mountains. It resembled Europe much more than our flat coal/factory cities out in the East. It was so beautiful. Ha, but instead of going to all the museums and seeing all the cool sites, Margo and I pretty much cafe-hopped and drank beer and coffee. Now, before you think we are caffeine/alcohol addicts, I would like to point out that, A) Coffee is instant in the East, except for McDonalds coffee (MMmmm), in the west they have real coffee,  and B), (sorry East Ukraine), the beer is TERRIBLE in the East.  Even the Easterners say this. They are much more vodka people. They had REAL beer in the West. Also, the cafes in Lviv were beautiful. We were sitting at this one cafe looking out onto a plaza surrounded by European architecture, a nice NATURAL hill in the background, and people bargaining for goodies in the bazaar. What beats that, right???

So, Danielle, Me, likes to play things by ear, and Margo, oblast bestie, likes to have things planned, so, thanks to Margo, we did get train tickets to our next destination, Odessa. But thanks to Danielle, we bought them too late and had to leave the west from Ternopol, change trains in Kiev, get off in Mykolaiv, and then take a two hour bus to Odessa. But things worked out smoothly, since Ternopol was a pretty city to see, in Kiev we got to hang out with the volunteers finishing the second language refresher, and then I met up with my group from training in Mykolaiv! See, things do work out! 🙂

Odessa….AMAZING city. Probably my favorite city in Ukraine right now…except for my city of course!!! I was really hoping to see an Opera in the famous Odessa Opera House, but apparently even though there were operas advertised online, there were no actual operas. Super disappointing. No biggie, I spent most of my time laying on the beach anyways. I love the beach. 🙂

After Odessa, Margo and I split. She headed back home to the East and I headed to the top of Crimea to visit some volunteers. One of my awesome friends, Maggie, taught me how to can so when I got home, I made and canned SALSA! Super easy and super awesome. I am sooo stoked to eat it. 

So, school starts in 2 weeks. Sad. Not ready. But I guess it’ll be good to get back on a schedule and I really do miss my students. I’ll write again soon, I promise. 🙂

August 12th: the Peak of the Perseids Meteor Shower. 60 Meteors/min

I’m at a patio right now drinking a live beer flavored with honey. I’m at home that means. I haven’t been home in almost two weeks, except for one random night I finally made it to my bed somehow.

Firstly, exciting news, I finally saw the Donbass Arena. This is one of the few stadiums (including stadiums in Kharkiv and Poland) where the 2012 Eurogames will be held next June. The game I saw was Ukraine vs. France, and we sorely loss. But the loss was not the worst of the game, believe it or not. I went with my site partner, Candice, (a random ballerina some volunteers met at the last game after my site partner yelled some profanities out in English), and two German girls who are also doing volunteer work near us. We were initially assigned to seats far back beyond the crowds. Since the stadium was fairly empty though, we made the decision to move closer to where the real fans were seated, the fans dressed in all yellow and blue jumping up and down, singing and waving flags. Apparently these same fans are the drunken idiots who get overly excited, pull down their pants and wave their junk about. Yes, that did happen, and the bastard didn’t even get kicked out of the stadium. He only got a warning! It was a fun time either way though.

While Candice, Conor and I were walking back to Candice’s place, we decided to play tag on a playground we found. Conor and I were slightly tipsy after a few beers, so anything stupid we may have done, ie falling, tripping, etc, was excused. CANDICE ON THE OTHER HAND was not excused. She tripped over a park bench and fell flat on her face and then continued to laugh about it…all done sober ladies and gentlemen. Haha. Класно!  (Classic)

So this is kinda cool, one of the German chicks, Johanna, only arrived in Ukraine about 2 weeks ago. The organization she is volunteering with, Alliance, is using her as a test subject to see how manageable (or unmanageable) Ukraine is to a foreigner who knows no Russian. They are sending her out on random errands like finding shops or riding buses and then she writes a blog (in English) about her experiences. As it stands right now, Ukraine is F***ing difficult to navigate without knowing Russian. Ukraine has a lot to do before the 2012 games. At least they are working at it though.

I recently had an AWESOME opportunity to play my flute in a very important ceremony. For those of you who do not know, Peace Corps is currently (this year) celebrating their 50th anniversary. In Ukraine, we just had about 100 new trainees become volunteers. Peace Corps Ukraine combined these two big events and made a gigantic ceremony out of it. I got the play my flute in the opening of the ceremony! Ukrainians are, like the rest of the world, crazy about the Beatles so I pretty much played a bunch of their songs. It was awesome.

Summer in Ukraine rocks. Already. Although I haven’t lived through the infamous July yet…so this may be updated later. Its so pretty…flowers and green EVERYWHERE. Maybe I didn’t notice these beauties since I lived most of my life in the hot south or America. But after that long dreadful, black winter, this summer is breathtaking. I finally got a hold of a sleeping bag to go with the tent…did  mention that? I went halvsies on a tent. WOOT.

This summer I have one camp I will take part in and then Language camp. The first on is a camp focused on HIV/AIDS, which I have numerous times mentioned is a HUGE problem in my oblast. HUGE. I am taking 13 of my students along and it is going to be a blast. It will overlap with 4th of July, which I am a little sad I will be missing in Pennsylvania by the way….but we will be able to use this as a great opportunity to show Ukrainians how we celebrate one of our most important holidays. The second is a Russian Language camp where I will be able to touch up on my Russian grammar. I am stoked because it will be the first time my cluster, Charlie, Jun and I, will be together since we swore in as volunteers. Also, many other of my favorite volunteers in the world will be there. I am stoked. It will be a week of actual full on Russian studying and seeing friends and no other worries, ie projects…can’t get better.

School ended a while back but I never got a chance to write about it, sorry. I think it was the last week of may it ended? Anyways, it was awesome. We had this big ceremony to say bye to the students and give out certificates. I had to present a few and say everything in Russian…it was tough. But it made my heart BLOOM because when they said my name to come up, the students almost made me deaf with screaming. My heart almost melted. I LOVE MY STUDENTS.  After that, all the teachers piled in a big van and we headed to a nearby lake to have a Щащлик. (BBQ) Shashlik, (yes that is what that says), is like a shish kabob. Yummy. Deliciousness. The food was great. Ha, the best part though, is when all the teachers started puling out their many bottles of vodka. It always gets me. I look up and there is about 16 bottles of vodka and wine on the table, and all I can think is “uh-oh”. Ha…so we drink them….and it was hilarious, from spending a good 30 minutes to modeling for photos, (sticking to Ukrainian traditions of ‘photos are awesome”) to my director randomly deciding to present her sunglasses to our youngest English teacher, to returning to the table hours later and finding that one of our administrators had been hiding more vodka in her bag…At this point I was sun sleepy. I had been playing Frisbee, (drunk I might add)  and laying in the sun and the alcohol was starting to make me feel woozie. My teachers tell me the only cure for this is another shot and they insist on another shot. Ha…thank God we had to leave shortly. Though shortly included making or may back to the vans and taking as many strange pictures as possible with the 2o-something teachers on hand. Ukrainians know how to have fun!

I think I must run now. Its getting late and I need to sleep and be productive tomorrow. I only returned from Kiev this morning (at 5am I might add) and I still have to unpack. Small little updates, my sister Elisa might be here to visit. Yay! I am still working on fundraising for the World map project. The book-project is on hold until next semester for reasons beyond my control. Nevermind…

Next month on the 16th, I am officially 1/3 the way through my service. Wow. Time flies when you are having fun….and then winter comes…Threw an awesome surprise for sitemate’s birthday…after an innocent Mexican party, my students and I surprised him by throwing a bunch of water balloons at him. Turned out the Babushka was the only one to hit him . 

Sorry, one last note…My little sister Maria was dues yesterday. As far as I heard she hasn’t had the baby yet, a little girl, Cheyenne, but please send up a little prayer for her and an early congratulations. I hope to soon have pictures up of her little girl. I miss you tons Maria.

Mars: This planet probably got its name due to its red color.

Free time! Whoo hooo!

“What’s been going on in Ukraine lately, Danielle?” Oh, well thanks for asking. Let me tell you about a wonderful visit from my fellow awesome volunteers and the fact that 2 minutes ago there was a fight in my classroom and I am terrified. Which first? “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!”

Ok. The fight. Well, I was just sitting on my desk waiting for my students to sit after the bell had already rung. Suddenly, I turned to see two students fighting, a girl and a boy. Within the few seconds that I realized what was going on, the girl was sat in the boy’s seat, he had thrown the girl off the seat, she socked him in the face, and they started struggling. Holy crap I was raging. These were not young students and they were fighting over a CHAIR. Mondays…

The weekend was great though. Charlie and Margo came to visit us! Charlie was in my training group and Margo is an older volunteer that visited my group when we were training. First we had tea with my fellow teachers, Victoria, Kate, and Iryna. We talked about the upcoming book project I am doing and our lives at site. I would just like to brag for a second that I am apparently a very lucky volunteer. I have my own classroom while apparently many other volunteers do not. Thank you God! Then my English club students met us and we all went bowling. (P.s. Tall guy 29 HATES bowling and didn’t come.) Anyways, Margo is awesome at bowling. I was awesome about every 4th bowl. Hopefully, if the weather is nice, my English club and I will play Frisbee net weekend.

Conor and I are still attempting to buy our bikes. Since the volunteers came to visit, we never got a chance to go to Donetsk. There isn’t a lot of selection in our town. They either have one gear which isn’t very good for long rides, or they are too small for Conor. (He’s tall).

Currently my students and I are videoing our own personal interpretation of “The Three Little Pigs”. The video should be up in the next week or so. Also, we just finished a video about our school. Its an amateur video but it has some  humorous parts. Please follow the link to watch it and we always appreciate comments!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNSE1eKbqko

Interesting Czech Proverb I saw:

“You live a new life for ever new language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only one life.”

Best story EVER! I was sitting in my classroom the other day reading papers when three of my fifth grade students came in to talk to me. One girl saw my bright pink Duct tape my sister,Kelsie, had brought me in Germany and asked what it was. I decided to show them how strong it is by putting it on my hand, ripping it off quickly, and showing them the hairs. Jokingly, I asked, “I wonder how much hair you would get if you put it on your arm?” 

One girl thought this was a brilliant idea and asked to try it. So we cut a small piece, put it on her arm, and then ripped it off. AMAZING right?!? OF COURSE, the other two girls were like, “We want to try it too, but we want BIGGER pieces!” So I cut three more pieces of Duct tape, put it on their arms, and then we went for it again. I’m pretty sure I have never seen three little girls more excited in their lives. They walked out of my classroom with their bright-pink-hair-covered Duct tape pieces and huge smiles on their faces.

BUT, wait for it…it gets BETTER. Later that day I had English club and one of the fifth graders has an older sister that attends my club. I decided I would try to embarrass the little girl a little and tell her older sister to encourage a little teasing. Get this, the older sister had already heard the story and she and all the English club (9th and 10th graders may I point out) wanted to try it out too!!! BAHAHAhahahaha. I LOVE MY STUDENTS.

Yesterday, being the day after I wrote the first half of this blog, I went rock climbing and I finally made it up a wall that I had been trying to tackle since I first started climbing 3 months ago. Woo hoo! And now I am on my way to start climbing some natural cliffs. The group went to a neighboring area to rock climb two weeks ago but it was too cold for me to get a grip on any of the rocks. We go again on Sunday so wish me luck! After that, Mount Everest!

There is a great book I have been reading lately:  FURY by Koren Zailckas (Is it books you’re supposed to underline?). I would totally recommend it to everyone! It is about the author’s pent-up anger that learns to deal with along the course of writing her book. It is so amazing and a really easy read.

I don’t know if I already mentioned it but my bird, Temptations, died. Or ran away actually. (flew away*) So, no more Mrs. Birdie. Maybe I will get another one…one that likes me more.

So apparently this post copied wrong onto the internet so I am reposting it. A small update since I last posted this, I was recently rushed the capital of Kiev after blacking out and fainting in a supermarket. As I write this I am in the capital just released from the hospital and now I am in the sick bay at the Peace Corps office. I am predicted to go home Tuesday. Miss you guys and don’t worry. I’m alive..or maybe that is reason to worry…

Mars has some of the most highly varied and interesting terrain of any of the terrestrial planets.

I’m back from Germany! (For those of you who knew I was going in the first place.) It was such a blast! But as sad as I am to be back, Ukraine finally feels like home now. So, here goes, the last few weeks that I have lazily avoided writing:
March 8th, Women’s Day. This is apparently an international holiday but I first heard of it actually being celebrated in Ukraine. Each teacher in my school donated 30 грн to a celebration and then each department was assigned to make a dish. The English teachers made a delicious mayo crap salad.(Ukrainians thrive on mayo). After all the food was prepared, all the teachers gathered around a big table where we ate and drank. A few teachers had prepared some skits and games, including a skit about how a rooster made a hen pregnant and then out popped a baby egg, (pictures included).  To say the least, it was entertaining.
I unfortunately was leaving for Germany the day of the town celebration. All I saw was a women’s version of Guy Fox ready to be burnt (picture also attached) and a large crowd of people munching down on goodies and singing. I’m still puzzled as to why the would BURN a fake woman to celebrate women’s day…

Upon landing in Germany I found my debit card apparently didn’t want to work, even though I had called ahead of time to warn my bank I would be overseas. Thankfully the credit card worked. I proceeded to take a bus to Munich to the train station, and then I hopped on a train to Cori’s town. Damn train was late for the connection though so I ended up having to take 3 more connections to make up for the one lost connection. So all in all, I was about 2 hours late. Funny though, Ukrainian trains are much slower and older, but they never leave late, or arrive late, and I have never missed a connection.

It was really great to see my sisters. How couldn’t it be with the 6 bottles of vodka I managed from Ukraine, including one specialty bottle of Chili-Honey vodka! Hehe. We spent 2 days in Cori’s town and then we moved on to Nurnberg where there is a small castle and very good beer. (Although I’m pretty sure good beer is a German thing all around.) Ohhhh, BEER. IT was soooo tasty. Beware though of much higher percentages of alcohol than in the US or in Ukraine. I was personally unaware of this and then consequently surprised when I felt buzzed just after one beer, (Though Conor might say I have always been a light weight).

So I was with my sister Corita for about a week, and my sister Kelsie was there for 4 days. After seeing them, I headed to Munich where I met some friends that I had studied abroad with in Finland. Lucky me, one friend is engaged to a wonderful girl, Johanna, whose mom had a house in the Austrian Alps, so guess where I got to go stay and ski for FREE??? My first time ever skiing, IN THE ALPS. Johanna’s mom was WONDERFUL and a tad bit crazy. The 51 year old lady BASE Jumps, Skis, Snowboards, and in two months she will hike the Rocky Mountains alone. (P.s. If any family or friends would like to host her, join her or just meet her while she is in the US, she would REALLY APPRECIATE IT. So please shoot me an email. This lady is wonderful and I assure you that you will immediately fall in love with her.)

So back to skiing, we took a lift to the top of one of the mountains and there we ate with the most wonderful view in front of us. By the way, Austrian food is really sweet. There is tons of sugar in every meal, breakfast, lunch dinner. (And did I mention their BEER? :D) I am not a big drinking but I could never say no to a Germany or Austrian beer. Its so NOM NOM!
Back to school tomorrow. I am kind of mixed happy/sad about this. I miss my students and I know that since I have been to Germany their attention spans might be a little longer than normal (and I might even receive some I-missed-you chocolate). But really, going to Germany and seeing my family made me a tad homesick.

Speaking of homesick, some things that Americans who have never lived in a 3rdworld country have but don’t necessarily appreciate: Peanut Butter (Thank you Cori’s friend Hunt), Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups, Taco Bell , Dr. Pepper, REAL FRESH ground coffee in the morning, Pot-holeless Roads, WiFi, Hot water/ Hot showers (and powerful showerheads), and supermarkets, (yes I know this one could be debated, but you have no idea what life is like without variety.) This is my recent epiphany I had while in Germany (not on a toilet) when these various things were available to me and I realized how much I missed them. I seriously spent an hour under my sister’s shower head in the barracks cheesily smiling to myself and thinking how much God loved me to give me all these things. Why is it everyday in America I was standing there in a shower thinking how long it had been since I had taken a bath? (Which I still very much enjoy in Ukraine, even though I thoroughly loved the powerful showerhead).

Anyways, School, not so exciting because that means I am back to work. But summer is almost here and I am starting to feel more motivated and alive again. Conor tells me of these beautiful sunflower fields where there are sun flowers as far as the eye can see. We are planning on buying bikes and making the most of the nice weather! I am also stoked to see if maybe we can bike to some nearby villages of neighboring volunteers. What do you think 40 minutes on a bus turns into in bike time?

I have been accepted to be a camp counselor at an HIV/AIDS camp in the summer and it is my job now to help raise money to pay for it. From what I know, we need about $15,000USD for the  camp and we are still hugely short. We would really appreciate any contributions, big or small. Also, if anyone knows any HIV/AIDS organizations that would contribute, please tell! I am super stoked because I have wanted to get involved with HIV/AIDS for a while but I unfortunately got rejected from the working group and thought this would mean I couldn’t be part of the camp. I kept showing up to the meetings anyways though, volunteered for group responsibilities, and talked personally to the volunteer organizing the camp and I finally got accepted! Whooo Hoooo! By the way, please note for sympathies sake that Donetsk Oblast (my region) has the HIGHEST RATE OF HIV/AIDS IN ALL OF UKRAINE.  So that means that YOUR contributions makes a difference (Please repeat this phrase out loud to yourself and imagine Sam pointing his finger at you).

Anyways, bed time, or technically ‘Oh-shit,-time-to-sleep,-I-had-better-start-lesson-planning’ time. Thank God I have pictures from Germany! That should take up four 45 minute classes, right?