Merry Christmas from Ukraine! С Рождеством!

So I have now officially spent my first Christmas in Ukraine! Classes ended at my school last Friday on Christmas Eve, and the kids were all so excited to begin the holiday season... I taught a 4th form class all 3 verses to Jingle Bells! And after they learned the english words, they sang the Russian version of the song to me!

Then they sang a Ukrainian New Year's song about a Christmas tree to me and demonstrated the dance to it :)

A bunch of kids stopped me in the hallway to take a picture in between classes.

  In Ukraine, they have a really intense holiday season. They celebrate New Years as Americans would celebrate Christmas, with a Christmas tree decorated with ornaments and lights and exchanging presents. The Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar, which is 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar, used in Europe and North America. Therefore the Ukrainians celebrate Christmas on January 7, 13 days later than the Catholic world and then they celebrate the Old New Year on January 13th. Russia and Ukraine officially switched to the western calendar after the 1917 Revolution. My school held a New Year's party in their auditorium on Friday and invited me to sit with all the parents in the back.

Several teachers put on a short play for the kids.

All the children dress up as if it was Halloween!

My little town also put up a big Christmas tree in the central plaza and had a little celebration on Christmas Eve. They sang a few of the same traditional Ukrainian Christmas carols and walked around the tree.

Cultural Moment: This is the first time that I have seen Christmas lights strung on a tree vertically instead of spiraled around the tree.

All the kids linked hands and walked around the tree.

For Christmas day, I traveled to meet up with a few other Peace Corps volunteers in Kharkiv. It was interesting to make new friends and hang out in the big city! We went to a pizza parlor for Christmas dinner, which was nice because it was American food :)

They served ice cubes!!! This is the first time that I've even seen ice cubes here!

My neighbor Alison! She only lives about 30 minutes away from my town.

Yes, this is a dog wearing a tracksuit. Dogs get cold too!

On Sunday, we walked around downtown Kharkiv and did a little bit of sightseeing. We walked down Pushinska Street, known for its famous shops and restaurants. This is one of the famous statues in Kharkiv.

This is a GIANT thermometer, hanging on the side of the building! Seeing a 3 story tall thermometer was almost the best part of my day... though of course it was in Celsius and not Fahrenheit haha.

We also passed the famous Philarmonic Theater along our journey, which also had a really cool monument of four musicians in front of it.

I am dwarfed by the statues!

Two of the other PCV's in my region, Ty and Tiago, stopped to conquer the last remaining bit of snow on the ground.

We also walked by Kharkiv's Dolphin Aquarium! We didn't pay the admission fee to go inside but the outside reminded me a lot of the Georgia Aquarium. i was sad that all the fountains were turned off for the winter, but I'm sure that place will be really cool to visit in the summer. And apparently you can pay to swim with the dolphins too, which would be really awesome!

You guessed it... Dolphin is a cognate.

Rawr!

What an awesome blowfish.

And now for the best part of the day.... we went to the Shevchenkov Park and saw the big Christmas tree in the city center, then went ice skating! I haven't gone ice skating for a few years, and certainly haven't been to an outdoor ice skating rink in forever! I always wanted to go ice skating in Centennial Olympic Park (in Atlanta) but never had the chance to go.

Alison being a superstar :)

Our Ukrainian friend Vadym.

I love ice skating!

Alison and her sitemate Tiago.

Ty showing off his skating skills.

The big Christmas tree reminds me of the one in Atlantic Station (in Atlanta) and the big one in Macy's Square in San Francisco! This plaza was filled with lots of holiday festivities, including some amusement park rides and GIANT Russian dolls. If we had more time, I was going to go take a ride on a llama. 

Gotta love the artsy-fartsy angle!

Little kids are so adorable on the baby roller-coasters.

A baby pony, I was too busy debating whether or not to go have a llama ride to remember to take a picture of it.

Look how big those Russian dolls are!

So now that American Christmas is over... the Ukrainian New Years Holiday is coming soon and I am traveling back to Kyiv to visit my host family for New Years next weekend! I can't wait to see Mama Sveta and maybe tour some of the holiday festivities in Kyiv, I have heard they also have a huge Christmas tree on display in Independence Square :)

Swearing-In and My New Home

I can’t believe 3 months have flown by so fast in Ukraine!

After a very busy week in Kyiv last week, I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! The Swearing-In Conference was a week of informational sessions and excitement, as it was great to see old friends that I hadn’t seen since Staging and meet the other half of group 40 that arrived in Ukraine a week before me.

With Nicole, Avital and Colette.

Hanging out with Peter, Jonathan, Warren, Jun and a few new friends.

Shortly after we all arrived in Kyiv, we settled into the dorms. It was fun to be back on a university campus, I forgot how much fun living with roommates was! I was in the triple room of a suite that connected with a double room and bathroom.

My awesome roommates, Deedra and Nicole.

Alison, Katie and Bri in the dorms.

After lunch on our first day, they had announcements of where all the Trainees in group 40 would be working in Ukraine! There are 86 volunteers in group 40, and we are now spread out all over the country. My site is located on the eastern side of Ukraine, in Kharkiv Oblast. Here is a glance at the map of all of our sites.

I am on a purple post-it note in a teal colored oblast.

We also got to meet our Ukrainian Counterparts for the first time. Counterparts are typically future colleagues, so for us TEFL volunteers that means that our Counterparts also teach at the same school that we will be working in. For Community and Youth development volunteers, Counterparts are usually involved in a volunteer’s primary organization.

My Counterpart Alina and I with my friend Melanie and her Counterpart, by the flags on stage.

We also had an informational session about all of the different “working groups” that are within Peace Corps Ukraine, such as the Volunteer Advisory Committee, Gender and Development (GAD) Council, Technology for Development, Healthy Lifestyles, Multicultural Awareness Council (MAC), HIV/AIDS Awareness, Environmental Working Group, and Special Needs Working Group.

My super awesome peer advisor Sasha came to Swearing-In to represent MAC and GAD.

On Wednesday evening, we had a little concert as Peter Yarrow from “Peter, Paul and Mary” came and performed live on stage. He was joined by Kurt Hagamann, a PCV from our group who is awesome at playing the sax.

Peter playing on stage with our Country Director Douglas Teschner and Kurt.

Not to be outdone, Warren shared his lovely piano skills.

 The actual Swearing-In Ceremony took place on Thursday, and many host families came to watch their Trainees become Volunteers.

My training cluster and linked cluster (minus Monica) with our country director.

Repping the ATL with Dara and Nathan.

With my suitemates Deedra, Melanie and Natalie.

 We also said goodbye to our dear Language Facilitator and Technical Facilitator. Without Larysa and Vika (our two Language Facilitators), I would not have learned enough Russian to score at the Intermediate High level. And our Technical Facilitator Ludmyla was immensely helpful in providing guidance on how to plan and structure our English lessons.

With Luda, Larysa and two of the host families from my training town.

Heather, Nathan and I with Vika.

Moving into my new town was a little bit crazy since my train arrived at 6:30 in the morning. It was snowing outside on top of the already existing 4 inches of snow on the ground. Luckily a few people met us at the train tracks, including my school Director, her husband, and my fellow PCV site-mate. They were a great help with my luggage and drove me to my new apartment. My new apartment is great, it is a furnished 1 bedroom apartment with a kitchen and bathroom (including a regular shower with running hot/cold water and a clothes washing machine!). I am also lucky to have lots of pots, pans, dishes and a full size refrigerator in my kitchen. Here is a photo tour of my new home.

My bedroom/living room. I sleep on a flip-down sofa.

This is the other half of my bedroom, with a flip-out table and 3-ft tall teddy bear.

I have a balcony, which will be nice for hanging out in the summer.

The view from my kitchen.

Washing machines look a little different here in Ukraine! Don't worry, my landlady showed me how to use this one.

My kitchen (sorry for the unpacking/cooking mess).

The view from my balcony... check out how icy the streets are!

 I can't believe Christmas is right around the corner! This will be my first Christmas without my family, but hopefully I will be able to spend it with some of my new friends here. Happy holidays to everyone!

Painting Eggs, Chopping Wood, World AIDS Day, Kiev-Atlantic Factory and СНЕГОПОД (SNEGAPOD)!

These past few weeks in Ukraine have been really cold. By really cold, I mean that the temperature has dropped to around minus 10 degrees C and it has been snowing off and on all week! My host mom says that this weather is normal for winter, and soon it will be -30 degrees outside. Snegapod (snow fall) is my new favorite Russian word, though I’m not quite sure if it is a real Russian word... We kind of made it up from the word for snow - снег (pronounced sneg) and pod - под (meaning to fall). Over the week, my town has gotten a few more inches of powdery white snow :)

The view of the playground in front of my apartment building from our kitchen window.

You can tell that winter is setting in because the days are getting shorter – the sun sets around 4pm now, and it still rises around 7am. But no worries, life still goes on during the winter and we’ve had a really busy week in our little town.

Heather and I walked to school in the snow with our umbrellas!

Our Technical Facilitator Ludmyla taught us how to paint eggs with wax by hand, in the traditional Ukrainian style! It was very similar to dyeing Easter eggs, except designs drawn in hot wax with the stylus are usually a lot more intricate than the designs drawn in white crayon on eggs.

These eggs are so beautiful – I can’t believe our teacher painted all of these by hand!

Luda was kind enough to let us each take home one of her painted eggs! We were all so excited to get one of her beautifully painted eggs. Luda is really talented at painting the eggs, I can't believe that she painted all of these in just a few short days! They are so detailed and intricate.

Monica and I got matching teal eggs.

First, our teacher poked holes in the eggs and blew out the whites and the yolks. She let them dry at home and brought them to school for us to paint.

Our teacher preparing all the eggs and dye.

Next, we used a small stylus to draw on the egg shells with hot wax. We stenciled on some traditional designs in pencil first, so our eggs weren’t completely drawn freehandedly (can I turn freehand into an adverb?). The places on the egg covered by hot wax were white after the first round of dye. After the first lines were drawn on with wax, the eggs were dropped into the jars of dye for their first coat of color. Luda explained that each egg usually has only 2 or 3 colors – any more than that and the colors kind of just blend into brown.

The eggs soaking in the jars of dye.

After the first coat of color, hot wax was drawn on the egg again. This time, the places on the egg covered by the second round of wax preserve the first color.

Danielle and Heather working on their 2nd coat of wax.

My egg didn’t turn out so well, because I accidentally rubbed off some of the wax between the first and second coat of color. However, Monica’s egg turned out great!

Monica and her hand-painted egg!

In our little town, it is common to have a dacha. A dacha is a second house, usually a summer house with a garden or a farm house. We all went to Jakob’s host family’s dacha and got to saw and chop wood!

Nathan and I with the saw.

Jakob chopping a little chunk of wood.

Inside the dacha, Jakob’s family had an old wood stove. I thought it was interesting to see what a wood stove looks like, for I may be cooking on one when I get to my permanent site soon!

Making tea on the wood stove.

I think Mama Tanya said that this dacha has been in their family for a few generations. She showed us an old photo album with black and white pictures of her and her family from the early 1900s, which was really interesting. They’ve definitely done some renovations, for the house has electricity inside.

Our group inside the dacha with Jakob’s host  mama, Tanya.

Mama Tanya told us that her dog likes to dance in his spare time… and she wasn’t kidding!

Heather and the dancing dog.

Last weekend, Laura cooked pizza and invited us over to her host family’s house for dinner. It was fun to hang out with another host family and practice my Russian. Our Language Proficiency Interview (LPI) is coming up next week, so I can use all the practice that I can get!

Our group at the dinner table with Laura’s host sister.

World AIDS Awareness Day was December 1st. Since Ukraine currently has one of the worlds fastest growing infection rates of HIV/AIDS, our group dressed in red and presented a short Powerpoint presentation at school to the 8-11th form students.

Yes, the only thing red that I brought to Ukraine is my famous Christmas sweater... I'm a hardcore Yellow Jacket :)

We also toured the “Kiev-Atlantic  Ukraine” factory in our town. Kiev-Atlantic is a grain and feed processing plant, they produce feed for livestock and also export sunflower oil to surrounding countries in Eastern Europe. Disclaimer: this part of my blog post is going to sound pretty nerdy. As an Industrial Engineer, I am naturally curious about a factory’s manufacturing operations, quality control process, distribution system and warehousing facilities.

In front of the factory’s short-storage bins, where grain is stored for up to 2 months.

The factory employs around 300 people from our town and churns out about 15-20 truckloads of oil per week. It was really interesting to see what their operations were like, and we were lucky to have a tour in English since the directors of the factory are American.

Monica tasting some soybeans fresh from the production line.

Since our town is located near one of the bigger railway hubs, Kiev-Atlantic takes advantage of the open rail lines to import raw grain and export their products. The founders of the company actually used the railway to import all the machinery and materials to build the factory from the United States.

Rail containers are loaded directly with grain product from the factory.

Walking into the factory’s warehouse made me smile, since the CAT forklifts all look familiar and a lot of the machines have Russian translations taped onto the control switches. Inside the warehouse, finished bags of feed grain are stacked on pallets and stored on vertical pallet racks.

Mike, the director of the factory, showing us a bag of quail feed.

My host family drinks water from the well in front of our apartment building, and I usually draw water from the well every few days. I asked my mom the other day if the water in the well would freeze during the winter. She laughed and told me that the well is deep enough not to freeze. We keep a silver coin on the bottom of the water bucket, apparently silver is a natural purifier. I just noticed the date on the coin the other day, and was astonished at how old it is!

Cranking the water from the well!

Check it out – the silver coin is a ruble (Russian currency) from 1896!

So my apologies - I meant to post this last week, but didn't have time to upload all of the pictures until today. This is my last post from my Training town... I'm headed to Kyiv tomorrow to find out my permanent site! I am thrilled to see everyone in group 40 again that I haven't seen since Staging (and to meet everyone else that staged a week before me). And then our Swearing-In Ceremony will be on Thursday, after that I will officially be a Peace Corps Volunteer!