Shopping for Winter Clothes

Most of Ukraine is on approximately the same latitude as the border between the United States and Canada, so I've got to prepare myself for snowy winters around 20 degrees Fahrenheit (with probably about a 20 degree standard deviation, depending on which part of Ukraine that I am assigned to). Since I've been in Atlanta for the last 4 years and my parents currently reside in California, my winter outerwear primarily consists of a black pea coat that I got for Christmas my freshman year of college, jeans, rain boots, and sometimes my Ugg boots. So the next two clothing items on my Packing List that I need to acquire are a winter jacket and warm and waterproof boots.

I ordered the North Face Brooklyn jacket online in "Graphite Gray", it looks like it will be about knee length on me and reliably waterproof and it is insulated with down. I have no prior experience purchasing winter coats so hopefully this will be sufficient to keep me warm in Ukraine. I'm very excited about the furry hood, I love hooded jackets and will most definitely pretend to be an eskimo. I wonder if the locals would believe that I'm actually an eskimo... just kidding.



Most of the Peace Corps' recommended packing lists for Ukraine have wavered on the subject of bringing boots from the United States or purchasing them there. I decided that since I wear size 6 and most Europeans tend to have larger feet than I do (I expect that they will all be like a foot taller than me), I don't want to gamble on being able to buy boots there. I will be arriving in Ukraine in late September, and it might already be snowing by the time that I get there. So I ordered the North Face Nuptse boots in black, they are knee high and waterproof. According to the specs online, these boots are also insulated with down and have some sort of grippy outer sole on the bottom.



Since they don't quite look attractive enough for me to teach class in, I will probably be changing shoes inside the classroom. The reviews of this boot are generally good though, so I'm confident that these boots will keep me from losing any toes. I wonder what kind of footwear local Ukrainian women wear to teach in, so far I have heard that they are generally very fashionable and love stilettos. But there is no way that I will be able to stand in stilettos for like 8 hours, I love wearing heels but my feet start complaining after like 30 minutes haha.

Current PCVs serving in Ukraine have mentioned that they do not salt or sand down the roads and sidewalks in Ukraine, so that is why they recommend something like Yak Trax ice gripper things for your shoes to help you walk around safely during the winter. The Yak Trax Pro that I ordered off of Amazon came in the mail, and they are quite... interesting. They are basically made to hook over the bottom of boots and shoes to add traction on ice and snow and come with a velcro strap that goes over the top of your shoe (to ensure that the bottom portion stayes latched onto the shoe). The Yak Trax design uses steel coils wrapped around rubber, and kind of reminds me of putting chains on snow tires. The reviews online for the Yak Trax are mixed but overall I think that they will come in handy, for I have pretty much zero experience walking on ice and I would like to avoid any complications from slipping and falling on icy sidewalks.


When I pulled them out of the box, I was a little confused since they were folded up into an intimidating pyramid and appeared to be tangled. But they were not actually tangled, just folded up for more efficient storage and they hooked onto the bottoms of my shoes just fine. I was worried that the small size would be too big for my shoes since I wear a 6 and the small is supposed to fit sizes 6.5-10.

On a very nerdy side note, that is a huge size range and essentially should have just been labeled one-size-fits-all. Unless of course, you wear a women's size 10.5-12.5, then you should order a medium. And if you wear a women's size 13-15, then you should order a large. Interesting strategy from the marketing and operations departments of Yax Trax, since they just sized their product with large ranges instead of splitting it up into a male and female oriented product size then they can reduce the amount of customization and consolidate their raw materials.

My mom also took me to REI last weekend and I got a few pairs of Smart Wool socks and a set of black Patagonia Capilene base layer. Thats apparently what they call their long underwear. The material for those is very lightweight and seems relatively sturdy, which will be good if I have to wear it often during the winter and wash it by hand. I'm a little confused about how I am supposed to wear that with business clothing though, since it is long sleeved and my blouses and professional shirts that I'm bringing are either 3/4 sleeved or short sleeved. I don't really like long sleeve blouses since the wrist cuff always seems to get in the way. Hmm.

Anyways, I'm excited about the winter clothes that I have ordered online and can't wait to get them in the mail. They are supposed to ship within 2-4 weeks of the order processing date, but if they don't get here soon then I will start freaking out... I leave for Ukraine in just 4 weeks!

Staging.. its real and finally almost here!

I am actually going to Staging... and then flying to Ukraine from DC! I called the travel agency again this morning and actually got through in like a minute, which caught me off guard when the bright and chipper lady answered the phone. I was fully expecting an automated message and being put on hold.

Anyways, I asked the lady to try to book my flight through Atlanta and she couldn't do it. Apparently our flights are booked at reduced rates for government fares and all the fares for Delta flights through Atlanta were booked. I'm not that surprised, because both San Francisco and Atlanta are big airport hubs and I'm sure lots of government employees fly through there to get to DC.

So I'm flying from San Francisco to Chicago, then from Chicago to Washington National. I'm arriving at Staging a day early, at the Peace Corps' expense since I'm flying from the west coast. But thats okay because there are a lot of other people arriving early and maybe we'll get the chance to know each other a bit before the Staging conference-room sessions begin.

I'm sad that I couldn't get the connection through Atlanta to work, it would have been nice to see people one last last time before I leave for Ukraine.

One last thought - I'll be missing my 1st football season as a GT Alumni, and we're actually ranked in the preseason top 25 again this year. A friend of mine posted this article about hating on the top 25 on Facebook, and it cracked me up and reminded me that football season is right around the corner. Even though we lost Dwyer and a couple other big names to the NFL, hopefully we'll still do well. And maybe we will even finally win a bowl game, that would be super exciting! I can't wait to get back to Atlanta so I can join the Letterwinners Club at football games. I love meeting old student-athlete alumni :)

Preparing for Staging!

So of course the ONE day that I don't check my email in the morning is the day that I get my Staging email! I can't believe its really happening! Staging for my group will be in Washington D.C. on September 24th. Staging is essentially where they collect all the volunteers in the same group from all over the country and brief us really fast, then we fly together to Ukraine on September 25th.

Right after I read my Staging email, I tried to call the travel agency to book my flights right away but I totally forgot about the time difference... so the travel agency office is based on the east coast and they were already closed for the day, epic fail for trying to call the east coast from California.

I went shopping and ran errands with my mom earlier this morning, I was going to start getting some stuff from my Packing List like long underwear and waterproof Merrell boots. I didn't realize long underwear was so expensive! I guess its expensive because its a technical fabric and they have to weave extra stuff into the fibers for insulation and wicking away sweat etc (thank you to my polymer, textile and fiber engineering intro class for turning me into a fabric nerd). I read on the little sign by the shelf of long underwear that the current record for wearing that brand of long underwear without changing was 132 consecutive days! That sounds disgusting... the sign also claimed that the fabric doesn't smell either but I somehow highly doubt that those clothes don't smell after 132 days.

I finally got a stainless steel water bottle and I'm super excited about it... its so shiny! Stainless steel is like the "new" thing when it comes to crunchy waterbottles for hiking/camping and stuff since aluminum bottles tend to dent and the unbreakable polycarbonate Nalgene waterbottles are quickly becoming classics. Then I thought maybe I should have gotten the insulated stainless steel bottle, since boiling hot water poured into a stainless steel bottle will still be boiling hot. I might need to get a kozy for this bottle so I don't burn myself when I try to make tea to go!

I bought a nice Columbia Windrunner roller duffel bag for my 2nd bag to bring to Ukraine. I wanted a duffel bag because since they don't have a hard frame, they're lighter than suitcases. But this one still has a boxy shape to it and is really light, so it will work well. The only thing wrong with it is that it is red and black, ewww. I may be out of Tech but I still hate buying things that are UGA colors haha.

I also got this fluffy purple Sierra Designs Diamond Spring 30 degree down sleeping bag. It rolls up pretty small and weighs only 2 lbs, 3 oz. Its very purple but its got a cute flowered pattern on the teal fabric inside. The sales associate was pretty excited about selling us this bag and it might be more than what I need since its for 30 degrees - I don't plan on sleeping outdoors anywhere (I certainly hope its not 30 degrees inside homes in Ukraine!), but I think he just wanted to make his commission on this sale. And the sleeping bag is cozy and fluffy and makes me feel like I'm in a cocoon, hopefully I will get some good use out of it during the Ukrainian winters.

So I've got to call the travel agency again tomorrow to book my flights, since I missed their business hours already today. Maybe I can get them to book me with a connection through Atlanta, that way I could say hi to a few friends during a quick layover :)

Checking out the Big Apple

Last week, I flew from Atlanta to join my family in New York City for a short vacation. The last time I was in NYC was when I was about 6 or 7, when my aunt was still living there. However, I don't think the city has changed much since then, except maybe grown taller and more populated. We flew in at night, and seeing the city skyline while taking the taxi from the airport to our hotel reminded me of Atlanta. This post just shows some of the highlights from our vacation.

Here is a picture that I took of the nearest major intersection to our hotel. Yellow cabs were always everywhere, but we unfortunately never found the Cash Cab guy :(



We wandered around the city, and my parents stopped to ask for directions like every 5 minutes. So touristy. We passed the Empire State Building, but didn't go up there. And I realized that NYC is a Pepsi town, boo...



The above photo was taken near Madison Square Garden, which is like the famous arena area in downtown NYC. They have lots of concerts and events there.



The Chinatown in Manhattan was not very exciting, reminded me a lot of San Francisco's Chinatown (except not as exciting). The shops in Chinatown were nowhere near as good as the street market stalls in Beijing, but I suppose its not very realistic to compare Chinatown to China.



We went by the old Trinity Church on Broadway. It was hard to take photos of the large church from so close up, I should have taken this from across the street.



Then we walked around the famous Wall Street, home of the nation's top investment banking firms.



I forgot what the name of this musem is, but it is right across from the New York Stock Exchange on Wall St.



And here is the front of the New York Stock Exchange, my parents wanted to go inside and check it out but unfortunately you are only allowed inside if you are an employee. I guess they want to keep all the crazy tourist crowds away from the craziness of the trading floor.



From Wall St, we walked over to where you can take ferries to Staten Island, Ellis Island, and the Statue of Liberty. If you look on the bottom right of this photo, you can see my dad wearing his awful safari hat and my sister's light purple backpack.



I love street performers that get all dressed up like this, except they try to scam tourists and charge like $5 for a photo with them. I took a quick photo of this guy anyways.



After waiting in a ridiculous line that went through airport-style security, my sister and I took the ferry to the Statue of Liberty.



Here is what the military monument looked like from our ferry.



The NYC skyline in the distance looked really awesome, as seen from the ferry.



On the way to the Statue of Liberty, we passed Ellis Island. Ellis Island used to be the first place that immigrants stepped on American soil, up until 1954.



The Statue of Liberty is huge when you get close up, you can see all the little people at the bottom of the statue walking around the island look like little dots.



My sister and I also went to go see the musical Wicked at the Gerswhin Theater. Its a story about the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz, and the show was great.



Then we walked down Broadway, through Times Square. There are a ton of shops along Broadway street and it really shows the hustle and bustle of NYC with all the tourists.



We went to the Hershey's store (on the right hand side of the above photo), where I found a GIANT bottle of Hershey's chocolate syrup :)



We also checked out the M&M store, which incidentally was right across the street from Hershey's.



I really liked how they dressed up the M&M characters, like this green one.



And they had giant m&m's at each cash register. My sister likes the blue one.



We also walked around Central Park. We were originally going to rent bikes and bike around, but renting a bike cost $15 per hour (which was a ridiculous rip-off).



Here is the famous green lawn part of the park where people lay out in their swimsuits.



We passed a bunch of guys breakdancing in the park, trying to make money from people's donations. They weren't that impressive, this is pretty standard stuff. Of course, after seeing Step Up 3 and going to school in Atlanta for the last 4 years, I may have higher standards for breakdancing haha (though I can't do it myself).



We took nice family picture by the fountain. I am horribly embarrassed about how both of my parents look super asian in their touristy hats...



I thought this lake looked nice, you can rent little boats and row around the green water.

Russian, ya?

I checked My Toolkit on the Peace Corps website online, and downloaded some huge pdf file dedicated to teaching survival Ukrainian. But since Rosetta Stone doesn't offer Ukrainian, I figure that I might as well learn Russian since most of the country speaks both languages anyways.

So I've been learning Russian from Rosetta Stone, and its been kicking my butt. The sounds and accents in Russian are very different from those in English or the Chinese tones, so I've been struggling with it. So far, I've gone through like lesson 1 and part of lesson 2 of level 1 Russian and I've learned that I am especially terrible at rolling my r's (they roll r's more than spanish) and especially bad at pronouncing девочка (girl). I think I spent like a good 15 or 20 minutes trying to get past that word alone... but the good news is that now I can sort of say it. I've only learned basic words like boy, girl, man, woman, eating, drinking, reading, running and swimming. Hopefully the next few lessons will cover more useful, conversational stuff like greetings and the numbers.

Anyways, just for fun... I updated my blog title to say "the jinger" in Russian... according to Google Translate.

G6PD Deficiency

I was browsing another Peace Corps applicant's blog the other day, and noticed that they had received their PC medical clearance with a G6PD deficiency... which reminded me that I had recieved my medical clearance with a G6PD deficiency as well. I received my medical clearance back in June, while I was still studying abroad in Singapore. At the time, I was just so excited to finally have medical clearance and looking forward to the next steps towards getting my official invitation that I didn't look up what a G6PD deficiency was.

The G6PD test was one of the many blood tests that I was required to do in order to get my Peace Corps medical clearance, and actually one that is not routinely given at the Georgia Tech Health Center. I had to ask the doctors there to include that test, and I distinctly remember that the cashier had to actually create a new 6-digit treatment code for it since it wasn't already in their checkout system.

So anyways, I got the results from all my PC medical tests back all at once and didn't know how to read most of the result charts so I didn't notice that anything was off about my G6PD test. According to the G6PDD.org website, this deficiency can cause "hemolytic anemia, which means that oxidative stress can cause the premature distruction of red blood cells' due to the lack of an enzyme called reduced glutathione which G6PD helps produce". Okay, I have no idea what the previous sentence means. I also looked up G6PD deficiency on Wikipedia, but that didn't help at all either.

According to an article on Kidshealth.org,

"G6PD deficiency is an inherited condition in which the body doesn't have enough of the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase, or G6PD, which helps red blood cells (RBCs) function normally. This deficiency can cause hemolytic anemia, usually after exposure to certain medications, foods, or even infections. Most people with G6PD deficiency don't have any symptoms, while others develop symptoms of anemia only after RBCs have been destroyed, a condition called hemolysis. In these cases, the symptoms disappear once the cause, or trigger, is removed. In rare cases, G6PD deficiency leads to chronic anemia."

Reading articles with so many medical-related terms is pretty much all gibberish to me. I think that G6PD deficiency basically means that I'm allergic to some things and could thus have an anemic reaction to certain foods that I have never heard of, like fava beans or everyday drugs like ibprofun. It also includes reactions from some malaria medicines (the ones that end in -quine, so good thing I was prescribed doxycycline malaria pills for my summer abroad), which explains why I only received PC medical clearance for countries that could accommodate my deficiency. And apparently this deficiency is hereditary and usually prevalent in African-American males and people who live around the Mediterranean, neither of which is a category that I fall into.

I guess my G6PD deficiency must not be too severe, since I'm 22 and have never heard of it before from my annual checkups and the Georgia Tech Health Center doctors didn't notify me of anything unusual after my test results came back. So I'm not particularly freaked out about having this deficiency or anything, but I think this is interesting... and now I'm wondering how long I've had it and why its never ever been diagnosed before, or if the Peace Corps has a certain standard that they test for and if my G6PD level falls below that, then it is considered a deficiency.

Revamping My Blog

So in case you haven't noticed, I've spent the last few days trying to ravamp my blog with a different template that is a little cleaner. My blog design is still definitely a work in progress, fighting the HTML code inside the pre-set CSS of a template gives me a headache. I can't quite seem to get the page link tabs at the top to fit correctly within their respective color tabs. I'm not quite sure why the paperclip is in the way, it seems like a poor design in the blog background picture. And I can't seem to format the "Recent Comments" part (on the top right) the way that I want to, it seems to be a linked list but the text keeps overflowing and looking awkward.

I've added several pages to my blog - created the "About" profile page, moved my Peace Corps Application timeline to the "Timeline" page, added a "Contact" page with my address in Ukraine, and compiled a "Packing List" page. Of course since I can't get the margins to resize to fit the length of the labels of each of these pages, the page names have been truncated to fit in the header. Ughh.

If any of you have ever been to Ukraine (or Eastern Europe) before, any thoughts or help on the packing list would be much appreciated!

I've also discovered the Peace Corps Facebook group for Ukraine Groups 39 & 40 so I've spent quite a good amount of time trolling the discussion boards and befriending new people. It looks like I am going to be one of the youngest people in the group, as well as one of the only non-liberal arts majors. Most of the people are from that liberal arts side of the world that I know very little about - English majors, International Studies, American Studies, History, Economics, Political Science, etc.

Teaching English at the secondary school level is certainly going to be more of a challenge than I thought, I am getting a little worried that I am going to behind everyone in terms of knowledge of things like American history and government. So I just read up on the U.S. citizenship test to quickly refresh my facts about the United States. Its amazing how some of these facts may be totally taken for granted by everyone living here, but I am really going to need to do some research to learn all this stuff about the equivalent political structure and history of Ukraine.

Its been quite a few years since I've lived somewhere where it gets cold enough for snow to really stick on the ground, 2 inches of snow and ice in Atlanta doesn't count. I lived in Madison and Brookfield, Wisconsin during elementary school for a number of years while my dad finished up grad school at the University of Wisconsin. All I remember about living there is having a sweet pink onesie snowsuit, playing around the Engineering buildings on campus, and riding the bus to school in 2nd grade at Wisconsin Hills. So Ukraine is going to be quite a change from Atlanta and San Francisco... yay for shopping for new clothes! Maybe I will get to build a real snow fort this year, haven't done that since I was about 7 :)

Wu Dao Kou, Laowai and the Street Markets

This will be my last post about Beijing, since I need to start researching stuff for Ukraine and Peace Corps soon. So just fyi, I'm going to throw a bunch of random photos from around Beijing together...

While we were at Tsinghua University, we lived in dorms near the Northeast Gate (Dong Bei Merrrrrr). The closest subway stop to us was Wu Dao Kou, on line 13. There are a lot of great restaurants and street vendors around that area, especially for foreigners like us. There was a KFC, Pizza Hut, some French cafe, Lush (burgers) and Laowai (southern food!). This what the Wu Dao Kou area looks like at sunset. Its always busy there, no matter what time of day or night.



Laowai means foreigner in Chinese, in case you were wondering. It was a little taste of home, in the middle of China! The owners are from Louisiana, so they serve southern food like pulled pork and chicken and biscuits, but they don't have sweet tea (yet).



They had a few pool tables, foosball, and shuffleboard. The guys got into a really intense game of foosball. Andrew (on the left, with glasses) is one of the Singapore students who came with us to Beijing and hadn't played foosball before!



I had actually never played shuffleboard before, but some of the guys from our study abroad group taught me how to play. This is Travis' game face.



Nik taught us how to play a game called cutthroat, where you have 3 players and you each get 5 of the pool balls. But I still don't really know how to play, except you're supposed to try to knock out the other players by getting rid of their balls.



Here is the new poster that they put up, featuring Obama. Christine and I got a kick out of it :)



There is a chalkboard there, directly in front of you when you walk in. So of course we kind of took over with all the GT logos and fight song :)



Mark decided that he would try to use the pool cues as a giant pair of chopsticks. It was relatively unsuccessful haha.



Annie is practicing her chinese squat, its like the default position for all native chinese. But as you can tell, she is cheating by using the pool table for balance. Chinese people tend to just chill and squat while they talk on the phone, or smoke cigarettes.



Joe and Bill made friends with one of the local guys, who had a very unique haircut.



We ended up going to Laowai multiple times a week, mostly because they had half off food and drink specials for their grand opening week and because I was craving cheese. This tomato and mozzerella salad was my favorite thing there, followed by the grilled cheese and chicken pot pie. Om nom nom!



Lindsay and Alex are extremely excited to have mac and cheese :)



I actually got the chance to try my hand at fuyen-ing (working there as a server) on their grand opening night, when they hired a DJ and turned the tables into a dance floor later. This is me with the two full time servers, Sarah and Skyla.



Here is Christine with the owner of Laowai, Brett, and the famous Green Dragon.



You can buy almost anything at the street markets around Wu Dao Kou, from food to fruit to clothes to shoes to hats to jewelry... to pet bunnies. Well, at least I think they are pets, perhaps people are shopping for dinner haha.



And only in China, you can get a tattoo or piercing right on the street. This is the sketchy tattoo van. I checked out their tattoos but they only had things like dragons and scorpions, no pretty butterflies or buzz logos. Just kidding, I would be terrified to even go inside this van.



Our first week in China, we biked to Walmart. Nik looked it up, and said it only looked like it was a few km away from campus. Wrong... we got lost so it took us about an hour to bike there and find it. And then later we learned that its just the next subway stop over from Wu Dao Kou, epic fail.



We randomly biked to this little food street one day for dinner. It was actually just down the road from Wu Dao Kou, but I didn't figure that out until later.



They had a few outdoor pool tables, which was something that I've never seen before. I've only seen pool tables inside restaurants and the like. But then again, I hardly ever play pool because I'm terrible at it.



Here is one of the standard meat-on-a-stick street stalls, they put raw meat or vegetables on kabob sticks and just grill it right there for you. Its probably really dirty and unsanitary, but usually tastes great and can be found on streets almost everywhere. Sometimes I wonder how those street vendors make a living, but I suppose that they don't have to pay rent if they just bike up and set up their grills on the streets. This picture is of an actual stall, but most of these vendors are on the edge of the sidewalks on the streets. And the raw meat is probably very cheap in bulk quantities. Then since they make cash, they won't have to claim it for taxes. Actually, I am not sure how China does income taxes or how that works in their political system.



And this is me and Hi Bao at the airport in Beijing. Hi Bao is the mascot of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. I love my Hello Kitty shirt, it was a birthday present from my friend Michelle :)