ABC Weekend Camp!

A few weeks ago, my sitemate Sam organized ABC Weekend Camp in our town. ABC Camp is a 2-week long summer camp that is that is traditionally held in downtown Kharkov, focused on leadership and PDM (project design and management). The goal of the weekend camp was to give some of our students the opportunity to experience a little taste of what an American style summer camp is like and practice their English.

Everyone at the Closing Cermony on Sunday. 

You can check out the video that Sam created from our ABC Weekend camp here:

We had about 25 students attend the weekend camp from my school, Sam's school and neighboring towns. Sam invited 5 PCVs and 5 Ukrainian university students to serve as counselors and team leaders. Each team had a PCV and a Ukrainian, which worked out well for the students to be able to ask for translations if neccesssary.

Green team yelling their team name. 

Purple team showing off their team chant.

We've got spirit, yes we do... We've got spirit, how about YOU?

We've got spirit to the sky, you've got spirit ankle high!

Sam selected some topics for the leadership lessons from a book called Seven Habits of Highly Effective Leaders. These lessons were taught in English jointly by the PCVs and Ukrainian counselors, and I think that the students really enjoyed how active and creative the lessons were.

Students sharing their picture representation of "responsiblity".

Lee and Zhenya teaching about personal values and priorities.

Shannon and I playing the guessing game (with Ukrainain leaders on our foreheads) during  "Qualities of a good leader".

In addition to teaching lessons on leadership, we had a number of team challenges. One of the team challenges was a game called Tank, where each team selected a representative to be their "tank". Each tank was blindfolded and put into the playing arena, where the rest of the team had to give the tank instructions on where to find the balls and how to dodge balls thrown by other tanks. This game was hilarious and everyone loved it so much, including the counselors who demanded to play an all-counselor round of their own.

Another team challenge was the Egg Drop, where teams were given only 9 wooden skewers, 4 sheets of newspaper, and some scotch tape. They were asked to design something that would protect an egg from falling when dropped. The team whose egg dropped from the tallest height without being broken was the winner. Some of the teams came up with super interesting contraptions, but in the end all the eggs were broken.

In between lessons, we also played some team building games and had "electives" like American football, art class, music class and Mafia (the card game). The students made mini paper Christmas trees in art class, played guitar and bong drums in music class and ran around the gym in American football.

Photos taken during People-to-people are always hilarious.

The Christmas tree, designed by Shannon and Danny.

Kyle catching the football. 

Another team challenge was to come up with a short 5-minute skit on leadership... the kids came up with a bunch of fun stuff ranging from a quiz game show featuring celebrities like singers Nastya and Potap vs.Tymoshenko/Yanokovych, a Mafia version of Winnie the Pooh, and singing "We all live in a green leader ship, a green leader ship, a green leader ship".

The quiz game show. 

...which somehow involved a wheelbarrow race around the stage.

A music band where each member had a different skill.

Asking to join Don Pooh's Mafia family. 

Crossing the river.

All in all, I think all of the students had a great time at camp! More information about ABC Camp can be found on the official blog at http://abccampukraine.blogspot.com/. My students asked me to organize a similar weekend camp at our Lyceum in the spring, so I'm planning on running a Camp HEAL weekend camp, focused on HIV/AIDS awareness and education training. I hope that this will inspire some of the students to come to Peace Corps summer camps with me next summer :)

Sightseeing around Ukraine with Himali!

Last week, my old classmate and best friend Himali came to visit me from the States... Himali and I have known each other since the 7th grade, and she and I have just stayed in touch even though I moved away after 11th grade (and we went to different universities in different parts of the country). But anyways, she is traveling around Europe for a while because her brother is studying in Barcelona. She went to Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and then came to see me in Ukraine! She is going to Florence, Italy and then spending new years in Paris!

We found another church in downtown Kharkiv, near Pushinskaya St. 

The beautiful Christmas tree in Kharkiv's freedom square. 

Here are some photos from her trip to visit me, she was only here for 5 days so we hung out at my site, in Kharkiv, and in Kyiv. It was a short but action packed trip - I picked her up at the airport in Kyiv on Wednesday, then we took an overnight train back to my site and went to school on Thursday. We went sightseeing in Kharkiv on Friday and then took a train back to Kyiv on Friday night and walked around downtown Kyiv on Saturday. Himali got a little taste of what my life is like as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine!

Himali at the T. Shevchenko statue in my town's main square.

Our 2nd Shevchenko statue in front of the train station. 

The traditional dress and celebratory bread of Ukraine.

The trident, one of the most famous symbols of Ukraine. 

Posing on our train tracks. 

Kharkiv is a city that I've come to love, I can roam around comfortably without getting lost now that I've been here for about a year... Its funny to think that almost exactly a year ago, I got horribly lost on the way to Kharkiv my first time (for the Christmas party) when I got on the wrong bus and went to another town in the opposite direction.

The Christmas tree inside the Kharkov train station has little tiny soccer balls as ornaments. 

We walked around the city with my friend Alina,  this is the famous mirror fountain in downtown Kharkiv. 

Himali at the 50th parallel in Kharkiv. 

An exhibition dedicated to famous actors, artists, and musicans in Kharkiv's Shevchenko park. 

The main statue of Taras Shevchenko in Kharkiv, a famous Ukrainian writer. 

Alina and I kicking the Metalist soccer ball!

A Central Perk cafe in Kharkiv's Constitution Square?

We walked around most of the major tourist attractions in Kyiv, including the 3 big churches and the huge underground shopping center Globos. We walked down St. Andrew's descent (the hill of souvenir stands near the Lavra - St. Andrew's cathedral) and Himali bought a bunch of traditional Ukrainian souvenirs such as the famous matroshka dolls, a decorated ceramic plate, some magnets, and some jewelry!

Kyiv's Independence Square. 

Personally, I think Kharkiv's Christmas tree is prettier :P

The official EuroCup 2012 soccer ball in Globos. 

I'm almost ashamed to say that I wish there was snow right now, its still a little bit too warm for snow so all we've got is mud on the streets. The first big snowfall is always really pretty because everything is frosted over, and I'm sad that Himali didn't get to see that. But I still had fun hanging out with her and showing her around Ukraine :)

Raising Awareness on World AIDS Day!

I worked with my school psychologist to organize a small project at our school to help raise awareness for HIV/AIDS on World AIDS day, which is the first of December. As a member of the Peace Corps Ukraine HIV/AIDS working group, I am very passionate about educating Ukrainian youth about HIV/AIDS and especially trying to reduce stigma and discrimination by teaching accurate information about prevention and transmission. In Russian, World AIDS day is called День Борьбы со СПИДом, which translates to Day of Solidarity. Here is the poster that I drew and the true/false statistics that I prepared for school.

Translation - "Day of Solidarity: Overcoming HIV/AIDS and leading the world!"

True facts are in red and the false facts are in blue. 

Together with the help of some of the 10th form girls, we presented some basic information about HIV/AIDS statistics and passed out the little booklets and flyers in Ukrainian and Russian to the students. The students from the 10th form attended a training several years ago about HIV/AIDS when the previous Peace Corps volunteer was at my school.

with the girls from 10th form. 

Some 9th form girls with the booklets. 

We also held a poster contest and asked each class to draw a poster, we will use some of the winning designs in our AIDS memorial mural (to be painted in the spring as part of my PEPFAR project). There was a surprising number of poster entries from the 5th-7th form classes, I am glad that they already have some knowledge about HIV/AIDS!

The boys from the 5b class and their posters. 

with the girls from the 5a class. 

with the girls from the 5b class. 

Okay, so 5th graders love taking photos.

with 11th form girls.

11th formers with our school psychologist. 

December is shaping up to be a really busy month for me, project wise... my sitemate and I have a weekend leadership camp planned for next weekend and then my best friend from middle school is coming to visit me the week after that! I'm currently in the process of writing a SPA grant for a Journalism club at my school and I'm also writing the partnership grant for Camp HEAL next summer, a camp about HIV/AIDS education, human trafficking, healthy lifestyles and leadership. I'll post the link to the grants once they are finished :)