*Disclaimer: the contents, views & information presented in this website are my own and do not represent the Peace Corps, Peace Corps/Ukraine, the US Government, or the Government of Ukraine.
Well, believe it or not, I’ve been in Ukraine for just under 10 weeks. We have one more week of pre-service training (PST) before shipping out to Kyiv for Swearing-In and then taking off for our permanent sites.
So what do we do in our last week (week 11) of PST? Well, the big event is our Language Proficiency Interview (LPI), that determines what our language level is after all the lessons we’ve had. We’re supposed to be at least “intermediate-mid,” but it’s also impossible to fail the interview. If we’re below par, the Peace Corps just tells us to get a language tutor when we get to site. Hopefully that won’t be necessary for me, but it’s nice to know that they can’t kick us out for a bad LPI. During week 11 we also have various written tests (open book!) on Peace Corps policies/procedures and health/safety practices. Other than that I think I’ll be spending a lot of time packing (again – ugh) and thinking about how to sufficiently thank my host parents for being wonderful hosts (any ideas? Let me know!).
We go to Kyiv on 6 December for the Swearing-In Conference, three days of meetings and sessions before we head off into the abyss. I’m most excited to get my site assignment on the afternoon of the 6th. And once I get to this as-yet-unknown site, I will finally get a mailing address at which I can receive more than just letters!
It will be sad to leave my cluster-mates and host family, but I’m ready for PST to end so I can start the next two years of my life as a full-fledged Peace Corps Volunteer.
I taught my first TEFL class this week! 8th Form (grade), by myself for 45 minutes on the climate of Great Britain. Introduced some new words like “rainfall,” “sunshine,” “climate,” “wind,” “humid,” “mild,” “average.” I also tried to teach the pupils about comparatives and superlatives. Parts of the lesson worked – they loved the “word swatter” game – and parts were addressed to complete silence. Overall, it wasn’t too shabby for a first lesson but there is much room for improvement.
In Ukrainian language we’ve moved from the food unit to time and weather. Learning ordinal numerals; how to ask for/tell time; days of the week and months of the year; names for weather phenomena. Friday was a beautiful sunny (сонце) and warm (тепло) day! Also interesting is that in Ukrainian the months are named after things that happen in those months:
January (січень) loosely means “heavy snow”
February (лютий) means “angry month”
March (березень) is the bird month
April (квітень) is the month when flowers come out
May (травень) is when grass is green
June (червень) is when cherries blossom
in July (липень) the linden trees bloom
August (серпень) is harvest month
heather comes out in September (вересень)
October (жовтень) is the “yellow month”
November (листопад) is “falling leaves month”
December (гпудень) is “frozen ground month”
Language class is a fun mix of review from the previous day and new material practiced through games, dialogues, and repetition. As usual, more “daily life in Ukraine” pictures below.
My Cluster! L to R: Tammela, Kate, Andy, Janira, Andrew
Kate and I unconsciously dressed in opposite color schemes for our first day of teaching!
Beautiful fall day in Chernihiv.
My host family's garden and chickens!
Grapes in the late afternoon. Host dog, Dina, bottom left.
End of week one – have I only been in Ukraine for 5 days? It feels like yesterday and ages ago at the same time. As I write, my host parents are downstairs watching some Ukrainian TV. I recently heard Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable” in Ukrainian/Russian float up the stairs. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto! It’s been a wild week, from Staging in D.C. to my – and 13 others’ – delayed arrival in Ukraine on Tuesday. But here I am, situated in a small village (~1,350 people!) – no bank or police or cafes – outside of Chernihiv, the Chernihiv Oblast center, north of Kyiv.
I have a host mother, Anya, and a host father, Sergey, and a host long-haired Dachshund-type dog, Dina, who gets to eat left-over people-food for dinners (Dundee would never be allowed to do that! But like Dundee, my host parents intimate that Dina would sit at the table if he could). I have my own room with space for my yoga mat on the floor (yay!). I don’t know much about my host parents yet because I can barely speak or understand any Ukrainian. I do know that Sergey is an auto-mechanic right now. After dinner on Friday, I followed my host mom across the driveway to what I thought was a second kitchen. Lo and behold, it was! Natalya, my cluster’s language and cross-cultural facilitator, told us that households often have a second kitchen for the summer, where most of the food is stored and prepared. After I saw the other kitchen, Anya showed me around their property. When I say property I really mean dacha (дача), for we are in the country and this is a country house – we have a large and fertile garden; pigs; cats; adorable chickens; and two large rabbits! My host parents are very welcoming and feed me lots of soup (potatoes, carrots, onions, broth, meat/beans/grain, dill) and other tasty things – блінічки (blini), салат (salad), tasty brown bread, and potatoes prepared many different ways – of which I must try not to eat too much.
Language training is fast and intense, but we’re all equally lost so it’s okay. I’ve been placed to learn Ukrainian, and all five of us in my cluster are just out of university. Lots of language-studying – it’s like being back in German 101, but this time it’s Ukrainian-for-survival! There is so much I want to say and so little I can say.
Some interesting Ukraininan-language tidbits:
-There are no articles in Ukrainian – whereas the articles change with case in German, in Ukrainian the word endings change with case.
-There is no “to be” in the present tense – e.g., “I – teacher” – it’s pretty awesome.
-There are SEVEN cases in Ukrainian – and four were tough to keep straight in German!
Here are some of the terms we use in Peace Corps that I will refer to often in my emails and blog posts:
-For PST, I am part of a cluster, which is 5 Trainees (PCTs) grouped according to living preferences, teaching assignment, and language ability. We do all our language training and a good deal of our technical (secondary TEFL) and cross-cultural training with our cluster every day but Sunday. Our cluster is led by an LCF (Language & X-Cultural Facilitator).
-Every Saturday we join with another cluster to form a link – our link cluster is in Chernihiv, also learning Ukrainian, but teaching higher education TEFL. We do a bit of technical (TEFL) and cross-cultural training with our link cluster. Link sessions are led largely by our TCF (Technical & X-Cultural Facilitator).
This first week in Ukraine has been overwhelming, but good. Probably won’t have much internet during PST since there’s none in my town, but below are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.
...to pack up many things! Things for the next 27 months -- not ships or sealing-wax or kings, and I will get plenty of cabbage at my destination, but definitely shoes. (Full text of Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and The Carpenter.") Here's what my "packing room" looked like at the end of last week:
And when I started trying to put things in suitcases: DISASTER. I thought weight would be the issue, but it's actually space -- I want to bring too many things! So I acquired two vacuum-pack bags from my dad and took out some clothes for my parents to send once I get to my site at the end of December.
I leave on Friday. Unbelievable. I just ran my first half marathon, and now that that's done, the next thing on the list is the Peace Corps! The scariest thing about leaving on Friday is how much I don't know about what happens in the next three months: what language will I be learning? Who will be in my cluster? Where will I be located during training? Will I have internet access? What will my host family be like? Will I be able to exercise? Where will I end up being placed in December? And so many more.
I can think of two ways to reconcile these unknowns to my schedule- and routine-oriented brain. First, the following quotation, which I can hear Meryl Streep-as-Karen Blixen reciting in her Danish accent in the 1985 film, Out of Africa, adapted from Isak Dinesin's memoir of the same title: "Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road." A simple explanation, yes, but it resonates with me as I start my journey with the Peace Corps.
Second, I had coffee this morning with a former English teacher who remains a mentor, friend, and kindred spirit in the discussion of books, literature, and life. I recommended he read Dave Eggers' novel, What is the What, and was describing the basic premise of the book. Astutely, Mr. D asked, "so, what is the what?" I explained that, in the book, the boy's father tells a story where God offers men a choice between cattle -- i.e., security and prosperity -- and "the What"-- variously interpretable as the unknown, the mysterious, or just plain chance."Oh," said Mr. D, "so you're about to enter the What." "Yeah, I kind of am, I guess," I replied.
So, off I go to Ukraine and the What, not seeing too far down the road but prepared for anything. Stay in touch!
Two months from tomorrowI depart for my staging -- a couple days in the US to get acquainted with my group and take care of last-minute stuff -- and then for Ukraine on September 19th with my fellow Ukraine Groupe 39-ers! Wowzers. I started studying Ukrainian today and it's tough! I think once I learn the Cyrillic alphabet (abetka) it will get easier.
So I thought you might be curious as to what I will be doing in Ukraine for 27 months -- this post will reveal what I know so far:
My job title is Secondary Education TEFL Teacher. The Peace Corps TEFL program was launched in September 1993, with the goal of expanding and improving the quality of English instruction in schools and at teacher-training institutions. So this means I'll be teaching English -- conversational, communicative methodology, U.S. history/culture, American/British literature -- to students ages 8-17. I will teach a minimum of 18 hours/week, made up of 6-9 classes with 12-28 students each. In addition to my teaching duties, I may be involved in developing English teaching materials and curriculum for my school, leading workshops on approaches to language teaching, and assisting with English development among my (Ukrainian) colleagues.
But those are just in-school activities... Secondary to my school-teaching will be work on community projects. These may include workshops on any number of things: healthy lifestyles, HIV/AIDS awareness, drug/alcohol prevention, multicultural awareness, ecology, journalism. I may lead English conversation clubs or educational activities at orphanages. The options seem endless! The most important thing that my assignment materials remind me of is that I will be part of a long-term development project. There won't be quick fixes. But success often comes from a series of small changes.
So are they just going to throw me into a classroom right off the bat, you may ask? Nope -- that's where Pre-Service Training (PST) comes in. We -- Ukraine Group 39, I think we're all incoming TEFL teachers -- will spend the first three months in and around Kyiv with host families, taking part in intense training, of which there are five components: technical training, language training, cross-cultural training, health training, and safety/security training. We will work in our communities to apply/develop our skills and experience, learn about Ukraine (economy, politics, education), study Ukrainian or Russian, and learn preventative health maintenance and safety measures. Halfway through PST we will get our site assignments -- the place/project we will be with for the next 24 months! It could be anywhere in the country. Exciting times are ahead...
As a parting thought I leave you this video (below) showcasing the sights of Kyiv, with a pretty rockin' soundtrack. Enjoy!
(Information courtesy of my Peace Corps/Ukraine Welcome Book and Peace Corps Assignment pamphlet. Video courtesy of YouTube.)
Now that I've officially accepted my invitation to serve in Ukraine, I have access tolanguage lessons through my online Peace Corps hub.
I haven't learned any yet, but I thought introducing the language to you would help me get started. Here goes:
-Ukrainian belongs to the Slavic group of the Indo-European language family. -Ukrainian is specifically East Slavic, as are Russian, Rusyn & Belarusian -- other groups are West Slavic (Czech, Slovak, Polish) and South Slavic (Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian). -Ukrainian uses the Cyrillic alphabet (pictured), which is comprised of 33 letters. -Stress can fall on any syllable of a word in Ukrainian (dang! I'll have to throw all that next-to-last syllable thing from German out the window).
...time to start learning the alphabet -- haven't done that since I was a kid!
(Photo courtesy of http://www.brooksgreen.net/Siberia/Mary/Alphabet%20Lesson%20Plan_files/image001.gif; language information courtesy of "Survival Ukrainian, Peace Corps/Ukraine," June 2006)
This will be a general overview of some country statistics. More on specifics of Ukrainian culture later!
75% of Ukraine's population is -- surprise! -- Ukrainian. However, more than 110 ethnic groups are represented in the country.
Ukrainian was declared the official language at independence in 1991. However, Russian is the primary language spoken in large cities, while Ukrainian is spoken in most of western Ukraine and in smaller towns/villages. (I think I will be learning Ukrainian, but it might depend on where in the country I will be placed for my two years of service.)
Folk arts are prevalent in Ukraine, including embroidery, weaving, pottery, pysanky (painted eggs), and woodcarving. There are folk traditions such as songs, dances and games. (More on this later!)
Most Ukrainians have little knowledge or understanding of non-Christian faith. In most communities there are Polish and Greek Catholic churches and Ukrainian Orthodoxchurches.
Ukraine has many natural resources, including about 70,000 species of flora and fauna. Almost 8,000 deposits of 94 commercially valuable minerals are extracted in Ukraine.
A small part of the country is mountainous (the Carpathian Mountains & Crimean Mountains).
Forests and steppe are scattered throughout the country. The Dnipro, Europe's third-largest river, runs through the north part of the country.
Most of Ukraine's southern border is Black and Azov sea coast.
