I am looking out my window right now and its snowing... again... Usually that means that the sun will be out tomorrow and it will be nice... maybe not...
This post is a bit long but I think pretty interesting... but that is a biased opinion. Enjoy.
So, I ended the last post on a sad note, but now I will share my experience that I had in Ukraine. That is something to think about. A lot of people say “the Ukraine”. Why does it need that article before the country’s name? It does sound a bit dodgy when you just say “Ukraine” though. Its kind of like those people that take about about Ohio State. Why would you call it “The Ohio State”? I mean, true, there is only one, but that is dumb...
Anyway, I went to the Ukraine last week. And this blog is devoted to the trip and the people who I met there. So, I left Mike’s town on Tuesday around 3 and got to Yerevan around 5. Not too bad of a drive but somehow I ended up spilling super glue all over my bag and pants. Weird huh? No biggie. Anyway, I got to Yerevan and then I went to the office to take care of some business and leave my big bag there in the storage room we have there. I also ate dinner with a Peace Corps Volunteer, Joe, that I had only seen a couple times. Really nice guy. He took me to a Syrian restaurant. Pretty good. Then I made my way out of there to the hostel which American Council decided to put me up in. I had never been to that part of town. It took me about two hours and a handful of calls to the lady that organized all this to find this place. I found the place finally. It was behind these buildings and there was a really small sign describing what this place was. I rang the doorbell and Artur came and got the door. Really friendly guy. We went upstairs and he gave me the tour of this place. It lasted a mere 20 seconds. He said, this is the bedroom, this is the bathroom, this is the kitchen, and this is the showerroom...Then we just stood there because I was expecting him to take me somewhere else and he was expecting me to get ready for bed or something. The place was nice enough but not anything like the hostel I usually stay in. I got really irritated because I had already spent half the day trying to find the place and now there were no towels that I could rent to take a shower. There was no internet, and the door to the bathroom didn’t lock. The size of the whole place was the size of half the downstairs of an average home in the US. Interesting. It was about 10pm and I was ready to go to sleep. I met a French guy who was staying there who worked for the French Embassy in Russia and was in Armenia just to visit. Nice enough guy... A bit later is when Ani told me her father had passed away. I didn’t know how to feel about that. I mean here I was in a non-familiar hostel, which already irriated me, and I was trying to get some sleep before my flight. I finally did fall asleep and the next morning I was woken up by my alarm clock... at 4am. The guy next to me... Artur... Good morning.
I washed up pretty quickly and then Gayane called me saying the taxi was outside waiting for me to take me to the airport. Gayane and Monet were the two TAs who will be working with me this summer. So I went downstairs and Artur and I made small talk and off we went. We picked up Monet and then headed to the airport. Our flight was at 7. We checked in and talked a little bit. I shaved at the airport... not a good idea because there was only cold water. My face looked like I had the chicken pots and scratched all the itchy spots for 3 minutes. The girls got a kick out of that. We got on the plane. I passed out the second I got on, pretty much for the whole three hours there. I did stay awake long enough to have my “meal” which was a croissant. That’s pretty much it. We got to Moscow. What a crappy airport. Nothing to do. The girls and I talked for a while and after the 3 hour layover, we boarded to go to Kiev. An hour and a half later, and an hour and twenty minutes later of more sleep, we arrived. The weather was really nice. At this point in the trip, I went from being regular-other-person-Danny, to paranoid-father-like-Danny. I made sure the girls were always with me. (it gets worse later). So, we met our driver and Allen, an older gentleman who just flew over from the States to start working for American Councils in Ukraine. We drove to the office. I was starving.
At this point, I met some people, but you know how it is, you don’t want to be overly friendly, and all I was thinking about was McDonald’s. It’s amazing how much you appreciate this gourmet restaurant when you go overseas. So, no one was really helping me find this place so off I went... on my own. I heard someone say that I had thirty minutes so I knew that if I didn’t find the place in 12 and a half minutes, I needed to come back. So I went down the street, withdrew some money and then found the McDonald’s. I went to the front of the line. I am really glad I learned how to read Russian, because the menu said “Big Mac” in Russian, but I wouldn’t have known that if I didn’t know the language. So I got one of those, very awkwardly and then walked back. Apparently, everyone was looking for me because I just disappeared. I became an instant celebrity. I was loading my bags and someone asked me who I was, and I said that I was Daniel and everyone said “so you’re Daniel” like I had known then for years. If you were there you would better understand the situation and the circumstances.
So we got on the vans and off we went to the hotel outside of Kiev. Not too far out, maybe 30 minutes away. We got to see a good amount of the city (yeah, one road). We got to the hotel and had a little welcome session and what to expect. Afterwards, it was about 8 and so a group of people went to the store to buy some goods. We socialized for a while which was really fun. The people that were there were Peace Corps Volunteers from all over; Maldova, Macedonia, Montenegro, Ukraine, Serbia, Georgia, and Armenia. I think that’s all of them. So it was really interested talking to them. Apparently I was the only health volunteer there so they were really fascinated with what I was doing. Mostly everyone else was a Business or a TEFL volunteer. The TAs were awesome too. Taras, who is a FLEX alumni from Ukraine, was awesome. So was Avto from Georgia.
You wonder what these kids will do with their lives. I always ask these FLEX alumni what they want to do. I ask them if they want to study or get a job in western Europe or in the States. Taras had a very interesting thing to say. Actually he answered with a story:
There were twelve different governors of China who ruled the twelve different provinces a long time ago. Every month they would come together and meet and each one had to bring a bottle of wine. They would bring this wine and pour it into one big barrel and then sit and drink the barrel and talk until it was dry. As time passed, some of the rulers realized that if they brought a bottle of water instead of wine and mix it in with everyone else’s wine, no one would be able to tell the difference. One day, the rulers had a meeting. They all added their bottle of wine. They all sat down and started drinking. What they were drinking was straight water, but no one could say anything because everyone had the same idea to bring water instead of wine.
The point Taras was trying to make was that, if he got educated in another country, what kind of person would he be if he went to somewhere else and wasn’t helping his own country. If everyone had the opportunity to go elsewhere and took that opportunity then what would be left behind? Taras is in Law school right now and wants to stay in the Ukraine doing what he can to help his country. He grew up in a small, poor village but wants to change things for his country... What can you say to that?
That is a major problem I think that Armenia is facing now. Everyone wants to leave as you all saw from my family when they went to Germany. Lately I have been talking to a lot of people talking about the Soviet times and how great it was. I understand that Armenia right now is going through a slump between generations. A communist one and a socialist one but if everyone leaves, what will Armenia become?
Anyway, back to Ukraine and my time there. We had a lot of sessions on how to teach the lessons of integrating into American culture. It was interesting. We got about half a day to plan lessons and the following day we got to work with our counterparts, mine being Monet and Gayane, to practice how we would present and afterwards, we would get feedback on what we needed to do to better our sessions. It was a lot of fun. The days were long going from 8 or 9 in the morning till 7 or 8 at night. I would usually stay up until 1 or 2am so that I could talk to some of the other volunteers and FLEX alum. I was exhausted.
It was eventually time to say goodbye and on Sunday we went into the city. Since there was no flight back to Yerevan on Sunday, I got to stay in Kiev for a day with some other people. I walked around with Kay, a volunteer from Moldova and we went to see some churches. It was interesting because none of us spoke any Russian. I now know how to read Russian but can’t really speak it at all. We got lost trying to get back to the hotel. We got off on the wrong bus stop and had to take the metro. We had to figure that out. We finally found our way back after a lot of pantomiming.
Then, I went with Kay, Lauren and Ashley (the last two serving in Georgia) to a sushi place. Holy crap how awesome was that? It was so amazingly good. Seriously, its definitely the variations of food that I miss from the states. That and Chick-fil-a and mario’s pizza. (Mom and Dad, make a mental note that on the way back home, we will need to stop at a Chick-fil-a and try to have a mario’s pizza waiting at home. Doesn’t matter if its cold). So we walked back and met some other volunteers at a bar and talked there for a while.
Monday was the day we all had to leave. In the morning, we walked around and went to ‘old Ukraine” and did some shopping. That was fun. I went with the Georgian group. My two ladies left the night before to Odessa so I said my goodbyes the night before. We walked around the city and saw the sites. Kiev is such a beautiful city. Really nice buildings. What I didn’t like were all the drunk people drinking in the streets starting around 4pm. A bit depressing and really took away from the ambiance of the city.
Anyway, around 1, I walked back to the hotel, packed my stuff and got a big mac meal from the McDonald’s next to the hotel. A driver came and picked me up and during the whole 50 minute drive to the airport, I passed out. I bet that was better for the driver too because he didn’t know any English, so we didn’t have to try and make awkward conversation.
I checked into the airport and boarded and basically slept the whole way to Moscow. There I went through the transfer gate thing and while I was waiting in line I heard some Armenian and asked the man if he was speaking Armenian. It was great. I apparently made friends with the number 1 tennis player in Armenia and her coach. So, I got to practice my Armenian in the Moscow airport for 2 hours. That was interesting. Much like Ani, I realized that there is so much sacrifice that needs to be made. This tennis player, whose name is also Ani, had to chose between University life and tennis. She still has a year to decide. However, her father had to give up everything to coach her. Ani’s father is her coach. Ani is ranked in the top twenty in Europe but she has no sponsors so their family has to pay for everything. They went to a 3 week tournament that cost about 4000 dollars but the family has to pay so that she gets the exposure that she needs. I asked her father why they don’t try and get sponsorships from Vivacell or other major Armeian corporations, and he said, “these companies give money for the betterment of Armenia. They pay for school supplies and food supplements to villages and small towns. How can I ask those same companies to support us with tennis when there are people who don’t have jobs?” Ani’s father was a very kind man. He told me how there is a lot of money in Armenia but black money. Money that he won’t get involved with and won’t touch. He was obviously a man of principle.
So, in the customary Armenian way, Ani’s father, Ruben, asked me “where are you staying in Yerevan? Surely you aren’t going all the way back to your village.” I said no, and Im pretty sure he offered for me to stay at his house. Maybe not. I told him that I had a friend who is letting me stay with her. He then asked “how are you getting into the city?” I answered that I was taking a taxi and he said “no, you are riding with us”. Ha. So, when we got to Yerevan, I waited for them to get their bags and they gave me a ride into Yerevan. How great. I am staying in touch with tennis Ani via facebook and she said she would let me know when there was a tournament in Armenia, probably this summer. Interesting what kind of people you will meet.
As I said before, I don’t know Russian. The only thing I really know are the usual things like hello, how are you, good, bad, yes, no, thank you... etc. So in order to have something to say, no matter what someone asked me, or told me, I would always answer in what I knew and the word that would most likely fit the conversation. For example:
Stewardess: Try and put your bag in that overhead bin
Me: Spaseeba (thank you)
Stewardess: No, its not going to fit
Me: Spaseeba
Stewardess: blank stare
Me: blank stare right back at her... then Spaseeba
The trip to Ukraine was awesome. A trip is always successful when you can at least make one new friend. I made several and I hope that at the end of the summer I can go on a trip with one of the new people that I made on this trip. We will see.
I got back to the village. It was so warm in Yerevan and nice. I got back and boom... it was snowing. It was ok because the next day the sun was out. Its been nice being back in the village. School has been really good.
Due to my trip and my lack of Russian, I have started learning Russian. I started last night at my neighbors house. Then my Grandma asked me what I learned so we spent about an hour and half going over what I had learned. She is from Belarus so she knows Russian really well. It was interesting talking to her. Im excited to see how much I can learn in the next year.
I wanted to thank Mrs. Lockwood for sending me an awesome care package. It was filled with American foods such as Nutter butter cookies and pringles. Oh my. I will have to share this stuff with Terri because if she knew that I had this stuff and didn’t tell her, my life would be over...
Also, wanted to thank Dr. Feduciary for sending me a package as well. Thanks for the little football and the frisbee. Now I can eat the dried fruit, play frisbee, and work for Peace Corps... did I mention that I only wear tye-dye now?
Until next time...
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