Here are the latest ramblings from this country we call Ukraine, borderland.

Since I last wrote, our cluster met with the Unemployment Center. We had a group of the 7 PCT’s, our translator, Natasha, her husband, Peter, an Australian, two of our Peace Corps Business Development staff, Victor and Vickie, and finally, Ira, my host sister. Quite a mess of people. We gathered a great deal of info about the center, such as how the help unemployed people, how they’re processed and registered as official unemployed, the amount of unemployment money they receive and finally that these registered unemployed can submit a business plan for a small enterprise and receive the full amount they would get for a year as unemployed as a lump sum. This money they don’t have to pay back, but the risk is that they aren’t eligible for more money if the business isn’t successful.

The Unemployment Center had 3 people representing their side. It was very interesting working with translators. Protocol is that one should speak to the people one is trying to communicate with, not the translator, which is difficult to do and sometimes I didn’t do it. We decided that we will work on two projects with them: 1. Provide and translate to the Ukrainian context an American business plan and 2. Provide training for center staff about how to access if a business idea is viable, with an emphasis on how to conduct market research on a small level.

Our Peace Corps Biz Development people indicated that the three women we’re working with at the center are a lot more forthcoming in asking for help than many unemployment centers that they’ve worked with before. They seem very professional and our group is excited to work with them. The center is in a very spiffy new building, apparently built with German money. It will be very interesting to visit other PCV’s once we’re all at site, b/c my understanding is that Kyiv gets the lion’s share of growth and revenue, while the rest of the country is much farther behind developmentally.

We’ll meet again with the Unemployment Center this Wed. 9 April to propose the above and see if there’s anything else they want from us during our remaining approx. 6 weeks.

Next Thursday, the Business Development group, all of our clusters, will go to Kyiv for our mid-training conference and then to visit our sites. I will not travel far to my site, but most people will be going at least overnight on trains. I must admit to being a tad jealous, but know that I won’t be when they are dealing with moving all of their things on said trains.

What else? I finally gave in and started taking antibiotics to properly kill a bug that’s had me in its grasp since arriving in Brovary. Nearly immediately after beginning a cycle, I’m no longer a snot factory (sorry, I’m sure this is TMI, aka too much info) and my cough has stopped coming from deep inside lungs. Hurrah!

It snowed today! Spring here is nearly as psycho as in CO. The locals swear this isn’t par for the course, but we’ll see next year.

Two of the trainees in my cluster were medevac’d to Kyiv this past week. They’re fine now, but lots of minor illness and accidents abound. One trainee in another cluster was mugged, but it was described to me by our Training Director as being a case of being alone in the wrong spot in his town. I’m safe b/c I don’t tend to leave the apartment after I come home at 4 or 5pm. I suppose after the weather changes (when? If?) I might venture out accompanied by friends, but I’ve little incentive with the weather as it is.

This coming Friday, Ira is having a party here for the PCT’s and some of her friends, most of whom speak English at least a tad. It’s been entertaining hanging out with youngens like Ira (20 yo) and some of the vocabulary I’m getting from them is very teenager, my Russian teacher tells me. Julia, said Russian teacher, says it makes her feel old the vocabulary I’m bringing in, as she’s all of 27.

Julia is such a wonderful teacher and especially so because she too is away from her family for three months while teaching us. She not only is our Russian teacher, but also our community liaison and cheerleader, patient professor and expert translator of cultural norms. We have a 20 minute tea break in between our 4 hours of class, which is held in her tiny flat, and she has instituted a Russian only rule. It at first was sort of a drag, as it made it less of a break, but now it’s fun and we try to creatively use the small vocab we have to converse. It’s actually amazing how much one can say when one tries to think only in known words and keep things simple, instead of thinking of complex structures and vocab.

Learning has been a bit of up and down for me. I’m so enjoying the classes and being in a structured learning environment, and especially enjoying the satisfaction that comes from studying something and then hearing it on the street or using it at home. However, I’ve found myself quick to be despondent when I can’t think of a word or grammar and quick to think that I’ll never learn the language.

When I’m more rational, I feel pretty good about how much I’ve learned in a month and confident that I’ll be able to learn a great deal of Russian, a bit of Ukrainian and perhaps speak Dvoryak, the combination of these two languages that most Ukrainians speak. People have been encouraging about my growing ability, particularly those who first met me in the early grunting/pantomiming stage.

One thing that’s funny to me is how sometimes I’ll mix Spanish in with the Russian. Some things are difficult, like “ya” is “I’ in Russian, and “already” in Spanish, but used frequently in conversation. Or “nada” (nothing - Spanish) means “need” in Russian. Little things really, but sometimes hard.

Saturday was our one month anniversary in country. It was funny to me that that was a particularly hard day. There is a set model of stages of culture shock, but like any model, parts may apply to a person, while others might not and likely one’s own schedule may be different than the model. I had a “Stage 2” day - blaming and finding fault in everything, impatience and grumbling. Missing home terribly. Some days will be like this and I hope that most won’t. I mainly am happy about how few days I have like that.