Thursday 17 April through 20 April, I was in Kyiv at the beloved PiG for our mid-training conference. Dan, Larry and I made our way, all by ourselves, to Kyiv. So you are duly impressed, this involved taking the now-familiar marshrutka to the Losina metro stop, a transfer through byzantine hallways at the Chreschiatik station to another metro line, exiting the metro to then walking underground on one of the many pathways that allow one to cross streets w/o walking in traffic. We then completed our journey with a final marshrutka, where I got to say the phrase I’ve been practicing for some time, “Hastonivite, pozjalista - stop here, please.”

An aside: I heavily employ mnemonic devices to learn language. For example, I remember “hastonovite” because it reminds me of “hasta la vista, baby.” I remember “newdeli - week” because it reminds me of “new dehli.” I remember “pamogat - to help” b/c it reminds me of pomegranate. Sometimes I wonder if these are too complicated, but they amuse me and seem to help.

Anyway, it was surprisingly good to see everyone, or at least the 40 or so of us who are in the “Business” group. There was much gossip and comparing of home stay experiences. Rumors of possession of particularly unsavory porno and some other such nonsense predominated the first couple of days, but some gossip that was confirmed to be true was equally juicy. I hereby retract any previous statements that our group 24 is boring and not living up to PC standards of hedonism.

For the three days we were there, we had seminars and interviews each day from 9am to 5pm. On Friday night, we had a grand dinner where we met our Coordinators, who are our counterparts from the organizations that we’ll work with. Most had traveled from far away, but mine, Bogdana, of course just came from Kyiv.

Bogdana is probably around my age and speaks English better than I do. She is the coordinator for trainings for CEUME and I hope to work with her, traveling around the country organizing and running such events. We talked a lot about traveling and also about how she had lived in DC for a year. She’s urbane and very used to working with Americans, so again I see that my experience will be so different than I expected.