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The Lightyellow Journal
The regular disclaimer: The views expressed on this website are my own and in no way reflect those of the U.S. Peace Corps or any agency of the U.S. Government.
September 2006 - Final Projects
Saturday, September 9, 2006
I'm back
How to begin?
Sometime last spring, maybe a month after I last posted to this journal, I hit my one-year-at-site-plus-a-few-months mark. I have since discovered that this is a pretty significant mark, even if it doesn't have a very significant name. In our Health and Safety Manual, given to us when we arrived, we have a sort of matrix of the "Critical Developmental Stages in the Life of a Peace Corps Volunteer," put together by a group of Volunteers in Africa in the 1980s. It's really amazing how well it corresponds to the experiences of Volunteers in Ukraine 20 years later.
Here are a few of the issues Volunteers mentioned for the one-year-at-site-plus-a-few-months developmental stage: realization of own limitations and considerations of "post PC life", depression about perceived lack of accomplishment, and anticipated separation. Volunteer reactions to these issues included self-recrimination, disappointment, downgrading of achievements, resignation, monument building, withdrawal into work details, panic, and procrastination. Suggestions to help deal with these feelings include applying for GREs and writing grad schools, taking vacations, and making detailed plans for the remaining time at site.
I'd like you to keep all that in mind as I continue. (Also, I might mention that I only just remembered that I had this matrix, and fished it out of a dusty box hidden under a spare bed.)
So, around the end of February, I started thinking obsessively about the future, to the near exclusion of everything else. Suddenly it became very important to decide what I was going to do after Peace Corps. This happened shortly after the One Year mark, because that's when things stopped being New (with a capital N), and so I stopped wondering What Would Happen Next in Chernomorskoe, because I pretty much knew. There was less than a year left, so if I wanted to accomplish anything concrete I'd better get started doing it now...but at the same time it was so much more interesting to think about what was going to happen after the Peace Corps.
This quickly led to obsession and frenetic activity, especially because I suddenly found a new internet company in Chernomorskoe and was able to get cable internet installed in my apartment. I can't get dial-up, but I can get cable. Hallelujah!
I then spent all of my free time online researching graduate degree programs and universities, wondering, What do I want to be when I grow up? (And I had a lot of free time, especially since by then I'd given up on most of my students, the little monsters--and I don't mean that affectionately--and so spent very little time lesson planning.)
The Future was such an interesting subject that nothing else could hold my attention. Even more so because this was around the time that I found out that my favorite student, Ruslan, didn't in fact get the FLEX scholarship to spend his senior year in America. I still don't understand it. He was so crushed that for a couple of weeks he could barely talk to me. And I was crushed, too, because--even though I knew I shouldn't have--I'd pinned all my hopes and feelings of accomplishment on this brilliant boy getting this wonderful opportunity, and once I knew he didn't get it after all, I felt like a complete failure, and began to think that, in the 15 months I'd spent in Chernomorskoe I'd contributed absolutely nothing of value to the community. A complete waste.
And that's about when I stopped writing letters, or updating this journal, and started feeling pretty damn awful and spending a lot of time online looking at different grad school programs.
And then I got over it, more or less, because I had to. It's either that or go home, and I wasn't willing to consider that. So I took some time to wallow, then got on with it.
(Although I kept looking at grad schools.)
That's pretty much been my emotional life over the past six months, feeling miserable and lonely. (It didn't help that, since I'd stopped writing, the trickle of letters I had been getting slowed to an infrequent drip. I mention this only because sometimes people I don't know stumble upon this Journal. So, if you're a friend or family member of another volunteer in Ukraine, please write them letters. Please!) Remember the matrix I mentioned at the beginning of this post?
It's funny; when I was younger I wrote most when I was miserable and depressed. My words came out of anger and sadness, and when I was happy I never wrote a word. Now it seems like somewhere along the way a switch was flipped, because I haven't written a word--anywhere--in the last six months. I wonder when, and why, that change happened?
All that said, I don't mean to imply that I've really spent the last six months doing nothing but feel sorry for myself and look at grad schools. I really have been busy with other stuff too.
For one, I wrote a small grant to create an English Language Resource Center at the library in my town. It's a pretty small grant, but we're going to be able to buy a computer, some books and movies, and a TV and DVD player, all of which will be a great resource for all the English teachers in my region. They are so far away from the nearest resource center, which is in Simferopol, that the only resources they have access to are the ones they kept from college. I bought a few things for the Center over the summer, and this week I'm going with a lady from the library to buy the big stuff. Getting everything together, and holding trainings and meetings with the English teachers from my region, are going to keep me busy up until the end of my service. And it's great to know that here, at last, is something concrete that I can leave behind when I go. (Maybe I’m monument building?)
I also had visitors this summer--my parents came in June, and we had a great time exploring Crimea and Kyiv. This makes me pretty lucky, compared to most other volunteers: I've had three sets of visitors come to see me. A lot of volunteers don't have any visitors at all, which is too bad.
After my parents left, I worked in a couple of summer camps, then in July I went to Budapest for about a week with a couple of other volunteers. Finally, at the end of August, I went to my Close of Service (COS) conference, a week of rain and fun in the Carpathians with all the other remaining volunteers from my group. We came to Ukraine with 109 volunteers, if I'm remembering correctly. We are now 71.
And now, finally, I'm back in Chernomorskoe, with only three months left in Ukraine. I've become busy overnight, with only more work to come. (This is a good thing, because I'm always much more productive when I have a lot to do and can't afford to procrastinate. That's probably why I'm finally getting this post written.) And I have lots of paperwork to do before I leave Ukraine, not to mention those grad school applications. Yes, I'll definitely stay busy for the rest of my time here. It's a good thing.
Now, at last, I have a request. If you're still out there, I'd like to hear from you. Send a letter (or an email) my way. Make my day happier!
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Teachers' Day
This week there is a significant school year holiday: Teachers' Day. The holiday is on Sunday, but we are celebrating on Friday. Actually, we started celebrating on Wednesday. At two o'clock there was a big concert at the Doma Kultura (House of Culture), which is the main concert and conference venue in town.
The concert (someone else I talked to called it a conference instead of a concert) started off with a big awards ceremony. Just about every school event I've been to has started that way: with awards being presented and certificates handed out. The First Bell starts this way, and so does the Last Bell. At the Teachers' Day concert, this took a long time, because there were a lot of speeches to accompany the awards. There were awards for teachers from all three schools in Chernomorskoe, plus the school in so-close-it's-practically-Chernomorskoe Novoselskoe. I also heard a few other schools mentioned, although from what I could tell no one from those schools was actually present.
I sat in the audience and zoned out while all this was going on. I was also feeling a little underdressed, since most of the teachers were very dressed up. When I mentioned this to the friend I was sitting with, and English teacher from a different school, she said she didn't think they were dressed up at all--they just liked to dress up every day. Which is true enough, but believe me when I say they were even more dressed up than usual. I was only wearing jeans and a sparkly knit shirt--even less dressy than my usual school clothes, due to an unfortunate lapse in judgment on my part that caused me to leave my balcony window open during a big wind and rain storm last weekend, resulting in a soaked balcony and a very unhappy downstairs neighbor. My balcony is still drying out, and I haven't wanted to hang any wet clothes out there. So I haven't done any laundry in a while.
Anyway, after the seemingly interminable awards ceremony was over, the talent show portion began. I call it a talent show because I really don't know what else to call it; I've never been able to think of a word in English that does a better job of explaining it. I have yet to meet a Ukrainian who doesn't love to perform, young and old alike, so most school events include--following the awards portion--a talent show. Every school presented at least one act; quite a few teachers sang, and some students sang or recited poems. One teacher presented a "comic" dance, and another a "gipsy" dance. My school had a skit, a variation of one they'd done for the first bell, and all the young teachers came out, dressed all in black, and danced. It was quite a success.
My friend asked me why I wasn't up there dancing too, and the honest answer is that no one asked me. (Though--again, honestly--I probably would have said no even if they had asked.) The fact that I was at this concert at all shows that I understand a lot more about what's going on around me than I did a year ago, because I'm pretty sure this concert is a yearly event, and I just didn't know about it when it happened last year. That tends to happen a lot to me: there will be some event that everyone goes to, and I won't hear about it until the next day, when someone asks me if I went. But people rarely think to tell me about it ahead of time.
I think part of it is that they don't understand that I don't understand or even bother to look at a lot of the notices that get put up in the school (most of them are administrative, and in Ukrainian, and irrelevant to me) that announce things, and that I just don't know the things that they take for granted that everyone knows. The only reason I found out about Wednesday's concert is when my coordinator said that she was preparing a dance for Teachers' Day, and I asked when I could go see her. I had no idea it was a city-wide event until about an hour before the concert.
Another example of this phenomena happened a couple of weeks ago, on Gas and Oil Workers Day, a holiday I learned about only because no one showed up for debate club. The woman I work with there then explained about the holiday, and told me that there would be a big concert that evening at a complex on the other end of town from where I live. Apparently they usually get pretty big singers to come, although this year it was a group and musical style that wasn't as popular, so this woman wasn't planning to go. "You should go, though," she said. And when I replied that I really didn't like to go by myself (not to mention that it wouldn't be safe to walk to this place and back by myself after dark, especially on a big drinking night), she volunteered her son to take me. Her son is 16. He has his own friends, and wasn't all that interested in the concert anyway. There wasn't a single thing about that "invitation" that was attractive, so I declined, and instead watched the fireworks that night from my balcony. Still, I was glad that--for once--I'd heard about the event before it actually occurred.
The next day I visited my best friend in town, who--of course--asked me if I'd gone to the concert. When I said that I hadn't had anyone to got with, she replied that I should have come with them; they'd been a big party, with lots of kids and grownups.
Sigh. If only I'd known.
But back to Teachers' Day. It's a fun holiday, and I wish we had something like it in the US. Here it carries the significance of a holiday like Mothers' Day or Fathers' Day. There are Teachers' Day cards sold at every card shop and the flower sellers do a brisk business. Classes give flowers to all their teachers, and bouquets and gifts to their "class teachers" (a class teacher is like a homeroom teacher). I should get flowers from all the classes I teach, although some of them will probably forget me because I'm not a "real" teacher. I'll still go home with a whole armful, however, since another teacher will probably give me some of hers. That's what usually happens, anyway.
There won't be real classes, although another volunteer tells me that at her school the students take of the role of teacher for the day. In my school the graduating class did this last year, preparing lessons for the younger forms. I'm not sure if that'll happen this year. In any case, after whatever token classes we have are over, there will be another small concert (this one at the school) for the teachers. Groups of pupils will sing and play musical instruments and dance for us. And then there's the party, open only to teachers. There will be some food, desserts, vodka, and wine, and most of the teachers will get drunk and start dancing. Eventually I'll slip away, and go back to my apartment to put my flowers in water before they die, and they will brighten my kitchen for the next week.
And that, my friends, is Teachers' Day in Ukraine.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Two Years
Today, amazingly enough, is not only Teachers' Day. It's also the two-year anniversary of my arrival in Ukraine. Time really flies.
Lately I've been noticing again things that have generally shifted to the background, no longer remarkable. On a bus to Simferopol last week (a purchasing try: I went with a friend to buy books for the new Resource Center), I found myself sitting in the dusty, rocking bus and watching the grey landscape roll by, the crows sweeping up in sheets from the harvested fields, the way I did a year and more ago. In my two more months here, how many more trips will I make to Simferopol? How many more times will I watch this landscape?
Walking from errand to errand in town, I remark again on the sidewalks. I'm going back to the land of smooth, even walkways, where I don't need to watch my every footstep. And I'm going back to the land of cars, of course. How much will I walk at all? I'd like to think that I'll still walk a lot, but am I fooling myself?
At school today I got flowers from classes that I don't even teach: classes I may have visited once, or taught in a previous year. My students know I'm leaving; they're sad when we talk about it, and everyone asks me--more often even than when I first arrived--Do you miss your homeland? Will you come back to visit?
The answer to the second question is easier: I'd like to, I say, but it's an expensive trip and I'm not sure when it will be possible.
The first question is more difficult. Yes, I miss America, but I'm also a little afraid of it. It will be so big and noisy and accessible. Funny to be intimidated by accessibility, but I am. I'm dazed and overwhelmed by my infrequent visits to Ukrainian grocery stores, and the biggest Ukrainian grocery store doesn't hold a candle to the average American one. I don't think I'll know what to do with myself.
At the same time, there are some things I want with a strange sort of craving, like a hunger. On that same trip to Simferopol last week, watching the sun come up, I suddenly really wished I were in a car, beginning a road trip, and that I could pull over at a gas station somewhere and buy a big coffee, and pour in some of that flavored creamer they sometimes have, and then get back on the road with a coffee at hand, and the steam from the coffee making the whole car smell good. And outside the sun would be coming up.
This was the first time since I got here that I've actually missed driving, and I pulled out my drivers' license (which I'd retrieved from a safe in Kyiv last time I was there, but not really looked at in two years) and realized that--contrary to what I'd thought--it did not expire in 2006, but in 2007. And I was so happy.
I haven't even mentioned family and friends, although of course I miss them, too. But there are people here that I'll miss when I'm gone. I've started thinking about gifts, and putting aside the things that I want to give to certain people when I leave. I'll give this book to Albina, and those two to Inna. What about all the children I work with? My debate kids especially. I need to do something for them, too.
I should probably throw myself a couple of goodbye parties, although that's a big expense and a fair amount of work to boot. I haven't decided about that yet.
So here I am, on my two year anniversary. I didn't even realize it until another volunteer sent me a message.
Time flies.