• The secret store

  Hitting the "Reset" Button 19 Feb 2012 | 8:13 am

  My life in Kirovograd has become what a person could call routine – I work at the library three days a week, at the Technical University one day a week, and most of the time at the Technical College part of a day as well. On Saturdays I usually help out my friends S & A at their English school. The fun of it is I don’t actually teach English – I just serve as the native speaker “expert” and help them out when they want to hear how a native speaker says a certain word, or to help explain something like the difference between “wash” and “clean”, or to go through tongue twisters with their students. Saturday nights are usually fun – S & A have a fabulous apartment, with a real kitchen, and like to try different types[…]

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• Happy Valentine's Day from Ukraine! С Днём ​​Святого Валентина!

  Джингер (the Jinger) 15 Feb 2012 | 12:49 am

  Valentine's Day in Ukraine is just like Valentine's day in the States... people exchange gifts, valentine cards, chocolate, and flowers. All my students were too excited about the holiday to focus on the lessons yesterday, so we did a Valentine's crossword in my 9th and 10th form and a word search in my 4th and 6th form classes. My school even organized the anonymous Valentine delivery service, where 3 little girls dressed up as Cupid's angels and went around to every class to deliver Valentines :) Cupid's Angels! The kids also had a small poster contest, where they basically painted giant Valentine's day card greetings. The posters were all displayed in the first floor of our school. Here are a few of my favorites. A cute poster by the 5A class.  "St. Valentine's day is the day for everyone in[…]

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• Happy Valentine’s Day

  Caroline Mackenzie, PCV, Ukraine 2010 - 2012 14 Feb 2012 | 1:54 pm

  Hello Family and Friends! Yes, it has been about two months since my last blog/update on my life as a Peace Corps volunteer.  The reason for the delay:   I am just back from a three-week emergency leave trip to the US.  Sadness and joy in one trip.  In mid-January my Mom took a nasty fall, which put her in the hospital.  My brothers called and asked that I come home, which I did.  I was extremely fortunate to be with my Mom for three days before she died on 25 January.  She is now happily with my father, the love of her life (they were married 65 years) and now, both are watching over all of us. Isaure “Zo” de La Chapelle Lord April 5, 1919 – January 25, 2012 It is good to be back at work; Mom was[…]

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• Happy New Year, a photostorm.

  Elise in Ukraine. 27 Jan 2012 | 4:24 pm

  In case you didn’t know, I just adore the crap out of my students. Here are some photos from the various New Years celebrations last month. For the rest of them, click here. The ladies of 5-a celebrating New Year. They heard I would be there to take pictures, so they loaded up on make-up. Nastya, one of my favorite sasspants students. We understand each others senses of humor. Darina, who tells me that her greatest dream is to become an actress in America. She says it can happen because she believes in herself. Lera, who is as serious during lessons as she looks here. The whole rambunctious class of 5-a together, almost. Except for Max, who decided the CD player was more interesting. The very fancy girls of 5-b, who are ridiculously sweet and affectionate. The gentleman, guys, and[…]

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• Winter Art

  jud dolphin adventure 16 Jan 2012 | 10:43 pm

  I never thought I would say this, "I'm missing winter." After two years in Ukraine, you might think I had enough of snow and ice. But here I am in Washington DC with temperatures in the 50s and 60s and only a few below freezing. Last week it was warm enough to have a picnic in a park and I did. Yikes, it's January!Maybe to compensate for the unusual weather, I've been creating snow scenes in my art. It's been a lot of fun and I feel like I'm improving week by week.  I started with scanning my photos of Maine winters for inspiration.  These two take me back to my wonderful years in Portland.  Then I heard on the radio that Portland was surprised by below zero or maybe not so surprised.  I remember... Mainiacs seem to take it in stride[…]

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• Merry Christmas!

  emmaandalex 23 Dec 2011 | 2:38 pm

  Oh, Christmas Tree! Dear Friends and Family, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We are so thrilled to be celebrating the Holidays in America again! We’ve been enjoying our frasier fir Christmas tree, drinking plenty of eggnog, listening to festive music, and enjoying the lights and decorations of our neighbors. We’re lucky to have been able to spend Thanksgiving with Alex’s family in Missouri and will be with the Griffises in North Carolina for Christmas. There’s nothing like a couple of years away to make us appreciate our wonderful families and crazy American Holiday traditions! Using that Electrical Engineering degree for something. As you know, it’s been a wild and crazy year for us, but we feel really happy to be settled down in Denver now. Alex is enjoying his new web development job at Beatport, where they bring in[…]

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• Fall Projects and Peace Corps Come To A Close

  Megan's Peace Corps Adventures in Ukraine 8 Nov 2011 | 8:47 am

  Dear Family and Friends,As I type this message the days I have remaining in Ukraine are sadly few. My how the two years have flown by! My last week in Velyka Lepetykha has been quite an adventure already with goodbye teas, final greetings on the street and a mix of emotions! Before I close out my service though, I would like to write one more update blog on the activities that have kept me quite busy these last few weeks. The weekend of October 7th-9th all female PCVs in the Khersonska Oblast were invited to a fellow PCV’s site of Chaplinka, southern Khersonska Oblast. Stephanie is a devote member of the Gender and Development Working Group of PC Ukraine and hosted a weekend mini GLOW camp for our Khersonska female students. GLOW stands for Girls Leading Our World and is[…]

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• Back Home

  Ben Robbins' Reflections 3 Aug 2011 | 1:57 am

  Well, I’ve been home now a total of 6 weeks. That’s the longest I’ve been away from my site since I first got there, and it’s starting to finally sink in that I’m not going back. I mean, I knew I wasn’t going back. I was incredibly excited about going home, seeing friends and family, living the good life again. And that was all a great distraction while it still felt like just a visit. But it’s real. I’m not going back, and it’s hard to admit.Leaving Ukraine was impossibly hard, emotionally and physically. There was all the stuff I had to do administratively to finish my Peace Corps service, involving multiple trips to Kiev; an awesome 16 hour roundtrip goodbye visit to a friend who’s boldly extending her service for another year who lives in the middle of nowhere;[…]

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• Warsaw and Krakow

  Life As We Now Know It 16 May 2011 | 5:38 am

  Last month my friend Sam came to see me. Sam is studying in Turkey this semester and like me, loves to travel. Sam had one caveat when coming to see me, that we go to another country, so I managed to convince her to go to Poland for six days.I had been to Poland a few years ago, while on a class trip with my classmates from Slovakia. We visited Krakow, and saw the beautiful old city and Auschwitz concentration camp, which is not very faw from Krakow. But I always wanted to go back and to see Warsaw and lucky for me, my friend Sam was game. I met Sam in Kyiv on Easter Sunday and we took an overnight train to Warsaw. In Warsaw we stayed with a really nice guy named Pawel, who like me is an English[…]

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