Helpin the Helpers

Greetings from Ukraine,

    A lot has changed since my last update.  We have gotten the results back from the survey that we sent out to the community - I was happy to see a 85% response rate.  We now have a basic idea of what we can start working on though with all the other stuff going on it will be hard to devote too much time.  It is nice to finally have some goals in place in a culture that is not so goal oriented.  In Ukraine, the process is more important than the results.  We are trying to adapt to the differences but it has proven more difficult than we thought.  For example,  meetings are generally conducted over tea and coffee and sometimes the meeting can last for long periods of time without ever discussing the business at hand - resulting in yet another meeting being scheduled.  Americans get to the point/business immediately but if you do that here, you might find yourself without any business partners/cooperation.  Numerous current volunteers have told us that we better start liking tea because we will be drinking a TON of it.   Which is cool with me because I love tea and I think I will enjoy a more casual business environment though if I ever have a time sensitive issue - that might be frustrating. 

    Other than the project, I have obviously been studying Russian every day like a madman.  It is an extremely difficult language.  Я нужна изучать прусский   Did you get that?  It is fun to study though and hopefully one day I will have a clue as to what is going on around here.  lol    Hanging with my HM, HB, and their Ukrainian friends makes me want to study 24/7 because I have almost no idea what they are talking about.  They are very friendly but I may or may not be the butt of some jokes that I am completely oblivious to.  Its all good, I can take a joke especially when I don't know the details.  The diet here is a ton of carbs and some fatty meats like well umm...raw fat.  lol   so for lunch (the only meal I have control over) - I try to eat light like a banana and yogurt for example.  Apparently, only kids eat bananas and yogurt is bad for you.  Go figure.  So that makes me a 6'7" kid that eats bad food.  I think they find that hilarious and disturbing at the same time.  What can I say, I am the weird American.  When I had an upset stomach the other day, it was immediately blamed on the banana and yogurt.  I had some other thoughts as to what caused the upset stomach. 

    I went on a tour of Chernigiv yesterday with some fellow volunteers and some kids from the local school.  It was really neat talking to some of the kids - their English is way better than my Russian.  We went to some of the historic buildings and monuments in the city and toured some caves that were beneath a 1000+ year old Monastery.  Monks lived in the caves at one point and there were some skeletons - cool stuff though tall people were not meant to be in caves.  After the caves, we had a picnic with the kids then split up.  I ended up walking around the city for quite some time with a fellow volunteer - simply walking around a foreign city is one of my favorite traveling activities.  You never know what you are going to see or what cultural gem you are going to uncover.  The bazaar for example never ceases to amaze me.  You can buy anything from fruit, eggs, meat, garden tools, to computers, motorcycles, pizza, electronics.  It is crazy however, at one point someone was following a bit too close and eyeing my backpack - it pays to be careful. 

    This coming week, we will be traveling to Kiev and seeing some of the sights.  That will be awesome - I have heard nothing but good stuff about Kiev.  So much history, culture, diversity, events, things to do, and everything else - awesome.  I like living in a small village but it will be nice to be in a large city for a while.  I wish I could post all my photos but unfortunately that would take forever.  Well,  I need to start working on the mass amount of work I have to do so take care all and keep me updated on what's going on.

Conor's Noteworthy Noteables:

1.  Chipped my tooth on a piece of bone and filed the tooth smooth with the metal file in my Leatherman. 

2.  The name of the street I live on is similar to the Russian word for ice cream so I may have told some people that I live on Ice Cream Street.  lol

3.  Found a Pizza Joint aka  a little slice of heaven.  Fantastic

4.  Going to see the Clash of the Titans in Ukrainian - it is an action flick so you don't really need to know what they are saying right?

5.  Running our first English club on Friday - curious to see how many people show up. 

6.  Went to a restaurant/bar/nightclub in Chernigiv and took a taxi back to my village.  Fun evening

7.  Took a ton of awesome photos.

8.  A few volunteers have already gone home.  Statistics show that we will lose 10% by the end of training and then another 20% will leave before the end of the 27 months.

*Click on the photo to see the large version*