Summer Travels

Howdy,

Like always, a ton has changed since my last post (I can only blog about a fraction of it).  I now have a new counterpart and am working for a different NGO.  I will still be in the same city and working in the same office but for a different NGO.  I am excited to see what happens from here.  My new NGO has a lot going on and seems to be very involved in the community though I have not seen much of the NGO so far.  My new counterpart and I will be heading to Kiev today at around 5 (1 hour bus to Donetsk then an overnight train to Kiev).  We will be attending a volunteerism training/conference that the Peace Corps has organized at the university.  It should be a very informative training and I hope my counterpart enjoys it.  At the swearing-in conference in June, I heard multiple Ukrainian counterparts comment that the trainings put on by the Peace Corps are extremely well organized and that they have never seen anything like it before.   I think this is a prime example of a difference in cultures.  Americans like to have everything organized down to the min and to the tiniest little detail where as Ukrainians are more open in their scheduling.  It is interesting to see how Ukrainians react to an American run event. 

 

 

It will be nice to be in Kiev again and I am looking forward to seeing some fellow volunteers that I have not seen since swearing-in.  I can't wait to go out with everyone again for a night-out in Kiev!  It will be nice to speak in English!  I am sure everyone will have some crazy stories to tell and it will be nice to get the cluster back together (minus Cassie due to a soccer camp : (    ).  My counterpart will be with me in Kiev until Friday night then he will head back to our city.  I will be in Kiev till Saturday night then I will be taking another overnight train to Krivoy Rogg with Amy to help with a week-long business/English camp for 200 college kids.  Should be awesome.  Amy and I decided to treat ourselves to first class train tickets to Krivoy Rogg - that will be awesome.  We will have our own train compartment complete with air conditioning!  Whoohoo!  It has been an extremely hot summer with temps in the 100's for the last couple weeks with some humidity as well.  This is out of the ordinary for Ukraine and it should be cooling down soon.  I never thought I would be looking forward to winter but damn!  I am sure that when winter rolls around I will regret that statement. 

 

 

Over the last week I have been in transition from one NGO to the other so I have had some spare time to help an NGO based out of Donetsk with a website and some translation work.  This org is very interesting and has been around for a long time with tons of projects going on at all times.  Cool stuff.  I have also been going on walks every now and then when I it is not too hot though I keep finding myself back at the bazaar day after day and every time I am there I find something I missed the first time.  Well, I need to finish packing.  Have a good week everyone.