Livin, workin, & Lovin.

Привет всем!  Hello Everyone!

Wow, 2 months without posting.  Oops.   There is a lot to recap.  I have been really busy lately with a couple of new projects in my community.  I wrote 2 grants which I submitted yesterday in order to start a volunteer newspaper and an HIV/AIDS awareness project.  I am really excited about these projects and can’t wait for them to start.  Basically, with the help of the grant money, the NGO that I would with will start a newspaper to promote volunteerism and NGO participation in the area.  We are recruiting volunteers that are interested in Journalism from the Volunteer Center that we started last fall and from local schools in the area.  The volunteers will write articles, interview people & NGOs, and will design, distribute, and publish the newspaper themselves.  It should be great.  We will have some professional journalists come and train the volunteers and my friend Sergey and I will conduct the trainings on volunteerism.   We submitted the grant and we will find out on Nov 15^th if we won or not.  The HIV/AIDS project is also very exciting – we will have professional trainers from Kiev come to our town to train local doctors about HIV/AIDS (many do not understand HIV or are unaware of the situation in Ukraine) and also to train 20 of our volunteers about HIV/AIDS.  HIV is a huge problem in Ukraine with almost 2% of the population being HIV positive and most don’t know what HIV is, how it is transmitted, or what treatments are available if you have HIV.   After the initial trainings, we will send our newly trained volunteers to all of the local schools in our town to train the kids at each of the schools and after all of the trainings, we are going to organize an HIV/AIDS awareness concert in the center of the town to promote HIV/AIDS awareness and to encourage people to get tested at our mobile testing unit with will be stationed nearby.  We will also find out on Nov 15 if we won that grant.  I don’t think there will be any problems with wining the grants though.   We should receive the money in early January and will start both projects in February.  Wish us luck! 

From the last time I posted, I took my friend and coworker Sergey to Kamyanets Podilsky (A small city in Western Ukraine) to attend a HIV/AIDS conference put on by PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Action Plan For AIDS Relief).  It was a really good experience.  There were 25 PCV and 25 Ukrainians there to attend the 5 day conference.  The conference made me realize how lucky I have been to be able to travel and experience as much as I have in my life.  My counterpart had not spent too much time traveling and being away from home for extended periods of time so I think he really enjoyed the experience.  It was a bit of a hassle to get to the training venue because we had to take 2 overnight trains and spend 15 hours in Kiev.  We left Khartsizsk on Saturday evening and arrived in Kiev at 7 am on Sunday where we met up with a couple of Sergey’s friends then spent the entire day (15 hours) walking around Kiev and seeing the sights (it was Sergey’s first time in Kiev) before catching yet another overnight train to Kamyanets.  It was a really nice day in Kiev and I am glad I was able to spend so much time with Sergey and his friends.  We were exhausted by the time we arrived and were happy to have a couple hours to shower and clean up before the conference began.   The conference was held at a resort about 20 km outside of Kamyanets in beautiful area next to a river.  It was an amazing location – PEPFAR definitely has more money than PC.  The trainings at the conference were extensive and ran from 8 am tell 8 at night every day but by the end of the conference, we had developed a pretty awesome project plan.  I was very impressed with how well organized the conference was and it was very nice to be able to spend time with the other volunteers and their Ukrainian counterparts.  After the conference, Sergey and I decided to spend an additional day in Kamyanets to explore the city and tour a famous castle.  It was nice to spend a little extra time traveling with Sergey – he is a great guy and it was good to get to know him better.   There were a few other volunteers that wanted to spend an extra day in Kamyanets so we all went out together and had a great time.  It was funny because it was a group of Americans hanging out so Sergey was able to see how Americans interact with one another and he told me later that he understands what it is like to be the only one in the group that does not speak the language fluently though we all had a great time.  It was very interesting to see some of the rich history Ukraine has to offer.  Most of the historical sites in Ukraine were destroyed by the USSR in order to erase all record of previous cultures and get people to believe only in the tsar which is a shame because Ukraine is a bridge between Europe and Asia and has been conquered by almost every major world power at least once over the last 2,000 years so it would have been a historical and cultural goldmine. 

After the PEPFAR conference, I have spent most of my time writing, organizing, studying Russian, and discussing our new projects with people in the community.  We have met with the doctors at the local hospital, one of the leaders in the local government, and with another NGO in Makeevka to get access to a mobile HIV testing unit.  My Russian is getting better but it is still nowhere near where I thought it would be by this time.  I have started seeing new Russian tutors which has been great.  They work at a small foreign language school in town.  We met every day, 5 days per week – it is a great situation because I help them for one hour to improve her English and then they spend an hour helping me with Russian.  Hopefully I will be speaking better real soon.   

Well, It is getting late and I still need to pack for the trip so I need to go.  My bus leaves tomorrow at 5:00 am so it is going to be a long day but this time tomorrow I will be eating awesome food with Bob.  I can’t wait!

Conor’s Noteworthy Noteables:

1.        Heading to Greece tomorrow to travel and spend time with my Uncle Bob.  I can’t wait to spend time with Bob and eat some great food.

2.       Finished my grants!  Awesome.  Now I finally have some free time again.  

3.       Spending more time with Danielle which has been nice.  It is great to have a site mate. 

4.       Had a farewell party in Donetsk for one of the German volunteers.  It was great but kinda weird to see someone head home to the real world. 

5.       Started my English club again.  Great times – we have a good group of people. 

6.       Went to the movie theater in town and watched a movie in Russian.  I actually understood more or less what was going on. 

7.       Picking up some much needed shoes, jeans, and a coat from Bobo in Greece.  Finally!  I can’t find clothes my size in Ukraine!   I was starting to look like a bum. 

8.       Internet and hot water stopped working.  ;-(    I have gotten used to it though.  I heat water up on the stove to take bucket baths.  Lol  I am amazed how much I get done when I don’t have internet at home. 

9.       I interviewed to be a volunteer with the Euro 2012 football championship.  I hope I get it- we will know on Nov 15^th.  I will probably be a volunteer manager and if that is the case, I will try and get the volunteers from our volunteer center involved.