Hello from Ukraine

Hello Friends and Family from Ukraine! I have now been in country for 2 weeks and I wanted to take a moment to catch you up on the events, which have occurred thus far in my Peace Corps experience! Despite an emotional break down over my suitcases, carryon and items I could not fit in my overweight luggage around midnight the night before my flight to Philadelphia- I was able to make to it all the way to Ukraine safe, sound and lucky to have all my luggage!!

110 Peace Corps “Trainees” (as we will be called until swear in on December 17^th when we receive the full title of Volunteer) arrived to Philadelphia on September 25^th. As the 110 of us, each with 2 pieces of 50(+) lb suitcases and plenty of carry ons, arrived at the Hampton Inn City Centre, we were asked to register and to begin the ice breakers which would introduce ourselves to the other men and women who would share our experiences for the next 27 months of our lives. It was quite an overwhelming few hours as I felt Freshman Year of College occurring all over again – the need to impress/interest enough people into being your friend so that you would have a support system for the next 27 months brought people talking to as many other trainees as possible. As I have mentioned to a few of you before I left, I have had the wonderful fortune this summer to meet 7 of my co-volunteers through get togethers in both Chicago and Minneapolis, as well as having a close friend from Northwestern also receive an invitation to P.C. Ukraine! This allowed my hesitancy/nerves to subside quite a bit!

US Soil training was primarily an overview of all the paperwork and packets that we were required to read since accepting our invitations – the primary reason for this training is to ensure that all those present have fully contemplated the responsibility which they are taking on and to determine that 27 months of service is a feasible action in ones life. With all of us on board we arrived on Sept. 26^th to JFK airport for our flight to Frankfurt, Germany followed by a short flight to Boryspil, Kiev. We arrived and were warmly welcomed by the Peace Corps staff of Ukraine – the only American of the P.C. Staff in Ukraine is the Country Director – all other positions are held by Ukrainians. This is a wonderful aspect of the P.C. because it truly does allow for cultural integration, as the citizens of the country you are attempting to integrate yourself into are the people who are leading you through that integration. The first three days in country is filled with a “Retreat” where all Trainees stay in a city called “Desna” just 2 hours north and slightly east of Kyiv. In Desna we were housed at a place that is called a Retreat but in truth is more a Sanitarium - is a place where people go to relax and recover from an illness. It looked to me like a concrete built summer camp but the fact that it could house all 110 of us and Staff was great! Throughout these three days we worked on Safety lessons, Cultural Differences, the P.C. rules such as the “Delta Award” which are the reasons that P.C. may send you home on the next Delta Flight out of Kyiv (these mainly include breaking P.C. rules set to keep us safe and therefore ones you shouldn’t be breaking). The most exciting part of the retreat for me was when I learned that for the next 12 weeks I would be learning RUSSIAN! P.C. Ukraine teaches volunteers 1 of 2 languages – Ukrainian or Russian. Due to the many years of Russian especially Soviet control over Ukraine – the country is quite divided in its loyalties to Ukraine as an independent nation versus Ukraine as a province of Russia. This has lead to the Ukraine of today being a very bilingual nation with Ukrainian as the official language but Russian as the dominant language – therefore P.C. teaches 60% of the volunteers Ukrainian who will work in on the western side of Ukrainian and 40% of Volunteers Russian who will work on the Eastern half of Ukraine. I am so incredibly excited to be learning Russian as I feel that it is a very interesting language that I have always been interested in learning – throughout my Northwestern life I feel that I had a lot of interaction with the Russian language (Russian Roommate, Russian Friends, Russian Coworkers at the Nail Bar etc.) that I feel very lucky to be able to now learn this language! I also hope that I will be able to visit St. Petersburg and Moscow at one point during this experience and the language will certainly help the trip immensely!

Once the 3 days of Retreat are complete – P.C. trainees travel to their training sites – these are small communities set to accept 5 or 6 trainees where language classes take place, technical training of how to teach English, and a school willing to take in these new teachers of English opens classes for the practice of teaching English to Ukrainian children occurs. My town is named Boguslav – in Cyrillic it’s: Богуслав. Boguslav is located about 2 hours south and slightly east of Kyiv. Here I live with a host family who have been extremely welcoming! I have a host mother, Iryna, a host father Sergey, a 19 year old host sister, Rima and a 9 year old host brother Maxim (Max). The family lives in an apartment building pictured below – it lies on one of the main 3 roads of Boguslav. My walk to school each day is about 20 minutes long as I head to my Language Instructor's home for our daily 4-5 hours of Russian. Beginning this last week my cluster had a visit to the local school where we will be teaching for the next 10weeks. My first day visiting was alongside one of the other trainees, Kesley. She and I visited the 4th form (grade) and were swarmed by the kids pushing and shoving one another to be the first to ask us our names – it was amazing to see their eagerness to speak with us! We will be teaching this class this coming Tuesday (Oct. 13th). I also was able to visit some of the older kids – both 8th and 9th form, these students did not corner us with questions but they did show excitement to our presence in their classroom and upcoming guest teaching. I am coteaching the 8th form on Thurdsday the 14th alongside another trainee, Matt.

In conclusion I just want to say that things are going very well for me so far here in Ukraine! My language is coming along very quickly – I did the math yesterday and realized that I have had to date in 2 weeks more Russian language class hours than an entire quarter at Shattuck or Northwestern which explains how I am already speaking full sentences – describing myself, my likes and dislikes, my hobbies, my family and school etc. I am looking forward to testing out my teaching skills in the next 10 weeks of training and seeing the reactions of the children – I promise to pass along a description of that experience! And so for now I will leave you with a few pictures of Boguslav. Please feel free to email me any questions regarding my town, Peace Corps or anything else you'd like me to address in the next blog post! Also feel free to send me any letters at the following address – I'd love to receive the support!

PCV Megan Trout

C/O Peace Corps Ukraine

111 A Saksahanskoho Street

Kyiv, 01032

Ukraine

До Свидания

Всего Хорошего!

Меган (Megan)

P.S. Photos will come at a later time due to technical difficulties on this computer and its internet. Sorry but I promise they are worth the wait!