Happy Holidays from Ukraine!

Dear Friends and Family, 

Happy Holidays!!! I hope that you all have had a wonderful Christmas and Hanukkah! So much has happened to me here in Ukraine since my last update so please bear with the length of this post but it has been a very exciting time for me as a newly sworn in Peace Corps Volunteer and so I want to share this experience with all of you.

As promised, I have attached a final picture from Boguslav School #1 of my sixth grade class. In my last post I was about to begin our last week in Boguslav. To sum up that experience, my last day of classes went very well. I thoroughly loved my sixth grade class – as I was telling my mom on the phone – sixth graders are delightful. They are old enough to have a decent attention span as well as discipline, but they are young enough to not be dramatic and moody. In the end I got a hug from many of the students despite it only being my second time teaching them – I am really going to miss that class! 

My Russian Language classes ended on Wednesday, December 9th with lots of review and preparations for our Language Proficiency Test on Thursday. I am happy to inform all of you that I did pass! We were to achieve an Intermediate Mid Level on the test in order to be “ready for our 2 years at site” and I achieved that level. So the 2.5 months of Russian paid off! We celebrated with a holiday party where we made Ginger Bread Cookies with Powdered sugar frosting (thanks Mom for all the frosting making practice!). We did a little Secret Santa exchange too knowing that none of us would have gifts to open on Christmas day. The requirements were a price limit and the gift had to be wrapped. I drew my language teacher’s name from the hat and so I pulled from my bag of Minnesota goodies a window ornament of a loon and bought some chocolates. The wrapping was tricky – in the end I had a piece of red construction paper and cut some of my knitting yarn to tie the package together (can you say clever!!). The gift was a hit – I received from Rudy a pack of markers, some cards and a new pair of socks wrapped in a desktop wallpaper print out of the TV show “Entourage” – a show that I have recently become addicted to since being in Ukraine – its on HBO, check it out! The day before we headed to Kiev we had a goodbye party for our host families. Peace Corps had prepared certificates of appreciation/recognition for the host families with the pictures we had taken with them. We bought cake and cookies and served tea and coffee, it was a wonderful time spent together and a nice way to show how much we appreciated the time we had with them. Max was the only kid to come to the party and he was a hit! The other 4 in my group loved him – I think it was the Harry Potter glasses. Following the party I gave my host family a frame with our “family” picture, I was very excited to receive in return a jar of my host mother’s strawberry jam for tea! It was hard to say goodbye – especially to my awesome host brother Max. I gave him a copy of Wall E, which we managed to watch one last time, bringing the total viewing times to something like 4 for just that movie. Disney did truly help us bond these past 2.5 months!

On Monday the 14th we got all of our bags into the bus with the Mironivka crew and said our last goodbyes to our families and headed off to Kiev. One side note I would like to mention regarding travels is a wonderful Ukrainian custom that I had the fortune to experience before my trip to Kiev. Ukrainians before traveling have the custom of taking a seat right before leaving a house and having a moment of silence. The act of taking a seat allows for any bad demons that would follow you on your journey to disappear and to allow for a safe passage. Right before we began to take my bags down to load into the car my host dad pulled me down to sit on my red suitcase and we had a moment of silence for my journey. It was a really touching moment as I had only heard of such a custom but was so touched to now be experiencing my whole host family sitting in the hopes that I had a safe journey. (It was also a little worrying as my host dad was sitting on my black suitcase, which was already bulging at the seams!) In Kiev, Peace Corps had organized us to stay at the Taras Shevchenko University Campus for the Masters program in the International Students’ dorm. With 112 PCVs, all the PC staff and the incoming 112 Counterparts – Peace Corps was forced to find a big space for us to stay! Luckily the first thing on the agenda following check in was to find out the location of our sites – which was good as I was about to pass out from my nerves not knowing where in a matter of 3 days I would be going to live for the next 2 years. Peace Corps announced the locations based on Regions – the country is split into 8 regions, each watched over by a Regional Manager. My name was called for Region 2 – The Republic of Crimea and the Khersonskaya Oblast. It was very exciting to stand along with the other Group 37ers who would be with me in our Region! This included Rudy from my group and 2 girls from our Mironivka Link Group. Following the announcements we went to meet with our regional manager and I found my site to be a town called Velyka Lepetykha on the Dnipro River in the Khersonskaya Oblast. I have tried to Google this – nothing comes up except its location on Google Maps, so feel free to Google it, otherwise I have attached pictures from my site! I am now working for the Velyka Lepetykha School #1. The town is about 10,000 people and is very beautiful. I am living with an older married couple, Lyuda and Tolia who take good care of me, but I’ll finish telling about that after finishing talking about the Swearing In Conference. 

The following day we got to meet our Counterparts. A Counterpart is a Ukrainian that works in the school in which you will teach and works as your mediator for any needs you may have in the town. Peace Corps requires every receiving school of a Peace Corps Volunteer to have a Counterpart so that there is someone looking out for the needs of the Volunteer. My Counterpart is named Tonia, I want to guess she is about 40 years old; she has short spiky black hair and she told me she lives with her 8 cats and her mother. We discussed my tentative teaching schedule – I will be teaching 4th through 8th graders, which I was very excited about! I was a little disappointed to hear though that I will be co-teaching all of the lessons. Meaning that the Ukrainian teacher for such subjects as Grammar and Lexical Material will teach the first 20 minutes and then the Communication will come from my 20-25 minutes of the lesson. I was hoping to be able to teach by myself but in all truth, Grammar is taught here completely in Ukrainian and so my ability to explain in English probably would not have worked anyways. 

On the last day of the Swearing In Conference we actually had the Swearing In Ceremony. This Ceremony took place in the large auditorium of the University - each Peace Corps Trainee sat with their Counterpart and attending host families took the side rows (none of the Boguslav Host Families attended). One of the Peace Corps Staff read aloud all of our names, our home states, our future sites and the name of our Counterpart. This took quite a bit of time but was exciting to hear all the places that my friends would be going to live and serve! Attending this Ceremony was the newly appointed US Ambassador to Ukraine. For all those attached to Northwestern or my family will find interesting, President Bienen, the recently retired President of Northwestern University, was offered the job of Ambassador to Ukraine but early this summer decided to turn this position down. As I listened to the new Ambassador speak, I realized how cool it would have been to have President Bienen there with three Northwestern Alums in the audience! The Ambassador also administered the Oath in which we became employees of the United States of America through the Peace Corps TEFL Program. It was a very touching moment! I chocked up thinking about all the work that went into getting to this moment!! I started my application to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in late September of 2008! Over a year of applications, physicals, preparations, studying and hard work went into getting me to the point of Swear In! I was so proud of myself! I have attached a picture of my Counterpart and myself at the Ceremony in front of one of the Peace Corps Banners used at this ceremony. 

That evening, despite a large snowstorm in Ukraine – hitting especially hard the South where I was going, we loaded busses to the train station. My train was at 9:44 pm and due to traffic because of the snow we made it to the train station at 9:35pm. Tonia and I grabbed my bags and with the other 5 Volunteers to be on my train and their Counterparts we ran like there was no tomorrow to catch our train. I don’t know if a miracle occurred or if the time I saved by simply throwing both my suitcases down the 2 flights of stairs to get to the train tracks saved us but we somehow made the train by a minute. The doors closed as I was stepping onto the train. I don’t know how to put more intensity into the explanation of this event, but I was about to cry as I sat onto my bunk bed in thanks for making the train (I had already heard many accounts of people missing buses and trains for their sites and thus having to return to Kiev to leave another day because of the snow and length of travel to the train and bus stations). I slept well on my overnight train- I would even say it was as nice as my night train between Venice and Linz, Austria two years ago this time of year. We made it to Kherson and relaxed until a crazy funny guy named Yuri showed up in a sand dune rover looking vehicle to take Tonia and I to Lepetykha. This was quite a trip – especially when we off roaded it into the woods to help a car that had run off the road. I appreciated too that Yuri was only wearing a long sleeved shirt but with his massive fur hat he said he was plenty warm. I was sitting there shivering in about 3 layers - I must get one of these fur hats! 

I have now been at site for a week and it has been very calm. The first few days in town, the snow had brought freezing rain causing a foot of ice for the entire path of my trek to school. Luckily, REI had prepared me well and I whipped out my Yak Trax (i.e. rubber pieces you put onto your boots with metal picks to help walk on ice) and I was able to walk to school without a problem as everyone else slipped along the way. I have met the principal of my school – she is a wonderful and nice woman who took me to meet the head of schools of Lepetykha who was also very welcoming. I have been able to observe my classes – the students’ English is very very limited at all levels so I have my work cut out for me, but they are eager to work with me and so I am grateful for that! When the fourth graders learned I would be in their class there were a number of “Yeahs!” and hands thrown into the air in rejoicing – an uplifting moment I might say. I have also had a short chance to teach my 6th grade class and next week I get to teach them “Jingle Bells!” I spent an afternoon walking around the town, taking pictures – it is a beautiful town and I now cannot wait for spring when it isn’t so icy and wet and I can wander further. I have been able to buy a water filter (think Brita type water filter) and I have found our Bazaar and checked that out – not as big as Boguslav but lots of clothes for when mine finally wear out. So all in all things are coming along well! The school continues until December 31st and then the students are on holiday until January 11th, which is nice! Ukraine celebrates New Years, Christmas on January 6th/7th and then the Old New Year. So I actually taught on our Christmas and as a special treat on Christmas Eve I cracked out my peanut butter and had it with an apple and watched Elf. Yuri, my driver from Kherson, made Christmas day very special as he had prepared a little speech with my Counterpart’s English help. When I arrived at school he greeted me with “Merry Christmas, I congratulate you on your special day and I wish you all the best. Merry Christmas!” It was wonderful – I saw the piece of paper he read from later, it was transliterated with Russian letters sounding out the English words – quite interesting to read!  

Ok, I believe that is all for updating now. I am sorry it is long! I want to wish you all a wonderful rest of the holiday season and a very Happy New Year!! I am adding my new address below so please feel free to send me letters! They make my day! I miss you all tons but all is going well here and I am so thankful for that! 


  Love, Megan 

Also make note please of the New Cell Number: +38 066 457 4403
New Address (You need both the English and Russian – I suggest printing the address and taping it onto the letter to avoid having to write the Cyrillic letters!)

Megan Trout
C/O Velyka Lepetykha School #1
18A, Kuyibysheva Street
Velyka Lepetykha
Kherson Oblast
Ukraine
74502

Меган Траут
Великая Лепетиха Средняя Школа #1
18A Ул. Куйбышева 
Г. Великая Лепетиха
Херсонская Область
Украйна
Индекс: 74502

The Pictures below are My Sixth Grade Class, Making Ginger Bread Cookies, my gift for Yevginia, Our Group at our Holiday Party, Kelsey with a dancing Santa in Kiev, Max rock climbing in the hallway, our Family goodbye party, pictures with the host family on my last day in Boguslav, Kelsey and I wiht the map with all our sites labeled, my oblast and my name labeled, the Boguslav Crew with our teachers on Swearing In day, with the 3 Minnesotans at Swearing In, with Tonia my counterpart after Swearing In, My House in Lepetykha, the Dnipro River, the abandoned Port House (you can still see the name in Cyrillic on top of the buidling), the Church in Lepetykha and lastly a personal concert the Music School put on for me (lead by Yuri) where they played me La Cucaracha.