Джингер (the Jinger)

Ukrainian Easter Celebrations, the Euro Cup 2012 Kickoff Party, and Victory Day in Kharkiv!

2012-05-13T06:50:00.003-07:00

Still catching up on my spring photos from Kharkiv.... Ukrainians celebrated Easter here a week later than America, because they follow the Eastern Orthodox calendar. They bake traditional Easter cakes called "paskas", which looks like a giant Funfetti cupcake but is actually more like a sweet bread with raisins. Here are some photos from the Easter display in Kharkiv's Freedom Square (Площадь Свободы).

The display was huge!

with the Easter egg tree.

GIANT Easter eggs and cakes :D

Since I'll be working as a UEFA volunteer for Euro Cup 2012 in Kharkiv, I was invited to attend the Kickoff Party along with the 400+ other volunteers. We met at a place called Chateau Ledo in downtown Kharkiv and hung out for a few hours. I wanted to meet the other people who will be working with me in Ticketing, but there were so many people that it turned out more like a disco than an orientation (which is what I thought it would be).

The main stage.... they hired a famous Ukrainian DJ who spoke so fast that I didn't ever catch his name.

The DJ guy with 2 players from FC Kharkiv Metalist.

The presentation was in pure Ukrainian and the DJ spoke super fast, so he was really difficult to understand. I would catch maybe 2 words out of each of his sentences, then I tried to ask my Ukrainian friends near me and they had a hard time hearing what he said too (though it was because of the loud sound system, not because they were having problems understanding the language). Overall, the party was okay but not something I would have attended if I had known it was going to be all in Ukrainian. Since English is the official language of UEFA and of EuroCup 2012, I was hoping that they would have run this event in both English and Ukrainian. There are many other volunteers from different countries around the world, so I definitely wasn't the only foreigner who was having a hard time understanding what was going on.

My friend Yulia and I got a photo with the Euro Cup 2012 mascots.

We also got a photo with Papa Gueye, the Kharkiv Metalist defender from Senegal.

Ukraine celebrates Victory Day (День Победы) on May 9th every year, it is an official public holiday and we had school off so I traveled to Kharkiv to check out the celebrations there. They had a large stage setup in Freedom Square, and a parade to honor all the veterans of WWII. In the evening, they had a concert with some famous Ukrainian and Russian singers, but I was afraid of getting lost in the crowd of thousands of people so I stayed at home and watched it on TV instead :D

setting up the stage... I took this photo at like 4pm and people were already waiting in the front row for the concert which started at 8pm.

policemen guarding the jumbotron.

soldiers salute.

thats right, they rolled tanks through the square.

marching in perfect unison.

Spring Break: English Speaking Countries Camp in Izum

2012-05-06T02:13:00.000-07:00

My spring break was the last week of April, so I'm still lagging a little behind on my blog posts. I spent a few days in the nearby town of Izum, where my PCV friends Danny and Shannon organized a mini-camp for their students. Izum is the second-largest town in Kharkiv Oblast (after Kharkiv) and they are known for their raisins! The word Izum in Russian means raisin, but I'm not sure if the town was named after raisins or vice versa.

The PCVs with Shannon's counterpart.

The theme of the camp was English Speaking Countries so we had quite a few interesting country studies lessons. Shannon taught about Australia, Kenny taught about South Africa, Erika taught about Belize, Sam taught about Jamaica, Danny taught about Ireland.

Kenny with his team.

Erika showing different exotic animals from Belize.

Sam showing Jamaican food.

Shannon playing Australian Jeopardy.

Danny's rendition of the east coast of the United States is possibly the best free-hand drawing of a map I've ever seen!

I taught a lesson about India including a Fact File, traditional foods, traditional clothing, and some popular monuments like the Taj Mahal. We also tried to do a little bit of yoga but ended up only doing standing poses because the kids didn't want to sit on the floor :) Here are a few highlights with my team of 7th and 8th grade students.

I had my team design their own henna hand drawings.

Our team's henna hand poster!

this is how we can we portray the Taj Majal.

and a peacock looks like this...

tree pose!

gliding from Warrior 3 haha

me and Team India!

We also had an egg-drop challenge, where each team was given an hour to construct something to protect an egg from breaking. All the teams had the same materials: newspaper, plastic forks, drinking straws and scotch tape. Shannon dropped the eggs from different heights outside on the playground, and the winner was the team whose egg dropped from the tallest height before breaking.

my team building their egg contraption.

ours looked like a mini hot air balloon.

Kenny's team made something like a helicopter.

Shannon dropping the bowl-like thing that Danny's team made.

Erika's girls made a box which worked pretty well.

At the end of the camp, each team prepared a presentation about their country. It was interesting to see how much the kids learned from their team leader. Each team also colored a number of individual squares, and then we glued them together to form a patchwork World Map.

This is where South Africa is...

Showing off the Eurasia continent!

I n d I A !

Danny with Team Ireland

Erika and her team

Shannon being some sort of Australian animal haha

Sam sang Bob Marley's "One Love" with his team :)

After the camp, we hung out outside and enjoyed the spring sunshine. Erika and I walked around the town a little bit while the other volunteers played soccer with a bunch of neighborhood kids. Here are the photos from our Ukrainian-style photo session :D

swings!

a funny park statue of an old grandfather and grandmother.

the Ukrainian "tri-zub" symbol (which translates to 3 teeth, but is really a trident).

with Lenin.

yeah, I've got mad gymnastics skills... look at that pointy toe!

just hanging out :P

Kharkiv American English Club, Ice Skating and Going to the Theater!

2012-05-06T00:27:00.003-07:00

I seem to be getting more and more behind in my blog posts. April was a really busy month for me, so here are a few updates on what extracurricular activities I've been up to besides just working in my school...

For the past few months, the Peace Corps Volunteers in Kharkiv Oblast have been organizing free English clubs at the Kharkiv American Center. We meet once monthly and usually we have about an hour of general speaking club, then we show an American movie and discuss different themes from the movie. This English club has been pretty successful, we started out in December with about 10 people and its grown to about 30 attendees.

February English club.

In March, our English club theme was St.Patrick's Day! I told everyone to wear something green ahead of time, but some of the Ukrainians thought this was strange (because they didn't know the tradition of wearing green). We presented about the history and traditions of St. Patrick's day and then we watched the movie "Leap Year". Afterwards, we went to an Irish restaurant in downtown Kharkiv to celebrate.

March English club group.

with my sitemate Sam, Byron and our friend Artom.

Laura, Erika and Anton.

While hanging out in downtown Kharkiv, I've discovered a few cool things to do and places to see that I didn't know about last year... this is the advantage of making friends with more locals who know more about their hometown! I went ice skating with a few friends and some students in a huge shopping mall called Karavan which is located near the metro station Heroiv Truda (the last stop on the blue line). It cost only 30 UAH (about $3) for an hour of ice skating, which really surprised me because things are usually very expensive in the city.

with the ice skating group.

Ty and Ira together.

with Liza, Yulia, and Stas.

I found another giant Adidas soccer ball in the Karavan mall! These things are oversized versions of the official EuroCup match balls and they are popping up everywhere now that EuroCup is approaching soon... I saw one of these first inside the Globos mall in Kyiv (located under Independence Square) and I've also seen one in Kharkiv near the main train station.

Just kickin' it.

I also discovered a small Vietnamese restaurant very close to the center. Its called Fanzi Pan and located right down the hill from Pushinskaya Street, near the metro station Architectora Beketova (on the green line). I ordered their Pho and some rice crackers, and it was great being able to eat some asian food! I hadn't had Pho since I left Atlanta about 2 years ago.

They also had some great floor-to-ceiling wallpaper so I couldn't resist taking a photo with it.

my Pho and rice crackers! mmmmm....

Kicking off the Spring with My HIV/AIDS Awareness Campaign

2012-03-31T11:02:00.000-07:00

I apologize for getting behind in my blog.... but a few weekends ago, I took advantage of the nation-wide Saturday school to organize two consecutive HIV/AIDS education and awareness training seminars. We had Saturday school so that International Women's day (March 8th) could be turned into a 4-day weekend. These seminars marked the first part of my HIV/AIDS Awareness Campaign project in my small town, funded by a PEPFAR grant - Presidents Executive Program for AIDS Relief.

The first training was for teaching professionals from the Lyceum (my school). We also invited teachers from the Gymnasium (the other school in our town), doctors from the local hospital, and social workers from the local kindergarten.

With the teachers who attended my training.

I invited my friend Alex to come to my school as a professional HIV/AIDS trainer who works at many different Peace Corps events, he has also worked for the Kharkiv office of the All-Ukrainian Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS for the past 4 years. The training covered the biology, 4 stages, transmission, treatment, and stigma/discrimination concerning HIV and AIDS. I hope that my teachers enjoyed the training since Alex made it more active and interesting than normal school lessons :)

My counterpart presenting her group's drawing of how t-cells and b cells work in the body.

Our director and school psychologist debating which stage of HIV they have with a social worker.

Everyone discussing which groups of people are guilty/not guilty .

The second training was for 10th and 11th form students. This training was pretty similar to the one for the teachers, except the students did a few more exercises that are meant for younger people. The goal of training 10th and 11th form students is that they will be able to train our 8th and 9th form students (instead of me or my teachers simply teaching the lesson). Now my school psychologist and I are preparing to finish up the second part of my project during our school's "practicum" week at the end of May by training the 8th and 9th formers with the help of our older students.

Drawing their interesting interpretation of the biology of HIV.

Some of the girls presenting their biology poster.

Organizing themselves into the 12 proper steps of how to use a condom correctly.

Me and all the kids together with our certificates!

I think that my students enjoyed working with Alex very much, because it not only got them out of normal classes for school.... they got sweet professional certificates with their name printed on each of them (I created the template and we bought glossy photo paper to print them off in color) and we also prepared a beautifully Ukrainian sandwich lunch for free :D

Slicing up sausage and salo, Ukrainian style!

A true Ukrainian sandwich lunch... with meat, cucumbers, apples, coffee, tea and cookies!

English Week 2012!

2012-02-28T21:31:00.000-08:00

Last week, the other English teachers and I prepared a series of open lessons and extra-curricular competitions for English week in our school. As usual, I prepared some decorations for the door to my little mini-classroom. I've found that the students love checking out whatever I post on my door, so its actually one of the most effective ways of advertising my events and projects to my students.

Don't laugh at my crayon drawings....

I prepared a poster about school rules for one of my English teachers.

We started off the week on Monday with a small assembly of 2nd through 4th form students. Three girls from the 7th form prepared a presentation on why English is important in our lives, and they translated it into Russian for the younger students. I tried to capture what our hall assemblies look like, but the lighting from the big windows makes it difficult.

The first competition of the week was for 10th form students. Students from the 10A and 10B classes split into 2 teams and answered a series of trivia questions about Great Britain, including geography, government, history and of course the major facts about London.

The Rainbow team.

Team Smiles with their teacher, Svetlana Ivanovna.

Two of the students acted as hosts for the competition (or "leaders", as they refer to it in Russian) and the English teachers served as the jury panel.

The setup of the competition.

Students answering questions from the hosts.

Next, the 9th form students prepared some projects about environmental protection and presented them during an open lesson. An "open" lesson is when anyone is permitted to come and observe the lesson, this usually means that the director or one of our vice principals will attend the lesson.

Diana from 9A presents her project about the different ideas of things you can do with an old candy box.

Katya from 9A presents the 3 R's.

Misha from 9A presents about water pollution.

Tanya from 9V with her leaflet about 7 important environmental problems.

Katya from 9V presenting her project about the protection of whales.

I organized an after-school competition for students from the 4th form with another one of the English teachers. I only teach the 4A class, but the 4th graders love coming to my English club to play UNO every week. We had the kids divide into 2 teams and they competed to see which team could complete coloring and matching worksheets faster and correctly. We also learned and sang Old MacDonald Had a Farm together :)

The team from 4B.

The students from 4A.

Explaining the different tasks in the competition.

Connecting the dots with the alphabet... this was completely candid and its my favorite photo.

Liliya Nikolaievna checking one of the worksheets.

Teaching the words to Old MacDonald.

A vocabulary game - I said a word in Russian and they had the find the correct translation in English.

The 4B students.

With my students from 4A.

This year, the Men's Day holiday was in the middle of English week. This holiday is not an official school holiday, but women in Ukraine still give cards and small gifts to their husbands, sons and friends to celebrate it (similar to Father's Day in the US).

The girls from 11A welcomed all the male students into the school by congratulating them.

The girls from 5A organized some interesting contests... including apple eating.

They also had a mini-show for their class party, including dancing :)

Men's Day was traditionally celebrated as Soviet Army Day in the past, but it has now been changed to the Defense of the Fatherland Day (День защитника Отечества). My teachers had prepared a small lunch party (in the regular Ukrainian style) and we celebrated this holiday after the school concert. A few old veterans from WWII came to our school concert and I wanted to take a photo of them, but I was afraid to ask because I didn't want to be rude. But it was amazing to see that they were so decorated with medals and its crazy to think that they were young men on the battlefield during the war.

One of the 11th form girls singing at the school concert.

The lunch table... complete with sandwiches, salo, and pickes!

A few of my teachers with our physics teacher Yuri Alexeyevich.

An ensemble of our teachers singing for the male teachers.

We finished up English week with a display of the students' project work. There were reports on the environment from the 9th form, media/press in Ukraine from the 8th form, leaflets about sports from the 6th form, recipes for cooking from the 5th form, and different drawings from 4th form.

Sasha, Inna and Leyla from the 9A class with their projects.

And the final competition of English was was about pancakes, but this has already been a super long post so I will write about it separately in my next post :D

Happy Valentine's Day from Ukraine! С Днём Святого Валентина!

2012-02-14T21:49:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day in Ukraine is just like Valentine's day in the States... people exchange gifts, valentine cards, chocolate, and flowers. All my students were too excited about the holiday to focus on the lessons yesterday, so we did a Valentine's crossword in my 9th and 10th form and a word search in my 4th and 6th form classes. My school even organized the anonymous Valentine delivery service, where 3 little girls dressed up as Cupid's angels and went around to every class to deliver Valentines :)

Cupid's Angels!

The kids also had a small poster contest, where they basically painted giant Valentine's day card greetings. The posters were all displayed in the first floor of our school. Here are a few of my favorites.

A cute poster by the 5A class.

"St. Valentine's day is the day for everyone in love" - 6A class.

"When we are together, its cool!" and "The whole words is for us today! The whole world is for us always when we are together: you and I" - from the 9A class.

And last but not least, here is a small sample of what Ukrainian Valentine's day cards look like... these are all from my students and friends! They don't have any cartoon-character themed cards, but they love hearts and roses just like Americans do.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! Wishing you love and happiness from Ukraine!

Bomb Shelters, Bracelets and Basket Weaving - Winter Russian Language Refresher

2012-02-02T13:24:00.000-08:00

Last week, I went to the winter Russian Language Refresher camp. Peace Corps traditionally has 2 language camps each year (for both Russian and Ukrainian) and this winter, the camp was held in Chernigov - a city/oblast center in central Ukraine. There were approximately 50 PCVs there, and we spent several days studying Russian grammar and practicing our Russian speaking/listening/reading/writing skills. I also took another Language Proficiency test (affectionately known as the LPI) and scored at the Advanced Low level! I'm glad that my Russian has finally moved up from the Intermediate High level, although the teacher who did my evaluation told me that I would have scored a higher except I tend to only speak in the nominative case and use only the masculine form of adjectives... aka my grammar needs some serious work. But oh well, at least I've made some progress - I'll keep trudging away at the grammar!

Cases... the bane of my existence.

The different elective "clubs of interest" that were offered each day.

We also had the chance to participate in some cultural activities such as touring the bomb shelter (бомбоубежище) located in basement of the building that we were staying in. During Soviet times, many cities prepared bomb shelters in main buildings and actually trained their citizens on what to do in case of bombing.

Following everyone into the bomb shelter!

This door is curved, which was designed to withstand the impact of a bomb hit.

Look how solid this door is!

The bunk beds.

So for example, in that building they had prepared to withstand bombings by installing things like a filtration system and a small water tank. The filtration system consisted of a simple input/output system that would clean incoming air and then eject the outgoing air. Or maybe it was vice versa, I could have misunderstood the explanation in Russian. These cranks were designed to run normally on electricity but could also be manually worked if necessary.

Theo cranking the output valve.

Pushing the input valve.

The water tank.

They also had bathrooms and showers down in the basement - they rerouted the sewage pipes for that basement bathroom to go 200m below the ground (when the city's sewage system was normally only 10m below ground) just in case everything collapsed under the weight of bombs. They also had beds down there of course, although I didn't see much in terms of entertainment... I wonder if they ever had to actually use that bomb shelter during bombings.

Bathrooms.

Power switches for the bomb shelter.

Another interesting club that I attended was the hand-made club.... where I made some bracelets! Other people learned how to knit scarves, cross stitch, and embroider in the traditional Ukrainian style.

Linda and I with our bracelets.

Knitting.

Cross-stitching.

Earrings!

The figurines from the salty dough club!

Along with the theme of Ukrainian cultural lessons, Volodiya tried to teach the boys how to do the male part of the traditional Ukrainan dance. The male part is very physical and difficult to master, which made it amusing for the girls to watch. Katya had already taught the female part of the dance during dance club :)

Chest out, shoulders back, and open your arms up wide to the women!

And kick... while your friends got your back.

Next, you can try to do it by yourself (the trick is to do it without falling).

And my favorite lesson that I attended at Russian language camp.... basket weaving! Volodiya gathered a bunch of willow branches and taught us a basic weaving technique that he learned from his mother. He told us that she used to weave baskets to carry things like food back from the market in their village. Of course, none of our baskets look as smooth and professional as Volodiyas but it was still awesome to actually produce a basket from sticks!

So many sticks...

Starting the base from 2 long and 2 short sticks.

See... our bases are starting to look circular.

(The next day) evolving into baskets!

Still working on the baskets (I'm weaving around a waterbottle for structural support).

Almost done.. most of us are finishing up the handles.

Ta-da! The finished baskets!

I also tried to organize a Talent Show at the end of our Russian language camp, but unfortunately not very many people were interested in showing off their talents. I wish I could have sang (like the summer, when I adapted Lady Gaga's Bad Romance into Russian) but I had a sore throat all week and almost lost my voice... so I was barely able to speak, let alone sing. But we still had some really fun talents!

Mysterious as a Sphinx....

Sphinx, sphinx, sphinxxxxxx.....

Music club with Sergei and Helen.

Counting to 1000 in Russian with Nathan and Richard.

The Sphinx team plus Andrew!

I had a fantastic time at Russian Language Refresher camp, and I really hope that I'll be able to go to the next one in the summer... though it will be much harder to get selected as a participant because I'll be one of the oldest groups of PCVs in Ukraine by then. It's so weird to think that I'm considered one of the older (and therefore more knowledgeable and experienced) PCVS now! One of the most interesting things that happened to me at this camp was that several group 41 PCVs came up to me and introduced themselves and told me that they read my blog before they came to Ukraine - its amazing to feel like people actually take the time to check out whats going on in my life and follow my blog! Thank you to all my readers out there :)

Skiing in the Carpathian Mountains!

2012-01-27T10:47:00.000-08:00

Over winter break, I had the opportunity to go skiing with Kharkov Gymnasium No. 82. My friend Whitney used to work as a Peace Corps Volunteer there, but she already finished her service and went home so her counterpart Svetlana invited me and another PCV to travel with the students instead. We spent about 6 days skiing at Bukovel, a ski resort in the Ivanko-Frankivska Obast (in western Ukraine), skiing during the day and teaching English lessons in the evenings. It was really beautiful out there, it was almost like being in a whole different country! I had never been skiing before but I loved it, it was awesome :)

Me with a bunch of the students on the ski slopes!

The Kharkiv - Ivano Frankivsk train has been cancelled recently, due to construction and repairs of the railroads... so we traveled through Kyiv. Many of the students had never been to Kyiv before so they really enjoyed walking around Independence Square and seeing some of the main sights downtown. We also saw the "national" Christmas tree of Ukraine, the one located in the Maidan (Independence Square).

Olya and Nika, two adorable girls from 6th grade.

Everyone by the Christmas tree. And a panda photobombing.

Ty (another PCV) with Illyaz, Marina and Julia.

We actually stayed in a small town called Yarmche, about 45 min from Bukovel. I roomed with 6 girls, ranging from 5th grade to 11th grade. We had an apartment with 2 rooms and a kitchen. At first I was really nervous to go skiing, because I've heard from so many friends who have gotten skiing-related injuries from falling and whatnot. But after I actually tried it, I found that it wasn't that bad... kind of a cross between the balance of surfing and the coordination of ice skating.

with Darina and Liza.

Riding the ski lift with Olya!

so many people!

Ty and I taught lessons focused on healthy lifestyles in English. Svetlana and the students wanted to film a series of social advertisements, so we taught topics such as anti-smoking, anti-drinking, the environment, sports, music, leadership, diversity, etc. I felt a little like a Peace Corps LCF (language facilitator) because I was teaching groups of kids and using the strips of paper method that is the signature of many LCF's :)

Maxim and Vadim (7th grade)

Matching American slang words.

The girls on the couch.

Olya, Dima and Sasha.

Ty working with the students on their rap.

We also celebrated Christmas on January 7th by cooking shashlik (like shish kabobs). Ukrainians celebrate Christmas on the orthodox date because most of them of Eastern Orthodox. Children walk around the neighborhoods, dressed in interesting costumes and singing Christmas carols. However, I was told that this is only a tradition in western Ukraine and its not so popular in eastern Ukraine.

with Ira and Anya, two university students who are alumni of Gymnasium 82.

Bros!

Nika, Elvira, Olya and Julia.

Konstantine, Sergey, Marina and Ty.

The carolers!

I had a ton of fun hanging out in western Ukraine, especially since Kharkiv didn't really get any snow until last week (and now its already -20 degrees C). I walked around the ski resort with the kids and we bought tons of souvenirs :)

near the ice skating rink with Julia and Liza.

Sasha, Julia, me and Liza.

Liza, Julia, me and Dina.

A huge ice-sculpture advertisement with the girls.

After we got back from the trip, the kids put together a video slideshow of photos and videos from the trip... enjoy!! I was very thankful to have the opportunity to go on this trip and I hope that I'll see these kids around in the future, they were a ton of fun to be with and they all loved learning English :P

ABC Weekend Camp!

2011-12-29T23:52:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, my sitemate Sam organized ABC Weekend Camp in our town. ABC Camp is a 2-week long summer camp that is that is traditionally held in downtown Kharkov, focused on leadership and PDM (project design and management). The goal of the weekend camp was to give some of our students the opportunity to experience a little taste of what an American style summer camp is like and practice their English.

Everyone at the Closing Cermony on Sunday.

You can check out the video that Sam created from our ABC Weekend camp here:

We had about 25 students attend the weekend camp from my school, Sam's school and neighboring towns. Sam invited 5 PCVs and 5 Ukrainian university students to serve as counselors and team leaders. Each team had a PCV and a Ukrainian, which worked out well for the students to be able to ask for translations if neccesssary.

Green team yelling their team name.

Purple team showing off their team chant.

We've got spirit, yes we do... We've got spirit, how about YOU?

We've got spirit to the sky, you've got spirit ankle high!

Sam selected some topics for the leadership lessons from a book called Seven Habits of Highly Effective Leaders. These lessons were taught in English jointly by the PCVs and Ukrainian counselors, and I think that the students really enjoyed how active and creative the lessons were.

Students sharing their picture representation of "responsiblity".

Lee and Zhenya teaching about personal values and priorities.

Shannon and I playing the guessing game (with Ukrainain leaders on our foreheads) during "Qualities of a good leader".

In addition to teaching lessons on leadership, we had a number of team challenges. One of the team challenges was a game called Tank, where each team selected a representative to be their "tank". Each tank was blindfolded and put into the playing arena, where the rest of the team had to give the tank instructions on where to find the balls and how to dodge balls thrown by other tanks. This game was hilarious and everyone loved it so much, including the counselors who demanded to play an all-counselor round of their own.

Another team challenge was the Egg Drop, where teams were given only 9 wooden skewers, 4 sheets of newspaper, and some scotch tape. They were asked to design something that would protect an egg from falling when dropped. The team whose egg dropped from the tallest height without being broken was the winner. Some of the teams came up with super interesting contraptions, but in the end all the eggs were broken.

In between lessons, we also played some team building games and had "electives" like American football, art class, music class and Mafia (the card game). The students made mini paper Christmas trees in art class, played guitar and bong drums in music class and ran around the gym in American football.

Photos taken during People-to-people are always hilarious.

The Christmas tree, designed by Shannon and Danny.

Kyle catching the football.

Another team challenge was to come up with a short 5-minute skit on leadership... the kids came up with a bunch of fun stuff ranging from a quiz game show featuring celebrities like singers Nastya and Potap vs.Tymoshenko/Yanokovych, a Mafia version of Winnie the Pooh, and singing "We all live in a green leader ship, a green leader ship, a green leader ship".

The quiz game show.

...which somehow involved a wheelbarrow race around the stage.

A music band where each member had a different skill.

Asking to join Don Pooh's Mafia family.

Crossing the river.

All in all, I think all of the students had a great time at camp! More information about ABC Camp can be found on the official blog at http://abccampukraine.blogspot.com/. My students asked me to organize a similar weekend camp at our Lyceum in the spring, so I'm planning on running a Camp HEAL weekend camp, focused on HIV/AIDS awareness and education training. I hope that this will inspire some of the students to come to Peace Corps summer camps with me next summer :)

Sightseeing around Ukraine with Himali!

2011-12-20T08:30:00.000-08:00

Last week, my old classmate and best friend Himali came to visit me from the States... Himali and I have known each other since the 7th grade, and she and I have just stayed in touch even though I moved away after 11th grade (and we went to different universities in different parts of the country). But anyways, she is traveling around Europe for a while because her brother is studying in Barcelona. She went to Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and then came to see me in Ukraine! She is going to Florence, Italy and then spending new years in Paris!

We found another church in downtown Kharkiv, near Pushinskaya St.

The beautiful Christmas tree in Kharkiv's freedom square.

Here are some photos from her trip to visit me, she was only here for 5 days so we hung out at my site, in Kharkiv, and in Kyiv. It was a short but action packed trip - I picked her up at the airport in Kyiv on Wednesday, then we took an overnight train back to my site and went to school on Thursday. We went sightseeing in Kharkiv on Friday and then took a train back to Kyiv on Friday night and walked around downtown Kyiv on Saturday. Himali got a little taste of what my life is like as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine!

Himali at the T. Shevchenko statue in my town's main square.

Our 2nd Shevchenko statue in front of the train station.

The traditional dress and celebratory bread of Ukraine.

The trident, one of the most famous symbols of Ukraine.

Posing on our train tracks.

Kharkiv is a city that I've come to love, I can roam around comfortably without getting lost now that I've been here for about a year... Its funny to think that almost exactly a year ago, I got horribly lost on the way to Kharkiv my first time (for the Christmas party) when I got on the wrong bus and went to another town in the opposite direction.

The Christmas tree inside the Kharkov train station has little tiny soccer balls as ornaments.

We walked around the city with my friend Alina, this is the famous mirror fountain in downtown Kharkiv.

Himali at the 50th parallel in Kharkiv.

An exhibition dedicated to famous actors, artists, and musicans in Kharkiv's Shevchenko park.

The main statue of Taras Shevchenko in Kharkiv, a famous Ukrainian writer.

Alina and I kicking the Metalist soccer ball!

A Central Perk cafe in Kharkiv's Constitution Square?

We walked around most of the major tourist attractions in Kyiv, including the 3 big churches and the huge underground shopping center Globos. We walked down St. Andrew's descent (the hill of souvenir stands near the Lavra - St. Andrew's cathedral) and Himali bought a bunch of traditional Ukrainian souvenirs such as the famous matroshka dolls, a decorated ceramic plate, some magnets, and some jewelry!

Kyiv's Independence Square.

Personally, I think Kharkiv's Christmas tree is prettier :P

The official EuroCup 2012 soccer ball in Globos.

I'm almost ashamed to say that I wish there was snow right now, its still a little bit too warm for snow so all we've got is mud on the streets. The first big snowfall is always really pretty because everything is frosted over, and I'm sad that Himali didn't get to see that. But I still had fun hanging out with her and showing her around Ukraine :)

Raising Awareness on World AIDS Day!

2011-12-04T03:15:00.001-08:00

I worked with my school psychologist to organize a small project at our school to help raise awareness for HIV/AIDS on World AIDS day, which is the first of December. As a member of the Peace Corps Ukraine HIV/AIDS working group, I am very passionate about educating Ukrainian youth about HIV/AIDS and especially trying to reduce stigma and discrimination by teaching accurate information about prevention and transmission. In Russian, World AIDS day is called День Борьбы со СПИДом, which translates to Day of Solidarity. Here is the poster that I drew and the true/false statistics that I prepared for school.

Translation - "Day of Solidarity: Overcoming HIV/AIDS and leading the world!"

True facts are in red and the false facts are in blue.

Together with the help of some of the 10th form girls, we presented some basic information about HIV/AIDS statistics and passed out the little booklets and flyers in Ukrainian and Russian to the students. The students from the 10th form attended a training several years ago about HIV/AIDS when the previous Peace Corps volunteer was at my school.

with the girls from 10th form.

Some 9th form girls with the booklets.

We also held a poster contest and asked each class to draw a poster, we will use some of the winning designs in our AIDS memorial mural (to be painted in the spring as part of my PEPFAR project). There was a surprising number of poster entries from the 5th-7th form classes, I am glad that they already have some knowledge about HIV/AIDS!

The boys from the 5b class and their posters.

with the girls from the 5a class.

with the girls from the 5b class.

Okay, so 5th graders love taking photos.

with 11th form girls.

11th formers with our school psychologist.

December is shaping up to be a really busy month for me, project wise... my sitemate and I have a weekend leadership camp planned for next weekend and then my best friend from middle school is coming to visit me the week after that! I'm currently in the process of writing a SPA grant for a Journalism club at my school and I'm also writing the partnership grant for Camp HEAL next summer, a camp about HIV/AIDS education, human trafficking, healthy lifestyles and leadership. I'll post the link to the grants once they are finished :)

Camp Unity: A Weekend Focused on Leadership and Multiculturalism

2011-11-30T03:12:00.001-08:00

Last weekend, I worked at my friend Alison's weekend camp at her school. She organized a weekend camp called Camp Unity and invited about 10 other Peace Corps Volunteers to work as counselors and teachers. The camp was a great success, we had kids from 7th-11th grade attend and divided up into 6 teams of about 10 students. Here are some highlights from the camp!

I led the Pink Team with my friend Avital (from Dnepropetrovsk)... guess who decorated our team room? I'm glad that Avital knows so many great team cheers, I'm embarrassed to say that I've forgotten a lot of cheers from my swimming days.

Props to Avital for the best team cheer!

Pink team and green team together at team time.

The first thing that we did with our campers was Living Libraries, which was great because they got to ask us questions about ourselves and we got to judge their level of English. I was glad that Alison asked her students to prepare some questions and impressed with what they came up with. I got asked some really great questions, such as what has been my most exciting moment in my life and what traditions do I have in my family.

Catherine sharing her experiences.

Showing photos of my family.

Next, we split up the teams and taught lessons. I taught a lesson about multiculturalism with Carolina and Ira. We talked about the difference between a stereotype and discrimination. It was really interesting to hear what the kids thought were different stigmas and stereotypes in Ukraine. We also had lessons on leadership, which included a really crazy team building challenge - the teams were given 25 balloons and a roll of tape, then asked to design a chair that would support the weight of 1 person. This turned out to be hilarious, I'm glad that Tiago found this challenge on YouTube :)

This was the most successful balloon chair - a round pouf designed by the counselors.

The kids found a loophole where they could also use their hands in addition to the balloons and tape.

In the afternoon, we had some game time where the kids were given the choice of art class, music class, playing Mafia (the card game) or playing American football outside. We also played some standard American camp games throughout the whole camp such as the Tram of Love, People to People, Hee-Ho-Ha, name games, etc.

Nathan leading "Hello, my name is Joe and I work at a button factory"

Boom-chicka-boom!

American football outside... thank goodness there isn't snow yet.

Music class with Tiago.

Art class with Danny and Shannon.

Mafia with Nathan and Catherine.

Anyways, I think that the camp was a great experience for Alison's students and I'm glad that I was able to be a part of it. I wrote a VAST grant for PEPFAR funds earlier this fall and I will be planning a camp focused on HIV/AIDS trainings for my 9th and 10th form students, and a 1-day seminar for my 11th form students in the spring... I hope my project turns out as well as this one!

Another Visit to a Village School

2011-11-19T00:39:00.001-08:00

I went to visit one another of the village schools in my rayon (district) yesterday with two of the English teachers from my Lyceum. Our town only has two schools, the Gymnasium and the Lyceum but there are about 10 or so small village schools. Some of the teachers work at multiple schools, my English teachers only work at this village school once a week. I visited one of the other village schools around Valentine's Day last year with another English teacher friend.

With my English teachers Liliya and Larisa.

This school was also small with an average of 5-8 students per grade level and only a handful of teachers. The kids were very nervous to speak English with a native speaker and some of them seemed almost shocked to meet a real live American. I visited 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 8th-11th grades while I was at their school. Some students asked great questions, like what is the difference between Ukrainian students and American students and they were all very curious to hear about the American educational system of grading and choosing your own classes.

The director of this school is a biology teacher and she has accumulated quite the collection of stuffed birds, fish, and other animals from her husband (who is a hunter). So the teachers proudly showed me their natural history musem, which happens to be the biology classroom. This classroom was PACKED with all these taxidermied animals and I was very impressed with how lifelike and well preserved the animals were.

Birds everywhere!

I think I would be too distracted by all these to be able to focus in this classroom...

They also showed me their school museum, including a display for the Young Pioneers (a youth group during Soviet times) and other old momentos from Soviet times. This kind of school musem is actually fairly common here, I've seen it at other schools along with traditional Ukrainian embroidered fabrics and costumes.

The Young Pioneers display.

The corner dedicated to The Great War (WWII).

In other news, it has already started snowing in Ukraine and I'm preparing myself for the winter ahead... not exactly looking forward to walking to school in the ice and snow, but at least the holiday season is coming up soon!

Happy Halloween!

2011-11-01T05:24:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I organized a Halloween party in Kharkiv and we had a great turn out of people who came to the party in great costumes! There weren't very many traditional American Halloween costumes like witches, ghosts, m&m's etc but some of the costumes were really original like the Super Mario brothers. I dressed in the traditional costume of an 11th form Ukrainian schoolgirl :)

Excited for Halloween!

Sam (my sitemate) came as a Jabbawockee from America's Next Best Dance Crew.

Mario and Luigi with the Princess!

Where's Waldo?

Pepsi promoter, a cowgirl, a carnival girl and the Statue of Liberty!

With a few other girls from Kharkiv Oblast - a black cat, a Lichtenstein, flapper girl and the Queen of Hearts.

A basketball team from Vinnytsia Oblast.

I miss Starbucks!

Living Libraries - Version 2.0

2011-10-24T01:21:00.000-07:00

Last week, my sitemate Sam and I organized a second round of the Living Libraries at both of our schools. Since we teach at the two different schools in the same town, we had one session of Living Libaries on Thursday at my school and then another session on Friday at Sam's school. We invited 5 Peace Corps Volunteers to come to our town and talk to our students. At my Lyceum, the volunteers met with students from 9th through 11th form.

All the PCVs and some Ukrainian students at Sam's school.

If you don't remember what Living Libraries is, it originally started out as an oral history project and it is now a project sponsored by the Multicultural Working group of Peace Corps Ukraine. The goal of the project is to provide a platform for volunteers to share about their different life experiences and spread diversity throughout Ukraine.

Laura Higgins shares family photos with some 9th form girls.

Brooks Harrison compares American football to Ukrainian soccer with 10th and 11th form boys.

Erika Hornli tells about traveling through Eastern Europe.

Joohee Lee shares about Korean culture with 9th grade boys.

Blakely Neff shows off landscapes from Utah to some 11th form girls.

Linnea Zielinski tells 10th formers about her internship at Glamour fashion magazine.

After Living Libraries at my school, we cooked fajitas in my new apartment. I moved to a 3 bedroom apartment at the beginning of October, and this was the first time that I've had visitors at my place :)

Laura, Liliya Nikolaievna, Sam, me, Erika, Joohee, Blakely and Linnea in my living room.

My friend Alison brought some of her 10th and 11th form students to our Living Libraries project. Her students are organizing a weekend leadership camp over Thanksgiving weekend and they are planning to have their own Living Library as well.

Linnea and I with the girls from Alison's school.

The girls with Joohee, Sam, Alison and Linnea.

527 Counter Trafficking Seminar

2011-09-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I successfully organized and held my 527 Counter Trafficking Seminar in downtown Kharkiv. I worked with my friend Natalia who works for the Kharkiv Red Cross office and as the Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) program Eastern Ukraine Alumni Coordinator to make this seminar happen. I had almost forgotten how much I love organizing events, this was my first seminar that I've run since I worked with the Georgia Tech Women's Leadership Conference over a year ago. Completing projects like these are what really make me feel like I'm having an impact and making a difference in peoples' lives here as a Peace Corps Volunteer :)

Natalia and I by the Red Cross banner.

What is 527, you may be asking? 527 is the Counter-trafficking and Migrant Advice Hotline developed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Mission in Ukraine. The hotline is advertised in all counter-trafficking information campaigns as a helpline providing advice and assistance to victims of trafficking or risk groups. Additionally, it is advertised in information campaigns targeting potential migrants as a helpline which provides information on the current realities and dangers facing Ukrainian migrants abroad, including human trafficking and the consequences of irregular entry and stay in foreign countries. By calling the hotline, Ukrainians can:

Be provided with information about how to travel, work, and study abroad safely and legally
Find out if the foreign employer offering work is a legitimate and legal source of employment
Know what legal, medical, psychological, and professional reintegration help is available to victims of trafficking through IOM and IOM Partner Organizations in Ukraine

We had 17 participants attend our seminar, all with a very high level of English and therefore we were able to teach this entire seminar in English! 8 other Peace Corps Volunteers from Kharkiv Oblast were able to come and help teach, which was awesome. This made it a great networking opportunity for everyone who attended the seminar - we were able to meet active Ukrainian university students and English teachers, and they were able to meet and get to know us.

Everyone at the end of the seminar, with our posters advertising 527.

The Ukrainian participants.

The Peace Corps Volunteers.

We taught a basic overview of human trafficking and included some specific statistics related to the situation in Ukraine. The goal of this seminar was to increase awareness of human trafficking and educate our participants on how to protect themselves from becoming victims of human traffickers. As an icebreaker, we did a blindfolded trust run, where volunteers were asked to run in between two parallel lines of people. Afterwards, we talked about trust and why trust is important in life. We discussed how 57% of traffickers are women, because people are more likely to trust women rather then men.

Natalia running down the hallway.

Next, we asked the participants to guess whether a statement about human trafficking was true or false. They were asked to move to the right side of the room if they thought the statement was true, and to the left if they thought it was false. It was interesting to see both sides defend their views, especially when some of the statments contained statistics that were surprising to the participants. For example, one statement was that "Ukraine is a country of origin and transit – not destination – for trafficking in human beings." This statement is FALSE, because Ukraine is all 3: a country of origin, transit, and destination.

Everyone debating one of the true/false statements.

We gave a general overview of the Who, What, Where, and How of human trafficking using the powerpoint slides provided by the Gender and Development Working Group of Peace Corps Ukraine. This covered where people are recruited by traffickers, how people may find job opportunities that are not legitimate, what jobs they are offered, who is most at-risk to be trafficked and how victims may escape. The participants were surprised to learn that many people become victims of trafficking when their own family or friends lead them to find opportunities that are not legitimate job or travel offers.

After the overview, the participants were asked to identify the different steps in the human trafficking process.

It was inspiring to see how our presentation impacted the participants - they were able to realize that human trafficking does not only involve women who want to become models and end up being trafficked into the sex industry - absolutely anyone who is interested in traveling or working abroad is also at risk for becoming trafficked. Many of them began to ask questions about how to tell if a job opportunity is legitimate or not, so we explained that there are different factors that contribute to a victim's helplessness (such as having their passport and official documents confiscated by the trafficker). We covered some tips on how to check if a company is legitimate and how to make sure that a job contract is real. To summarize the information covered in the seminar, we divided the participants into smaller groups and provided them with different tasks related to human trafficking.

The participants then presented their posters to the class. The first group presented an overview of the human trafficking process. The second group brainstormed on how human trafficking can be fought on a personal, community and national level. The third group came up with reasons why people potentially become victims of human trafficking and why women seem to be more at risk than men.

Group 1.

Group 2.

Group 3.

The last part of our seminar was the action component. To do this, we asked the participants to write information advertising the 527 hotline and about human trafficking on posters. We filmed a short public service announcement using these posters.. you can view our PSA on YouTube here! I apologize about the volume, the microphone on my little Canon PowerShot was clearly not meant for filming videos on busy streets. But we had fun filming the PSA and I hope that you enjoy it. Our video clips from Kharkiv will be submitted to the Gender and Development Working Group of Peace Corps Ukraine and they will compile a PSA with clips from everyone's 527 seminars from all over Ukraine to send to CNN later this fall!

Ed overseeing the poster-making.

Everyone and their posters (sorry its so far away, I wanted to show the scope of the Metalist stadium).

Everyone on the steps of the Sportivna Metro entrance.

We wrapped up the seminar by handing out certificates to all of the participants and giving them the resources to hold such trainings of their own on flash drives. I wish we had time to watch the MTV "Exit" video about human trafficking, but I was happy with all that we were able to accomplish in a short 4 hour seminar. And last but not least, here are the obligatory "funny" photos of the group :)

Showing off big "American" smiles.

Kharkiv Oblast PCVs rock!

More Info about the Counter-trafficking and Migrant Advice Hotline:

Dialing 527 is toll-free from Beeline, life :), Kyivstar and MTS mobile operators in Ukraine.

Dialing 0 800 505 501 is toll-free from landline phones in Ukraine (launched in 2006).

Kharkiv Metalist Football Game

2011-09-15T09:36:00.000-07:00

Its everyone's favorite time of the year.... football season! And I'm not just talking about American football or college gamedays, it is professional football (soccer) season here in Ukraine too. I went to a Kharkiv Metalist football game last weekend with a few other Peace Corps Volunteers from my oblast. Metalist is the name of the professional team here in Kharkiv, each major city in Ukraine has a professional team. One cool thing about living close to the 2nd largest city in Ukraine is that we have one of the better football teams :) Kharkiv will also host some of the EuroCup 2012 matches so we got a sneak preview of the renovated stadium.

Brooks, Sam, and Kyle.

We all bought some Metalist gear so we could fit in with the fans.

The Metalist Stadium is located at the Sportivna Metro stop. I thought this area would be much busier, since it is the location of one of the EuroCup stadiums but its actually fairly residential. There is a bazaar (open-air market) behind the stadium, but everything else around it is high rise apartment buildings. We tossed around an American football on the lawn across the street from the stadium, which drew some questioning looks from Ukrainians passing by but it was fun to hang out on gameday.

Can you believe how empty these fields are? These would be packed if this was a college gameday in America.

We got tickets all together and sat in the 5th row for only 40 griven - the equivalent of $5 USD!! How crazy is that? I can't believe that tickets to a professional sporting event were so inexpensive... after working for a year at Aspire with GT Athletics to sell football and basketball season tickets, such a low price seems crazy to me.

Whitney and I rocking our Metalist gear.

Everyone holds up their scarves like this.

See?

One thing that I thought was interesting - you know how in a college football stadium, the student sections traditionally sit on both endzones? At this Metalist game, there were also two specific cheering sections of hardcore Metalist football fans seated in the end zones. And they had someone who acted as a drum major and coordinated the stadium cheers, like when to raise the scarves and when to stomp/clap to a chant. It was a fun atmosphere and reminded me a lot of home!

All the fans holding up their scarves together.

The fans in the front holding up Metalist flags.

The sea of fans dressed in yellow jerseys, down at the other end zone.

Our group sitting together!

The game was Kharkiv Metalist vs. Arsenal Kyiv and it ended up being 0-0 in overtime. I hate to admit this, but the top team in Ukraine is probably the Donetsk Shaktars (coal-miners), followed by Dynamo Kyiv. I'm not sure if this was considered a big game or not, but there seemed to be a ton of football fans there. Its times like these that I wish I had one of those fancy DSLR cameras instead of my 6-year old Canon Powershot... but oh well, at least I have a working camera even if I can't take professional-quality sports photos haha.

Such a squeaky clean new stadium... have you ever seen a blue jogging track before?

Players marching out onto the field.

Me, Jillian and Whitney at halftime! I will miss my group 37 friends when they leave.

A corner kick?

PEPFAR Conference About HIV/AIDS Awareness and Education

2011-09-11T07:11:00.000-07:00

So I know its been a while since my last post, and I promised to upload photos from my travels with Annie... but things have been busy since school started. I had the opportunity to attend the PEPFAR conference with our school psychologist Irina Ivanovna about HIV/AIDS awareness and education. PEPFAR stands for President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and it is an international Peace Corps initiative.

With a few Ukrainian counterparts and Doug Teschner (our PC Country Director).

Ira and I in front of the banners :)

Ira and I with Andriy, the Peace Corps PEPFAR coordinator.

Last week, Irina and I joined about 25 Peace Corps Volunteers and their counterparts from their school or organizations in Kalamets-Podilsky for the conference. The sanatorium that we stayed at turned out to be a beautiful resort on a lake... western Ukraine is so green and pretty! We were lucky to have a few days of clear weather, we spent our coffee breaks outside enjoying the scenery and sunshine : )

Alex, Maria, Robin, Patrick and Kym.

Robin, Alex, me, Amanda and Abby.

Just stopping to smell the flowers.

Ira and I by the fountain.

with Abby and Amanda, the other counselors from Camp HEAL and OHALOW :)

No conference is complete without a jumping photo.

We spent a week learning about the biology of HIV/AIDS, methods of transmission, stages of infection, stigma and discrimination, and we also had a few very valuable language lessons on HIV/AIDS terminology in Russian. We also had a few guest speakers who came to tell us their stories as HIV positive individuals, one was an intravenous drug user (IDU) and one was a commercial sex worker. It was really interesting to hear about their firsthand experiences with living with HIV/AIDS in Ukraine and listen to their opinions about how Peace Corps Volunteers can work with our communities to help educate about HIV/AIDS.

PCVs learning about ways of transmission.

An joint session between PCVs and Ukrainian counterparts, working on a stigma/discrimination activity.

Learning about the different stages of HIV in a Russian language class.

I had a great time at the PEPFAR conference, and I think that Ira (my school psychologist) enjoyed it as well. It was great to meet other Ukrainian counterparts and talk to other volunteers about their different experiences working with organizations in their community. I am excited to start organizing a project at my own site, we are planning on doing a small presentation on December 1st, HIV/AIDS Awareness Day!

Eastern Europe Part 3: Auschwitz, Prague and Budapest

2011-08-05T01:18:00.000-07:00

Annie and I spent our second day in Poland taking a guided tour of Auschwitz, the old concentration camp located just outside of Krakow. Before the war, the buildings at Auschwitz were used as barracks for the Polish army. Auschwitz was the biggest death camp during the war, and over 1.3 million people were deported there during 1940-1945. The majority of the prisoners died in the camp from starvation, dysentery, other physical hardships from working 10 to 12 hours per day, or in the gas chambers. Here are some photos from our visit.

The entrance gate to Aushwitz.

The double electric fences that prevented prisoners from escaping.

The barracks where thousands of prisoners lived, most only survived for several months.

Bunks which became so overcrowded that 3 people slept on each bed.

The standing torture room where 4 people had to crawl through the little doors on their hands and knees , forced to stand for an entire night.

Registration documents for the prisoners.

A model of the gas chambers and crematorium (they were torn down before the Red Army arrived).

Eyeglasses - personal belongings were collected from the prisoners after they were sent to the gas chamber.

Shoes - the better quality goods were sent back to Germany or sold.

Our tour also included a visit to Birkenau, the other concentration camp built close to Auschwitz. Mostly women lived at Birkenau, and the living conditions there were much worse since the barracks there did not have heating during the winter.

The beds in Birkenau were converted horse stables.

The barracks at Birkenau.

The communal toilets - prisoners were only allowed to use them twice a day.

After Auschwitz and Birkenau, we took an overnight train to Prague. Prague is a beautiful city in the Czech Republic. A word of caution: be very careful of your stuff on overnight trains, especially since you have to share a compartment with complete strangers who may or may not speak the same language. I woke up in the morning when we got to Prague and found that my purse was gone... and nowhere to be found. I started freaking out because I had no passport, money, or ID and thankfully Annie and I were able to find my purse in the toilet of our train car. The thief had just taken the cash out of my two wallets and left everything else there, so I was extremely lucky to still have my passport, camera, phone, ipod, kindle, and credit cards there. I usually travel by myself on overnight trains in Ukraine, and I've never had a problem so I guess that I've just been lucky up until now. The moral of the story is that I will be much more careful about where I keep my purse and my cash when I travel on overnight trains.

Anyways, the rest of our trip to Prague was less eventful and we saw lots of gorgeous old European churches and buildings there. Prague is separated by the Vltava river and the famous St. Charles bridge connects the two banks. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that I was able to understand some words in Czech because it is also a Slavic language, though the spelling of their words in latin letters was a little confusing (I think it would have been easier for me to read if it was printed with cyrillic letters instead).

The streets of Prague are so quaint and cute.

One of the famous St. Edwards churches.

The astronomical clock.

Central square.

Annie and I plopping our Chacos down on the Meridian line.

On the bridge, with the view of half of Prague behind me.

A hot dog in a french baguette - best idea ever.

A giant lifeguard chair and penguins.

Annie and I on the riverbank.

I love modern art.

Annie with the modern art memorial to the victims of communism.

The view of the city from the top of the hill.

The other St. Edwards church.

Halfway up to the Prague Castle.

The changing of the guard at noon by the Prague castle.

A HUGE gothic church - this is only the side width view of it because we couldn't get the front into 1 photo.

Traditional Czech pastries!

The view from the Castle.

Walking down from the Castle.

After Annie and I Czech'ed out Prague, we took a 6 hour bus down to Budapest, Hungary. The bus was actually one of the nicest buses that I've ever been on, with plush leather seats, a little tray table, in-route coffee/tea and they even showed a few movies with English subtitles. Budapest is also a city separated by a river, one side of the Danube is called Buda and the other side is called Pest. Our first day in Budapest was bright and sunny, and our second day was very rainy so we were glad that we had walked around for like 8 hours and saw most of the sights the first day... we saw the Citadella, the Palace, the Fisherman's Bastion, and a few more places.

The view of Pest from the hill by the Citadella.

The "White" bridge, reminds me of San Francisco!

Annie and I at the fountain by the Palace.

On the bridge, with the Citadella in the background.

Annie and I in a tank by the bunker museum.

Georgy Arthur lived for 98 years from 1818 to 1916... can you imagine seeing so many technological developments!!!

The Basilica.

Annie at the Fisherman's Bastion.

Umm... hello?

The view of Buda from the Fisherman's Bastion.

The Palace.

Hungarian currency is crazy... the exchange rate is 180 Hungarian forents to $1 USD so we got ridiculously large bills from the ATM.

The Opera House.

The Synagogue.

We spent most of the second day buying our next train ticket at the train station and wandering around the House of Terror. The House of Terror is a museum dedicated to the victims of the fascist Hungarian Arrow Cross party and the time that Hungary was under Communist control. Another interesting thing about the museum is that it is located at the actual headquarters of the Arrow Cross Party, so some of the rooms had been preserved. Unfortunately, they didn't allow photos inside so we only took a few outside the musem.

The front of the House of Terror.

The Arrow Cross party and the Communist party.

A monument to the Iron Curtain.

A piece of the Berlin Wall.

And a giant cell phone that we saw along the way.

Next we are headed down to Slovenia! We will be there for a few days then continue our journey onto Belgrade, Sofia and Bucharest :)

Backpacking around Eastern Europe -Part 1: Kyiv, Lviv and Krakow

2011-08-04T00:07:00.000-07:00

About a week ago, my old roommate Annie from Georgia Tech flew from Atlanta to Kyiv to meet up with me and travel around Eastern Europe for a few weeks. I met her at the airport in Kyiv, which was a little bit scary because the flight came in about a half hour late and I started worrying that I had mixed up the date of her arrival or something. But I managed to find her by baggage claim and we started our journey by spending the night in Kyiv and seeing some of the famous churches there.

Annie in front of the St. Sophia's bell tower.

Annie in front of St. Michael's.

St. Andrew's church had some construction.

We had originally planned our next stop to be Warsaw, Poland but the overnight train ticket to Warsaw from Kyiv was ridiculously expensive (800 griven ~ $100) for our budget so we decided to travel to Lviv instead. Lviv is a beautiful city in western Ukraine, and I was excited to go there since I haven't really traveled west of Kyiv yet. We had to buy kupe tickets (second class sleeper cars with private compartments) for the train to Lviv since they were out of platzcart tickets (third class sleeper cars). When we got on the train, I was very surprised to see how new and clean the compartment was - we had our own mirror, sink, a few coat hooks, and AIR CONDITIONING. I was very impressed with it... we must have been riding one of the new EuroCup 2012 train cars!

HELLO from the top bunk!

Annie in the middle bunk.

The Lviv train station.

We walked around Lviv for a day and saw some of the famous sights... and then we ran into a bunch of the Peace Corps Volunteers from the Lviv oblast! They were actually staying in the same hostel that we were... small world! Another interesting thing about Lviv is that they speak predominantly Ukrainian there, whereas they speak predominantly Russian where I live in the east. So I got to practice some of the few basic Ukrainian words that I know (hello, goodbye, thank you, yes, no, and some train traveling vocab) haha.

The countdown to EuroCup 2012 in Lviv!

Annie and I in front of the old Opera House.

The small used book market by one of the Shevchenko statues.

Annie and I by the big Shevchenko statue.

Annie and the King.

Me and Ksenyia!! She and I are both from the SF Bay area and this is only the 3rd time that I've seen her in Ukraine since we went to different language training groups and then she went to live in the west and I went to the east.

From downtown Lviv, we took a small bus to Shegani, where Ukraine borders Poland. We followed a group of very nice Polish backpackers who showed us where we could walk across the border to Poland. This proved to be a very interesting experience, I had never just walked across a country border before. We passed through the exit customs on the Ukraine side without a problem, then found ourselves waiting in a massive group of people to go through the customs on the Polish side. We ended up waiting about 2 hours, but we made it safely across the border before it started raining. After crossing the border, we took a bus to the next town and then hopped on a 6-hour train to Krakow. In Krakow, the train station is connected to a huge 4-story mall and I was thrilled to see giant Walmart-like supermarkets and American fast food places like KFC and Subway!

Our marshrutka bus to the Ukrainian border town.

Annie eating her doner kebab in the mall food court.

OMG! I love grocery stores!

We settled into our hostel for the night and then went out walking around Krakow the next day. The weather was a little overcast and rain was drizzling, so some of the pictures had strange lighting. I really liked Krakow, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that everyone spoke English on the streets and in the shops.

Annie and I by the old main gate into Krakow.

Statues in the old square.

In front of the big gothic cathedral... it was so tall that the top of it got a little cut off from this photo.

A giant piece of a statue in the old town square.

Old town square (with the famous gothic cathedral shown fully).

These Polish bagels were sold on the streets everywhere so we decided that we had to try them!

The church of Saints Peter and Paul.

The church inside the Wawel Castle.

Look, one of Krakow's twin cities is San Francisco!!

While we were in Krakow, we walked over across the river to see Schindler's Factory, the inspiration for the movie Schindler's List. Annie and I spent our second day touring Auschwitz and Birkenkau, the former concentration camps located in Krakow. It was really incredible to see all the artifacts preserved from the second world war, and it was sombering to see how awful the living conditions were for all of the people that were kept there. I will post photos from these two places in my next post, along with photos from Prague. We are in the beautiful Hungarian city of Budapest now, and we will travel down to Slovenia next!

Camp HEAL and Camp OHALOW!!

2011-07-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

I just got back from 2 weeks in the Sums'ka Oblast, where I worked at Camp HEAL and Camp OHALOW - two camps sponsored by the HIV/AIDS working group in Peace Corps. Both camps were awesome and I had a ton of fun working with kids during lessons about HIV/AIDS, healthy lifestyles, project design/management and leadership skills. Camp HEAL was for children ages 16-22 and Camp OHALOW was for younger children, from ages 8-16.

Both camps were a huge success and I loved having the opportunity to work with the older kids and teach lessons all in English, which was very impressive. The younger children were very sweet and energetic and I got to practice my Russian language skills with them. Here are some photo highlights from Camp HEAL! I don't have all the photos from OHALOW yet so I will post some of those up later this summer when I return from traveling.

The boys painted themselves up in their team colors for our field day.

The girls are ready for the water balloon fight!

Me with a few of the campers who were university students.

One of the girls focused on her tie-dye shirt.

Teaching everyone how to scrunch up their shirts in the spiral pattern for tie-dye.

Jonathan teaching about the biology behind HIV/AIDS.

Campers cross the river during a team building activity.

Campers presenting their own project ideas.

The "tram of love" song on the sports field.

Running the 3-legged race.

Playing bear/ninja/hunter on the field (like rock, paper, scissors but more intense).

Jumping into the pool.

All of the participants at Camp HEAL.

Performing a skit about HIV/AIDS.

One of the campers singing a traditional Ukrainian song at the Talent Show.

Some of the campers danced to Soldier Boy's "Crank That" at the Talent Show!

The Peace Corps Volunteers who worked as counselors and directors of Camp HEAL!

Anyways, sorry for the post being mostly photos... being away at camp for 2 weeks has been really tiring and the photos are awesome. I will be at my town for a few days and then headed off to the Russian Language Refresher camp hosted by Peace Corps and then out of the country for some travelling with my old college roommate Annie :D I am not bringing my computer with me on my travels so the next post won't be until August, but I promise to have some great photos ready for then!

Sasha's World Map Project

2011-06-18T00:26:00.000-07:00

This past week, I've been helping my friend Sasha with the World Map Project at her school. Due to some schedule changes, my own camp was canceled this week at my school and my teachers allowed me to travel to Sasha's town. There are many different ways to paint a World Map, here is a link to my blog post about when I helped with my friend Alison's World Map project. This time, instead of painting on wallpaper, we used the Peace Corps world map manual and followed their guidelines for a grid method and painted the continents instead of every individual country - that way the map will stay more current, as more new countries are created (such as South Sudan). Here is a photo of our finished World Map!

Our map of the world, with handprints from the students and PCVs who helped us make it happen!

Sasha had help from a few other Peace Corps volunteers with her project, and the first step was to prime and paint the wall blue for the ocean. The day before camp started, Sasha measured out a 2m by 4m rectangle on a wall behind her school's sports gym. After measuring out the rectangle and painting it blue, Sasha, Margo and Samantha spent the first day of camp preparing the kids to draw grid-style by using the worksheets provided in the manual.

Samantha and Sasha teaching about how to draw maps using the grid technique.

Sasha and I talking about how we will paint the world by continents.

On the second day of camp, after practicing on the gridding worksheets once more, we went outside and drew a grid of over 1,500 squares that each measured 7cm by 7cm. This was not a simple task since most of the kids only brought little 6-in rulers, but we were able to get the grid drawn accurately with the help of some teachers' meter-sticks.

Measuring out squares on the grid.

Accuracy is important!

Me with Kate and Oksana.

Sasha starting the grid lines on the top of the map.

Working with the meter stick really helped keep the lines even and straight.

After drawing the grid, the next step for the third day of camp was to outline the continents in pencil. We only had about 10 students, so we divided them up into groups and assigned them each to sections of the map. According to the manual, there are 18 sections of the map, but the bottom 3 sections are mostly ocean and Antartica. The most difficult section of the map was the area where Europe, Asia, and Africa were all in the same square. We spent a lot of time on creating an accurate and recognizable contour for as much as the map as we could. we had the kids outline each continent in Sharpie permanent marker. We decided that outlining the continents would make painting go much easier since the basic shape would already be drawn clearly on the wall.

The students drew carefully on the wall, according to the numbered squares in the grid.

Igor (an English teacher) working on finishing Asia while I am drawing the Peace Corps logo.

Sasha using blue paint to "edit" where the students accidentally outlined the Rio Grande instead of Texas haha.

On the fourth and last day of camp, we started out the day by mixing concentrated colors into white paint. The kids loved recycling their popsicle sticks and getting their hands a little bit dirty. We painted each continent a different color, and then outlined the continents in black paint. Here are a few photos of the progression of painting :)

We added concentrated color to white paint.

Mixing the paint.

Most of the kids outlined the continents again in paint anyways, before they painted the middle with larger brushes. Each kid had their own technique of painting, and since we only had 9 students, almost all of them got to paint their own continent!

Lilia painting Australia.

Kate outlining South America.

Washing their hands off in the water bucket.

After getting started painting, we were all really exciting that the map was actually taking shape on the wall. Asia, Europe and North America needed a lot of small details to be painted in carefully.

Sasha is so proud of her students!

Kate painting in Africa.

Vika painting carefully around North America.

Oksana helping Kate with South America.

Bogdan painting the Pacific Islands around Australia.

Yulia preferred to use her fingers to paint in details instead of a paintbrush, which was very interesting but turned out quite well... to each their own!

Yulia working on Europe.

Sergei, Lilia and Bogdan working together on the wall.

A few hours later, we had made a lot of progress on the map! All of the students were very proud of their work and their teachers were just as excited to have such a beautiful map on the wall.

Putting the finishing touches on Europe and Asia.

The map is almost finished!

After the map was finished, the kids all painted their hands and put their handprints on the wall next to the map. We took a few photos with the map and then called it a day!

Lilia and her purple hand.

Serhiy writing his name on the wall.

The trail of handprints on the right side of the map, plus the Peace Corps logo that I drew.

Sasha, Dan, Thomas and me.

Me and the world :)

Overall, this project was great and I was so glad to be able to help Sasha out with it at her school. I definitely want to do this project at my school in the fall, maybe I can show my teachers these photos and convince them to let me paint on the wall in the hallway by the English classrooms!

Kharkiv EuroClub Volunteer Seminar

2011-06-12T06:54:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, one of my fellow English teachers and I attended a seminar about Volunteer movement among youth at School No. 65 in Kharkiv. The seminar was the first of its kind, led by the organization EuroClub. EuroClub is a popular after-school activities club focused on studying European countries and they host different events throughout the year. Many schools participate in EuroClub events and I plan to start a EuroClub at my school in the fall!

Everyone present at the seminar!

There were members of about 10 different volunteer organizations present at this seminar, and teachers from about 15 different EuroClubs located in Kharkiv and Sumy Oblast (Sumy borders Kharkiv to the west). I was excited to meet the president of Kharkiv's AIESEC organization and I was impressed to meet a Ukrainian university student who had lived and worked as a volunteer in India through AIESEC.

The Ukrainian teachers and representatives from different volunteer organizations.

Here is a photo of the representatives from Svit Ukraine - an organization which sponsors volunteers to come to work on projects and camps in Ukraine from different countries. They currently have 2 volunteers in the Kharkiv area and others scattered around the country, such as in Donetsk.

Two of Svit Ukraine's volunteers: Caroline from France (far left) and Hank from Germany.

I was invited to represent Peace Corps at this seminar by my friend Oksana, one of the Ukrainian English teachers. They asked me to say a few words about Peace Corps in Russian, so thankfully I had brought along a piece of paper with some PC statistics and history from our Language Manuals.

I started out my speech by apologizing for butchering the endings since I only studied Russian for 3 months here.

It was really interesting to see what local volunteer organizations do in Ukraine, and to hear about some of their projects. Luckily this seminar was presented in Russian (and not Ukrainian), so I could understand most of what was going on.

The school director spoke a few minutes to welcome us all to her school and to begin the seminar.

After each of the organizations introduced themselves, we had a mini "press-conference" where some representatives from the different organizations sat on stage and the audience was permitted to ask us questions. The questions that came from the audience were thought-provoking such as how do different countries view volunteering and in what professional spheres are volunteer opportunities available. These questions were interesting to me as well, since I have little knowledge of what volunteerism is like in France, Germany or even in Ukraine - most international people (outside of other Peace Corps volunteers) that I meet in Ukraine are university students or working here, not volunteers.

The "press conference" panel of volunteers.

The seminar also included some time for the students to attend breakout sessions and come up with their own project ideas for volunteers in Kharkiv and in Ukraine. After the breakout sessions, the students came back to the main auditorium and presented their ideas to everyone. This was great because the students were able to recieve feedback from actual volunteer organizations, which gives them more of a chance to take the intitative and actually launch their own projects in the future.

I have a few weeks off from work now, then I'm headed off to Camp HEAL in Sumy Oblast in July! Happy travels and have a great summer everyone :)

Ukrainian-Style Graduation, Camp at School and Eating Chinese food

2011-06-05T07:38:00.000-07:00

My school finished its classes on Thursday May 26th, and I got to see what Ukrainian school graduation ceremonies are like. On Friday May 27, we had a huge ceremony for the graduating seniors in front of the school which is called a "Linneka", or a line. Here are some photos from the graduation day : )

The students line up with their classes from youngest to oldest.

The 8V class.

The graduating 11A and 11B class marched out 2 by 2, dressed in the traditional black and white school uniforms.

The graduating class walked all around.

The graduating seniors performed a few dances.

In Ukraine, the last day of school is traditionally known as the "Last Bell." The tradition is for a pair of the oldest student and the youngest student to walk around the Linneka, while ringing a big old-fashioned bell.

An 11th form and 1st form student walk around, ringing the "last bell".

On Saturday, May 28th, my school had the official "school-leaving party" at the auditorium in our House of Culture. Ukrainians traditionally dress very formally for this party - girls wear nice evening gowns and fancy hairdos and boys wear suits, similar to what Americans would wear to their prom.

The auditorium was decorated and looked very fancy for the party!

After classes at my school finished, we started what is known as "Practika," or a few weeks of practice and final exams for 9th and 11th formers. During these few weeks, I am working with my English teacher's 8V class. My goal for this camp was to teach a series of cultural studies lessons about different countries from around the world and partner it with the World Map project, but I've been having logistical difficulties with figuring out where to find funds for the paint so unfortunately the map will be postponed until the fall.

Our opening day photo.

The student enjoyed games in the school gym.

We threw around an American football outside.

The kids loved football.

The school had a sidewalk chalking contest and several girls from 8V won.

I spent this past weekend in Kyiv to attend the HIV/AIDS and Technology for Development working group meetings. We got a lot of logistics and planning done for Camp HEAL and Camp OHALOW, two of the summer camps that I am working at this summer. I had fun hanging out with the other techies in Peace Corps and going to lunch at a Chinese food place! I miss eating Chinese food :(

The entrance to the restaurant.

My sweet and sour pork.

Nicole got seafood lo mein.

Danny got a big bowl of soup with beef and vegetables.

Springtime in Ukraine: Shaslik and Healthy Lifestyles/Sports Day

2011-05-20T00:56:00.000-07:00

Springtime is finally here in Ukraine and the weather has been beautiful! Everywhere that was previously covered in ice and snow when I got here in the winter is now green and blooming :) I went to visit my friend Alison in her town and we went with a few friends to cook Shaslik, aka meat skewers over an open fire. Before we cooked the meat, we had to gather our own firewood and build a pit for the fire.

Vadim starting the fire from small pieces of paper and wood.

Tiago rolled over a log for us to sit on.

The view of the river.

So calm.

Heading into the woods to gather some wood for the fire.

I have two small trees in my hands haha.

Alison and I put the meat on the skewers.

Our skewers of meat, onions, and cucumbers (sounds strange, but it was what Alison had in her fridge and it actually turned out okay).

Our school year has gone by so fast! We are finishing up the last two weeks of classes now, with graduation for the 11th form on May 28th. However, the 9th and 11th graders have all of their final exams during June. And I will be running a mini-camp for my English teachers 8th form for the first half of June. In the midst of all of our standardized end-of-the-year exams, my school decided to have a Healthy Lifestyles and Sports day. The 5th through 10th forms participated in different competitions around the school grounds.

Girls from the 8A class chalk about being healthy.

6B draws different environmental things related to health.

The sports competitions were great and very different from the typical field day games that are held at schools in America. For example, they had soccer-related games instead of things like the egg toss and wheelbarrow race.

A pullup competition.

The first part of the relay race was dribbling a soccer ball around basketballs.

The second part of the relay race was dribbling a basketball.

After the sports competitions, all the students and teachers walked to have a kasha cook-off. Kasha is a type of cereal that is small yellow grains that look like dried grits, but taste bit softer when cooked, like oatmeal. The picnic area was right behind the stadium, which is located right next to our school.

Me with Olena and Dasha from the 5A class.

Kasha is traditionally boiled in a pot over an open fire with potatoes, meat, and spices.

The kids were having fun playing volleyball outside.

The girls from 8V with the sandwiches that they prepared.

My counterpart Alina and the school nurse tasting the kasha from 8V, as the jury.

The boys from 5A class made their version of a human pyramid.