Week One- DONE!

Whew! What a rough week! I'm not used to waking up at 6:45 in the morning for anything, nonetheless class. I feel like I'm in high school again! For those of you who totally skipped reading previous entries, I live about an hour's walk from Russian class. Class starts at 8:30. Meaning I leave the house at 7:30, because I want to walk as many places as possible (get some exercise, you know?). That means that I probably walk about 4 miles a day. Which also means that those "when I was your age, I had to walk 4 miles every day in the snow to school" stuff won't work on me anymore, because I've been there, done that.

Anyways, so the first week of training is done. It's interesting, to say the least. First off, out of the 50 Community Development volunteers, there are about 10 that are under 35. Which in and of itself is a little bit of an issue, because the rest of the people are older and retired and can't hear very well and need things repeated about 20 times. AND, aren't catching on. . . to anything. I try to cut them some slack because honestly, I think it's very admirable and great that they're doing the Peace Corps at their age, but sometimes I just want to go up and make sure they understand what exactly is going on and what they (and we) are doing here. It's a generational gap, I know, and I know I'm not being as tolerant as I should be, but I just wanted to share my frustration.

That's number one. Number two- Politics of the Peace Corps Ukraine and training. So the trainings are run by Ukrainians. I get why (because they know Ukrainians better than anyone), but at the same time, there are no American counterparts whatsoever helping facilitate trainings. Which means that when one of the trainers says, "I know how you feel to be a volunteer in a foreign place", and of course they don't, it leaves a bit of a sour taste in your mouth. Not to mention that the entire time that they are trying to tell us to keep an open mind about Ukrainian culture and not to judge or compare to American culture, they sure do a lot of judging and comparing. They have these awesome preconceptions that all Americans are a certain way, and are often surprised if you're not, in fact, that way. And, to make things even more frustrating, they talk to us like we're idiots. I feel very conceded for saying this, but the training part of this week (language class excluded) is seeming very elementary. Granted it's only the first week, but still. There's a lost of "what is a community, and how do we organize it" discussion, which I'm sure is helpful to some people who have never done this sort of work before, but actually kills brain cells for others. I'm tempted to speak up and suggest maybe splitting the class into two groups (and advanced and less advanced group), but I'm scared of getting red flagged on the first week. My friend Rachel and I keep joking about how one or both of us are going to get kicked out pretty quick for speaking our mind.

And somehow, in lieu of all of these frustrations with the trainings, I'm still loving being here. Chirnigiv itself is a pretty cool town. Rachel's host sister's 21st birthday is tomorrow night so she invited all of our cluster (5 of us in total) to go out with her and her friends tomorrow night. That should be super fun. Plus I think I'm going to explore the caves that are underneath the city on Sunday. AND, I still heart my language teacher, who is so Western in thought that she could almost be American. I've definately found people to hang out with and be comfortable and myself around, and am starting to not only learn my way around the city, but learn Russian as well. I can read and even say some sentences! In only the first week! Eat that Spanish (for those of you who remember my 5 year battle with Spanish that ended in me getting kicked out of class and never coming back, this is going much, much better).

One more note: I've been told by many people, Ukrainian and American, so just keep my mouth shut about my constructive criticism towards the program, get through training, and all will be well. Any takers on starting a pool to see how long the "shutting my mouth" thing will last? Anyone? Anyone?