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April 2005 |
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26th |
Today was “Mental Health Day”. It sounds a little lame but what it really is, is a chance for a larger number of groups to get
together and talk about our experiences.
At first I thought it was a waste of time because we spent all morning
doing Yoga and Meditation exercises.
But even though I do not get anything out of those exercises I found
the program to be helpful because it allowed me time to think about my
feelings and realize that everyone here is pulling for Life in the
In general I think it will give us a better comfort level
with the language because it has been very easy to lapse into English whenever
we felt like it instead of trying to communicate in Russian. Today though I feel very
unprepared for class. We had one day
of class, one day of Medical meetings, and tomorrow we are off to I guess that it is so hard to tell old dad/granddad hi in the busy life back home. Well more later. Mark |
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23rd |
The word is Old.
I met some great people. Their expectations are realistic and their goals are attainable. I spoke with some volunteers when they got back and the biggest problem seemed to be expectation control. One volunteer was told that their job was to bring Democracy to the town. Another told me that they were expected to build a market base for the town and surrounding area. Mine are easy. 1. Set up a business resource center for the libraries readers. 2. Build a foreign language library 3. Set up a set of lesson plans for high school students to learn about American business practices. That’s it. Ok I
have to find the resources myself and put them together but really not a bad
set of goals. When I am bored and
looking for something to do I can teach Business and Computer English in the
library to anyone that wants it. Teach
English to the staff. Let’s be
real. I am glad about one thing. My new boss told everyone that I am not
allowed to teach English until they teach me Russian, so that will help with
my language problems. It seems that a
lot of the previous volunteers to On another note. Now I need to Study.
Russian is calling me. I guess
that may be because I am listening to My goal is to find out more about the music here. I have run into two instruments I want to know more about already and it seems that the accordion is a big instrument here, and they make it sound great. I have heard several students play and if they can play that good I can not wait until I can hear a real player take the stage. After we arrive in |
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14th |
Today we are back where it all started in We listened to the list of locations for our fellow volunteers, the youth development people are going to school (16), palaces of culture (4), youth center (1) and orphanages (3). Those of us in the business track are going to women’s business centers, small business centers, workers unions, relocations centers and two of us are going to work in libraries. That’s right, The Director of the library is very interested to turning the library into a modern research center for the community. We can do this by: Teaching English to the staff and members of the library. Teach IT skills to the staff and readers. Help find sponsors to bring in resources and books. Write grants to create the resource center and bring in internet access. Right we will be lucky to do all of that but what the heck, we’ll try. The only thing different about Virginia write up is that she is assigned to the children’s library and she gets to teach IT to children with special needs instead of running the resource center. The library consists of 19 libraries with 1.6 million volumes, and two computers. We will not see the library until next week so I will write more about it later. Right now the information you are all waiting for. Where. We are headed to one of the oldest towns in We will have a lot more to say after our trip but for now I just needed to get that information out. Any help from our librarian friends or relatives would be appreciated. I feel that for a while I will be the internet resource center as I look information and prepare it for the community. Any thoughts or opinions on grants or sources that would be willing to help me out go ahead and send. Web sites or information what ever. The town we are going to is between 150,000 and 171,000 depending
on who you ask. Most of the citizens
consider themselves Russians living in That’s our briefing; we’ll give you the reality when we get back. Mark |
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10th |
Another Saturday Night and I ain’t got no… Well I guess it’s Sunday so that dose not
matter. It is beautiful here right
now, spring has sprung and the world is in bloom. If it can be green it is and to add to that
it is clean up time in Wednesday we will find out where we are going and it will
most likely be after our trip that we will be able to post where that is so
do not be surprised if we can not tell you until after the 21st of
April. We go to the coordinators
conference on Wednesday and they will tell us, then on Thursday we will meet
with our coordinator from that town.
The coordinator may or may not speak English, the town may or may not
ever have been visited by an American but it will be fun. Then we work with our coordinator for a day
or two before boarding a bus/train and heading out to our future home. The time spent at the site will be
determined by the distance away from We have been working on our language skills and in class it just does not seem to be sinking in, but this weekend we had many conservations with various people and they seemed to go alright so I feel better. Today our host family had visitors right after lunch so we headed back to the table for more food and conservation. We showed pictures to everyone and we were grilled about our family, our education, our motivation and the color of our underwear, well that was a joke of course, but it seemed to be a comprehensive grilling. This whole country is all about family. The language class spent one whole week on words to describe family and at the time I thought it was a waste of time. Right now I’m glad that I learned how to say my sister’s second cousin’s daughter because it sure came in handy today. I am working on my introduction speech tonight. I have already written it but not I have to translate it into Russian so that my instructor can go over it before I give it. No matter how hard I try, I am very likely to tell that big group of future coworkers that I have a drunken family instead of a large family or that my Brother is green instead of a tree surgeon and the fact that my sister is a library will surely bring down the house. They already think I am weird because I have two papas and three mamas’ but my host family knows all about all of you and they can not wait to meet you when you come. Speaking of coming, feel free. Allow yourselves plenty of time to get your
passport and visa and scout out good plane fares but once you are here and
out of the capital, it is very inexpensive.
The local hotel is quite nice and has satellite TV and most of the
extras but costs a whopping 50 grivinia a day. Go back to March’s sidebar and remember that
a grivinia is worth about 18 cents each so that makes the hotel a very
expensive place at twenty dollars a night.
Transportation to Transportation is available and fairly easy to get but standing is a definite possibility on the shorter trips and walking is required for the in town transportation. We have not used a taxi as yet but they should be somewhere in that price range. The Peace Corps tells us that we are not allowed to travel very far away from our site for the first three months or the last three months but we should be able to arrange for time off most of the rest of the year. Every one here is involved with some kind of summer camp so check with us for dates before you come as that will be a required event. Tomorrow we travel to |
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6th |
I got to upload I have to remember that this period of time is a learning period. What we are here to do is learn Russian and discover the problems that we will encounter when we get to our permanent site. The layers of people that get in the way of your work, how you have to follow the steps to get anything done. What I have learned is that I will be frustrated much of
the time here in It seems that the major problem here is not with the
equipment that they have nor with the ability of the teachers but with the
system they have inherited. It is
cumbersome and restrictive from our point of view but they have used it for
many year and they have turned out many talented students. Some of the best programmers in the world
come from Now for other stuff. The time is coming neigh when we will find out where we are going. At this time next week we will be packed and ready to leave for the coordinators conference and the site visit. April 13th-16th will see us back at the training site we started at. During that time we will be introduced to our future coordinators and told were we will be working. Then from the 17th – 21st we will travel to our future site and visit the town and our job site. We will stay with the second host family and hopefully find the time to set up a post office box so we can receive mail. Right now we can receive mail through the Peace Corps but it goes through the Embassy mail room so it is opened before it gets to us. I’m not sure what they are looking for but since 911 they said it has gotten worse. Please if you are writing to us use the mail address for the Peace Corp until told to do anything different. When we get a box for our mail we will be able to receive packages but remember that we will be living with someone else until September. Well I have to get back to homework so I will sign off for now. I have to write a story in Russian using an odd list of words the teacher provided. I have been working on learning to type in Russian on the computer. I come home each day from class and transcribe the notes into the computer using Russian and English. They look very neat that way and some times it helps me remember the words better but it is a lot of work. Right now I know the keyboard in Russian as well as I do in English but since I have to look at each word for spelling, I can not type very fast. Writing the story requires two notebooks, a dictionary, and my computer notes as well as asking my wife her opinion on the case usage of the word. Ok, I’ll include my story here so you can enjoy the tale. Мой жена
очень
нравится
путешествовать. Она
часто ездит
в поезд. Я
кнпл мой жеиа
подарок два
билеты на
поезд
Одесса на пятнадцатый
июня.
Эти
сральный
вагон.
Я надежда она
получала
сама. Я
класл
шоколад, пиченьеы,
сирь и хлеб в
пакет на
путешествовать. Я надежда не дождь. What it says is: My wife likes to travel very much. She often travels by train. I bought my wife a present of two first
class tickets on the train to All nominations for a
literary award will be laughed at so do not bother. I was happy just to get it written. Bye for now |
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3rd |
Ok, it’s been a week.
That is a bad habit to get into and one that I will try very hard to
get out of. It’s just that since I
know that I can not upload I tend to wait until I might be able to
upload. Alright, back to current
events. Time is still full of things
to do but somewhere during the last week it seems that time shifted to other
things and the thoughts that I will be able to do some extra things here in Tuesday I will be meeting with the School’s IT people to
find out what is available to the teachers in the schools. I have been working up a PowerPoint
presentation that uses graphics and other media to teach simple English. Just before I left There is a church Organization here in town that has its
roots in We had our last job interview last week. It seems that we filled out all of that paperwork about ourselves and our backgrounds only to come here and go through a job placement interview. They have a location in mind but you have a chance to talk about your resume and put a true spin on it. The resume that they request when you enter Peace Corps was comprehensive to say the least. It listed every job we have ever had and that is what they used to set our preliminary site. This interview allowed us to give our thoughts on each job and list those that we did not ever what to do again. It was good for me because listing Television Production and instructing Television production on the resume left out the parts that I like. I mentioned that I had heard that the Peace Corps Ukrainian was looking for an editor for a current project and I wanted to be considered regardless of where I was stationed. That got a reaction and the next day I received a phone call from the Deputy Head of Country with a request to cut down a 30 minute tape to several :30 sec. commercials and a ten minute infomercial. I said Yes and even though I have not sworn in as yet I now have an official job with the Peace Corps. Well that will have to do for now and maybe I can upload tomorrow. I need to get back to Reviewing my case rules. This week we get to add another case as if the 5 we already have are not enough. В
году четыре
времени
гола: весна,
лето, осень,
зима? What is your favorite season of the year: spring, summer, fall, or winter? Just a little practice typing and hopefully to impress you with just how bad my Russian is. Mark |
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T