February 2005

28th

 

We got the luck of the draw which ever way you look at it.  We are still in Chicago and will be leaving tomorrow.  Today we walked to the Art Institute and toured the exhibits.  Stopped at a few stores on the way back and enjoyed a leasurely day repacking, and repacking, and repacking, watched a little TV and fought a virus infection on my computer.  Now with the virus taken care of we are updating our journals and getting ready to go in the morning.  We will be out of the loop for at least a week as we learn enough language to get to an internet café and get logged on. So that’s it for a few days.  See you next month.

27th

 

Staging is over.  All of the names on an E-mail list are now familiar and I have met some very nice people.  They gathered from all over the United States and it was very surprising to me just how diverse the group was.  We had a very good training session, an evening or two to enjoy Chicago’s finest foods and a long flight to look forward to.  Life is good  and just going to get better

22nd

Presidents day, storage room moved, boxes packed, almost everything done.  Well at least it feels better right now.  Tomorrow we load up the van for the dump run, pack out the garage so Jim’s proposed sports car will fit in later and go bowling.  Wednesday morning we are going out for that southern breakfast of grits and the associated stuff that goes with it.  We then head out to Greenville to enjoy the morning and drop Jim off at the airport.  We head home to finalize the packing wed afternoon and Thursday before heading out Friday morning. 

For my birthday I received today a two disc set and book on the Ukrainian language that I can listen to as I walk and work.  It should help me.  Then I received a book called Culture Shock, Ukraine.  It is very interesting and gets into attitude and humor that makes me feel like I might just fit into the culture just fine.  The neck flicking stuff is unusual to say the least and I can not see myself getting into that but you never know.  A friend of ours told us about that this weekend and I was not sure if I believed him but if it is written down it must be so, Right.  We shall see.

Back to enjoying a little TV.

 

20th

The day is getting close.  Yesterday was my birthday and we went out for a good steak.  I was disappointed with both the service and the preparation of the steak.  I had never had bad service or food in an Outback before but last night was very disappointing to say the least.  It is a shame that it will be my last experience for quite a while and I will have to remember them badly. 

Enough of that.  The preparation is smoothly running along, Jim is here to get setup for his moving in so we did all of the utilities and such on Friday.  He did throw us a slight curve because the room we stored the junk in was a room he would like to use.  I’m glad he told us in time and it really allowed us to pack the room up better because we had gotten a little sloppy in our packing.  We had just shoved it into the room to get it out of the way.  Putting it in some kind of order would have been harder than moving it.

A note of fun.  I took someone’s instructions off the e-mail to turn this computer into one that typed in the Ukrainian script.  It looked great but I never could figure out what was what on the computer keyboard.  I got up to do something else and the computer went to sleep.  When I got back it asked me for my password but would not accept it, I tried everything I could think of, I even tried the other accounts that I had set up on the machine.  Finally I rebooted the machine to find the same results.  Eventually I figured out that I no longer could type my password so I dug out my password removal program and stripped the computer of all passwords.  That worked but I had to change back to English and reinstall all of my passwords.  Next time I try that I will set up an account with no password protection just so I can get back in to fix it.

My last day at work was the 17th and it was the hardest thing I have had to do in a very long time.  I feel like I abandoned my program, my kids, my students, and my friends.  It was very hard to do and I do not want to do it again, but I know I will have to because it is a fact of my life, I move on eventually.  I thought that this location would be different because we bought our first house, we were older and ready to settle and just because I wanted to delude myself.

The leaving brings home with crashing reality the looming date to leave.  I am ready to get there but the leaving is still hard, once I turn the car keys over at the airport and move in to wait for the plane, it will be better, until then I am still getting ready.  Once I reach the airport I will be ready, or else I won’t have what I need and it will not matter. 

Yesterday I put together cords and made sure that each electric item had what it needed when it got there; man that is a lot of cords.  I found that by doing it that way I was able to get rid of some cords due to duplication but I still have too many to feel comfortable with.  I just know that security will have a field day with this bag because of the wires and boxes of electronics that it contains.  I think the banjo belly in there will have them in fits.

Well the rest of the house is getting up and I must have my coffee so I will write later.

14th

Today is Valentine’s day and it has been too long since I last wrote.  We have been very busy getting ready to go. The day gets closer and the list seems to just get longer; then the PC advisor has the nerve to tell me I should be spending an hour each day on the language CD.  My problem with the CD is that it is only available when I sit at the computer and I can not sit at the computer every day for that extra hour.  If this program had an audio only portion I would be in heaven studying 5 hours a day.  I have enormous amounts of time to listen as I walk the dog or work on restoring the aging computers at work to their best behavior. 

Somehow it feels like I will never get ready to go.  I can not seem to get the house packed up, the garage is ready, the picking and choosing is taking forever, The house sitter (My friend Jim) is coming in two days and we are ready for him but not ready to leave.  He comes Thursday; leaves on Wednesday we come home and finish packing on Thursday to leave on Friday morning, ready or not.  Next week will be a real storm of paperwork, packing, repacking, and of course partying.  I am looking forward with great joy to this coming week. 

This entry is more of a ramble then I like but I am going to leave it in.  I packed up the truck last week and put the camper on it.  Sewed a cover for it and put it on blocks for the next two years.  The jeep cover is made but it will not go up on blocks until next week.  The van is the easy part because we are donating it to South Carolina Public Radio; we drive it to the airport and meet the Lowrider’s at 10:30, sign the paperwork and get in line for the flight. Departure is 1:30 and I think the three hours allowed should be enough. WE spend 1 hour in the air to Atlanta and an hour and a half on the ground before a two hour flight to Chicago.  Then the preparation time is over, what ever is done is done, what is ready to go is with us and the journey really begins.  It looks like my sister Kris and her husband Bill will be able to join us Friday night in Chicago which will be a lot of fun.   

5th

I try to write at least three times a week but it has been so busy right now that I skipped too many days.  Getting ready is taking too much time and it seems that there is always something else to buy to get ready to go.  I spent today working hard outside the house getting it ready to turn over to the house sitter.  I moved the old car I had outback and got the truck and camper ready to store.  I sewed a cover for it and have it ready to install tomorrow.  I also get to make a cover for the jeep I am storing, but that process will have to wait.  I am having trouble getting my doctor to extend my diabetic testing prescription so I made an appt for Wednesday that I should not have to make.  It is no wonder the medical health system costs so much because they just make you do or visit more often than needed.  To get into the Peace Corp under the current health care system it took almost 7 months of visits to complete the basic physical and now one more just to get the required 6 months of supplies.  This week I arranged to give away the van.  We bought the van just to use while our grandkids were here for the fall semester and the trip to phoenix from South Carolina. It was a good purchase but we are done with it and we decided to give it to public radio.  We called and after a little work we arranged to have it picked up at the airport when we get on the plane.  So we meet the car people at 10:30 at the airport and get in line for the plane.  We leave at 1:30 and should get into Chicago about 3:30 or 4 (no official schedule as of yet)  Works out great as we can take care of the other cars and drive this one to the very end and drive ourselves to the airport. 

Work is actually making me work hard this week and next but I do get to take an enjoyable trip to Clemson University this week to pick up a computer donation for the school.  I enjoy this trip as I know it will be very helpful to the school and pleasant for me. 

This week I am finishing a video for the principal that will be helpful for me as well because it can be a look at the school I am coming from.  It is a marketing video for the school.  I will post it on the school’s web site and maybe I’ll put it here or at least a link to it so you can all where I came from.  Enough for now.

Mark

 

1st

There are a few mile stones that mark the impending move indelibly on your conscious mind, one of them are the changing of the month to the one in which you leave, and another is the expiration dates of your grocery purchases; bread, milk, and the like.  During the last week we saw many such milestones as dates passed that we will not see again in our house.  Now we have passed over to the final month.  One month from today some of us will be winging our way to Kiev while the rest of us wait for the dawn to start our journey. 

Next week the bread will have an expiration date after our departure and very soon the gallon of milk I buy for my breakfast will sail past our departure date.  Each event a fresh reminder of just how much we have to do before we go and a reminder of the passage of time. 

I can not tell you what this trip means to me inside but outwardly I am calm and assured about the changes and the journey.  I want to start.  I want to be on the way.  I want to devote all of my time to getting ready to leave but I must work and get ready to leave that to someone else. 

The hardest part to leaving is putting the programs I started in the High School into the hands of someone else, no matter how good a job I know they will do.  I created this program, or at least I made it into what it is and I hope I brought it far enough along to see it continue without me.  I will miss working each day with these kids, watching them grow up and learn.  It is a revelation to me just how much I have come to enjoy teaching as I had always thought I would not like it.  Life is full of surprises is it not?

 

msp

 

T