Summer and THANK YOUS

I guess you could say it's been a little while since the last update... :)

First and foremost, THANK YOU for all the birthday wishes, and especially birthday packages! The first to be received was from the Sullivan/O'Donnell clan. The jersey is awesome (and may possibly serve as a Halloween costume for this coming year) and music and books are also greatly appreciated. Thank you Dan, Su, James, Colleen, Kelly and Dan! Just yesterday I finally received my package from the Lamb sisters and families. It has been sitting in the post office for a few weeks, but I was traveling so I didn't have a chance to pick it up. Fortunately it didn't spoil over time. The McKenna's card is an especially big hit here in Ukraine. Also thank you to the Nesline's for the books. I was worried I wouldn't have enough to read this summer, but now I should be all set for at least a few months!

As for what I have been up to since May 15th... where to begin...

I have been away from my site traveling for the past three weeks and had myself quite the little tour of Ukraine. First I worked my friend's summer camp in the mountains near the border of Ukraine and Hungary. It was a fun camp, although some days we had more volunteers (seven) than kids. The camp took place in a very small village and the kids are expected to help on the farm during most of the summer, so a turnout of around ten wasn't half bad. We didn't do too much in terms of English, but I did get to teach a number of good old Hayden games- Indian chief, flinch, and dodgeball to name a few.

Next I traveled to Hungary and met up with Julian from St. Mary's. It was sort of a spur of the moment trip but I am really, really happy I went. My girlfriend Annie came with me. We didn't really know train times or even exactly where we were going when we set off, but unlike in Ukraine, customer service actually exists in Hungary, so everything worked out really well. We arrived in Budapest on a Saturday afternoon and stayed until Wednesday morning. The city was really great. For Annie and I it was nice to speak English without people staring at us, do laundry with both a washer and dryer, and eat good Italian and Mexican food. We also ate Subway. Twice. For Julian, the first "road beer," as we like to call them, was a fun little treat- "You can just walk down the street drinking a beer?! Awesome!"

While in the city we did a ton of walking and took in the sights. We visited one museum, called the Terror Museum. It was about the double occupation of Hungary, first by the Nazis and then by the Soviets. The museum is actually housed in the building where the Nazis and Soviet secret police worked. Overall a pretty intense experience and really interesting for me because the history of Ukraine during this time period is pretty similar but I don't know much about it. We also went to the outdoor Roman baths. The building and baths were constructed by the Romans and the architecture is really beautiful. There were three pools outdoors. Julian, Annie and I got a pretty nice rotation going- hot pool to cold pool to slightly warm pool and back to hot again. It was a lovely way to spend a summer afternoon :)

After returning from Hungary, Annie and I and two other volunteers took possibly the worst marshrutka (mini-bus) ride of all time to get to our Ukrainian language refresher. The bus left Uzzhorod at 9:30 pm and arrived in Lutsk, our final destination, eleven hours later. The ride itself could probably best be described as hell on earth. For some reason when buying the tickets the four of us pictured a beautiful greyhound couch bus with big comfortable seats delivering us to Lutsk well-rested and fresh after a lovely journey. Why we pictured this, since none of us have ridden on such a bus in at least ten months, I can't tell you... What we got was a regular old smelly marshrutka that stopped at least once very hour for the entire ride. One advantage was that the seats did recline. The disadvantage here being that the seats were so close together that once the person in front of you decided to recline you were left with no choice but to do the same. Upon finally falling asleep around three in the morning I was quickly awoken by a sudden stop. We had entered an unmarked roadwork construction site and were having trouble squeezing past another bus. As if fear of tipping over the side of the unfinished highway wasn't enough, the other bus scraped ours and we quickly turned around to chase it down and force it to the side of the road, at which point our two bus drivers exited the bus and began a rather heated argument. While I didn't have a good vantage point for this argument, my friend Neil Patrick is almost positive tire slashing efforts were made. All in all, overnight bus travel in Ukraine is not recommended.

Despite this harrowing journey, language refresher ended up being tons of fun. Language refresher is a service Peace Corps provides to help volunteers improve their language skills. It was held at a sanatorium on a lake in the north western part of the country. The thirty volunteers who attended were split into four teams and each given a color. Then each color was given a day to be on duty. Duty involved coming up with a morning warmup and afternoon team competition. On our day I was in charge of the morning warmup. Inspired by Tom Sullivan and his Norwich days I translated the words of the ever popular "We are the Sullivans, the mighty, mighty Sullivans" into Ukrainian and led a full out army march through the camp. The Americans were highly amused, and the Ukrainians more than slightly confused. Some of the non-PC guests at the hotel were even following us with cell phones taking pictures. The words, translated back into English, went a little like this:

Left, left, left, right left
Left, left, left right left.
Everywhere we go,
People want to know,
Who we are,
Where we come from,
So we tell them,
We are the Peace Corps,
From America,
We are volunteers,
Super volunteers.

After language refresher was the final leg of my journey, a second Peace Corps training held in Kyiv. My counterpart Iryna and I attended together and spent four days learning about project development and implementation.

The past three weeks were great, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't glad to be home now. I've got just over a week to ready the apartment and then it's off to Kyiv again to pick up Mom! I'm sure our travels together will provide even more interesting (hilarious?) stories. Can't wait!