Curveball doesn't really translate into Ukrainian...

Hang on to your seats folks, this is going to be one hell of a big post. I'm going to explain the crazy events of the past week in my life.
I posted a little about it, but I had to withhold some things, due to the fact that my Grandpa might somehow stumble upon the blog and then he'd be really worried. But now I think that the truth has to be put out there. The story is just too nuts to not be shared. Some of it might look old (it is. I liked the way I wrote it the first time and didn't want to change it), but most of it is news to you. Yeah, I also sent an email with the same content, but not everyone gets my emails. Sorry about that.

On Friday (December 9th) night we (my cluster mates and I, along with our Ukrainian host-siblings) were at the local bar/cafe/disco. I had ONE beer. I was half-assedly watching the television at the bar. I noticed a shady looking guy (balding, leather jacket, deep set eyes, goatee) looking at me from near the bar. I made eye contact with him and then as my eyes tooled down, I noticed that he was holding a shiv/stiletto/dagger/knife/ some sort of menacing blade. When he noticed that I had seen the knife, he tapped it menacingly and then put it back under his jacket. He was holding the knife blade down, kind of in a stabbing sense. It was a threat.
I kind of zoned out for a while, until my host brother asked me what happened. I told him that a man had just shown me a knife and he asked me to point out the man. I did. And Bohdan's first words were: Oh Fuck.

Now, you might be wondering why we didn't just leave the bar/cafe/disco right then. First off, no one else saw the knife, so no one else perceived the threat like I did. Plus, I figured that we were safer in the public building, where there are actually lights, and the owner knows/likes us. SO we stayed.

A short time later (maybe 15 minutes after the man flashed the blade), he stumbled over to our table and stood behind me. I was kinda scared. He strong armed my shoulder and began to say something to me in a drunken slavic tongue. It grew louder and harder to understand (even the Ukrainians with me couldn't understand it), but I did hear him say "I'm a Ukrainian, you're an American!", at which point he slammed his fist into the table in front of me.

The man then tried to sit at our table, but the owner escorted him out. We stayed, because of the public space, plus we didn't know if he was just going to be waiting outside for us.

It should be mentioned that there were three older, scruffy looking men in the cafe who had been watching me for most of the time we had been in the bar. It was to the point where I was getting creeped out by it, so much so that I moved to a different place at the table so that I wouldn't have to look at them.
When I did this, however, these men started to call my name and told me to come over to their table (in Russian). I turned around and told them to wait (in Russian). I then asked the Ukrainians at the table to explain what they wanted. One girl told me that I should not go talk to them, because she was afraid of them and that it was odd for them to be there. So I SMSed my host brother, who was upstairs in the disco (in the middle of what I have perceived as an all-out turf war between the youth of this city... I'll get to that later). Bohdan came down to the cafe and together we went over to the table of the three men.

The man who talked to me was an older guy, maybe in his 40's. He asked me about what I was doing in Ukraine and my former site. He told me that he was a teacher of Boxing (direct translation from Russian to English). We talked for maybe another 5 minutes and then he left. He did buy me two cups of coffee, however. Two because the first one was spilled onto my lap due to my shaken nerves.

After he left, Bohdan explained that he was the head of the Bobrovytsya Mafia and that he was an Ex-Con. Bohdan said that he was probably the most dangerous man in my former site, the son-in-law of the mayor, and the arch-nemesis of my host mother. Yep, that's right. The mafia and my host mom are on the outs. Which means, as I suspected and so did Bohdan, that the Boxing coach/Mafia Dude was sizing me up, trying to unnerve me and send a message to my host mom. The fact that Bohdan was disturbed by the man's presence at the bar and the man with the knife and everything else didn't really allay my worries.

We (the group of us) stayed until midnight and then we walked home. I walked home with Bohdan and a group of his friends, which includes a bunch of Armenian boys who are tough shit. One of them is actually the reserve Judo champ of Ukraine. So, I felt pretty safe with them, especially since I've already befriended the Judo champ. But during this walk home, I learned about the turf war. There is a big fued going on between the three factions of the youth: There are the central kids, the plant kids, and the outskirts kids.
There had been a fight on Friday night, resulting in two of the central kids getting roughed up (a black eye for one and another kid was knocked out). Bohdan told me that there would be an even bigger fight on Saturday, when vengeance was sought. (I was in Kyiv by then...) The youth situation is serious... so much so that the son of one of our host families actually bought a gun in Kyiv (the kid is in 9th grade).

So, I've been in Kyiv since Saturday afternoon. I'm not going back to my former site. I am going to be assigned a new site, but I won't find that out later today. When I first told this story to Peace Corps, they assumed that the mafia connections were probably just imagined by my host brother. I was told this morning that "Bad things are going on there. It's best that you don't stay there for two years."
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Yep, that's really what happened. I've been reassigned to Western Ukraine, in L'viv Oblast, in a town to the East of L'viv, called My New Site. There are 7,000 people there. I haven't the slightest idea what my host family will be like or what the school will expect from me. But I'm excited to go West, where they supposedly speak pure Ukrainian (doesn't really exist, but it will be Ukrainian, instead of Russian or Surzheek).

I've spent the week hanging around the PC office, posting on my blog, checking email, watching Harry Potter 4 (pirated, natch) 3 times, walking around Kyiv, getting to know other volunteers(there were a lot of evacuees from Crimea, but they're all gone now... it's just me today.) and eating far too much McDonalds' food. I'm so sick of it (read about it on my blog fashodacrisis.blogspot.com).

But there was supposed to be a highlight to my week: I was going back to my former site yesterday for a farewell party with all of our host families. I was going to be escorted by Peace Corps in one of their white SUVs with diplomatic plates (really travelling in style). I was going to pack up my things and spend time with the wonderful people of my former site (yes, there are some wonderful people. Namely, our host families). It was all supposed to go according to plan. Famous last words...

Ok Kids. Now, life is about to throw me another curve ball. Here's the incident report I just typed up and submitted to Peace Corps:

On Saturday, 17th of December, I was riding in a Peace Corps driven vehicle from Kyiv to my former site. It was snowing and, although there was perfect visibility, the roads were slippery. As we were coming out of a town, I believe it was Markivitsya, we came upon several people walking in the middle of the road. The driver noticed these people and began to slow down the vehicle. Due to the aforementioned road conditions, however, our vehicle did not slow down as quickly as was necessary. Of the three people walking in the road, two acknowledged the presence of our vehicle and made their way to the side of the road, but one old woman (I learned later that she was 70) did not leave the middle of the road. Our driver honked the car's horn several times, but the woman still did not make much of an effort to get out of the way.
In an effort to not hit the woman, our driver moved to the left side of the road. At the same time that we went left, however, the woman also went left. It was at this point that the driver locked up the brakes, but, again, because of the slippery road, we continued to slide.
The woman was hit from behind be the left side of bumper. We were not accelerating, but merely sliding (which is, I maintain, the reason why the woman walked away from the accident). Since we had been moving to the left, our wheels directed us to the left. The woman fell to the ground and the car slid over her and came to a stop. We exited the vehicle and surveyed the scene. The woman was below the vehicle and calling out for help. There was blood on the snow (from a cut on the head and a bloody nose). ___ ran to find a phone and call an ambulance, while the driver and I tried to get the woman out from below the vehicle.
Several men and women gathered around and together we were able to pull her out: The men, the driver, and I lifted up the car from the side while two women grabbed the victim's hands and dragged her free.
We waited until the ambulance arrived.

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I'll elaborate a bit on the whole "getting the woman out from under the car" part.
At first we tried to get the jack out from the back of the SUV, but it was bolted in and I couldn't get the bolt off quick enough (I don't know... blame it on the cold weather or the adrenaline coursing through my veins. Your pick.). So then the driver and I (before the other men showed up) tried to push the car backwards, but I quickly realized that that would result in a tire going over her leg. The entire time this is going on, the woman is screaming for help and the driver is screaming about being sorry and pleading to Mary, mother of God. Plus the passersby are showing up and they're yelling at everyone too.
This was when the other men showed up. One of them had a jack, but the road was too icy to trust it. So the five of us grabbed the underside of the side of the car and began to rock (grunting and counting in Surzheek). Using the momentum, we were able to lift the car up enough for the woman to be free of the car. We held the car up while the two women dragged the downed woman free.
There was blood all over her face and she had a big gash on the back of her head. She refused to go to the hospital because she didn't have any money (she just wanted to go home and sleep). I was pretty sure she had a concussion (She did. And a broken knee). A woman pressed a large handful of snow to the victim's head and then tied her head scarf over it. We convinced her to at least get a ride in the PC vehicle to her house, where she could wait for the ambulance. She did. The ambulance came and carted her away to (you guessed it) the Hospital in my former site.

We continued on our way, but this time with quite the altered schedule. The car and the driver now had to stay at the police office for inspection. I, along with my escort, walked to my house. There I packed and was made to eat a lot of food. I think Natasha is worried that I won't actually eat for the next two years. As I was walking out the door, the Grandma arrived. She cried a bunch and gave me a big hug. Then gave me a bag full of vareneky filled with cherries (vareneky are some of my favorite things in Ukraine. They're like little pies. So good.), a big piece of sausage, and chocolates. I cried a little and told them how much I will miss them and how grateful I was.

Then I had to go to the farewell party and say farewell to all of the families there. I cried a bunch more and gave a lot of hugs. I promised to return to visit.

(Ok, I'm wrapping it up...)

After that, we caught an electric train back to Kyiv. And here I am. I bought "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" today on DVD. It's pretty cool. I was hoping to buy King Kong, but no dice.

Here's to hoping that my next two years out West are a lot less crazy as this past week.