My Life, as of 2-14-06

Here we are, another typed-at-home email message…
It’s Sunday, February 12, the eve of the eve of my train trip to Kyiv. I’m off to the capital city for a week of language and technical training. We’ll be staying in the Peace Corps Ukraine’s meeting-grounds-of-choice (a.k.a. cheapest place around). It’s a sanatorium called Prolisok, which means snowdrop. No, not a sanitarium. A sanatorium, the kind of place you might have read about in Russian Literature. They are resorts/spas for the overworked. Prolisok is a bit outdated and it’s not really much of an ideal resort any more, but it’s got hot water (knock on wood).
I could go on and on with the flaws: the horrible beds (I’ve had one that was like sleeping on a board, because, well, it was a board; another had a huge pit in the middle of the mattress, so that I woke up each morning with a knot the size of Texas in my back; another time the bed was louder than my snoring roommate; another bed, not my own, rested on a metal frame and what looked like a coil of chicken-wire… you get the picture); the lack of shower curtains so that whenever you use the shower the entire bathroom floor gets flooded (I happen to know that this is the fault of our American mind set. The shower is not really a shower, but more of a big sink meant for rinsing specific body parts. This doesn’t prevent my friends and I from making fun of the fact that we flood the floor all of the time.); the insufficient heat… ok, I haven’t personally had a problem with this, but a lot of people complain; one time the room I slept in had, we’re pretty sure, bloody handprints smeared all over the walls, which was disturbing; the list goes on, but it’s all part of the adventure right?
Anyway, it’s a sanatorium called Prolisok, where Peace Corps hold all sorts of meetings. I’ve been there 4 times, soon to be 5, in the past 5 months in country. It will be fun to be at Prolisok for a week, hanging out with a bunch of fellow volunteers (some familiar, some new faces). This will be the first time that my group, Group 29, will be interacting with groups 27 and 28. Group 26 is getting ready to go home, so they won’t be joining us. Should be ok, and like I said: hot water… consistently.
I don’t have too much news to tell. But one thing stands out for me: progress. The students of my 8th form and 9th form both told me that I was doing a good job. They understand more spoken English now than they did before I came. They said that I am making them think in English and pull up their vocabulary because I don’t speak in Ukrainian very often. They said that they feel more confident. It made me feel good. Really good. It’s a really little thing, since I’ve only been teaching for a month, and they still don’t speak in English very well, but it’s a start. It’s funny how progress can show itself from day to day: One day it’s me understanding everything that is said at the dinner table with my host-family (that includes everything said by my little host brother with a speech impediment). The next day it’s my students telling me that they are thinking more in English. It's little things like that, and the progress is happening from both sides.
I know I won’t be making a world of difference, but like my friend Travis said to me in an SMS “I figure that if I can get at least one of these kids to think that English is pretty cool, and if he’ll believe that he’s good at it, then I’ve done what I came here to do”. So, my first step, and perhaps the only step that’s really necessary is to get these kids to believe in themselves… so much is drilled into them that they’ll probably never move to another town, or that they can’t really be anything they want. There’s a lot of pessimism in these kids, but at the same time, they’re really bright kids. They just need somebody to care about them and believe in them. That might sound really hokey, but maybe you’ll cut through my schlock and see what I’m talking about. Maybe?
Yep. That’s about all I’ve got.
I just finished two books this weekend: “The Adventures of Augie March” by Saul Bellow, which was excellent, and “Deadeye Dick” by Kurt Vonnegut, which was funny and absurdly coincidental as per Vonnegut’s style. I’m now reading “The Silence of the Lambs” by Thomas Harris, because I eat a lot of liver here.
Speaking of liver, I’m pretty sure that if I were given the chance to be on Fear Factor after my time in Ukraine, I’d mop the floor with any of those gross eating contests. Case in point, tonight, and many times before, I dined on sausage made of coagulated blood and buckwheat. It’s probably just regular old blood sausage (I don’t know… I’ve never had blood sausage), but I don’t mind it. I’ve told you about the meat Jell-O and the canned fish and the fish salad, etc. So I’m pretty sure that I could wolf down anything put before me. Except for the bile pudding.

Most Ardently,
Casey