Arrival to Ukraine (09/28/2009)

       We arrived in Kyiv on Sunday afternoon around 1:30pm (10 hours ahead of California time). When we got out of the airport, Peace Corps Ukraine staff was waiting to escort us to busses and we were driven to an old Soviet camp. The buildings were pretty run-down and all the furniture looked like it was from the 1970’s. The land was gorgeous and the leaves were just starting to change for fall.
       On Monday, we got put in our clusters. These clusters are groups of five trainees that will be spending the next 10 ½ weeks together, studying the language (Ukrainian or Russian), getting technical training, and other fun stuff. I’m in a group with three gals and one guy. We’ll be learning Ukrainian, which I’m pretty excited about! I know that Russian is more wide-spread, but I figure if I’m gonna be living in Ukraine for two years it’d be fun to learn their national language. We have an LCF (Language Cross-Cultural Facilitator) Larisa, who will be teaching us the language and helping us adjust to Ukraine. She’s really nice and seems like she’ll be very helpful. Our cluster got placed in a village called Kolychivka in the Chernihiv oblast, in very northern Ukraine. It’s super close to a big city called Chernihiv, just a 15-minute bus ride. The only thing separating the village with Chernihiv is a river. Kolychivka is a village of about 1,300 people and the K-12 school has a total of 150 students. I was hoping it would be larger, but it should be easier to teach with the small classes. I’m overall excited about living in Kolychivka. And because it’s a village, they grow a lot of their own food….so it’ll probably be super good!