Happy Easter everybody! Let me tell you, Easter in Ukraine was incredibly different from Easter in America. There are Easter baskets, but no Easter bunny. Just Easter vodka.
My babucya (grandmother) woke me up at 2:30am to go to the Ukrainian Orthodox church. All the women were required to cover their heads in the church, but the men weren't. Before entering the church and before leaving, everybody crosses themselves (the opposite way of Catholics) and bow. The service was extremely different. There were chairs lining the walls for the babucyas, but the service was basically standing room only. The priest was behind some golden doors in a separate room and he would periodically come out to chant and sing, but there was no real sermon. About 5 older Ukrainians were singing/chanting and everytime they said a certain word, everybody would cross themselves and bow. Then they would stop and the priest would chant and then the singing and bowing would start again. That's what we did for about an hour. After that, we went outside and I ran into James, so we chatted for a bit. Then about an hour later (it was FREEZING, mind you), everybody was lined up outside with their Easter baskets full of food for the priest to bless. He came out with a bucket of holy water and a sort of horse tail looking things and proceeded to chant and spray everybody with water. My host brother-in-law was super blessed as the priest soaked him in water. I think the priest took great pleasure in blessing everybody haha. After the blessing, we went home and had breakfast. Babucya poured us shots of fortified wine at 6am. Great way to start the day! After breakfast, I thankfully went back to my warm bed.
I woke up a few hours later and went on a picnic with my host sister and a few of her friends. We proceeded to stuff our faces in between shots of vodka for a few hours. My host sister made sure I ate plenty of food!! We also shot a BB gun (safe, i know) and BBQd. After that, we went out to the local discoteque which was fun. Lots of techno and dancing. All in all a pretty good Easter!
Monday, April 25, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Kiev and back again...a Erin's tale
So, this has been an exciting and exhausting week! On Tuesday, after class, we went to the arts and music school to learn how to make Ukrainian Easter Eggs. We thought they would take maybe an hour to make.....we thought wrong. They took 4 hours to make and we didn't even finish them! Ukrainians put a whole lot more effort into their Easter Eggs!! First, we picked out a pattern for our eggs. Then, we sketched the patterns with pencils. After that, we went over the lines with these pens. You would fill the top with wax and then hold it over a flame and it would drip slowly out of the bottom. It was pretty cool! As you can imagine, an intricate design would take forever to draw symmetrically, not to mention again with wax! We not only learned what some of the symbols meant, we learned something about Ukrainian teachers. At this point, Laura holds up her egg to the art teacher and says (in Ukrainian), "my egg is pretty, isn't it?" and then the teacher looks at the egg and says ".....no." Then she walks away. Haha, it was pretty amazing. Of course, Laura's egg was pretty, it just had to real Ukrainian symbols on it.
After we finished redrawing our patterns in wax, we dropped the eggs in dye. I was told I had to use red because it has crowns and crowns must be red. THEN we have to wait until the eggs dry and then cover whatever we want to stay red with wax. After that, we redyed the eggs another color. At this point, we had been at the art school for 4 hours, so we decided to come back to take the wax off and take our eggs home.
On Wednesday, we went to Kiev!!!! Well, first we went to Obukhiv for our Safety and Security session and THEN we went to Kiev. So of course after hearing all the horror stories about people who weren't smart about their stuff on the metro, I clutched my purse to myself and gave the evil eye to any babushka who looked at me.
Kiev was fun! It was definitely more of a business trip than a sightseeing trip. The point was to show us how to navigate and survive Kiev. Now that our group has gone to Kiev with Ira once, we can go alone. When we first got there, we learned how to use the metro and we found the main branch of the bank we will be using. Then we went by the train station and then visited the PC headquarters and had a tour of the building. Now comes the best part. We took the metro to the main street and then we had.........SUSHI!!!!!!
I don't know if you guys know how I feel about sushi, but it's just about my favorite thing in the world. It was happy hour so everything that you bought was buy 1 get 1 free. So much sushi!!! And so yummy!! It was very reasonably priced too for being right in the middle of Kiev. For 6 people, the total about about 500 HR or $62.50 or about $10/person. I love some things about Ukraine!
I'm excited to go back to Kiev sometimes soon and do some more real sightseeing.
Today was also exciting because we had our first Russian lesson! The PC decided it would be important for everybody to know at least a little of the language they are not studying (Russian or Ukrainian) because the entire country is basically bilingual. In the east and south, Russian is mostly spoken, but road signs will be in English. In the west, Ukrainian is spoken, but most everybody will speak Russian and it is possible you'll end up in a Russian speaking town or that your counterpart will only speak Russian. I'm already in Ukraine and I am still in the dark about some things in my near future!
Today, we also began planning our summer camp and community project. As of now, we're planning on have a 4 or 5 day summer camp dedicated to health and the environment. We will probably apply for a HIV/AID awareness grant to help fund one day dedicated to educating the students about the HIV/AIDs problem as Ukraine has the highest rate of HIV in all post-Soviet countries. We are thinking that our community project will be to record some dialogs and maybe some songs onto CDs so that the school will have permanent access to native English speakers for listening activities.
Tomorrow will be fun too! We won't be teaching classes because the school is having a sports day. We'll go to the school and hopefully play kickball with the kids. Then just 2 hours of Ukrainian lessons and 1 of Russian.
This weekend is also full of events! At about 3am on Easter Sunday, we will get up and go to the church to have the food blessed by the priests. After that, we'll come home and sleep and then wake up and eat and drink bahato (a lot) with the whole family. I think some of my host family's cousins are coming and they go to the school I teach at, so hopefully I'll have somebody to speak a little English with. I'll definitely update again after I come out of my food coma on Sunday.
That's all for now!
After we finished redrawing our patterns in wax, we dropped the eggs in dye. I was told I had to use red because it has crowns and crowns must be red. THEN we have to wait until the eggs dry and then cover whatever we want to stay red with wax. After that, we redyed the eggs another color. At this point, we had been at the art school for 4 hours, so we decided to come back to take the wax off and take our eggs home.
On Wednesday, we went to Kiev!!!! Well, first we went to Obukhiv for our Safety and Security session and THEN we went to Kiev. So of course after hearing all the horror stories about people who weren't smart about their stuff on the metro, I clutched my purse to myself and gave the evil eye to any babushka who looked at me.
Kiev was fun! It was definitely more of a business trip than a sightseeing trip. The point was to show us how to navigate and survive Kiev. Now that our group has gone to Kiev with Ira once, we can go alone. When we first got there, we learned how to use the metro and we found the main branch of the bank we will be using. Then we went by the train station and then visited the PC headquarters and had a tour of the building. Now comes the best part. We took the metro to the main street and then we had.........SUSHI!!!!!!
I don't know if you guys know how I feel about sushi, but it's just about my favorite thing in the world. It was happy hour so everything that you bought was buy 1 get 1 free. So much sushi!!! And so yummy!! It was very reasonably priced too for being right in the middle of Kiev. For 6 people, the total about about 500 HR or $62.50 or about $10/person. I love some things about Ukraine!
I'm excited to go back to Kiev sometimes soon and do some more real sightseeing.
Today was also exciting because we had our first Russian lesson! The PC decided it would be important for everybody to know at least a little of the language they are not studying (Russian or Ukrainian) because the entire country is basically bilingual. In the east and south, Russian is mostly spoken, but road signs will be in English. In the west, Ukrainian is spoken, but most everybody will speak Russian and it is possible you'll end up in a Russian speaking town or that your counterpart will only speak Russian. I'm already in Ukraine and I am still in the dark about some things in my near future!
Today, we also began planning our summer camp and community project. As of now, we're planning on have a 4 or 5 day summer camp dedicated to health and the environment. We will probably apply for a HIV/AID awareness grant to help fund one day dedicated to educating the students about the HIV/AIDs problem as Ukraine has the highest rate of HIV in all post-Soviet countries. We are thinking that our community project will be to record some dialogs and maybe some songs onto CDs so that the school will have permanent access to native English speakers for listening activities.
Tomorrow will be fun too! We won't be teaching classes because the school is having a sports day. We'll go to the school and hopefully play kickball with the kids. Then just 2 hours of Ukrainian lessons and 1 of Russian.
This weekend is also full of events! At about 3am on Easter Sunday, we will get up and go to the church to have the food blessed by the priests. After that, we'll come home and sleep and then wake up and eat and drink bahato (a lot) with the whole family. I think some of my host family's cousins are coming and they go to the school I teach at, so hopefully I'll have somebody to speak a little English with. I'll definitely update again after I come out of my food coma on Sunday.
That's all for now!
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Another week in PST (Pre-Service Training)
So, another week has passed in Ukraine and I am totally exhausted. This week was really busy and the rigors of the program are starting to wear on me, but I'm staying positive and I'm still having a good time and enjoying what I'm doing. Our schedule has been very, very busy and will be next week, but hopefully we'll be able to take our first trip to Kiev!! I'm a city girl at heart, so I'm very excited about that! Next week will be full of more Ukrainian lessons, Ukrainian tutoring teaching technical training, cross-cultural training, lesson planning tutoring, as well as actually teaching classes. They are pretty good about keeping us busy even when we have a day off with lesson planning, Ukrainian homework, as well as planning an English summer camp and community project for this summer. Lots to do!
Besides the trip to Kiev, I'm also excited about this coming Tuesday because we get to go to a class on how to make Ukrainian Easter eggs! I'll take lots of pictures and post them when my internet is working well enough. ALSO, next weekend is Easter, so we will go to church and then I presume we will eat lots of salo and I'm under the impression it's a big, fun family event. Speaking of salo, my host family killed a pig yesterday and today they made fresh sausage. Needless to say, while some things are pretty similar, some things are very different in Ukraine!
Besides the trip to Kiev, I'm also excited about this coming Tuesday because we get to go to a class on how to make Ukrainian Easter eggs! I'll take lots of pictures and post them when my internet is working well enough. ALSO, next weekend is Easter, so we will go to church and then I presume we will eat lots of salo and I'm under the impression it's a big, fun family event. Speaking of salo, my host family killed a pig yesterday and today they made fresh sausage. Needless to say, while some things are pretty similar, some things are very different in Ukraine!
Monday, April 11, 2011
I forgot!
How could I forget to write about this!? It was one of the most fabulous experiences I've had so far.
Sunday, I went to James' house to work on our lesson plans together and I had a great time with his family. I showed up during lunch time (I had already eaten lunch, but then I had a second lunch!) and we proceeded to sit and chat over many (many, many) shots of vodka and some beer. We had a great conversation and I learned a few new words I won't repeat here.
Then his host father, James and I listened to heavy metal blasting from James' host father's truck in his driveway. It was very surreal looking over rural Ukraine with Iron Maiden blasting in the background. Luckily, we did get our work done in the end.
Ok, thats all for now.
Sunday, I went to James' house to work on our lesson plans together and I had a great time with his family. I showed up during lunch time (I had already eaten lunch, but then I had a second lunch!) and we proceeded to sit and chat over many (many, many) shots of vodka and some beer. We had a great conversation and I learned a few new words I won't repeat here.
Then his host father, James and I listened to heavy metal blasting from James' host father's truck in his driveway. It was very surreal looking over rural Ukraine with Iron Maiden blasting in the background. Luckily, we did get our work done in the end.
Ok, thats all for now.
Our schedule just blew up
I had my first day of teaching today! I taught with James and I think it went really well. We talked about ancient books and the use of the passive voice. It wasn't perfect, but I think we did a good job and next time will be even better. The classroom is definitely very different from what I experienced in school. Some of the kids just knew every single answer and had no problem just yelling it out (even when you asked somebody else) and some of the kids seemed to not understand anything. Apparently this is a problem that we will learn how to handle while we're here.
So, they have most definitely upped our schedules this week! We are insanely busy. Today was a 9-5 day for us! It sounds like a normal work day, but when you include homework as well as being forced to practice what you learn because your family speaks the language, its more like a 16 hour day! Here was our schedule today:
7am : Wake up and run to the outhouse!! Oh, and its FREEZING and it has been snowing......AGAIN.
8:15: finish up breakfast (potatoes and cabbage) and leave for school
9:05: James and I teach our first English class!
9:55: Observe the other Americans teach their class and we do a debriefing session
11:30-12:30: lunch at the canteen (we have 3 course meal: soup, sausage (2 kinds), salad, kashi, and pickles tomatoes, and finally awesome cookies for dessert and its all served with a yummy apricot compote. this costs us 10 hyrivna per person, which is a little over $1!)
1pm-5pm: Ukrainian lessons
6pm: dinner! chicken soup, great ukrainian bread, meat and cheese
7pm: update my blog! and then go study more Ukrainian
Not only do we have lessons to teach and observe, we have language classes, lesson planning tutoring 2x per week, one hour of language tutoring per week, technical group training, and two group projects to plan for. So intense!!! We will have a brief respite this Wednesday as we have "health day," where the doctor will come out and teach us....about health? Not really sure!
I'm really excited about our lesson tomorrow because its cooking day! We get to spend 1/2 of our lesson (2 hours) cooking borscht and halupki (stuffed cabbage). We can only speak in Ukrainian so who knows what we'll end up actually making. It should be fun though!
Nothing else much is new besides that. I am still being harassed by angry geese on the way home and I don't know why they hate me. Ok, well I'm off to study more Ukrainian and then pass out!
P.S. We should be doing a chapter about sending letters/going to the post office, so once we do that, I'll try to have some post cards out to you all!
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
I CAN HAZ INTERNET!!!
So, as you can see I finally have internet! Yay!!! I ended up having to buy a portable modem so I just stick that in my computer and pay by the month. Not too shabby! Now that I have internet access, you can all skype me or chat with me on aim/gchat. Just post if you want my info!
So we have been continuing with our Ukrainian lessons and they have been very intense. Our teacher and mentor Ira is very nice and a great teacher. It's just so exhausting to have so much information pounded into your brain for 4 hours at a time everyday and then to have to go home and do more homework! I'm even making flashcards of our vocabulary as we speak. Ironically enough, Cyrillic was the thing that most people feared about Ukrainian and has actually probably been the easiest thing to learn. The hardest part for me is pronunciation and grammar. I can't roll my "r's" so that has been a problem. Also, there are just a crazy amount of consonants in Ukrainian words. For example, подороувати is podorojuvati or to travel. Also, the grammar is difficult because they have so many things you have to conjugate! You can't just conjugate verbs, you also have to have the correct pronoun and noun conjugation as well. For example, to say "I love," it's "Ya lublu," but if you want to say "I am 22," you have to say "Meni 22 roki." So much to learn in just three months! I really like learning languages so hopefully I'll have everything down by then.
Here's a breakdown of the typical day for me if you're interested:
7am: wake up and run to the outhouse
8am: breakfast/walk to Iras
8:30-10:30 : Ukrainian lessons with Ira
10:30-11:00: Tea time! Ukrainians are very big on tea and it is customary to bring cookies or biscuits for tea if you are going to somebody's house, even if you don't want to have tea!
11:00-1:00pm- More Ukrainian
1:00pm: Lunch!
Sometimes we'll also have technical sessions for a couple hours or we'll go to the school for class observations or one day we went to the bazaar to buy food, so there is always something going on.
Not only are we learning more Ukrainian everyday, we are finally starting to really get into our teaching training. We observed two English lessons today and on Monday we are already going to be teaching an English class! James, another PCT(Trainee) in our cluster will be teaching with me on Monday. We'll be teaching the 8th graders about books. Wish me luck!
So besides studying and more studying, I've been hanging out with my host family and cluster. We have made friends with the dog at Ira's house and he has subsequently been named "George Jefferies" by Paul.
My host family has also introduced me to Ukrainian vodka and moonshine. Who would have thought that I would leave Georgia to try moonshine in Ukraine??? Ukrainians are very fond of their vodka and it is appropriate to do multiple shots of vodka as long as you are eating after each one.
I'm not sure what to write about besides that and the fact that some angry geese chased me home today. Such is life in Ukraine!
So we have been continuing with our Ukrainian lessons and they have been very intense. Our teacher and mentor Ira is very nice and a great teacher. It's just so exhausting to have so much information pounded into your brain for 4 hours at a time everyday and then to have to go home and do more homework! I'm even making flashcards of our vocabulary as we speak. Ironically enough, Cyrillic was the thing that most people feared about Ukrainian and has actually probably been the easiest thing to learn. The hardest part for me is pronunciation and grammar. I can't roll my "r's" so that has been a problem. Also, there are just a crazy amount of consonants in Ukrainian words. For example, подороувати is podorojuvati or to travel. Also, the grammar is difficult because they have so many things you have to conjugate! You can't just conjugate verbs, you also have to have the correct pronoun and noun conjugation as well. For example, to say "I love," it's "Ya lublu," but if you want to say "I am 22," you have to say "Meni 22 roki." So much to learn in just three months! I really like learning languages so hopefully I'll have everything down by then.
Here's a breakdown of the typical day for me if you're interested:
7am: wake up and run to the outhouse
8am: breakfast/walk to Iras
8:30-10:30 : Ukrainian lessons with Ira
10:30-11:00: Tea time! Ukrainians are very big on tea and it is customary to bring cookies or biscuits for tea if you are going to somebody's house, even if you don't want to have tea!
11:00-1:00pm- More Ukrainian
1:00pm: Lunch!
Sometimes we'll also have technical sessions for a couple hours or we'll go to the school for class observations or one day we went to the bazaar to buy food, so there is always something going on.
Not only are we learning more Ukrainian everyday, we are finally starting to really get into our teaching training. We observed two English lessons today and on Monday we are already going to be teaching an English class! James, another PCT(Trainee) in our cluster will be teaching with me on Monday. We'll be teaching the 8th graders about books. Wish me luck!
So besides studying and more studying, I've been hanging out with my host family and cluster. We have made friends with the dog at Ira's house and he has subsequently been named "George Jefferies" by Paul.
My host family has also introduced me to Ukrainian vodka and moonshine. Who would have thought that I would leave Georgia to try moonshine in Ukraine??? Ukrainians are very fond of their vodka and it is appropriate to do multiple shots of vodka as long as you are eating after each one.
I'm not sure what to write about besides that and the fact that some angry geese chased me home today. Such is life in Ukraine!
Saturday, April 2, 2011
First week in Ukraine!
Wow is pretty much all I can say. Everything is so crazy right now. Right now I'm in a internet cafe in the closest town to our village, Obuhiv, and I'm surrounded by teenagers playing World of Warcraft and screaming at each other in Ukrainian/Russian. Some things aren't so different from America!
I've finally settled into my house in Hermanivka and gotten into a routine. I live on the outskirts of a village on a small farm in a small house with a small family. The family has a grandmother, a mother and father, and a 6 year old son. I have no running water or internet. At first I wasn't sure if I could deal with having an outhouse and a bucket to shower with, but I've gotten used to it. The family is so nice and welcoming that it makes up for the lack of amenitites. The grandmother cooks my meals and I have quickly learned the word for "EAT!" as I hear it fairly often. I have also learned to only eat when my babusya (grandmother) is in the room as otherwise she will insist that I eat more of it and I can't speak enough Ukrainian to tell her that I've already had some. The family speaks no English and I speak barely any Ukrainian. Things have been challenging, but not too difficult. I made friends with the 6 year old, Sasha, by letting him play Angry Birds on my Ipad. He is now obsessed with the game! He is much like any typical American boy who loves video games and Spongebob. The mother and father work alot, but have been very friendly to me when they have been around. The babusya even taught me to milk the cow!! Not something I saw myself doing a year or even a week ago! On the farm, there is a cow, chickens, pigs, dogs, and cats.
Everyday, I'll get up around 7am and have breakfast with my babusya. After that, I'll head over to our Ukrainian language teacher's house, Ira (short for Irina. So many Irina's here!). We'll have about 4 hours/day of Ukrainian lessons Monday-Friday. We also have a technical teacher who is in charge of teaching us about teaching English effectively in Ukraine. We'll do classroom visits to observe other teachers as well as make lesson plans and teach ourselves. They keep us really busy! On Saturdays, we meet up with another group (our "link" group) and we have a technical class. The other group is in Obuhiv and they all live near the internet cafe and have running water and are able to go places at night. In our village, there is nowhere to go at night and the only bar is not a safe place to be. There are ups and downs to living in a city/town v. a village. Everybody already knows us in our village!
While a few of us live on farms, one of us actually has his own house. His family set him up in their two story guest house complete with a sauna. He has a sauna and I have an outhouse. Typical. At least I'll have an authentic experience!
We do have free time at night and as there are no street lights in our village or anywhere we can go, most of us have been staying at home with our families as well as watching movies and reading. I've already read about 3 books since coming to the village. I'm going to run out soon! Hopefully I'll be able to get some more if the internet will work in my village. So apparently the school in our village has internet and we are allowed to use it, but as we aren't going to the school often, I don't know exactly when I'll be able to update next. We are going to see if the internet modem you can buy will work in our village and if it does, I will get one. I really hope it does because I don't like not being able to keep in touch with you guys and from whats going on the in the world.
There is mostly schools and government buildings in my town (a hospital, admin building, museum, schools) as well as two cafes, only one of which we were advised to go to and only during the day. For the most part, our host families provide food for us. All I can say is that I've never eaten this many potatoes in my life! One day I had leftover mashed potatoes for breakfast, mashed potatoes for lunch, and then potatoes in my borscht for dinner. Almost everything that I have eaten has been really good though. I did try some Ukrainian salo (pig fat), which is an experience. I actually liked it! It was my host sister's birthday and her husband pulled the salo out as well as a bottle of vodka. A very cultural experience! The people are very big into canning food. I've had lots of called tomatoes and pickles already. Ira is going to teach us how to can food and I'm really excited to start making my own pickles and whatnot so I can have them during the winter!
Ok, well I'm gonna go before I run out of time at the internet cafe. I'll try to update when I can! I'll try to get postcards out when I can, but I'm not sure when. Miss you all!!
I've finally settled into my house in Hermanivka and gotten into a routine. I live on the outskirts of a village on a small farm in a small house with a small family. The family has a grandmother, a mother and father, and a 6 year old son. I have no running water or internet. At first I wasn't sure if I could deal with having an outhouse and a bucket to shower with, but I've gotten used to it. The family is so nice and welcoming that it makes up for the lack of amenitites. The grandmother cooks my meals and I have quickly learned the word for "EAT!" as I hear it fairly often. I have also learned to only eat when my babusya (grandmother) is in the room as otherwise she will insist that I eat more of it and I can't speak enough Ukrainian to tell her that I've already had some. The family speaks no English and I speak barely any Ukrainian. Things have been challenging, but not too difficult. I made friends with the 6 year old, Sasha, by letting him play Angry Birds on my Ipad. He is now obsessed with the game! He is much like any typical American boy who loves video games and Spongebob. The mother and father work alot, but have been very friendly to me when they have been around. The babusya even taught me to milk the cow!! Not something I saw myself doing a year or even a week ago! On the farm, there is a cow, chickens, pigs, dogs, and cats.
Everyday, I'll get up around 7am and have breakfast with my babusya. After that, I'll head over to our Ukrainian language teacher's house, Ira (short for Irina. So many Irina's here!). We'll have about 4 hours/day of Ukrainian lessons Monday-Friday. We also have a technical teacher who is in charge of teaching us about teaching English effectively in Ukraine. We'll do classroom visits to observe other teachers as well as make lesson plans and teach ourselves. They keep us really busy! On Saturdays, we meet up with another group (our "link" group) and we have a technical class. The other group is in Obuhiv and they all live near the internet cafe and have running water and are able to go places at night. In our village, there is nowhere to go at night and the only bar is not a safe place to be. There are ups and downs to living in a city/town v. a village. Everybody already knows us in our village!
While a few of us live on farms, one of us actually has his own house. His family set him up in their two story guest house complete with a sauna. He has a sauna and I have an outhouse. Typical. At least I'll have an authentic experience!
We do have free time at night and as there are no street lights in our village or anywhere we can go, most of us have been staying at home with our families as well as watching movies and reading. I've already read about 3 books since coming to the village. I'm going to run out soon! Hopefully I'll be able to get some more if the internet will work in my village. So apparently the school in our village has internet and we are allowed to use it, but as we aren't going to the school often, I don't know exactly when I'll be able to update next. We are going to see if the internet modem you can buy will work in our village and if it does, I will get one. I really hope it does because I don't like not being able to keep in touch with you guys and from whats going on the in the world.
There is mostly schools and government buildings in my town (a hospital, admin building, museum, schools) as well as two cafes, only one of which we were advised to go to and only during the day. For the most part, our host families provide food for us. All I can say is that I've never eaten this many potatoes in my life! One day I had leftover mashed potatoes for breakfast, mashed potatoes for lunch, and then potatoes in my borscht for dinner. Almost everything that I have eaten has been really good though. I did try some Ukrainian salo (pig fat), which is an experience. I actually liked it! It was my host sister's birthday and her husband pulled the salo out as well as a bottle of vodka. A very cultural experience! The people are very big into canning food. I've had lots of called tomatoes and pickles already. Ira is going to teach us how to can food and I'm really excited to start making my own pickles and whatnot so I can have them during the winter!
Ok, well I'm gonna go before I run out of time at the internet cafe. I'll try to update when I can! I'll try to get postcards out when I can, but I'm not sure when. Miss you all!!
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