Perpetual Change

Training is great

I keep thinking how lucky I am. Peace Corps Ukraine is the largest post in the world, and I think it must be one of the best put together. The training is really incredible. They give us SO many resources and it is all very well structured. The plan is to push you to the limit where you can learn the most, where you have to learn, where you can’t get comfortable but where you won’t get overwhelmed. Today I realized just how overwhelming it could be. If I didn’t want to learn and study so much so that I can communicate then it would be really hard work. I have classes 6 days a week, morning to night. I then study on my own and try to talk to my host family; it can be very emotionally stressing. Not to mention, I have an internship at an employment center, and we are supposed to put together a community project in the 8 weeks we have left here in training. But I am so excited and high all the time and my language is coming along nicely (though I have been getting frustrated more often lately).

We have some days where the health officers come to talk to us. They are part of the Peace Corps staff in Kiev and they are really good. The first day they came we had go over a bunch of stuff but then they gave us these medical kits – UNBELIEVABLE!! It is a briefcase full of medication, tons of stuff, all generic, but some of are prescription antibiotics. I don’t know where the get all the stuff or how much it might cost, but I bet some congressman somewhere made a great deal with some pharmaceutical lobbyist. Then in our healt day yesterday, we had about an hour session on how to break elbows and knees, gouge eyes, rip fingers and free ourself from an attacker should we ever find ourselves in a life or death situation. They don't anticipate any such problems, but they do want us to be prepared. In Ukraine, only 2 volunteers have ever died - 1 was determined as a suicide during training and the other was an elderly man who gave a key to an much younger romatic interest and her friends came to burglar him and he came home unexpectedly – so don't worry, Mom.

posted by jjs @ 8:05 AM