Perpetual Change

how things are going

So I promise more is coming soon. Unfortunately, I cannot post my address or phone number on the internet for security reasons (they don't want anyone tracking us down), but you can send me an email, and I will reply back with my address and phone number. If you want to know roughly where I am, look between L'viv and Ivano-frankivs'k, on a map of Europe, or else between L'viv and Odessa, if you can't find anything more detailed.

And for all you faithful readers, I wanted to point out that the lovely posts from Blia are posted from Swaziland, a small country in South Africa. Blia is a Peace Corps volunteer fighting the AIDS plague and its orphans. We were friends in college and now we keep in touch across the globe this way, I am sure she would love some words of encouragement too. Blia, feel free to post any of your fellow PCV's blogs if you want.

As for more Ukraine news, and pictures (Sando, I haven't sent any out yet, but hopefully soon), you can check out two of my friends sites. They will give you another perspective past mine. Chris Moulder (www.thepeascorps.blogspot.com) was in my training group, but now he lives in the Poltava Oblast (very far away). And Aaron Brantley (www.ukraineaaron.com) was in my link group in a neighboring village, and he is now even further away (basically the distance of i-10 from one end of Texas to the other). So our views will probably grow more distant from this point on, and represent 3 of the 5 major geographic regions. People usually talk about East and West, but there is definitely a central (where Chris is, kind of like the midwest), and a south central (similar to the south in terrain) and Crimea (like a Florida, a world all of its own with plenty of beaches and tourists, but Crimea has mountains too).

Chris has a picture of Kelly and himself at a windmill; Kelly is a volunteer who is living in my town for the next two years. And he has another photo of our community event with both my host Mom (though it is an awful picture of her) and Tetiana, our Technical/Cultural Facilitator.

Aaron's group picture at the picnic was in a volley of about 20 camera shots, which is why I may not look too entertained. The picnic was something of a surreal event - a very interesting mix of a Ukrainian barbecue, a college kegger, and a family reunion all rolled into one.

posted by jjs @ 4:02 PM