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I haven’t wrote for my blog for some time now, but I felt tonight would be a good chance to catch up. Tonight is my first night in my apartment in Pryvillya. This is the apartment that I will live in for the next 22 months. Living at camp was great, was able to make some really good friends and meet a lot of the kids in my town as well as the surrounding area. Since the last time I wrote quite a bit has happened. Liz came and visited which was amazing. We went to L’viv in the East of Ukraine which was so beautiful, so far my favorite city in Ukraine. The next weekend we were in Kiev, the capital. It was great just hanging out and exploring. During the week we stayed with my host family in Fastiv, which is near Kiev. I got to take Liz to the sauna, to the forest and spend time with my amazing Ukrainian family. Was hard to say goodbye to her again, but now she is living and working near Paris, so it is great to have her closer, as well as only one time zone away opposed to the 8 hour difference we were dealing with.

              Last week I was in Kiev again for a volunteer conference in Kiev. I attended the conference with my counterpart, Marinna. She is the English teacher at school 7 where I will be working. She has been nothing but amazing! We plan on starting a city newspaper through the school. Our goal is to have it be completely run by volunteers in the school as well as the community. With the revenue from the paper and its ads we will donate the money to community projects. Right now Pryvillya does not have a paper, and there is a void for it. So that will be my big project over the next years. Tomorrow I will meet with the school directors to figure out what else I will be doing. I really want to have a chess club, English club, and a sports club. Not sure if it is possible to do all of these but that’s what I am going for. I also would love to teach a few lessons during the week either on environmental issues or healthy lifestyles, the rest of the time I will be hanging out with Marinna during her English lessons.  

             Besides that I have slowly been trying to piece together my apartment, slowly is key to that sentence. The workers remolded the whole place which was great, now I must buy all those random things that bring the apartment together. I live in a 6 unit building just off the main street of my town. I just went outside and it was crazy to see the surrounding area at night, so cool to see the age of the buildings, the street and the area near my apartment!  

 

               Also I must mention that my sister was married a few weeks ago, I can’t believe I was unable to attend. While in Kiev I was finally able to see pictures from the wedding, she looked absolutely beautiful! Pretty crazy I have a brother-in-law now, which I am super excited about, as well as a c ute little niece. 

  So yea during the next week I will get my apartment all set up, meet with the school directors to figure out what my work will be, and then in a week school will start. Kind of nervous to meet all the students at school, but at the same time super excited to do so. It should be interesting to say the least. Russian is coming along, try to stay focused on it but its hard sometimes not to get burnt out on it.  

 

         

I will end here, love to hear from any of you! Take care. Side note, love to get some mail my address is

ВУЛ. ПАВЛИКА МОРОЗОВА 9 КВ 2
ПРИВiЛЛЯ, ЛИСИЧАНСЬКИЙ РН.
ЛУГАНСЬКА ОБЛ.
  Ukraine 93191
(Ukraine in English will get it to the country, the Ukrainian address will get it to my apartment here)
The street I live on is named after a young boy who during the creation of the Soviet Union ratted out his dad for hiding land and money from the Soviet government. The boy was a popular figure during the cold war, communism before family.