Hello Ukraine!
I'm on my third day in this beautiful country. We left from Toronto on Friday afternoon and arrived after midnight on Sunday. We were greeted by tradionally dressed young Ukrainians, eager and excited to grab our suitcases and move us through a an evening full of events. I wish I could show you this first encounter throughmy eyes..... I was sleeping on our 'seventies band tour bus ( which is the Ostroh Acedemy bus )' and woke up just before we arrived at our training location. I remeber looking outside the buses window to a sea full of stars inthe pitch black while 20 new friends slept around me on the bus. We were in the middle of nowhere - aka, rural Ukraine. The bus turned onto an old cobble/brick road, slowing from it's already 'turtle speed' to a stop in front of old rickety giant gates that we iluminated by our buses headlights. There were 20 soon to be friends, standing in front of this old church camp and home for the next 3 day orientation.
The Ukrainians brought us to a court yard entrance, dressed in tradional white blouses for girls and white with red ribbon shirts for boys. We each formed these awkardly situated lines in front of them. This girl with bright blonde hair held this giant loaf of gread, which I thought was angel food cake at first. All of the others around her said some nice greeting words to us, followed with the passing of this welcoming 'wedding bread' to share and a bag of goodies for each of us. Wow!
Of course, us Canadians, having prepared a sentence in Ukrainian and gathered a couple gifts tried to give a decent response to this decidant introduction!
All of them had waited until we arrived to eat dinner - we'd eaten less than two hours ago! But politely, we sat down to a second feast.... this is the first thing I noticed about Ukrainians - they make huge, homemade, beautiful, and tasty meals, and they eat a lot! At each meal I've had, we've had at least half the food left over. It's a little overwhelming, but you are definitely eating very good quality food. They really spend time on preparing meals. I feel like they havn't become part of the craze of proccessed foods; therefore they aren't changing to the 'One Hundred Mile' diet. It's already the norm! But really, I can't eat that much all the time!
Then we stayed up until 1:30 am, having a big girl chat in the Ukrainian girls room. That was only 3:30 pm Victoria time, but by that point my internal clock was so mixed up! I literally crashed that night, and getting up at 8:00 am during the camp was horrible!
We did lots of 'Naramata style' training activities, and had check-ins! I learned a ton, and a couple Ukraine phrases too!
Ukrainians are extremely polite and hospitable. They really work to include you and make you feel comfortable. Allof our group speaks pretty fluent English, which surprised me. We talked about some pretty deep topics, and the conversations with everyone made me so excited for the adventures to come!
But this first training was more than meeting people, for me it was meeting the environment. It's absolutely gorgeous. The climate is pretty similar to Victoria, and our camp's village was very rural, with no cement roads ( all cobble or dirt or grass ), it made a cool , quiet and comfortable environment. Each house is very small, with a giant garden - most Ukrainians grow all their own fruites and vegetables, and raise livestock. Their were lots of cats and dogs in the 'village', which is read a road with some houses and one store. There's no way I can follow the travel clinics advice by avoiding animals!
Yesterday, host families and counterparts were chosen ( the person you will live with on both pahses of the program ). I'm with Svitlana, who is AWESOME! Her parents are both teachers. Her Dad 'masters' a grade 10 class at the Ostroh high school and her Mom is the dean of english at the Ostroh Acedemy. Her Mom has supervised the CWY/Ostroh Acedemy before and I think they will all be great resources for this experience and an awesome host family!
Well, Svitlana and I are heading over to another friends house from her families apartment to hang-out. I love you all at home. My phone number will probably come tomorrow!
Now, for a short explanation of the title of this. When I first arrived, I was super nervous and felt pretty awkard. They've basically given me their living room as my room, and I didn't know how to react to a new family and how to intrude on their family. After unpacking my stuff - I really didn't bring anything - I wasn't really sure what to do. I needed to wash clothes, but I didn't know how they did it. I asked Svitlana and she got my started, washing them by hand in their bath. I had these giant striped colour woolies from Han and Meg and I needed to wash them. Well, I thought I washed them before, but it turns out I didn't because it turned their tub purple. I felt horrible and didn't really no the proccesss. they helped me through the proccesss and it's alright now!
They really are an awesome host family and I loved getting to know them better over dinner.
Got to go now
love,
ellen
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