Hello all,
It's been quite a while since I've written on here, so I thought I'd give an answer to the question, "What on earth is Andrew doing nowadays?!?"
A lot, to be honest. Let's start back from May, my last entry.
The weekend after my last entry (May 9), I attended a sort-of graduation ceremony, merged with prom. I can't really describe this. All the 11th grade classes from my school were at the town's cultural center, a former movie theater. I gave a speech to about 300 assembled Ukrainians. In Russian. It went over well, or at least they laughed in all the right places. My school principal proposed a toast later that night--something along the lines of, "When you are governor of your state, Georgia? invite us to your governor's mansion and have a Ukrainian-style holiday there. For us." It was pretty fun.
In late May, I went way out to western Ukraine, to a town called Berehovo. I ran a 10K race there--that's 6.2mi for all you metric-illiterate Americans out there--and placed something like 6th overall, 3rd out of Peace Corps volunteers. Sounds pretty cool, but there were maybe 22 people in the race, so...yeah. Not last at least. It was a fun week, and I finally got to see the Carpathians. This town is basically on the Hungarian border. A week later, my school held its official last bell ceremony, which was anticlimactic--it rained heavily, so they held it inside and restricted attendance. I watched from a balcony.
Around that time, I also got my visa to visit Russia. Russia requires a visa for most Westerners, and it can be a bit of a headache to receive it. But I got it in early June, just in time for a trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg that 2 other volunteers, Dara and Warren, and I had been planning. In June I also ran the same day camp at my school that I did last year, and I was lucky enough to get tickets for a Euro Cup game. Ukraine hosted the once-every-four-years tournament of European soccer, along with Poland, which consumed almost all news in Ukraine for the first half of 2012. It went off relatively smooth. I saw Ukraine's team play France in the city of Donetsk.
At the end of June, I hopped on a series of trains that, altogether, totaled 29 hours [as you may expect, there's a whole book worth of stories in that journey alone...but that's for another day] and took me to Budapest, Hungary. I met up with one of my best friends from college there, Cedric. After Cedric flew back to Ireland to go to work on Monday, I headed to Vienna for a few nights there, then back to Ukraine. Once back in country, I went down to Crimea, finally, to work at a Ukrainian-run camp there. My role there was pretty lax: I ran an English club, open twice daily, for anyone who wanted to come. Usually I would get 2 or 3 girls who would practice their English for 10 minutes or so. Then I would possibly get a handful of boys who wanted to play Frisbee with me. I'd oblige. But that was about it. The camp was on the beach, which was nice--I was never really bored. After that, I attended Peace Corps's Russian "language refresher," a short camp for us to practice our Russian, and then I went to what was, for me at least, the meat of my summer: CAMP REPUBLIC.
I'd been on the planning staff of this camp from the start--it's one I had worked at last year and greatly enjoyed. I don't want to get too much into the details, but it's basically a week-long camp for college students where they simulate historical scenarios--in this case, the fall of the Roman republic (i.e. Caesar, Octavian, Mark Antony, Brutus/Cassius, and all that good stuff). And it's 100% in English. I wasn't exactly the director, but that responsibility got more or less thrust upon me--at least the non-logistical aspects of the at-camp directing. [Some other, much more organized, and all-around wonderful volunteers handled the logistics--and then some--of the camp...Blakely, Jing, and Courtney, to name a few] It was everything I could have hoped for, I guess.
After Camp Republic, I headed home to Pavlograd for the first time in a few months. I had a week or so of relaxation there before I headed on my last trip abroad as a Peace Corps volunteer: Estonia and Finland. But I'd made a mistake booking my flight...long story short, I wound up in Estonia/Finland 2 days behind all my friends, but I did get a lovely 5-hour layover in Riga, Latvia and got to see the town. So not all was lost. Anyway, Helsinki, Finland was beautiful but chilly (in August) and expensive. Tallinn, Estonia was even more beautiful (in my opinion), also chilly, and much cheaper. We spent 3 nights in Tallinn, but 5 in Estonia--we rented a car and went to a national park there and camped for 2 nights. All around fun times. Honestly, Estonia might be my favorite country I've ever visited.
And now I'm back here in Pavlograd. School starts again in 2 weeks, and I officially have my close-of-service date: November 20. My plan is to travel for 2-3 weeks in India and (maybe) Nepal or Korea, then be back in Georgia around mid-December, definitely well before Christmas. Then, life starts again...
It's been quite a while since I've written on here, so I thought I'd give an answer to the question, "What on earth is Andrew doing nowadays?!?"
A lot, to be honest. Let's start back from May, my last entry.
The weekend after my last entry (May 9), I attended a sort-of graduation ceremony, merged with prom. I can't really describe this. All the 11th grade classes from my school were at the town's cultural center, a former movie theater. I gave a speech to about 300 assembled Ukrainians. In Russian. It went over well, or at least they laughed in all the right places. My school principal proposed a toast later that night--something along the lines of, "When you are governor of your state, Georgia? invite us to your governor's mansion and have a Ukrainian-style holiday there. For us." It was pretty fun.
In late May, I went way out to western Ukraine, to a town called Berehovo. I ran a 10K race there--that's 6.2mi for all you metric-illiterate Americans out there--and placed something like 6th overall, 3rd out of Peace Corps volunteers. Sounds pretty cool, but there were maybe 22 people in the race, so...yeah. Not last at least. It was a fun week, and I finally got to see the Carpathians. This town is basically on the Hungarian border. A week later, my school held its official last bell ceremony, which was anticlimactic--it rained heavily, so they held it inside and restricted attendance. I watched from a balcony.
Around that time, I also got my visa to visit Russia. Russia requires a visa for most Westerners, and it can be a bit of a headache to receive it. But I got it in early June, just in time for a trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg that 2 other volunteers, Dara and Warren, and I had been planning. In June I also ran the same day camp at my school that I did last year, and I was lucky enough to get tickets for a Euro Cup game. Ukraine hosted the once-every-four-years tournament of European soccer, along with Poland, which consumed almost all news in Ukraine for the first half of 2012. It went off relatively smooth. I saw Ukraine's team play France in the city of Donetsk.
At the end of June, I hopped on a series of trains that, altogether, totaled 29 hours [as you may expect, there's a whole book worth of stories in that journey alone...but that's for another day] and took me to Budapest, Hungary. I met up with one of my best friends from college there, Cedric. After Cedric flew back to Ireland to go to work on Monday, I headed to Vienna for a few nights there, then back to Ukraine. Once back in country, I went down to Crimea, finally, to work at a Ukrainian-run camp there. My role there was pretty lax: I ran an English club, open twice daily, for anyone who wanted to come. Usually I would get 2 or 3 girls who would practice their English for 10 minutes or so. Then I would possibly get a handful of boys who wanted to play Frisbee with me. I'd oblige. But that was about it. The camp was on the beach, which was nice--I was never really bored. After that, I attended Peace Corps's Russian "language refresher," a short camp for us to practice our Russian, and then I went to what was, for me at least, the meat of my summer: CAMP REPUBLIC.
I'd been on the planning staff of this camp from the start--it's one I had worked at last year and greatly enjoyed. I don't want to get too much into the details, but it's basically a week-long camp for college students where they simulate historical scenarios--in this case, the fall of the Roman republic (i.e. Caesar, Octavian, Mark Antony, Brutus/Cassius, and all that good stuff). And it's 100% in English. I wasn't exactly the director, but that responsibility got more or less thrust upon me--at least the non-logistical aspects of the at-camp directing. [Some other, much more organized, and all-around wonderful volunteers handled the logistics--and then some--of the camp...Blakely, Jing, and Courtney, to name a few] It was everything I could have hoped for, I guess.
After Camp Republic, I headed home to Pavlograd for the first time in a few months. I had a week or so of relaxation there before I headed on my last trip abroad as a Peace Corps volunteer: Estonia and Finland. But I'd made a mistake booking my flight...long story short, I wound up in Estonia/Finland 2 days behind all my friends, but I did get a lovely 5-hour layover in Riga, Latvia and got to see the town. So not all was lost. Anyway, Helsinki, Finland was beautiful but chilly (in August) and expensive. Tallinn, Estonia was even more beautiful (in my opinion), also chilly, and much cheaper. We spent 3 nights in Tallinn, but 5 in Estonia--we rented a car and went to a national park there and camped for 2 nights. All around fun times. Honestly, Estonia might be my favorite country I've ever visited.
And now I'm back here in Pavlograd. School starts again in 2 weeks, and I officially have my close-of-service date: November 20. My plan is to travel for 2-3 weeks in India and (maybe) Nepal or Korea, then be back in Georgia around mid-December, definitely well before Christmas. Then, life starts again...
