One More Week

and I'll officially be a Peace Corps Volunteer! (right now I'm a Peace Corps Trainee)

To mark this commencement, Peace Corps will hold a ceremony called "Swearing-In" where they will not only invite all 105 Trainees, but our host families, our training teachers, local officials from our training towns, our future Ukrainian counterparts

My invitation to "Swearing-In"

(the person we will be working closely with at our permanent site), and some current Peace Corps Volunteers. The ceremony is four days long packed with speeches, performances, meetings, lectures, seminars, and goodbyes. The most exciting part is we finally find out where we will be living for the next two years! It's up to fate now I guess, let you know soon!

This weekend is my first weekend off in 3 months and oh man did I need it. Last week I came down with a type of food poisoning (E. coli) and my host grandma tried to take care of me. Her remedy for all ails is tea so that's what she gave me... and nothing else. Since tea contains caffeine, it can dehydrate you and since I wasn't eating or drinking anything else (+ symptoms of E. coli), I became very dehydrated and even started hallucinating. I remembered eating mushrooms a few days earlier, which are not recommended because certain types of mushrooms can be poisonous to an unaccustomed stomach, so I became worried and called Peace Corps. I was rushed to the Medical Office in Kyiv for possible mushroom poisoning where I drank a charcoal mixture (absorbs poison), was put on an IV, got some shots, and spent the night. Turns out it wasn't mushroom poisoning (it was E. coli) and I'm all better! Peace Corps care was impeccable, I'm fine, flowers and rainbows :)

Me with one of my students

Right now, the school we've been teaching at is on summer break and we are teaching an English Summer Camp with kids 5-15 years old. It's great! It's more low-key, we have the freedom to choose our topics, and the weather's been nice for our outdoor activities. Each day of our camp has a theme, like American History or American Holidays, that my cluster mates and I plan our lesson topic around. Tomorrow's theme is American Pop. Culture and I'm teaching American slang, "chill" they're all positive words haha. Life isn't all flowers and rainbows, this week we have the dreaded Language Proficiency Interview (LPI). It's where we have a conversation with a Peace Corps interviewer about basically everything... IN RUSSIAN. For example, a question might be to compare my host family in Ukraine to my family in America including appearance, profession, house, age, character, and hobbies of everyone. I can barely do some of these questions in English, let alone using my 3 months of Russian. That's Peace Corps training though, intense and with crazy, unrealistic expectations haha. Wish me luck!

Last note is to my family: I love you all, I'm sorry I can't be with you right now.
Rest in peace Grandma.
"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal"
- Anonymous