Happy New Year
Trip Start
Mar 02, 2003
1
17
41
Trip End
Jul 04, 2005
Krakow, Rivne,
Ukraine
Friday, January 9, 2004
I've been back in Rivne for a week now. My mom was here last month, and then we went to Krakow for the holidays. It's been a rather crazy, whirlwind time and I'm finally getting settled back into things. When I got back to Ukraine I was informed by my colleagues that there wouldn't be any work until at least the 8th, and well, they were right. And we're moving offices. I swear, I can't keep up with the changes anymore.
So, a quick synopsis of what's been going on. While my mom was here my regional manager and I distributed toys to local orphans. Some of Bohdan's friends in the States had collected the toys and sent them to him here, and then I located an orphanage in Rivne, and finally on December 19th, St. Nicolas Day, we handed out the gifts. It was a great time seeing a bunch of smiling faces ripping open these huge boxes filled with toys. I didn't realize how emotional the whole experience would be... I think all three of us - me, my mom, and Bohdan left that orphanage feeling really great, and at the same time absolutely sad. The next day, leaving my apartment in a state of absolute disarray after the present wrapping, my mom and I took the train to Lviv, thus beginning our trek to Krakow.
Although I had asked my mom to pack light because I knew the trip to Poland would be a bit long, she arrived with a large suitcase, full of gifts for our family in Poland. So we settled it, instead of walking across the border and saving some money, we would take the super nice, new train from Lviv directly to Krakow.
01 Giving out gifts
Now, I must say, it was fancy. It has these special wheels that expand and retract to adjust to the gauge of the rail. Normally, when going from Ukraine/Russia to Poland you have to stand on the border for a few hours while they lift the train and change the wheels - since the gauge of the rails is different. Now with this new train we didn't wait at all on the border, so the trip was quite fast. Krakow was great. Four of my friends came to Krakow for Christmas. I was able to show them around my city, tell some stories, and share family time with my friends. They even tried the Jewish style carp that we eat at Wigilia, even though I don't touch the stuff. :) While in Krakow, I also saw some old friends, and ran into a lot of Peace Corps Ukraine peeps on the street. It was so odd to see so many people that I know in what I truly consider to be my city. Also, I met some Ukrainians on the street one day and spoke with them, in Ukrainian, which was also really odd for me. Perhaps that sounds silly, but I've never spoken anything in Poland besides Polish and English. Crazy.
Most importantly I got to spend time with my mom and my sister. I hadn't seen Claudia in almost a year, and it was really like no time had passed at all. Her hair's gotten shorter, and now she's a college graduate, but our conversations picked up just where they'd left off in February.
Now things will start to pick up again at work, once we move offices next week. Then I'll be off to Kyiv for four days of language refresher. I can't wait for that, because it's going to be a reunion of sorts for my group, and I'll be able to intensely study language for a few days, which is always a nice thing. So, that's all for now. More updates later... perhaps I'll be more eloquent in the future. It's just been a really, really tiring month.
