Squat Toilets and Ukrainian "So You Think You Can Dance"

Yesterday the group piled into two vans, said a quick goodbye (we won't see each other till the Swearing In ceremony in two months), and shipped out to our training sites. I was the first drop-off. The driver kept turning onto smaller roads, past vast flat fields of black earth, down a dirt road...I sensed we were getting close. He stopped to ask for directions. "Bilky? Never heard of it."

We picked up my LCF, though I didn't realize who she was till we stopped and I pointed out my luggage to the driver, who left me and my mountain of luggage to the tender mercies of my very own babushka. My LCF spent a few minutes translating "Do you have any special food needs, etc. etc." and then left me alone with Olya. We spend most of our time pointing at words in the dictionary. Then she feeds me massive amounts of food and I rub my belly to assure her it is tasty, even though I can only manage--with heroic effort--to down half of it.

Highlights: I got locked in the outhouse and had to bang on the door and yell for Olya to rescue me. There is a block of wood that swings over the door on the outside, probably to keep it from flapping in the wind during the winter or something, but it swung over the door when I was inside, and that was not good. And of course I couldn't explain it so she thought I didn't know how to use the door. While unpacking last night, I discovered my face wash had become unlocked and unloaded half its contents into my toiletry bag, drenching the bottom of my hiking backpack and everything nearby. I'm still trying to scrub the suds out of the fabric, but at least it will be very clean! Right now it's still sticky though, and Olya hung the entire pack on the clothes line, which amuses me. I'm sure she thinks I'm crazy, since I spent a good hour trying to scrub the soap out (it's still not gone). Last night I also peed in a bucket. That was not a mistake. Before going to bed, she pointed to the bucket and said "tooalet," so apparently we don't use the outhouse at night. I made sure she had used it for the intended purpose before I did, in case I had misunderstood. I don't know, however, if the bucket is the proper place for other nighttime bathroom visits, and I don't know how I'm going to figure that out either, without some interesting miming/broken Ukrainian.

The house has running/hot water and electricity. The entryway is part mudroom/part hallway (perpendicular to the door, if that makes sense?), then straight ahead is the kitchen, to the left is the bathroom with sink and tub (and bucket), to the right is her bedroom (with a tv), and through a door off the front hallway slightly to the left is the dining room, left off of that is the living room (with another tv, and a wardrobe where I put all my clothes and suitcases and miscellaneous stuff), and straight through the dining room is my bedroom (minus a door). At night she shuts the dining room door and that acts like my bedroom door, so I essentially have dining room, living room, and bedroom to myself at that point. I have to walk past a chained dog on my way to the outhouse, but she seems nice so I pet her on the head and hope for the best each time. Olya has a big garden (pretty typical for Ukrainians, I'm told--they grow a lot of their own food if they can, since the hyperinflation of the 90s hit incomes hard).

Yesterday after lunch and a quick nap, my LCF (teacher), Svitlana, picked me up and we walked to another trainee's house for a party. I was tired, but I wanted to meet my cluster. We walked past a new neighborhood, and I was shocked by the contrast: the houses were double, triple, quadruple the size of Olya's house, and very elegant. Don't get me wrong, I think Olya's house is lovely, but these houses were nice in a different sort of way. It always surprises me when such contrasts exist in adjacent neighborhoods, but I don't know why I'm so taken aback, since it seems to happen everywhere in the U. S. too. We went to Alia's house and I met her host family (a very jolly--yes, I would describe them as jolly--couple with a 16-year-old daughter and a son somewhere in the 8-12 year range) and the 4 other volunteers I will be training with. We sat around the table and worked our way through a big meal (I had eaten two hours ago), chatting mostly in English, with Svitlana occasionally asking one of them to translate into Ukrainian for the host family. They all seemed to understand most of the Ukrainian spoken and be comfortable responding, so I'm anxious to get started. The tv on the counter was showing a marathon of Ukrainian "So You Think You Can Dance," and everyone was entranced.

Lauren has 9 host siblings, Sean lives with host parents, grand parents, and a 3 year old grandchild, and Sarah's host grandparents live in the next town and happen to host one of the trainees in that cluster, so there's a lot of back and forth visiting between their host families. Borova (sp?) is the "big" town and host to another cluster that together with ours makes a "link." I am sitting in an internet cafe in Borova right now with my LCF and three trainees: it has free wifi and we are all silently typing away at our computers. All of my cluster mates have indoor flush toilets, so they were a little shocked to learn that I did not. Frankly, I was too. I don't mind it, but it would be nice if everyone had similar living conditions, whether rustic or modern. In a perfect world, I would also have a bigger host family, with some host siblings, but I didn't have any say in the matter and I like Olya, so as soon as I can figure out what she's saying I'm sure we'll have a grand old time!

Tomorrow I start language class--I'll go in an hour early to start catching up, and everyone else will come at 10. We meet at Svitlana's house, which is just down the street from mine. The school is also very close. The other trainees all taught their first lessons on Friday and will be teaching more this week. We are also going to Kyiv on Thursday. They have never been! Orientation for the main group took place at an old Soviet resort outside the city. My group had a (very) abbreviated orientation right at Peace Corps Headquarters. Peace Corps only lifted the travel ban for trainees yesterday, so no one has left their training villages since they arrived.

That's all for now; I've got my work cut out for me in the next few weeks, so I doubt I'll have much free time, but I'll post when I do!