1st week in Ukraine

After 19.5 hours of traveling we finally arrived at our Orientation center about 2 hours outside of Kiev. Here we were split up into small groups and met our Language/Cultural Trainer who will be living in the same village as me and my 4 other cluster mates. Our trainer is Natasha. She is from Eastern Ukraine, is young (probably 28 or so) and is very pretty and stylish. She speaks English very well and will be training us on everything like language, culture, food, pharmacies/grocery store products, health, safety, etc.

My host family is an older couple (Mama (Nadya) and Papa) probably in their 50’s-60’s who live in a small village called Starte Belous and speak NO english. They have a pretty large house for just two people with 3 bedrooms, large living room, descent size kitchen, nice bathroom, and a family room. There are also many animals including 1 dog, 2 cats, 2 adult goats, 3 baby goats (2 weeks old!), many chickens/hens, and a few baby pigs. Also, my host family is completely OKAY with me being a vegetarian. There are plenty of dishes I can eat and also lots of types of cooked fish. I’m very happy about this because I learned those cute little pigs that I was playing with will soon be their dinner (this made me very sad, but at least I don’t have to eat it!). I must admit though, these animals have the life! They have their own little houses, get to eat all our scraps and get to play around in a large backyard. Everyone’s yards are fenced in so animals can run freely. I guess if I were to be a pig, I would want to live here.

Easter was great. My host parents have a son, Sasha, and he and his wife, Lina came over for dinner. This was the highlight of my weekend because she is an English tutor in Chernigiv, which is a city about 15 minutes away. She translated all the dinner conversations and also helped me get a few answers to my host family about myself and also helped me answer some of my own questions about them. She gave me her cell phone number/email so that we can meet up in the city and bring me to her study group to meet her students. Anyway we had great conversations and drank some good Ukrainian wine. I feel lucky to be with such a family. They are VERY hospitable and never let me go hungry.