Glad to be here

Written Monday in my notebook, waiting for my first class to begin:

Yesterday, walking in the bitter, bitter cold to the bazaar--and later to the internet club to check my email--I thought again how rarely I go anywhere in a car. Last weekend I took the Marshrutka (like a mini-van bus) to the post office instead of walking, and it was the first time in two weeks I'd been in an automobile. I don't usually miss cars, and I only noticed how long I'd gone without riding in a vehicle when I was sitting there thinking, "The last time I was in an automobile was the bus ride to Simferopol. That was 2 weeks ago today."

Yesterday I was wondering again (thanks to the cold and the snow) how long it had been--a week--and thinking how unlikely it was that I'd go anywhere by vehicle in the next week, maybe two. This was a pretty impressive thought. I wondered how long I could go? I would try to break the two-week record.

Walking to school this morning I go slowly--it's very, very slippery out, the sidewalks wavy, bumpy sheets of compacted snow. As I am leaving the Dimitriva Region (the community of huge apartment buildings where I live with my host family) a car pulls over, the door opens, and the director (principal) offers me a ride to school.

So I guess I won't be breaking that record this week.

After I wrote the above I went to the post office, where I finally received my first mail packet from Peace Corps in Kyiv; from now on I'll get them every two weeks. I had about 10 letters, plus administrative notices, a newspaper, a cookbook put together by the volunteers in Ukraine, and 4 Newsweeks. I devoured the letters first, then moved on to the magazines.

And reading all of this I suddenly realized how glad I am to be here, doing this thing that I've always wanted to do, but always worried would slip away from me in a constant stream of next years. (I wanted to be the Carrie that joined the Peace Corps, and not the Carrie who always meant to.) It hit me, finally, that I am here, no longer postponing the dream.

Reading random articles from Newsweek I suddenly started thinking about things I hadn't really thought about in almost 5 months. For all that the Orange Revolution made international waves, I've been pretty isolated. There was the first news I've had about the tsunami, beyond the brief news reports in a language I don't understand (Ukrainian) and passing mentions in too-short phone calls home. There are editorials about Bush's second term, reports of his inaugeral address. An interview with some of the actors up for Oscars. (The Oscars. I forgot about the Oscars!) Here's an article on VoiP, next to an article on Rumsfield and international defense spending.

Wow. I haven't thought about any of this stuff since I got to Ukraine. My life has been so full of just living, learning Russian, decrypting conversations with my host family, learning to teach, wondering when I'll finally get out there to buy a pair of pants that fit me. I worry about wanting a computer, think about the things I miss from the States, anxiously hope for mail, wonder when I'll next speak English with an American. I complain about the (quantity of) food, wish I had more stylish winter boots, despair of ever becoming fluent in Russian, agonize over lesson plans.

I think about how long it's been since I've ridden in a car.

I doubt I'll fall back into being so out-of-touch as I have been the last few months, but I must admit it's been nice. And I'm glad that these days I worry about whether the kids will think the lesson I have planned is fun, rather than whether I'll meet the deadline at work (which Newsweek tells me can increase your chances of having a heart attack by a factor of 6). Teaching is hard and a lot of the time I don't like it (I remind myself that the first year is always the hardest), but it's gratifying when the pupils are so obviously interested in me, when a class I sub for asks me to please come back, when I try something that I can see, yes, is working. Those are good feelings. Sometimes I think I'm not doing enough, but I've only been here (less than) two months--not everything can happen at once.

But there you go--a nice, introspective entry. (To follow the nice, materialistic entry. I should tell you that I wrote an even more materialistic entry, but decided I didn't want to let you all know I was quite that shallow, so I decided not to post it.)