I'm back

How to begin?

Sometime last spring, maybe a month after I last posted to this journal, I hit my one-year-at-site-plus-a-few-months mark. I have since discovered that this is a pretty significant mark, even if it doesn't have a very significant name. In our Health and Safety Manual, given to us when we arrived, we have a sort of matrix of the "Critical Developmental Stages in the Life of a Peace Corps Volunteer," put together by a group of Volunteers in Africa in the 1980s. It's really amazing how well it corresponds to the experiences of Volunteers in Ukraine 20 years later.

Here are a few of the issues Volunteers mentioned for the one-year-at-site-plus-a-few-months developmental stage: realization of own limitations and considerations of "post PC life", depression about perceived lack of accomplishment, and anticipated separation. Volunteer reactions to these issues included self-recrimination, disappointment, downgrading of achievements, resignation, monument building, withdrawal into work details, panic, and procrastination. Suggestions to help deal with these feelings include applying for GREs and writing grad schools, taking vacations, and making detailed plans for the remaining time at site.

I'd like you to keep all that in mind as I continue. (Also, I might mention that I only just remembered that I had this matrix, and fished it out of a dusty box hidden under a spare bed.)

So, around the end of February, I started thinking obsessively about the future, to the near exclusion of everything else. Suddenly it became very important to decide what I was going to do after Peace Corps. This happened shortly after the One Year mark, because that's when things stopped being New (with a capital N), and so I stopped wondering What Would Happen Next in Chernomorskoe, because I pretty much knew. There was less than a year left, so if I wanted to accomplish anything concrete I'd better get started doing it now...but at the same time it was so much more interesting to think about what was going to happen after the Peace Corps.

This quickly led to obsession and frenetic activity, especially because I suddenly found a new internet company in Chernomorskoe and was able to get cable internet installed in my apartment. I can't get dial-up, but I can get cable. Hallelujah!

I then spent all of my free time online researching graduate degree programs and universities, wondering, What do I want to be when I grow up? (And I had a lot of free time, especially since by then I'd given up on most of my students, the little monsters--and I don't mean that affectionately--and so spent very little time lesson planning.)

The Future was such an interesting subject that nothing else could hold my attention. Even more so because this was around the time that I found out that my favorite student, Ruslan, didn't in fact get the FLEX scholarship to spend his senior year in America. I still don't understand it. He was so crushed that for a couple of weeks he could barely talk to me. And I was crushed, too, because--even though I knew I shouldn't have--I'd pinned all my hopes and feelings of accomplishment on this brilliant boy getting this wonderful opportunity, and once I knew he didn't get it after all, I felt like a complete failure, and began to think that, in the 15 months I'd spent in Chernomorskoe I'd contributed absolutely nothing of value to the community. A complete waste.

And that's about when I stopped writing letters, or updating this journal, and started feeling pretty damn awful and spending a lot of time online looking at different grad school programs.

And then I got over it, more or less, because I had to. It's either that or go home, and I wasn't willing to consider that. So I took some time to wallow, then got on with it.

(Although I kept looking at grad schools.)

That's pretty much been my emotional life over the past six months, feeling miserable and lonely. (It didn't help that, since I'd stopped writing, the trickle of letters I had been getting slowed to an infrequent drip. I mention this only because sometimes people I don't know stumble upon this Journal. So, if you're a friend or family member of another volunteer in Ukraine, please write them letters. Please!) Remember the matrix I mentioned at the beginning of this post?

It's funny; when I was younger I wrote most when I was miserable and depressed. My words came out of anger and sadness, and when I was happy I never wrote a word. Now it seems like somewhere along the way a switch was flipped, because I haven't written a word--anywhere--in the last six months. I wonder when, and why, that change happened?

All that said, I don't mean to imply that I've really spent the last six months doing nothing but feel sorry for myself and look at grad schools. I really have been busy with other stuff too.

For one, I wrote a small grant to create an English Language Resource Center at the library in my town. It's a pretty small grant, but we're going to be able to buy a computer, some books and movies, and a TV and DVD player, all of which will be a great resource for all the English teachers in my region. They are so far away from the nearest resource center, which is in Simferopol, that the only resources they have access to are the ones they kept from college. I bought a few things for the Center over the summer, and this week I'm going with a lady from the library to buy the big stuff. Getting everything together, and holding trainings and meetings with the English teachers from my region, are going to keep me busy up until the end of my service. And it's great to know that here, at last, is something concrete that I can leave behind when I go. (Maybe I'm monument building?)

I also had visitors this summer--my parents came in June, and we had a great time exploring Crimea and Kyiv. This makes me pretty lucky, compared to most other volunteers: I've had three sets of visitors come to see me. A lot of volunteers don't have any visitors at all, which is too bad.

After my parents left, I worked in a couple of summer camps, then in July I went to Budapest for about a week with a couple of other volunteers. Finally, at the end of August, I went to my Close of Service (COS) conference, a week of rain and fun in the Carpathians with all the other remaining volunteers from my group. We came to Ukraine with 109 volunteers, if I'm remembering correctly. We are now 71.

And now, finally, I'm back in Chernomorskoe, with only three months left in Ukraine. I've become busy overnight, with only more work to come. (This is a good thing, because I'm always much more productive when I have a lot to do and can't afford to procrastinate. That's probably why I'm finally getting this post written.) And I have lots of paperwork to do before I leave Ukraine, not to mention those grad school applications. Yes, I'll definitely stay busy for the rest of my time here. It's a good thing.

Now, at last, I have a request. If you're still out there, I'd like to hear from you. Send a letter (or an email) my way. Make my day happier!