I can see Russia from my house
- madisonunderwood93
- Dec 11, 2016
- 2 min read
So a lot has happened since I last posted but the biggest news I have completed training, officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer and moved to my official site that I will be living in for the next two years!!! It was a pretty cool ceremony and a lot of us dressed up in traditional вишиванки (vyshyvankas). I'll attach a link to the video of the ceremony at the bottom of this page.
Shortly after the ceremony my counterpart (the English teacher that is responsible for me and my main liaison with the school I'll be working in) and I hopped on a bus and headed to my new town Ромни (Romny). Romny is located in the Ukrainian Oblast of Суми (Sumy), which is in the northeastern part of Ukraine.
The main language spoken is Russian and as cool as it will eventually be to know not only Ukrainian but also Russian it’s pretty intimidating right now when I’m walking down the street and can hardly understand what people around me are saying.
Since moving here on Wednesday I’ve already started learning different Russian words and fortunately a lot of vocabulary is very similar to Ukrainian. When I get stressed about the language I just think how thankful I am that I am even able to be here with an opportunity to learn two languages. Okay who am I kidding I think about how much I miss the Gaff (my favorite bar in State College) and how no one speaks Ukrainian or Russian there, but that I'm doing so much more with my life and improving other peoples lives by being here and that at the end of the day everything will be fine.
Romny has about 40,000 residents and a park with a golden pig?? Not sure what that is about but I intend to find out. The school I will teach in is specialized for foreign language so starting in first grade students start learning English. The students also learn French or German. There are fourteen English teachers in my school of about 900 students and from now until spring break I will be working with 7 different teachers teaching 10 different groups of students ranging from 4th-11th graders. I’m super excited to get to know my new town and get started teaching. I (unbiasedly) think I have some of the best students in Ukraine;)
“If I cared about the other seven billion [people] out there, instead of just me, that’s probably a much better use of my time” – Princess Diaries
Yes I did just use a Princess Diaries quote but it's a great movie and a fitting quote.
-M
If you're interested you can find the video of the ceremony on the Peace Corps Ukraine Facebook
Some cool highlights from the video
1:50 the Ukrainian national anthem
25:26 I’m called up on stage
37:00 We take the United States Uniformed Services Oath of Office
1:00:00 the ministry of education has a special comment thanking our parents