Laura and I have been back in Donetsk for a little over a week now and we finally seem to be getting back into the routine again. Just like the first time we came here it has been a difficult adjustment for us, but it has been different this time around.
First of all, the sense of adventure that carried us through our first few months has worn off, making us a bit less excited about all of the things that aren’t quite as easy here as they are at home. It isn’t as easy to take the little things, such as long, smelly bus rides and sporadic periods of time with warm water, with a grain of salt. Those first few days back Laura and I found ourselves saying, “Oh yeah, now I remember” a lot. Looking at it another way, it should have been easier to come back because we already knew what we were coming back to, but this was not really the case. Knowing the situation and expectations, has, however, helped us to adjust a lot more quickly this time.
I think that MCC’s mandatory two-week orientation is a very necessary thing in preparing people to plug in to positions in a wide variety of cultural settings. At orientation we were forced to think about how things will be (or how we really have no idea how things will be). This time, we did not have any sort of a buffer between our time with family and our time here. While that didn’t have to be a problem, I found myself wishing I had prepared a bit for coming back. The problem was that I wanted to enjoy my time at home and sort of forget about how things are back here for a little bit. This caused me to neglect some of the tasks I had planned to complete while at home. I had wanted to set up meetings with several people at home who could’ve been very helpful resources for my project. They could have been very good sounding boards since they have a lot of experience with projects like mine. And I kick myself for not being more deliberate, but there is not a lot I can do about it now.
So now, we seem to be back into our routines. Laura is keeping busy preparing/teaching a couple of English classes and I am moving forward with the greenhouse and garden. We start attending language lessons again tomorrow and we will see how that goes. Life seems to be going on as normally as it can be for us here.
Dave
