Well, our time in Ukraine has come and gone. This will probably be my last blog from Donetsk. How nice to end on such a nice round number. We leave town on the train on Sunday and leave Kiev crazy-early on Tuesday morning. The last weeks have been peppered with invitations for meals and good-byes with so many people who have cumulatively added up to our life here these past years. And this "good-bye schedule" has been turned up a notch these last days. We still have two more days of this, so I can't really wrap it up, but I don't think that I will be able to find much time to update again from here out.
In the course of these gatherings, the questions always come up: are we "ready to leave and are we leaving "in general" or "forever." I want to respond with an emphatic "No, I'm not ready to leave" or "No, not for good" but it is hard for me. In all honesty I am pretty much ready to start the next chapter in life and therefore I am ready to leave by default. And these good-byes have been especially difficult because we don't know if/when we will be coming back to see these people again. We would like to come back, but with 3-4 years of study in the immediate future and without a specific trip date in mind it is difficult to say anything for certain.
But to not respond with one of these "emphatic responses" seems to belittle the experience; to say it wasn't great and we didn't appreciate these people and the part of their lives they have shown us. And that isn't the case at all. We have been stretched in ways that we never knew we would bend. To say it has all been great and enjoyable would be stretching the truth in that same way. But overall it has been, as I find myself oftentimes saying in Russian, a "miraculous experience" (somehow it doesn't sound as cheese as it does in English).
I have gotten to meet and talk with people whose stories I had only read about in North America. Through these conversations these stories and heroes became real to me. I have grown from the faith and values of the many people I have worked/traveled/played with in ways I will never really be able to put my finger on. I have felt like I have been on a MCC scholarship these past years and I could summarize the education I have received in a long, boring blog (maybe I already have).
Have I had a positive effect on these people? I hope so, probably not as much as they have affected me, but nonetheless I think that I have been honest, flexible, and willing to help in any way I have been able. I have tried to be both real and optimistic, even if this was oftentimes a struggle. And I have provided them with plenty of laughs, with my "ease of speaking/lack of attentiveness to grammar" combo.
The optimist in me wants to say that I/we will be back. This would help to emphasize the many "thank you's" that I find myself saying. We both hope to come back, one option might be to teach at the Summer English Intensive that Laura has spent so much time and effort planning. And maybe come early or stay late and help out with some camps for the Good Shepherd kids. So, I guess the only question really is when.
Dave
