End of Term Preparation

Today I started to work on my “End of Term Report” for MCC and I read “A Re-entry Manual” for overseas workers. With a little over one month left, I guess it’s time. The last months have flown by and I am sure this next one will go even quicker.

We were supposed to start this process back in May, when we participated in our last annual retreat. At that time we gave little reflections and had meetings with the area directors, but it just didn’t feel right. How can one reflect on the whole time when there are still three months left to go? I wasn’t ready for such activities; it seemed too early. After that local people began asking “when are you leaving?” as the first question after the standard greetings. Again, I just wasn’t ready.

After having taken the Crimea trip (the topic of the previous entry), I have started to feel like I am ready to think about leaving. I still want to be here until that last day, but I realize that leaving is a process and needs to be done over time so we can have closure with as many activities and people as possible.

So, what does the schedule for the next month look like? Laura will be finishing out her English intensive responsibilities by July 29. Sometime during that time we will also pack up our two suitcases each and move out of our apartment. From then until the end we will be living in a house of some friends of ours who will be on vacation. We will head to Zaporozhye on the 30^th for a picnic/farewell that afternoon; also spending the 31^st there for “end of term” evaluations with our country representative. After we return to Donetsk we will move our furniture and home furnishings to an apartment in Makeevka where the new MCC workers will live. They will arrive in country on the 4^th and in Makeevka a few days later. We will do as much of the moving in process as we can before they get here to help them with their transition. I will do some traveling and have some meetings with the new Income Generation worker, and we will leave Donetsk (by train) on August 19^th. We will spend a day in Kiev and fly out at 6:30am on August 21^st. It’s coming fast.

So, that’s it in a nutshell. I hope there will be more reflections to come.

Dave

Crimea Trip

Crimea seems to be the place where everyone in the Former Soviet Union goes “to relax” on vacation. It is the southernmost peninsula in Ukraine, and is an “autonomous republic.” I am not sure what that means exactly, but I have heard it has to do with the fact that many residents are ethnic Russians and would rather not be associated with Ukraine. I won’t get into politics—that isn’t something I know much about—but after having been to Crimea, I can understand why the land has been fought over by so many nations and peoples in the past. Crimea is incredibly beautiful.

I traveled there on July second for a meeting with partners at a correctional facility where MCC has financed the construction of a greenhouse. After the meeting, I met up with two educators and 10 kids from Good Shepherd for a week of relaxing and seeing some of the Crimean sites. We traveled to Laspi, a small resort community between the cities of Sevastopol and Yalta. It is situated on a sliver of pebble beaches sandwiched between some mountains and the sea. I have heard it referred to as the “most beautiful place in Crimea” and, from my limited exposure to the area, I would not argue.

We set up our four tents on the beach and slept there six nights. During the days, we spent some time at the beach; the water was clear, blue and very deep in places quite near shore. There was nice variety, a couple of days there were some strong waves to play in and a couple of days it was almost completely calm. It was a pebble beach, which meant it was sometimes painful to bare feet, but there were a lot of boulders not far from shore that a sand beach probably wouldn’t have. We swam out to these boulders and had great fun jumping/diving into the sea.

We also tried to take at least one excursion each day to different interesting places in the area. Sometimes getting the kids to travel to these places was like pulling teeth, but they were usually glad they came. These places seemed like a different world when compared with industrial Makeevka.

As the pictures indicate, we visited the ancient cave cities of Mangup and Eski-Kermen, which supposedly date back over 6,000 years. There were over 200 caves in each of these communities and we made it a point to enter as many as possible. It was fun to speculate who lived there, when and what each room was for. There were oftentimes great views from the windows; the cities were situated on some pretty tall cliffs.

We climbed a 1,600-foot mountain—called Kush-Kaya—that was directly behind our campsite on the beach. There, as the last picture suggests, we experienced some unbelievable views. Some of us could have stayed up there for hours, but a couple of the teenaged boys have attention spans similar to my own when I was that age… we were there about 15 minutes.

Our daily devotions were taken from Galatians 5 and Colossians 3 and the topic was “building and strengthening (the Christian) community.” We talked about how much emphasis Paul placed on ththis topic and how sometimes we get caught up in individualism and forget those around us. These times of discussion and reflection were a highlight for me and, by the end of the week, many of the kids opened up enough to participate in some community-building activities.

The combination of the location, the devotional sessions, and some great conversations with the kids made the week in Crimea one of the highlights of my time in Ukraine. I was hoping this would be the case, as it was kind of the last big hurrah before starting to do the end-of-term stuff here. I am very thankful for the time, it was a real blessing.

Dave

Shakthar-Dynamo

Shakthar, the Donetsk soccer team, played Kiev Dynamo on Sunday night and I thought this would be a great opportunity for some of Laura’s English intensive people to see a different side of Ukrainian culture. These are the two best teams in Ukraine and there is a deep rivalry between them. I bought 21 tickets (at $0.60 a piece you can’t go wrong) and found a crowd to go. Due to some people backing out at the last minute, a crowd of 17 foreigners headed to town to chant “Shakthar Champion” with the locals.

We took a trolley bus into the center (8km) and then a tram to the stadium (2km). I had already gone to a game with two of them last year and they were wise to my ways… they warned the others to “stick close to Dave” because “sometimes he doesn’t look back.” Fortunately for them I’m not as serious about soccer as baseball back home; sometimes I have almost lost Laura because I “needed” to see the first pitch. Luckily we all stayed together and all got into the stadium almost on time.

The game was as intense as it was billed; it was a sellout crowd of around 30,000 mostly-rowdy fans. We sat in about the worst seats in the house (but I’m not complaining, they were worth every penny of the price) and were only one section over from the Kiev fan club. This was an interesting location, the rivalry encouraged both sets of fans to hold nothing back. They clearly demonstrated that they all had vast repertoires of rude words and gestures for to yell at and show the others when necessary (which just happened to be all the time). Many in the group recognized some of the gestures but, fortunately for them, they didn’t understand most of what was being said. Not that my vocabulary is vast in the “four-letter word” category but spending time with kids has helped it to develop some. Being the only person in the group who lives here, I was the “expert” the group turned to for answers. Fortunately for me, I only got asked if we were “safe” three times and, wisely or naïvely, I always answered “of course.”

The game ended up being a 1-1 tie and both teams put on a good show. It was pretty even but if I had to voice my opinion I would say Kiev was the better team. I hope, for my own safety, that no one from Donetsk reads this heresy.

The real adventure started after the game. It seemed that taking the large group home would take more thought than I had originally planned. We started out at the bus station where the vans leave from (usually quite regularly). Using my deductive reasoning, the fact that there were around 200+ people in front of us and we only saw one van in the 20+ minutes we waited, I estimated that we would have to wait approximately all night to get home. We walked to the trolley bus stop and waited another 20+ minutes. As far ass I could tell, no busses were running. I made some calls and found that, at 11pm on a Sunday night, my van driver friends are either busy and/or sleeping. We found a crew of taxis willing to take us home and weren’t too badly ripped off for the trip home. Fortunately there were no complainers in the group… although I probably deserved at least one or two for my poor planning. It was an adventure the group will probably remember.

Dave

Hiking Trip

The electric trains here are great. I can’t believe it has taken me almost three years to realize that. Even though they take a long time to get from point A to point B, they are clean, cheap, and the large windows provide great views. I wish I had learned about them earlier, I would have taken guests on them… it is a great way to see the countryside.

A few weeks ago, 11 kids and educators from Good Shepherd and I took an “electrichka” to Izyum to embark on a 6-day hiking trip along the Donetz river. It was a beautiful hike with plenty of great views, nice places to camp, and opportunities for swimming. It was approximately 25 miles, which we hiked in 3.5 days, and we ended up in picturesque Slavanagorsk. It is the rather-famous location of an Orthodox monastery in the hills of eastern Ukraine. We also had a couple of days where we stayed at our campsite and hung out. It was great.

Some of the kids didn’t think that hiking was necessarily “rest and relaxation” but nonetheless it was a great way to tire them out a bit. We carried our own food and supplies, so the backpacks were a bit heavy, especially the first couple of days. We only hiked near 2 villages along the way, so sometimes finding bread and water (we didn’t have the nice water filters hikers at home have) were a bit difficult. But it was great to get out in the countryside a bit and escape the noise and daily routine.

The last night brought thunderstorms and the following day we were soaked as we waited for the electrichka to take us home. It was a little uncomfortable, but good that it happened on the last day.

Dave

Wiffleball

In the last couple of months I/we have brought a lot of guests to Good Shepherd. Most times such visits include a tour of the facilities and some sort of sport activity with the kids. In the past this has usually been basketball or volleyball, but last week I took 8 of Laura’s English intensive people for some wiffleball.

Wiffleball, like baseball, is not popular here. Needless to say, the rules are not understood very well. So there we were, 9 foreigners and a few more kids wanting to play—most of whom didn’t know even the basic rules. I gave the best explanation I could and thought the rest could be figured out as we go…learn by doing. This wasn’t 100% but fortunately there were two Russian-speaking Australians with us. This helped and also changed the game a bit; there were definitely some cricket rules Hellenized into our wiffleball game.

We played for a couple of hours, with much laughing, cheering, and maybe a little taunting along the way. It appeared to be time to go home, but the kids weren’t quite ready for this so we went inside for another 45 minutes of basketball.

It is great when the atmosphere is such that playing sports is as fun as anything the kids may find to do on the street.

Dave

Birthday Party

It has been a while since my last entry and, you can probably imagine, as our time here moves toward its end it seems to also be accelerating. Nonetheless, I will find time to post several updates to catch up a bit. I will spread it out, and it probably won’t be chronological; my apologies.

We baked a couple of cakes and made the trek to Good Shepherd for a birthday party last evening. I was expecting just a small gathering of kids in the cafeteria, but there is a group of young educators at Good Shepherd who are always looking for an excuse for a celebration. And a celebration it was.

Personally I find it a bit uncomfortable to be the center of so many people’s attention and, as Laura will testify, I am not so good at being gracious and accepting complements. But I’m learning. As the picture indicates, we were dressed as king and queen and sat at the head table (Laura said it felt like “we’re getting married again”). A couple of kids prepared a power point slide show of pictures of me with the kids; complete with music to which the crowd sang. And to top it all off, there was a 5x6-foot black-and-white poster of my face on the wall.

After the party, we realized that if we didn’t take the poster, the crowns, and about 25 balloons we would be offending those who prepared the party. So at around 10:30 we left—I in my crown carrying the huge poster roll and Laura with the balloons—taking public transportation, as usual, for the 12 km journey home. It was awkward to make a scene in public after having spent almost 3 years trying not to draw attention to ourselves. But when will we get the chance to wear crowns and carry balloons in the little minibuses ever again. At least people had an excuse to stare at the awkward foreigners for once.

Dave

More visitors (and more fun!)

We've been kind of lax on blogging for awhile, so here's a bit of a catch up. On June 8 we met my sister Lisa, and brother-in-law Jason, in Athens. For the first few days we walked all over the city and saw the sights, then headed to the tiny island of Hydra, about an hour and a half boat ride from Athens. There we relaxed and enjoyed the island. After a few days, we headed back to Ukraine, stopped by Kiev, then Donetsk for a couple days each. It was great fun in all, and sad to say goodbye to our last visitors to Ukraine. Pictures are Lisa, Jason and Dave at the Ancient Agora with the Acropolis in the background and all of us outside the Donetsk soccer stadium.

Today is the first day of English Intensive so I'm catching a little time between conversation practice sessions to blog - since Friday we've been orientating the teachers, today the students showed up and I'll breathe a sigh of relief when today is done. All goes more smoothly after the first day. It's fun, but tiring.

Laura