I guess that I am trying to catch up on blogging as I took the last few weeks off. Today is an important day for us as we arrived in the Dnieperpetrovsk airport all sleep-deprived and groggy exactly one year ago. A lot has happened in the past year and I would like to write a bit about it.
I started out my year wondering what exactly it was I was going to be doing the next 3 years. I found myself adequately busy most of the time with teaching, gardening and building the greenhouse. Seeing the produce as we weighed it and gave it to the cafeteria as well as seeing the steel structure standing outside definitely have given me a sense of accomplishment. At the same time, I wonder now what I will be doing for the next 2 years. I am sure I will find something.
Language has been a source of frustrations and joys. I have repeatedly found myself wondering if I would be fluent yet, had we chosen to go to a Spanish-speaking place and I spent as much time there as I have here on language. It never seems to happen fast enough for me; it has been a long process to get even to the point where I would now consider myself almost conversational. Who knows if I will ever approach fluency, but I was quite pleased with myself over the past month as I was the Decherts' primary translator and I didn't have to ask "What does that mean?" too much. I would even venture to say that I did not do too bad of job.
The biggest struggle that I have had over the past year has been with being so far from friends and family. While we tried to prep ourselves by heading to Arizona for a few years, which seemed to be so far away from friends and family, all we did was find new friends and even family to grow close to. While something similar may be starting to happen here, it still feels infinitely more isolated than anywhere I have ever been. I have been fortunate to have some very good e-mail correspondences as well as to have taken a trip home this summer. That was really good for me, yet the readjustment was again very hard. Now we are settled back in and are preparing for people to come here and visit us. We just don't know who will be first.
The biggest joy for me has been getting to know some Ukrainians. While I can't really say that I have made any close friends, I have a lot of acquaintances and have had some really good interactions. I especially enjoy talking to the workers here at DCU, the kids at the orphanage where I coach basketball, and people at our church. In many of these instances we have even moved beyond the traditional "differences between the U.S. and Ukraine" that seemed to dominate conversations when I began to be able to converse. That has been great.
As I look to the next 2 years, I expect many more joys and struggles. As I continue to develop relationships with and work beside some of the nationals, I expect some strong friendships to be built. I hope that these will far outweigh any of the struggles.
-Dave
