Day Six:
Today was a good day. I got up about 9am…at my own waking! J It’s been a while since I’ve been able to sleep in! We had breakfast which consisted of mashed potatoes, fish, pork patties from the night before, some mix of peas, egg, ham, mayo…I don’t know what it was but it’s really good, and to top it off we had tea and chocolates. I’m not a very big breakfast eater so it was hard for me to get all of it down. But it was so good!
After breakfast I help set the table for Anna’s birthday party and she helped me with my Russian. I met with my cluster group for community mapping. Katya took us around Fastiv and showed us certain main points: the market, post office, police, administration building, train station, bus stops, how to get to and from her apt and our homes, etc. We all were able to exchange our dollars for UAH and make our first purchase (beverage) in one of the stores.
We also got to meet our TCF whom we will meet with for technical training. We all were also able to get cell phones. YES!!!!!!! Communication is the one thing I’ve been dying to have! Since I don’t have internet at my home, we can get it closer to in town, I needed a way to get in contact at least w/ my parents and Aaron. (This was all successful. After many texts and email help from Bob, my fellow PCV, my parents and Aaron were able to call me and talk for about 20 mins. What a great boost!)
I plan on hanging out w/ Bob tomorrow to send a few emails, update my face book, and update my blog. We also have to work on our community mapping project. We have an assignment for Tuesday to draw a map of Fastiv complete with directions on how to get around, including how to get home.
As I said before, tonight was Anna’s birthday party. I took the bus home from Katya’s apartment…scary at first, but I think I’ll be ready to go on Monday!
We had lots of food for dinner and some wine. Everyone makes a toast to the birthday girl. I even gave a toast, but it was in English. My Russian is basically non-existent at this time since I’ve only been working on it for 3 days. (Today we got all of our language materials. That is such a relief! Now I’ll have to get crackin’ and hit the language books.)
After dinner I went with Anna’s friends down to the river to hang out. They took lots of pictures and when we got back to her house we had the birthday cake. Remember the one I made the night before? Yep, that’s the one they cut! It was delicious! It was made out of some kind of thin wafer cake, a cream filling with pecans sprinkled, and chocolate topping; layered cake.
I met Anna’s grandma, friends, boyfriend, etc. A couple of her friends spoke a little English so they were asking me about myself and America. I showed them pictures of my family and friends. (Yes Dad, they all said that you are a cowboy! …I told them yes. J )
Love!