Two Cities, One Weeks, Time to Jump off Things!

As you can tell from the title of this post, I may have caught the travel bug just a bit - but it's not my fault (or so I tell myself). Kozelets is perfectly located an hour and a half in either direction from two big cities - Chernihiv and the capitol Kyiv.On the 17th, four of the five of my cluster mates made the trek by Mashuka (mini-bus) to Chernihiv in the wee hours of the morning. 


One may ask why the fifth was not in attendance? The lone ranger was actually under the impression she was going to milk a cow that day - which she's been wanting to do for some time now. Unfortunately... said activity never happened (which was quite hilarious) and this presumed cow wasn't even mentioned at all throughout the day, haha. Anyways, Chernihiv was a blast. The weather wasn't pristine however it was perfect for a day of walking around. We met up with a few groups who are doing PST in Chernihiv so we got a mini / fast paced tour of the city. We had an awesome time with only a little blip in figuring out how to get home to Kozelets - however it all worked out.

On the contrary, the 22nd turned out to be a scorcher in Kyiv - however the Ukrainian people still managed to be in their winter coats while I was sweating my life away. We were advised to not keep anything of importance in our pant pockets due to the prevalence of pick-pocketing so it was all zipped away in the million compartments of my North Face. However that meant I had to basically keep my jacket on the whole time! If I lost that - my life would have been over. The field trip to Kyiv was actually part of our PST curriculum so our LCF Natasha came along and had a scavenger hunt planned for us. Kyiv is really pretty with all the conveniences of what I think of as a city - McDonalds, Subway Station, and even an underground mall! We had to ask for a lot of directions to locals in Ukrainian and most people were very willing to help out - so it was much appreciated. The main point of the visit was to get a tour of the Peace Corps Ukraine headquarters. There was actually a fair amount of current volunteers visiting the office as well so it was fun to ask questions and get perspectives of people who've been there for quite some time. They had internet stations and showers for volunteers to get cleaned and caught up on life which was pretty neat. 

With all the new sights I've managed to overlook one of Ukraine's favorite things - EASTER - which happens to be in two days! I'm not actually sure what's going to happen but I do know that there is an eight hour church service that spans though the night and into the next morning, delicious delicious comidas, and hopefully wifi, haha. My host mother Natasha has been in the kitchen the entire day cooking / baking and our house smells bomb so I can only assume good things are in the near future. I looked in my fridge last night and there was probably 75 eggs - so maybe I'll go hide a few to share the easter egg hunt tradition.

I've actually felt a bit under the weather the past couple days so I plan on sleeping all day tomorrow to hopefully knock out the bug that's got me down.