Oh, Christmas Tree!

Dear Friends and Family,

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We are so thrilled to be celebrating the Holidays in America again! We’ve been enjoying our frasier fir Christmas tree, drinking plenty of eggnog, listening to festive music, and enjoying the lights and decorations of our neighbors. We’re lucky to have been able to spend Thanksgiving with Alex’s family in Missouri and will be with the Griffises in North Carolina for Christmas. There’s nothing like a couple of years away to make us appreciate our wonderful families and crazy American Holiday traditions!

Using that Electrical Engineering degree for something.

As you know, it’s been a wild and crazy year for us, but we feel really happy to be settled down in Denver now. Alex is enjoying his new web development job at Beatport, where they bring in a DJ every Friday afternoon and have happy hour in the office. He’s been biking to work just about every day and has only lost one pair of gloves in the process. Just in case the job ultimately doesn’t work out, Alex has been dabbling in alternate career options, such as: pinball repairman, bike fixer-upper, professional foosballer, and speciality crocheted monkey-clothing designer. He finally joined an ice hockey league and gym and is trying to remain modest about his two years of soviet arm-wrestling training.

What is this strange American custom called shoveling?

Emma did really well her first semester in the Master of Public Health program at the University of Colorado, Denver. She’s bringing joy to Christmas parties everywhere with her enlightening tales of the theory of biostatistics. She’s been biking to class and running most days. After the last two years, she has newfound appreciation for concrete sidewalks, storm drains, and people who shovel snow from their walkways. (Did we mention that we’ve had 4 big snowstorms in the last 2 months?!) Emma’s also been trying her hand at a variety of new healthy-living projects, such as homemade granola, shampoo, and deodorant.

Saying goodbye to Ukraine

Although we’re happy to be back in the States, we really miss our friends in Sofievka. If you weren’t able to keep up with our blog (which we totally dropped mid-July—sorry!), we had a very busy last few months in Ukraine—finishing work at our schools, saying goodbye to all our friends, and frantically completing a playground project, which couldn’t have been done without an amazing amount of support from you folks back home! Anyway, we’ve had a couple of Skype conversations with some Sofievka friends, but it’s really hard to keep in touch. It’s still very surreal sometimes to realize that we were living in Ukraine just 7 months ago. (Alternately: it’s been 7 whole months?!) We continue to be very thankful that we had such a wonderful experience. It was hard and trying at times, but we’ve already gotten beyond that and now only think fondly about our time there!

One more adventure, this time in South-East Asia

We tried our best to have a smooth transition from Ukraine back to the US, but everything from June through August is pretty foggy! We left Ukraine (flying directly over our training site and Sofievka on the way) headed for DC, with a six-week layover in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, in order to see another awesome part of the world. The food was amazing, the beaches were beautiful, and the people were super friendly. We even got SCUBA certified! However, the bus rides were long and uncomfortable, we were living out of our backpacks, and we were pretty ready to be back in the US after 2+ years away.

What a great country!

Once back in the States, we got to spend about a month visiting our families and hanging out with friends before we felt the pressure to get to Denver and settle down before Emma’s classes started. But, we had a seriously wonderful time visiting with our loved ones, relaxing, and enjoying American life. Many thanks to our families and the Caudles for hosting us along the way!

So, here we are, in Colorado and enjoying just about every minute of it. We’re in a lovely rental home with a guest bedroom, so we’re expecting lots of visitors in 2012. (That means YOU!) Shout outs to sisters Cara and Anna for being our first guests!

Best wishes to you and your loved ones this Holiday season. Here’s to a new year full of peace, love, and happiness!

Love,

Emma & Alex

Alex and his grandpa Rudy (in his daily overall attire) hanging out in Missouri this past summer.

Update: We found out on December 31st that Alex’s grandfather, Rudy Kunza, died. He was a real character who made friends with just about everyone he met. He turned 90 this year, and he just kept on farming – he was remarkably active and healthy till the end. He survived WW2 and many close calls with farm equipment, but apparently a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurism finally took his life. Although we are sad that Rudy’s gone and will miss him greatly, we’re thankful for the times spent on the family farm and around the kitchen table: playing cards, listening to funny stories, eating toast straight out of Rudy’s toaster, and hearing his good ol’ Missouri drawl.

2011: Our whirlwind year in exactly 100 pictures

[View with PicLens]

No luck! We haven’t seen the sky yet in Laos. From what we can see through the rain, Vang Vieng is a beautiful place. There are huge limestone mountain outcroppings that are just barely visible on the other side of the town’s river. Normally, the many tourists spend their time here tubing down the river and exploring nearby caves, which would be amazing. Unfortunately, the river is super swollen so that tubing would be ridiculously unsafe, and we weren’t allowed to cross the bridge to get to the caves on the other side. Instead, we spent our day today wandering the streets of this little town, watching “Family Guy” episodes at a nearby restaurant, relaxing with a Lao beer on our deck overlooking the river, and surfing Facebook. So, kind of a bust, but hey, we’re relaxing in Laos, so life can’t be too bad!

We’ll cross our fingers for better weather tomorrow. Either way, we’ll probably head back to Vientiene by Tuesday (hopefully with a clear day or two to explore that city) and from there over into Cambodia via Bangkok.

Emma enjoys an evening on the beach.

I’m sitting in under a fan in an internet cafe in Khao Lak, Thailand, sipping on an iced coffee from a 7-11 (which are on every street corner). We packed our trusty Macbook Pro between a couple sleeping bags, said a couple Hail Mary’s for it, and shipped it home on our last day in Ukraine – so we have to go old-school with the internet cafes to stay in touch.

Anyway, we’re alive and sweating and enjoying our break between the stresses of Peace Corps and the inevitable post-Peace Corps “let’s figure our lives out again” phase.

On April 28th, the post holes had been dug in the Milaritivniy neighborhood—near our very first apartment (where we lived our first month at site).

Within a few days, the fence had been installed and painted.

Our third playground is in a neighborhood called Milirativny. A bit farther out towards the edge of town, it’s the neighborhood where we lived during our first month in Sofievka. We chose a nice spot in a grassy area near some chestnut trees in front of the apartment buildings.

The timeline for this playground paralleled the one in Molodyozhny. We painted the fence here in early May theday after we finished the fence at Molodyozhny, and we waited the same two weeks for the carpenters to build the rest before we could paint it in another marathon volunteer day. The residents really came through for us and helped, though, and the results are something to be proud of.

As we held the final opening ceremony here and watched kids running around, we felt a great deal of pride at what we managed to do for our beloved hometown in Ukraine. Thank you again to everyone who supported us and made this possible. The people of Sofievka won’t soon forget your generosity!

A week later, the bench and trash can were finished, and the other structures had been started.

It was a great day for painting playgrounds - and we were experts by then.

Superstar volunteer Solya and another local kid cut the ribbon.

Congrats to Peace Corps for making it 50 years!

Finally, more than a month after it was begun, the Milirativny playground is finished and open for business!

This is the Molodyozhny site before any work was done...

...halfway finished...

... and Molodyozhny after we painted everything.

Our volunteers made quick work of painting the fence.

The second of our little parks is located in a neighborhood called Molodyozhny, surrounded by several apartments and a preschool. This part of town is just behind the secondary school, so a lot of teachers and young families live in the apartments.

The carpenters didn’t get started on this playground until the end of April – well late enough to make us nervous about our timeline. First, they cleared a couple trees for space, and put up the fence, bench, and trash can. We organized a community work day right away to paint what was finished. We had a lot of help from residents that day, and it was fun to see neighbors coming together and volunteering – something that doesn’t happen very often here.

Once we painted the fence and bench, we had to push for nearly two weeks before the carpenters finally finished the playground on the very day of our grant deadline (which we had already extended). We were frustrated by the delays, needless to say, but we organized a work day for the next day to get it painted. This time, with such short notice, only a few very dedicated neighbors were able to help. Nevertheless, after five or six hours of sloshing on red, yellow, and blue paint, we managed to mostly finish. We returned a couple evenings later with a ladder to get the high parts and some other details, and then prepared for an opening ceremony a couple days after that.

When the time finally came to hang balloons, take photos, make speeches, and cut the red ribbon, we enjoyed the moment. Kids ran around and had a blast, parents sat on the bench and chatted, and we gave off a big sigh of relief!

It even has a climbing wall! That's Mountain Dew Extreme™!

Time to play!

Workers put together a bench in the lumber yard behind the workshop.

We’ve learned a couple new details and changed plans a little. First of all, it turns out that we need to treat all of the wood with a flame-retardant liquid before we can paint it. Ukrainians traditionally love going to the park and cooking shashlik (grilled meat) over an open fire. We don’t want some “resourceful” fellow using our beautiful picket fences as shashlik fuel! Secondly, we learned the carpenters are planning to bring the wood to our sites and assemble the playgrounds on-site, rather than put them together at the workshop. So our part in this is now two stages: treat the wood with flame-retardant while it’s in pieces at the workshop, and then paint it after it’s assembled on-site.

So, for these last two weekends, we got busy slathering on flame-retardant. We recruited some volunteers from among the students we know at the school and lyceum to help us get it done.

We started treating the fences inside, since it was still cold out.

Olya and Carina worked hard to help us finish the fences. Alex wore his iContact t-shirt as a shout out to colleagues who donated.

We started last weekend with the little picket fences that will surround the playgrounds. A couple of my star English-speaking students at school, Olya and Carina, volunteered to give us a hand. It was still a little cold outside, so we worked inside the workshop. We had 50 2-meter sections of fence, 20 pickets per section, 4 sides on each picket – and we had to cover it all with the clear liquid. It was tedious, thankless work, but Olya and Carina were real troopers. They helped us knock out almost all the fencing that first day, and then volunteered to come back and finish off the rest after school. The fence pieces were the hardest parts to treat, so we owe Olya and Carina a big thanks for their hard work.

Lyceum students and the mayor pose with Alex for an action shot. Those bench legs, by the way, are made of recycled school desks.

After the fencing, we mostly just had a huge stack of flat lumber to treat, which we managed to finish off in one long Friday’s work. In the morning, we recruited 6 volunteers from the 2nd course farmer class at Emma’s lyceum: Roma, Kolya, Sasha, Dima, Vitaliy, and Sasha. These guys made swift work of a sizable stack of lumber, so Emma and I were able finish the rest that afternoon.

It felt satisfying to finally get our hands dirty (or chemically, I should say), and put some “elbow grease” into this project rather than just the “brain grease” we’ve invested thus far. To see and actually pick up and carry around the giant stack of heavy-duty lumber our friends and family bought with their hard-earned dollars – it makes us really grateful once again for your support.

Emma, Olya, and Carina take a break from their hard work on a new bench behind the workshop.

We had a lot of heavy-duty boards to treat with flame-retardant.

Alex and one of the carpenters share a moment on one of our benches.

Emma finishes off the last batch: a stack of roof slats.

You can see all our photos of the project in this gallery. Next weekend, weather permitting, we’re planning to install the first playground in our neighborhood! Wish us luck!

Emma and the mayor check out the picket fencing.

Emma and I want to let you know that the Our Sofievka: Parks, Playgrounds, and Peace project  is in progress and moving along nicely. We learned in early January that – thanks to many generous donations – we were fully funded. Peace Corps processed all the paperwork for us, and we were able to withdraw money at the end of the month. Our local carpenter and his crew had already begun work on the playgrounds, thanks to the community contribution procured by Sofievka’s mayor, Petro Yuriovich. We’ve since paid two more installments towards their work, with one more payment due upon installation of the structures.

We’ve been holding meetings every other week or so with our community partners and the mayor to track our progress. For the last meeting we went to the carpenter’s workshop where we finally saw some concrete (well, wooden) results!

The first thing we saw were the completed sections of picket fencing. These cute little fences will surround the playgrounds, keeping stray dogs out and stray kids in.

Petro Yuriovich inspects the playground steps. That's a sandbox behind him.

Perhaps more impressive was one of the covered sandboxes, which was almost finished.  As you can see from the photo, it’s very sturdy-looking. It’s also bigger than I imagined – you’ll be able to pitch a tent under that thing and pretend you’re camping on the beach!

The actual playground structures aren’t there yet, but they had already built the step ladders for them. We also got to see one of the trash cans.

Overall, progress looks good! We’re very excited to see things starting to come together. Our next step is to begin organizing volunteers for the work ahead. It’s still too cold to work on the playground sites, but we can start painting fences at the workshop as soon as we get some materials.

Alex wants to throw something into that beautiful trash can.

The carpenters are getting into the community spirit. They say they're going to turn that big log into a balance beam – free of charge!

Emma admires the cute little Xmas trees on sale in Krakow's market.

Christmas Eve has sort of snuck up on us here in Eastern Europe.  It’s tough to be a foreigner in a foreign land this time of year—are there any Christmas songs not about being home for the holidays?  So, our strategy is to go somewhere interesting to keep our minds off the fact that Santa probably can’t find us.  Krakow is an amazing city with lots to see and experience, and—as a bonus—they celebrate Christmas here in December like we’re used to.

We had a surreal experience at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

We’ve had some time in Krakow to learn about Jewish culture and history, and we spent a full day at nearby Auschwitz.  That was a very sobering experience that can’t be boiled down into a few words.  Suffice it to say it makes you think a lot about human nature.

Yesterday we visited the Wieliczka salt mine, an underground labyrinth mined continuously for 700 years.  It’s an amazing place that’s understandably listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.  There’s at least one more museum and some more cool sites for us to check out in the next couple of days.

You don't need a salt shaker in the salt mines—just rub your fry on the wall.

Our hostel has some fun Christmas activities planned for tonight and tomorrow, so we’ll be celebrating with other travelers from all over the world.  After that, we found a little place to go in the Tatra mountains of Slovakia for a couple days, followed by New Years in a random Czech town that actually doesn’t overcharge for the holiday.  We’ll be back “home” on the third.

As a side note, we’ve been overwhelmed by your support of the “Our Sofievka” project!  We’ve already raised 75% of the needed funding, which is amazing!  We look forward to telling our project partners and friends about it – what a nice New Year’s gift it will be to them!  (If you don’t know what we’re talking about, please check out the appropriate link at the top of the page.)

Happy Christmas to you and your families!  Sending you love and blessings from Eastern Europe!

Enjoying some hot wine in Krakow's main square with fellow PCVs.

Alex decides between fight and flight when he runs into the Krakow dragon.

11th form ladies show off their amazing graduation dresses.

Emma and I attended our second graduation ceremony here last week, and I gave my second graduation speech. I wrote the thing in English (as simple English as possible), translated it myself, and then got help from my Russian tutor to correct the mistakes. Then I practiced it for a week. My Russian’s improved over the year, but it still took a lot of repetitions to get to the point where I wouldn’t stumble over the tough words.

Here’s the text side-by-side. You can also watch the video below!