Ukraine? or Limbo?

After much anticipation and traveling, I am finally in the huge capital of Ukraine! The only way to describe the transit between Salt Lake City and Kyiv, Ukraine is 30 hours of misery. Ok, maybe that's a little dramatic, but it was so long! I woke up at 4:30am on Thursday after 2 hours of sleep and my plane left SLC at 8:10am. I had a 4 hour flight to DC and a 3 hour layover in the Dulles airport, which wasn't bad at all! I got to know the cool people in my group who were on my flight. Then came the hard part- an 8 hour flight to Munich, Germany. I hardly slept, so it felt like it would never end!! It was really cool watching the time change though- the sun went down and 4 hours later I watched it come back up again! At last, we arrived at the Munich airport, and after an already long 15 hours of traveling, we now had a 5 hour layover in Germany. It was painfully long, especially when I just wanted to be there already! About 3 hours into the layover, my body decided it had enough and I passed out strung across 3 airport chairs- and trust me, I wasn't the only one! We were dropping like flies. At that point, even though it was a bright and sunny afternoon in Germany, it was around 4 am my time, so it was like pulling an all nighter the night after I'd only had two hours of sleep. But it wasn't over yet! At 1:15pm German time (5:15am Utah time), I caught my final plane to Kiev, feeling like I wanted to die at this point. I slept the entire flight, and at last landed in Kiev.
All I wanted was a bed and a shower, and I thought it wouldn't be far away now that I was in Kiev. Little did I know! Haha. After we got through passport control, our coordinator met us at the entrance. Without being told what was happening, the 12 of us AND our luggage were crammed into a small van and drove out onto the crazy streets of Kiev. I was soo excited to finally be here, but I was in need of sleep in a bad way! Unfortunately, sleep wasn't in the cards for me yet. Having no idea what was happening, or how long we would be in that car, we drove around town for the next - get this - FOUR hours! At least. It could have been more. I have to admit, as we drove around the streets, Kiev was nothing like I'd imagined it. Instead of the charming European architecture I had imagined, along every street and corner are tall, monstrous apartment building reminiscent of the Soviet era. Seriously, that's all there is! Imagine the scene from Inception where they wake up in Limbo and every inch of land is covered by buildings that are falling apart, and you'll have a good picture of what I first saw in Kiev. I didn't mind though; I didn't come here to live in the lap of luxury, I came here for adventure! And adventure is what I've found. Plus, as a bonus, I've since discovered that downtown Kiev is much nicer, with all the quaint European charm I had imagined.
The driver and our coordinator sat in the front arguing in Ukrainian for what seemed like the four hours, and one by one they pulled up to a seemingly random streetside, pointed to one of us, and said "You. Get out." And that's how we first met our host families. After four hours in this cramped van, it was finally my turn. I seriously hit the jackpot with my host family! The mom and dad are SO nice, and speak good enough English, and I have one host sister my age who speaks incredible English. She has been so helpful! She gave me her old phone, bought me a sim card, taught me how to get around on the metro, cleared shelves in her room for my stuff, and shows me around the city. She is so great!
On my first full day here (Saturday), I met up with the rest of my group at Nyvky (the adorable little school I'll be teaching at) and we all exchanged funny host family stories :) Afterwards, I went into downtown Kiev with my host sister and some of her friends from university. The main street was shut down and crawling with performers and thousands of people, and light up by decorative lights strung from streetlight to streetlight. Around 8:30, this huge dance competition that was also being aired on TV started, and dance teams from different cities all across Ukraine came and competed in front of famous judges- it was a lot like So You Think You Can Dance, which they have a Ukrainian version here that I watch with my host family. It was fun, but we stayed soo long and I was freezing and falling asleep standing up by the time we left.
Today was even better! I slept in, finished unpacking, and then my host sister's nephew came over (he wanted to meet me since I'll be teaching him this semester). This kid was so crazy! He jumped on my head several times and put me in a head lock, he threw pillows at me, he played never-ending rounds of hide and seek, he made me throw pillows at him which he hit like baseballs with a metal pole he found. I have to admit, he is still really cute! I met up with the rest of my group at a metro station (took the metro on my own for the first time and survived, woo!) when we walked to a park for the last part of training. Afterwards, a bunch of us went to one of the many vendors in the park and bought some delicious banana ice cream. Mmmmm, who knew Ukrainian ice cream would be so good! We then walked to a small Ukrainian restaurant where the food was good and I had my first squatter experience. And that's all I'll say about that.
Things are crazy here, which is part of why I love it so much. You thought drivers in Utah were bad- you should see what it's like here! And the pedestrians are even crazier. The women walk around in stilettos all day long (how does it not break their feet?!!). We have all been offered/strongly encouraged alcohol by our host families. Everyone talks in really fast Russian/Ukrainian, and it always sounds like they're yelling at each other. It's just great :) Tomorrow we start teaching and the actual hard work begins! I only teach from 3-6pm every day, though, so I got really lucky and have a pretty easy schedule.
Tonight after training, our group got smaller and smaller until 4-5 of us were left exploring the streets of beautiful downtown Kiev, taking pictures like crazy tourists, enjoying the performers along the main street, and loving every moment. It is so wonderful here! I am already in love with the market-lined streets, the crowded metro, the red sunsets, the liveliness of downtown, and the rush of the every day life along the streets. The food can admittedly be weird, but my host family let's me choose what I eat instead of force feeding me nasty stuff (like meat jello and frog, like some other people from my group have had to eat!). And the smoking here is ridiculous- my throat burns from all the second hand smoke I've been breathing in, haha. I love sitting around with my group planning trips in our free time- it's so exhilarating! Already, we have a tentative weekend trip to Poland and a castle tour planned. There's also been plenty of talk of Prague, Vienna, Romania, and perhaps even Greece. We'll see! Tomorrow, I'm going down to the Dnipro River to take a ferry ride. Me and Megan are going to start jogging tomorrow night. There's an endless amount of things to do while we're here. Four months here feels like hardly enough.
This is the greatest adventure of my life so far. I can already feel my perspective changing and expanding. I love it here.