It’s official! On Wednesday the 20th, we were sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers at a ceremony held in a beautiful auditorium at an institute in Kiev. The U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine did the honors, and all 70 of us took an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and discharge our duties with respect and vigor, or something close to that. We left Kyiv the next day and have been in our new city since the morning of the 22nd. We live with a nice woman in a medium-sized apartment for a Peace Corps-required one month home stay. We’ll spend this month looking for our own place, and we’re greatly looking forward to living on our own again. Plans for the summer include preparing for classes that will start in September, working on our Russian, getting involved in other programs in town, and exploring this city and other parts of Ukraine. The weather is quite warm, but tempered by a breeze. The people we’ve met so far have been great. We each have “counterparts” at our universities who’ve agreed to be primary support persons, both at school and in life beyond school. They’ll be helpful in our apartment search, and in our looking for Russian tutors. Both are teachers of English, and speak it beautifully.
Though we were tickled to be finished with training, we had a tearful farewell on the 17th when it was time to say goodbye to our new family and friends. Not only did our host family come to see us off at the bus meeting place, but also the couple with whom we had enjoyed our forest picnics and nights at the banya (Russian sauna) surprised us by coming out to say goodbye. With promises to come back to visit regularly, and especially when our kids come to visit in Dec/January, we waved goodbye from the Peace Corps bus. (Another cultural moment, or perhaps not that surprising if you know Peter, was the goodbye gift our friends gave Peter: a bottle of local vodka.)
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