Two years in

Exactly two years ago today, I and some 70 other trainees first set foot in Ukraine. We were shepherded to a Soviet-era hotel with rust-colored water for a few days of orientation, then scooped up by our host families for three months of training and borshch. Then we swore to serve for two years as Volunteers, and now here I am.

My service has just become my regular life. Ukraine stopped being a foreign country a long time ago. I've blogged about the local bazaar, the cornucopia of Snickers-themed desserts in my city (there are even more now than before), the "Falling of the Lenins". I hope you've enjoyed my entries about Ukrainian music and poetry.

I'm going to keep my two-year-anniversary blog simple as I start contemplating the end of my time here and the alternately exciting and terrifying idea of returning to the US. What are some of my favorite things in Ukraine? What do I think I'll miss when I'm no longer here?

All the tea

Ukrainian culture is tea drinking culture. Not only are your standard black and green teas available at virtually all work events and social gatherings, but Ukraine boasts a huge variety of herbal and fruit teas.

Ginger tea, sea-buckthorn tea, blueberry tea, citrus tea, cranberry tea, plus your standard herbal teas like mint, chamomile, melissa... I've even had linden flower tea, basil tea, and a whole array of things I never tried in the US.

I once went down quite an impressive internet rabbit hole to figure out what ivan chai is - folks call it fireweed in the US, I think. In Ukraine, it's harvested in the Carpathians. I am now awaiting a promised care package of home-fermented ivan chai from a Lithuanian friend.

Na zdorovya!

The bazaar

My first 6 months or so in Ukraine, I was intimidated of the bazaar. It's big and disorienting. It's crowded. Ukrainians don't share Americans' love of personal space, so people constantly bump into you and otherwise get too close for comfort.

To face my fear of the bazaar, I wrote a blog about it, and now it's my favorite place to shop for food and certain household wares. I live in an agricultural region of this very fertile country, so the bazaar is overflowing with whatever fresh fruits and vegetables are in season: giant watermelons, fragrant fresh herbs, staples like potatoes and garlic and onions, fragrant apricots, a huge variety of apples, and the best berries of every kind. Everything at the bazaar is fresher than what you can get even at the nicest of the grocery stores.

In the US, farmers' markets are luxuries. They only happen on certain days of the week, during limited hours. If you don't live near one, they're not always convenient to get to. But in Ukraine, every village and town and city has at least one bazaar. And while a farmers' market is the closest American thing I can imagine in comparison to the bazaar, the bazaar is so much more. Imagine if Home Depot, Target, Goodwill, and the local farmers' markets combined forces to become a giant outdoor trade hub every day of the week. And if they were staffed primarily by grannies. That's the bazaar, and I'm going to miss it. 

Work-life balance

This is not universal across Ukraine, of course, but in my role as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a small NGO, I have almost full autonomy over my schedule. Ukraine generally tips toward the "life" side of work-life balance, and while this can be frustrating when trying to get things done at a pace that corresponds to "Western" expectations, it's also afforded me a pretty comfortable daily life.

I can visit the bazaar at 11 AM on a Wednesday if I want to. I can take my cat to the vet whenever I feel like it (and by the way, everything's on a walk-in basis - no appointment needed unless it's for surgery, and I never wait more than a few minutes). If it's a beautiful day, I can spend the bulk of the afternoon in the park and then do all my work at home in the evening. As long as I finish my tasks, meet my reporting deadlines, and keep up with my occasional presentations, clubs, meetings, etc. I can pretty much do as I please. Adapting to the more regimented and inflexible workplaces of the US is one of the things I most dread about returning. 

Easter

Yes, we celebrate Easter in the US, but not like folks do in Ukraine! While there are many holidays specific to Ukraine or to Slavic cultures more broadly, the global holiday of Easter is still my favorite holiday here. It's hard to surpass the beauty of streams of people with candlelit baskets making their way in the pre-dawn darkness toward the town church to have their Easter bread blessed.

The all-night church service may sound familiar to some devout American Christians, and I was lucky enough to sing in the choir for one such service. When dawn finally comes on Easter Sunday in Ukraine, the joy is palpable. Everybody greets one another with the Ukrainian version of "Christ is risen!", and even though I am not Christian, I get caught up in the excitement. It feels like the resurrection has just happened - that word has just gotten out and people all over are spreading the news. The joy is infectious. That Easter coincides with the coming of spring only heightens this joy, and most people go out for a festive afternoon picnic (if they have survived the all-night service and the following breakfast feast complete with much more cognac and vodka than one would usually drink at 6 AM).

Photo by Georgiy Solonko

Ukraine is world-renowned for its various Easter eggs, and in particular for pysanky - eggs painstakingly decorated using wax and dyes. Different regions of Ukraine have different styles and motifs, and every detail is symbolically meaningful. People hang pysanky and other varieties of Easter egg from the still-bare branches of trees in the springtime, while cities make giant Easter egg sculptures to display in the main plazas. I'm lucky that the timing of my service has allowed me to spend three Easters in Ukraine.

Ukrainian language

I love the challenge and sense of accomplishment that come with speaking a foreign language every day. Each day is suffused with a sense of discovery. Maybe I hear somebody use a word I just learned in my last lesson, or I finally conjugate a particular verb correctly on the first try. Now that I've become somewhat confident speaking Ukrainian, I like testing myself to see if I can "pass" as being local in basic interactions. I usually can't, but at least when people try to guess where I'm from, they guess something like Poland or the Czech Republic - countries that also speak Slavic languages.

Learning and speaking Ukrainian has added significance because of the persecution this language and its speakers have faced throughout history. Listening to an episode of the Ukrainian Lessons Podcast suddenly feels like a big deal when I reflect on the fact that just some decades ago, the girl teaching the podcast would have been arrested for such work.

I think I will feel a sense of loss when I am back in the US and don't get to hear Ukrainian spoken all the time. I will miss it. I recently had a nightmare about returning. I was in a restaurant, speaking Ukrainian out of habit, and then realized that nobody understood me. 

All-encompassing sense of identity

While it's exhausting being a cultural ambassador 24/7, it is nice having the clear and persistent sense of identity that comes with being a Peace Corps Volunteer. This has been my whole life for the past two years. My work is Peace Corps, my friends are Peace Corps, my medical care is Peace Corps, my oversized pajama shirt is Peace Corps, my baseball cap is Peace Corps. Everything is Peace Corps.

Nobody in Ukraine knows what school I went to, what neighborhood I'm from, who my family is, who I am. I came here and put on the identity of Peace Corps Volunteer, and that is the identity I have inhabited every instant of every one of the past 730 days. It is, essentially, my only identity here, and I worry about how disorienting it will be to suddenly not be "Cortney Copeland - Peace Corps Volunteer"; to return to a place where Peace Corps is just some far-off thing that people can't fully understand about me. I'll define myself again, sure, but it won't be quite so simple. Here in Ukraine I get to be just one thing, but in the US I'll have to go back to being many at once. 

Anyway, I have two and a half months left to enjoy all of the above - so I'd better get off my computer, head to the bazaar, and have myself a cup of ginger tea while I still can.




The views expressed in this blog are mine alone and are not indicative of the views of the Peace Corps, the US government, or the Ukrainian government.