A weekend in Magazynka

I spent this past weekend in it's entirety in my village. This is the first time I've spent a weekend in my village since the first month I was here back in June of '08. It was a very good decision. I do feel like the community here accepts me more when I don't leave them as soon as I'm able to do it.

I played sports with my students and attended the disco on Friday, attended the my school's wrestling club and also my school's class reunion on Saturday, and worked at my house cleaning up the yard on Sunday. My reflections on the activities.

Many of my students are incredible athletes. Even the seventh graders take me down with no difficulty. It's very humbling to be picked up by a seventh grader. The trainer is incredible, he completely understands me and enjoys helping me out, even though I'm completely weak and have never really been in shape. The 11th graders at my school are amazingly in shape, even a little scary. One of them can even practically do pushups with his hands while doing a handstand, if that makes sense. Not an ounce of fat on any of the kids that I wrestle with. If I can come out of my Peace Corps experience with a good knowledge of fitness and how to do my own routines on a regular basis, I'll consider the service definitely worth it. I'm rapidly learning the value of keeping up a regular routine, and I hope to develop lasting habits.

Later that evening I dropped in on the club for my town, which is also popular to the surrounding towns. It only occurs a few days a week, on Friday and Saturday. There wasn't a huge crowd that night, but I did get to meet a few interesting people. I'm still not sure whether I should go or not, as many of my clearly underage students openly smoke and drink, and I feel that by attending I am in a way condoning the behavior. On the other hand, I am not engaging in these activities, so I feel it's important to go and show that it's possible to go without abusing alcohol, nicotine, and who knows what else, and still have a good time.

The most interesting part of the club in my town, to me, is the complete divide between the way the two sexes behave. Probably 80% of the men at the club on Friday were completely drunk, some more than others, but honestly I didn't speak with one guy who didn't have some alcohol on his breath. However, with the women, it is completely the opposite. It's extremely rare to see Ukrainian women drink in public in my village. So they're all sober, hanging around these guys that are completely drunk. Maybe this is common in the states, I don't know, but it is interesting to me that the behavior is so different.

I did get to have interesting conversations with my peers in my village. I guess part of my Peace Corps experience is learning to develop relationships. I'll be honest, it's never been a strong point of mine, I'm always focused on the task at hand and not the people. The pace of my village and the way people operate is more than just a different country, it's like being on a different planet.

The class reunion was also very interesting for me. Instead of having separate reunions for different years, my school simply had one big ceremony for everything. Mainly because the crowd is pretty small, it's pretty difficult for a lot of these people to come out, transportation is difficult and most of them have families now. We watched slideshows of graduating classes. It was fascinating to see the change that has occured over time in Ukraine in and appearance.
After the slideshows all the students shared where they are. Most of them all are very succesful, having completed university after finishing their studies here in Magazynka.

More to come in another installment this week.

Nate