Flexibility

            Peace Corps has ten core expectations of their volunteers, which we are expected to follow over the 27 month service. The expectation that has become ingrained in my mind is,  “Serve where the Peace Corps asks you to go… with the flexibility needed for effective service.” Flexibility is the key word when living anywhere outside of America or Western Europeans countries.

            What particular things do I need to be flexible about? A micro example of that would be the emphasis on clean shoes. The women in Ukraine are not only beautiful and well dressed (fitting the stereotype of Eastern European women), they somehow keep their shoes spotless of dirt throughout the day. Every day I walk thirty minutes to my Russian school and when I arrive my shoes are caked with mud. Yet low and behold, the Ukrainian women on the street have somehow navigated around every puddle I apparently don’t see! People here look constantly at your shoes, and shoe polish has now become part of my daily life.

            Let’s not also forget the importance of flexibility when learning a new language. One night I tried to tell my host mom, “I write a letter to my family.” After saying my well planned sentence, she and my host sister Oksana started laughing! Once they calmed down Oksana explained that my sentence sounded like, “I pissed a letter,” to which I also started laughing. Learning a language is difficult, especially when I see daunting verbs with ten syllables written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Then it is important to take a step back, go with the flow and continue the language learning process.

            Currently Peace Corps keeps me and my fellow group mates working hard with four hours of Russian every day, technical training about Ukraine, teaching twice a week at school and a community English project for my current town Vasylkov. Whether the task is cleaning my shoes or somehow pronouncing Russian words, differences are only the tip of the iceberg of my Ukrainian experience. These are only a few examples of all the adjustments I am making in Ukraine and to a new language. At least I know early on that flexibility is a vital part of defining a successful volunteer in Ukraine.