Beginnings and Endings

This marks the end of my Peace Corps service and the beginning of my travels, a long journey with the end being home. I don't know when I will make it nor where I will leave my footprints on my journey. Nonetheless I go. I make my route eastbound, in effect circumscribing the globe over a 2.5 year period. My mantra for this journy can be summed up by Laozi's quote: "A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving". However I do have a current tentative plan (stay tuned for changes):

- September 1 - October 5: Make final arrangements and say my goodbyes in Ukraine
- October 5 - October 19: Visit Poland to meet my подруга.
- October 20 - November ?: Travel to Korea to visit friends and family.
- November: Try my hand at crossing the Pacific by cargo ship, cross-country road trip across the US, and arrive at home by Thanksgiving.

What can be said about the time between my official COS (Close of Service) date and now? Too much. I don't think Ernest Hemingway could sum it up consisely enough while doing justice to it.

At this point I'd post pictures so that you could have some visuals but like an idiot I left my camera charger at home and my camera died. So no pictures until a few days (and I do intend to update this blog as often as possible).

So to sum up my time at the end of June up to now: at the end of June I left my town to go to Kiev so that I could finish up my service and do all the paperwork that goes with it. On June 27 I was officially an RPCV (returned peace corps volunteer). I spent a day in L'viv, took a bus to Krakow, couchsurfed for the first time and visited the Auschwitz concentration camp. I also went several meters underground at the longest continually operating salt mine in the world (since the middle ages). Then I went to Wroclaw and discovered a gem of a city, which boasts some hundreds of bridges in a small area as the city is partly on the river: they call it the Venice of Poland. I spent a couple nights in Warsaw, couchsurfing. I stayed up clubbing one of the nights because I didn't feel very safe with my host, who fit the perfect profile of a serial killer (ask me about that story later). I came back to Ukraine as a private citizen and helped out for 2 weeks at ABC Camp, which presented challenges but was every bit rewarding and fun. I helped organize a youth arts festival in Kharkiv with some of the most amazing youth I've ever worked with. Then I rowed 90 kilometers on a river in Izium for 4 days with some good friends, cooked shashlick, and slept in tents every night. Following that I went to Rubezhnoe to help a volunteer friend with her international work camp, which brought a Spaniard, 2 French, 2 Italians, and 2 Koreans to the small Ukrainian town. Then I climbed mountains in Zakopane for about a week, came to L'viv for Independence Day, and celebrated my host moms birthday in Obuhov. I went back to L'viv and now I am in Koktebel near the town of Feodosia in Crimea for the Jazz Festival.

From here I will visit my Host mom's sister in Feodosia and then head back to my site in Shevchenkove to get my month of saying goodbyes started.