Okay, so I finally arrived in Kiev. If you’re and AIESECer, you understand that now my internship is finally realized. It’s corny, but it’s a dream come true. 5 years in the making. Looking out the window of the train, I saw 2 AIESEC members with my welcome banner (Sasha, we can feel better about Jon’s banner after this one). I had only told them the train number but not my car number, which is apparently just as important, but they found me anyways. It’s so strange to be on the other side of an internship arrival, but it’s awesome. I was so tired but all of a sudden pumped, and really glad that they didn’t forget about me. I stayed with my “buddy” for two days (an AIESEC member who helps you transition into the new culture). Anna was awesome. We had Ukrainian wine and Kiev cake the first night with some of her friends. She took me to work on the first day too. I was really excited to see a typical family’s flat. We ate homemade traditional food right away too.
It was a little hard getting around at first. I hadn’t seen any of the famous landmarks and I didn’t have any reference point to where I was in the city. We took a marshrutka most places for the first couple days. It’s a sketchy small bus that costs about 30 cents a ride, and you just yell when you want off, but you have to specify where, so it’s best to ride with someone who speaks the language. Now I have a Metro pass and I’m better oriented in the city, so we travel most places by subway and try to decipher the Cyrillic alphabet.
I was one of the first interns to arrive for this wave of the project. Now I have a better idea of what I’m responsible for. The project is called World Without Borders, and it’s basically interns from around the world who run leadership sessions with children and also learn about each other’s culture. This round, for the next six weeks, will have 15 interns. Because of issues with exams and visas, I was the first to get there, along with a girl from Poland. We both stayed with our buddies for a couple days while they looked for a flat for us. On the third day we came to check out the flat. A couple other interns were now staying in rooms at the dorms, and apparently this flat was much better. I will take a whole post to describe this apartment, so check back later. Needless to say, it’s not a luxury condo, and without hot water and most amenities, we moved in anyways. It was a good location and we were scared of the alternative.
So far I really like Kiev. There is lots of poverty everywhere, but it’s starting to become a modern city in some aspects. It’s a mixture of rich neighbourhoods, former Soviet style apartment blocks (like where we live), historic old neighbourhoods and old cathedrals, and student neighbourhoods (there is only one AIESEC chapter here but 200 universities).
I'll write more soon, but Ukraine=very little internet access, haha
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