I need to get anything i write approved and I haven't
had time to do that yet - soon though, i promise!
Here is an article that was written about me in teh
Detroit Free Press. They got a few facts wrong (boat
festival?) but what can you do.
eek
http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070422/CFP01/704220353/1112
Woman's wanderlust leads her to Ukraine Livonia
Volunteer with Peace Corps is learning Russian
April 22, 2007
BY ALEX P. KELLOGG
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Emily Kracht's penchant for travel put her atop
Tanzania's Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2006. She crisscrossed
Morocco the previous year and worked in such places as
South Carolina and the nation's capital before that.
Now her love of travel has landed her in eastern
Ukraine with the Peace Corps.
Kracht, who's 26, arrived in Ukraine in March and says
she loves it. She was the only Livonia resident picked
to travel with the Peace Corps this year.
The 1998 Franklin High School graduate was originally
hoping to travel to the South Pacific -- somewhere she
thought would be difficult to get to on her own.
But she says being placed in a city just south of
Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine, worked out great.
Volunteers get to list a top destination choice, but
the Peace Corps makes the final call.
"It's a really nice community," said Kracht, who
estimated the city had about 25,000 people in it. She
didn't want to name the city for security reasons,
which the Peace Corps recommends in some instances.
On Monday, she started teaching as part of her
three-month training before she heads off to work for
the Peace Corps in a specific community. She was
living with her mother and father, Marge and Bill
Kracht, in Livonia and working for the Detroit
Symphony Orchestra before she left town to go abroad.
She graduated from Central Michigan University and did
stints on a boat festival in Maine, at the prestigious
Kennedy Center in D.C., and with a music festival in
South Carolina before eventually returning to her
hometown. She got the itch to travel again and applied
for the Peace Corps.
Kracht has three brothers -- Mark, 31; Eric, 29, and
Ryan, 25. They all graduated from Franklin. She went
to Tanzania with Mark, her frequent travel partner.
Ryan was living at home in Livonia before she left;
Eric lives in Birmingham and works in advertising.
As part of her training, Kracht is studying Russian
for hours each day. She will spend the following two
years or so working in a specific community to effect
change and create a positive image of the United
States abroad. Both are key missions of the Peace
Corps.
"When I think about my family and my friends or when I
talk to them, I'm like, 'Oh, I really miss them,' "
she said by phone. But with all the work she has, she
added, "I just don't have the time to miss folks."
Right now, she's living with a woman who has a
daughter a few years younger than she is, and Kracht
is relishing each moment. "I have the best host
family," she said. She checks her e-mail when she can,
and writes her family about washing her clothes by
hand and practicing her broken Russian with the people
she meets.
She got a bit lucky, as she could have been sent for
her training to a more rustic setting in an even
smaller town. If that happens later, "I'm going to
have to learn to live a little rougher," she said.
"I've had it easy compared to some of the other Peace
Corps volunteers" she came with, she added.
The Peace Corps, which was founded by President John
F. Kennedy, has hundreds of Michiganders serving
abroad. Kracht is in a group of 70 trainees.
"Obviously she's got a real ambition to learn another
culture and travel," said Christine Torres, a
spokeswoman for the Peace Corps.
"It's pretty great," said her brother Ryan of his
sister's decision to go. "She's just lucky she didn't
end up too far north, just because she'd be absolutely
freezing."
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1 comment:
what was that boat festival like? Did you get sea-sick? It must have been so much fun, I wish I could have been there.
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