snow in kyiv. lots of it. more than kharkiv oblast has seen since november.

At the office in Kyiv, headed to Prolisok for Ukrainian Language Refresher. Looking forward to Apples to Apples, seeing friends, and speaking English (funny, I know, for being at language classes).

Events of my week so far:

~giving my 7th form a wordsearch, where they had to translate a list of Ukrainian words into English and then find them in the wordsearch. The kids all really loved it, even my slower kids, although I was surprised to realize that Sasha couldn't read Ukrainian...he knew that "divchyna" means "girl", but the word was actually "dvisti", which means "twice". I do not understand a school system that put everyone in foreign language classes.

~Having 3 of the 24 7th formers do their hometask to make a comic strip about Mark Twain's life. Although this is annoying, both Oleh and Vlada Y were 2 of the 3, and Oleh had gone beyond copying the six sentences I'd written and drawing pictures of them to changing the sentences into first person, as if Twain himself was talking. Very cool.

~A staff meeting at which my director chewed everyone out because our kids stink at filling out their homework planners and parents never sign them. Best line: "The daybook is the biography of the pupil!" Unfortunately, my Ukrainian is good enough that I could pretty much follow the entire rant. Fortunately, it's nice to know that she yells at EVERYONE like she's done at me, if not worse.

~Best part of the week: an impromptu jazz session on Monday afternoon with my neighbor Oleh (Jason, that's Sergey Danilovich's son) on the keyboard, his friend Dima on the saxaphone, and me as vocalist for "Fly Me to the Moon." Perhaps that can be my post-PC career--jazz vocalist. I've daydreamed about being a folk musician, but perhaps I should switch genres. :)