massive update

Um. Yeah. I haven't posted in almost two weeks.

Would it help if I told you that I was at COS Conference and didn't have computer access, and then when I got back to Balaklia, I was trying to get ready for school and Brandi's visit, and now school's started and Brandi's actually here?

Yeah, I didn't think so. You're a tough audience, you guys.

[This blog post was interrupted by a conversation between Brandi and I about who would play me in a movie in which, similar to Joan of Arc, I heard crackers and peanut butter calling my name, led France (or maybe Ukraine) into battle, was burned at the stake, and was eventually canonized as a saint. My options were Angelina Jolie and Drew Barrymore. I voted for the latter. I'm sure it'll be a box office hit.]

So anyhow...when I last posted, I was in the charming city of Uzhgorod, on the Ukrainian/Hungarian/Slovakian border. While there, I went to an evening worship session of a conference about Messianic Judaism, complete with lots of dancing and songs in Hebrew. The next morning, I went to the Methodist church. I met an American missionary (from Traverse City...small world!), who told me that the church has two services--the morning service, which I attended, was geared more towards "recovering Orthodox", with an accapella choir, while the evening service had a lot of young people and was more charismatic in nature, which I hadn't expected from a Methodist church.

COS Conference...wow. I don't even know where to begin. Out of the 116 people who left Chicago to come to Ukraine (115 made it, we left one in Frankfurt when she lost her passport), 74 are still here. I saw people I hadn't seen since our swearing-in ceremony. We sat through all sorts of sessions on finishing up our service here and looking ahead to post-PC life (does it exist?), hung out past midnight talking, and tried to realize that our time here is coming to a close.

One of my favorite experiences from COS Conference was riding a chair lift up a mountain and back, 40 minutes each way. At the top, we got off and walked around, enjoying the view of more mountains with little villages tucked into the valleys. However, it started off less than wonderfully--Mona, the girl I was in the chair with, and I couldn't get our lap bar down for almost five minutes, so we were each trying to pull it down with one hand while holding on tight with the other. Fortunately, we finally got it down and then were able to properly appreciate the mountain beneath us without worrying that we'd fall out and make its personal (painful) acquaintance.

From the conference, I spent an afternoon in L'viv (as beautiful as ever), took a 22-hour train ride back to Kharkiv, and arrived home in Balaklia on Friday evening, just in time to go to the First Bell ceremony the next day celebrating the beginning of school. At First Bell, the students always give the teachers flowers, and at the end of the day, I had 28 roses and 7 chrysanthemums. Seriously. I doubt I'll ever get 28 roses on one day again!

School has been a bit topsy-turvey this week. Our zavuch, or assistant principal, decided to step down from her role that she's had for the last umpteen years and go back to only being a physics teacher. (She's seemed happier this week than I've ever seen her...just smiling and smiling...) The administration's known this all summer, but they hadn't found anyone to take over her responsibilities...such as making the class schedule for the school. So on Monday morning, we didn't have a schedule past that day nor anyone in charge of making it. However, by the end of the school day, Olha Ivanivna, who is the other English teacher and also the zavuch in charge of organizing parties and concerts, decided to take on the task for One Year Only, and one of the Ukrainian language/lit teachers took over her position. So we've had a day-by-day schedule for this week only as Olha Ivanivna is learning her new position and trying to do the permanent schedule, which is not computerized, but instead has to be all worked out on paper. And we all keep popping in her office to see what classes we're supposed to be teaching and when. Poor woman. She said today that she hasn't really been sleeping and she sees numbers in front of her eyes all the time.

Brandi arrived at 3:45 on Tuesday morning after traveling 48 hours by bus and train from Germany through Poland to Kyiv and then to Balaklia. We've had a good time catching up on each other's lives and discussing the pros and cons of our respective apartments--she has hot water, but I have high speed Internet; I have a lot more space, but she has hot water, etc. She's come to school with me and gotten acquainted with my kids. I have my 11A form 5 times a week (in hopes of getting them ready for exams), so today and yesterday I sent them out in the hall in small groups of 2-3 students to practice talking with a native speaker. I was a little worried, but apparently they spoke English (even the ones I didn't think knew how!) and were polite. Yay!