for your amusement

Taking time out from cleaning my apartment to blog...

As I was scrubbing baked-on grease off of my stove (ugh), I was reminded of a childhood misconception I had, brought on by this passage from L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Windy Poplars:

How that furniture shone! No bought polish ever produced that mirror-like gloss. I knew it was Rebecca Dew's elbow grease.

This led me to believe for quite some time that elbow grease was, in fact, actual grease of a homemade sort that was used for cleaning (not made of elbows, mind you, but something that a good housekeeper would make every year, like jams or jellies or homemade soap). I don't remember how I actually learned the truth...

ooh, it's going to be fun!

Ever since I got Internet this past spring, I've been keeping an Amazon.com wishlist of books I want to read and CDs I want to listen to...not necessarily that I'd be buying them off of Amazon at some point, but more just to remember them for later.

Tonight, I got on the Interloan catalogue for Tamarack Library. Probably at least two thirds (if not more) of the books I marked are available through the inter-library loan system. (Although very, very few of them are actually at Tamarack.)

Cheryl, as soon as I get back to the US and either find my old library card or get a new one, you all at the library will be seeing a LOT of me, as I catch up on 2+ years of books!

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev

Today, I'm asking all my faithful readers for advice. As you probably know, I'm coming back to the US in four weeks (eek!). As you probably also know, I'm a voracious biblophile. So now I'm debating the best way to get my books back to the US. I probably have 20-25 books I want to ship back, many of them fairly small. The majority of them are in Russian or Ukrainian and would be hard to obtain in the US, and the remainder are ones that I particularly love or have sentimental value to me.

So...shipping. Because I really don't want to haul them in my suitcase, nor will I have room. I seem to have two options. The first is to go through EMS, a shipping company that some of my fellow PCVs used. They have a branch office in Kharkiv, so I'd have to haul my books up there, but it's closer than the main office in Kyiv. They charge a flat $40 to begin with, plus $4.17 per kilogram after that. It seems likely that I would have no worries about my box getting lost.

The other option is to go through my local post office. They said that the price goes up for each kilo, so they couldn't/wouldn't tell me how much things would cost exactly, but it would be roughly $30 for two kilograms. I'd only have to haul my books to the center, rather than two hours away. I've never had a package I sent to the US get lost, although some of them have taken their own sweet time in getting there (and let's not even talk about the postcards from Odesa, shall we, Mom and Tif?). However, if anything happened to my books, I would be a sad Sally.

(I would also, at my post office, have a very good chance of having to deal with the Mean Post Office Lady...Tif, I'm sure you remember her. She's one of the people in Balaklia who irritates me the most, not so much for her perpetual grumpiness and lack of helpfulness exactly, but that she goes to Andrey's church and is, as far as I know, a Christian and is STILL grumpy. I always want to say, "You know, we're sisters in Christ here. Can I get a smile?" It's not just me...she's like this with everyone. I think she must really hate her job.)

So...what do you think? Do I take a day to travel to Kharkiv and pay extra, or do I go to the post office and hope for the best?

~*~

I was at the copy center at the library today, this time for my own projects for the teachers' seminar, and Serhii Danilovich, the music teacher from my school, came in. He said that he'd seen how nice the booklets for the teachers' seminar I'd had printed at the library came out, and he also wanted some done the same way. (Except that he already had a dummy copy set up that just needed to be copied and the covers laminated.)

I'm not sure if the copy center ladies are going to hate me for sticking them with more booklets or love me for drumming up more business.

~*~

Serhii Danilovich and I had a nice chat after we got our copies done--a month or so ago, he'd requested a CD of American songs that dealt with topics other than love. I'd really gotten into the project and made him one with songs as varied as Alabama's "Forty Hour Week," Elvis Presley's "In the Ghetto," the Weavers' "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?", Nina Simone's "Work Song," and Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," plus a few more. Translating them is a bit beyond my skill, but we sat down one day and I told him a few sentences about each song.

Well, the current topic in the 8th form curriculum is "Modern Music," and apparently all the kids were like, "Ukrainian music sucks and is boring but music in English is cool." Serhii Danilovich played segments of the songs I gave him and asked the kids what they thought the songs were about. "I don't know but it sounds cool!" was a popular answer. So he told them what the songs were actually about--social problems, the working class, etc.

He said that the kids looked horrified and are now avoiding conversations with him, as if talking to him will somehow make all their other "cool" music turn into musical political statements.

I love it when stereotypes are broken down!

cooking is fun

Discovered while reading over Sean's shoulder at the office: a blog devoted to Soviet propaganda posters!

Last night, the five of us in our apartment (me, Erin, Jessica, Robert, and Matt) went on a shopping trip to a HUGE western-style supermarket to buy fixings for dinner. It was quite the experience, whether running around looking for the best deals on Parmesan-esque cheese, trying to decide between chicken vs. shrimp, and the ongoing discussion about whether or not olive oil was worth the exorbitant price that was charged. (We decided against it, which made the cheapskate in me happy. And I still don't think our food was lacking in any way.)

So then we came home and cooked. We did a big pot of vermicelli, and I made sauce--sauteed onions and garlic in butter, then added tomato paste, a little water, and Italian herbs, and chopped tomatoes. At the very end, after that had all simmered, we added in a small container of shrimp (the amount of which were very "shrimpy" in comparison with our huge amounts of pasta and sauce). Also, we found garlic/dill bread, which was a nice side dish. Yay cooking!

Today, we slept in, made omlets for brunch, and now I'm at the office. I officially don't have TB, if any of you were in the least concerned. (I wasn't.) I'd hoped to get an apartment with people again tonight, but it didn't work out, so I'm at the Bratislava tonight. Oh, well. At least they have hot water.

Tif, Harry Potter 7 is out in Russian. :)

not my most interesting post, but bear with me, dear readers

Today was fun. Sveta, the English teacher for the primary kids this year, is apparently not around for the rest of the month (college classes of some sort, I believe), and I'm teaching the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th forms twice a week each. They're so much more fun than my older kids, and their behavior's better, too! (Well, not always...but writing in their daybooks or putting their name on the board--in English--in order to tell their class teacher about it proves much more effective with 8-year-olds than 16-year-olds.) They're all excited every time they see me (we're on week 2 of 3 together), and it just makes my day.

(It makes me cringe just a bit when I realize that probably my older kids were once this sweet and enthusiastic as well and that these kids will eventually develop attitudes and no longer automatically think of school as "fun". Sigh...)

Really, my life is fairly uneventful and I don't know what to post. I bought two books of the non-graphic-but-still-stupid-but-I-want-something-to-read-British-historical-romance-novel-variety at the second-hand store today. I've bought several of the genre by various authors over the last year, and I'm beginning to think that the defining characteristics are a) coal mining is involved, b) someone (not necessarily the protagonist) has an illegitimate child, and c) household maids will, in fact, end up marrying the master of the house after his first wife dies. I cannot wait to be in a country with a decent public library with books in English and interloan services.

Let's see...what else... Oh, I've been trying the Curly Girl method with my hair, with mixed results. I definitely get curls, but I'm so used to brushing them all out every morning that keeping it curly tends to look a little strange to me. But I've been having fun experimenting (I bought hair sticks!) and have gotten several positive comments from kids at school (plus Oleh Y's "How did you do that?" Me: "It's a female secret. I'll tell Vlada but not you.").

Tonight I experimented, not with my hair, but with cooking. I made pizza sauce, sauteed a very small onion, diced up kolbasa (hard sausage) and tomatoes, grated some mozzarella cheese, boiled penne pasta, mixed it all together with a bit more mozzarella and Parmesan on top, and baked it "until bubbly", as the cooking websites I checked out for baked penne said. (I also made garlic-cheese bread.) The result was really good, except that I misjudged the amount it would make and had more than I could eat. Nice hearty food for a cool autumn evening!

I really should go work on my statement of purpose for graduate school...

I'm reviewing the situation*

Two funny anecdotes from this week about the problems of misperception:

On Tuesday, I was talking with Serhii Danilovitch, the music teacher at school. We were discussing everything from my fast-approaching departure to the European Union. He said to me, "Two years ago, when you came to Balaklia with a lot of luggage [suitcase, duffel, heater, backpack, computer bag, and I don't remember what else], we all thought, 'Oh, she brought all sorts of clothes...the latest in American fashions.' But instead, you had books and a laptop!" I laughed. "Yeah, I brought teaching supplies, because I knew it would be hard to find English books." "Who needs a lot of clothes anyway?" he said. It was funny, because anyone who knows me knows that when it comes to my priorities, books rank much, much higher than clothes...but that's not the stereotype that people here see in American pop culture. So that made me happy, that I've helped break down the idea that all Americans are highly fashion-conscious.

Although I do wonder if some of my girls were actually disappointed that I didn't have all sorts of new fashionable clothes.

The other story goes back to when Brandi was here. I was at school one day, when the secretary came down to the teachers' room and said, "Your landlady's coming by to get the key to your apartment." Land gentry (to use the term that Tif and I coined) in Ukraine can come into your apartment whenever they please...they don't have to give advance notice nor make sure that you're there. The landlady didn't come, and half an hour later, the secretary came back down and said, "You need to go home. The landlady called again and said that there's someone there who won't let her in." Knowing that Brandi was home, I thought that there must have been some sort of communication breakdown, so I headed home. Three-quarters of the way there, I met Brandi coming to school to get me. She had, in fact, told the landlady through gestures and a phrasebook that she and her male companion could come in, but the woman had seemed very upset about something. Brandi had tried to say that I'd be home soon and that she could go get me, but the woman didn't seem to understand anything that she was trying to get across. Brandi thought that perhaps I was getting evicted so that my landlady's son could move into the apartment.

By the time I got to the apartment, the landlady and her companion were gone. The across-the-hall neighbor assured me that I wasn't getting evicted, but I didn't understand what she said about what had actually happened. And therein ended Chapter One.

Yesterday morning, I ran into my friend Natalia at the bazaar. She apparently knows my landlady's family, and said that in fact, it had been my landlady's daughter-in-law who had come to scope out the place because they're moving in at some point after I leave in December. The daughter-in-law had never met me, and therefore assumed that Brandi was me. Apparently she said to Natalia that she was confused, because she thought I knew at least rudimentary Russian/Ukrainian, and she couldn't figure out how on earth I managed to teach the kids at school when I all I could say in Russian was, "I don't understand." I know that Brandi tried to let her know that I was at school, but if she had already made up her mind that Brandi was me, I guess Brandi's talk of school probably confused her all the more.

So there you have it...why you should always make sure of your facts before drawing conclusions!

*Bonus points to whoever knows what musical my post title is from.

wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles

GRE scores:

740 Verbal
710 Quantative (Math) !!!!!
Analytical writing: still unknown for the next few weeks

Many thanks to everyone who prayed for me and was supportive. I'm really excited about my results, and I'm thankful to God for enabling me to do this well.

LPI (Language Proficiency Interview) results:

Advanced Mid in Ukrainian, which basically means that I can carry on conversations with people who aren't used to talking to non-native speakers but that I'm not quite to the level of being able to rant for ages about theoretical topics. Also cool.

I spent the afternoon visiting Rita, a PCV friend of mine who lives about an hour and a half away from Kyiv. In her town, there's a really nice outdoor museum that includes a building about Sholem Alecheim, who wrote a collection of stories entitled Tevye's Daughters, which was later made into the musical Fiddler on the Roof. This is what prompted me to go, even before I knew that Rita lived there, but actually the rest of the museum was more interesting. We saw 500-year-old stone crosses, climbed a rickety wooden ladder to ring a bell, and chatted in Ukrainian with some old ladies who worked there and convinced them to sing a folk song for us.

And now I'm headed home again!

Odessa Theological Seminary

The concert last night was great! It turned out that it was a group of strings from the music school here for a tour group from the US, Germany, and Italy on a cruise around the Black Sea. The music was not spiritual as much as classical, with a lot of Mozart and Sousa, among others. (They did "The Stars and Stripes Forever" with only strings...and it worked!)

After I got back home, I hung out with some of the other people in the hostel--a guy from France who wanted to practice English, and some students from Sweden, who had me translate "vegetarian" and "vegan" for them (the latter just ended up being "I don't eat x, y, and z").

Today I went out to Odessa Theological Seminary (which felt like it was slightly past the end of the universe), where Ray Trantham, an American professor there, gave me a very nice tour. Then I got to spend 45 minutes browsing through the library (Five Views on Sanctification and Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot) before lunch at their cafeteria. Came back here, got a strawberry slushie (so good! real strawberries!), and came to the Internet cafe to get roughly 101 things done. Hope I've remembered them all!

a muggy August afternoon

Kherson will hereafter be remembered by me as "the city where people make weird noises walking down the street." Seriously. I was walking down to a pizza place for dinner last night (in hopes of a non-squat toilet, which did not materialize), and a man was walking down the sidewalk in the other direction, screaming every few yards. He didn't look like he was in pain, so I have no idea why he did so. And then on the way back, a man barked at me. I'm not joking. It freaked me out just a bit.

To continue on with the noise theme, one of the women in my train compartment snored very loudly all night. One of the other women was kind and gave me ear plugs. This is at least my third train ride where I've ended up near a snorer. Sigh...

Got into Odesa around 6 am and took a marshrutka to the hostel, where I promptly fell back asleep until 9. Got up and had breakfast with a boyfriend and girlfriend from Vienna, who had thought about going on vacation to Italy but instead did Hungary and Ukraine. They were about the same ages as Kate and her Jason (both of us are dating Jasons, in case that wasn't clear...yes, it's confusing; no, neither of us are willing to find a new boyfriend just for clarity's sake), and that really just struck me. Kate and Jason went camping up around Mackinac (that's right, isn't it? or just up north?). Susannah and Mark went to Ukraine. Wow.

After breakfast, I headed out walking, and within forty minutes, had already been to two bookstores and the Presbyterian church, which is holding a free concert of spiritual music tonight for American foreigners. At least, as best as I could understand. I couldn't tell if it was for all American foreigners or just a special group of them, but the woman thought I could come. Although she also thought I was Polish at first. At the bookstores, I bought two kids' books of Disney stories in English and Russian for my English club, decided not to spend almost $40 for Harry Potter 7, and eyed a Russian textbook for English speakers, just to brush up on grammar. We'll have to see.

Then I wandered the streets, walked down the famous Potemkin Stairs (have any of you seen Battleship Potemkin? Dad?), took the furnicular (little tiny railroad thing) up, bought a silk scarf that was on sale (I may have to go back and get more as Christmas presents, as they were a good deal), and went to a nice pizzeria for lunch. I had a pizza with shrimp, broccoli, spinach, onion, garlic, and mozzerella cheese, plus incredibly good garlic bread with minced fresh vegetables on it. Which should tell anyone who knew me growing up how far my tastes have expanded.

Oh, I almost forgot...Odesa is humid. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Skadovsk was warm, but there wasn't the humidity I've noticed here. So I'm just taking it slow. I think I'm going out to the seminary tomorrow, and for the rest of the day today, I plan to keep wandering the streets, visit the literary museum and whatever else strikes my fancy, and go to the concert in the evening.

You know, I could get used to this vacation thing!

big update!

Yeah, I'm still alive. My apologies to all of my faithful readers who keep checking back and wondering why I haven't posted recently...it's a combination of general busyness, Tif's visit, and three days when the Internet didn't work. However, my Internet guy has put my connection on a different channel (I don't know exactly what this means in English, but it seems good) and now my connection is a lot faster...and I can upload photos! (See previous post.)

Let's see...going back about two weeks now, before Tif came. My friend Andrey's church did a series of evangelistic tent meetings for four nights in an area of town where a lot of my kids live. Each night, they would have a general meeting explaining the basics of Christianity with music and a sermon, which was then followed by a meeting that was more youth-oriented on topics like AIDS, alcoholism, and drugs. At least 25 of the kids from my school were there (we only have about 280!), whether sitting and listening or occasionally drifting over from the cafe/bar across the road. I don't believe that anyone got saved during the meetings, but hearing the Gospel is a rare occurence over here, and I simply pray that seeds were planted that will come to fruition later. I know that the mom of one of my seventh form boys really enjoyed the meetings and wants to start attending church regularly. I myself really felt convicted to pray for my kids...the barriers of language, culture, and my role as a PCV limit my ability to witness to them in words, but going to the meetings regularly and praying fervently for each child by name were things that I could do in spite of those barriers. It was a boost for my own faith.

Tif arrived last Friday, and we've had a grand time! She knows the language and the area, so a few days she was off visiting people she knew from before and finding souvenirs, but we've been together a lot, especially in the evenings...cooking, listening to the music she brought, and having random conversations on any and all topics. Oh, and finding out that the cafe on the corner has a lot of good food at cheap prices! I enjoy eating out once in a while, but I would feel odd doing it by myself here in town.

Sunday was Yula and Serhii's wedding...I had wanted to do a huge post about that event alone, but I think I'll just leave it with all the comments I wrote about the pictures in my last post. If you have questions, let me know.

Monday we bummed around town, took pictures by the statues of Lenin and Taras Shevchenko (Ukraine's greatest poet), and stopped by to visit Robert, the new PCV in my town. He works at a non-profit organization that helps invalids, large families, and families with invalid children. The organization had gotten a LARGE donation of used clothes from Canada, and the director had invited me over to look through and see if there was anything I would want. Most of it wasn't anything I would/could wear, but I ended up with two sweaters.

Last night was the school-leaving ceremony for the 11th form (US graduation). It involved lots of music and dance numbers, including small children dancing (very cute), a harem dance (weirdly fascinating and not what I would consider appropriate for the occasion...Tif caught some of it on video), and me singing "Fly Me to the Moon" in English. It was a very nice ceremony, and the kids were all dressed up--the boys in suits, the girls in prom-type dresses. After the ceremony, there was an all-night dance for the kids...last year I stayed, but we were planning to go to Kharkiv today and so we left after the ceremony.

Woke up this morning at 7 am to a severe thunderstorm and me having a sore throat and feeling exhausted, so we stayed home and are planning to go to Kharkiv tomorrow, as we thought it better that I rest today rather than keep pushing and get very sick when we go to L'viv next week. So I went back to bed and slept until after 11. Then we had pork stroganoff on toast for lunch (don't ask, we invented the combination earlier this week and it's really good), and Tif went off to go exchange money and look for Harry Potter books in Russian to complete her set, while I attempt to catch up on blogging.

Next Monday, we head for L'viv in western Ukraine, which is supposed to be a beautiful old city reminiscent of Prague or Krakow. It'll be about a 24 hour trip from Balaklia to L'viv, but we're up for the adventure. Then we get back to Kyiv on Thursday and Tif flies out on Friday morning. We're planning to go out to McDonald's that morning for her birthday, but we'll see how that goes. I think I'm going to visit the Malkos in Zgurivka next weekend, then come home for a few days, and then I'm off to Donetsk again.

Tif's back, so I'll close for now. :)

the strawberry post

Ahh...I went to the bazaar this morning and came back with a kilogram of fresh strawberries, a kilo of onions, a bunch of dill, and a bunch of tiny new carrots. I love summer produce!


~*~


Yeah, I know I haven't posted in several days, but I was out of town this weekend. So here's my recap.


Thursday night, I visited the Shevchenkos, a family from my church who had invited me over for dinner when they saw me buying strawberries at the bazaar the previous Saturday. They told me there was no need for me to buy strawberries when they already had them in their garden. I went, but I also bought my own strawberries. :) We had borscht, strawberries with sugar, and varenyki (similar to ravioli, dough with filling that's either boiled or steamed) with cottage cheese and strawberries, with a side of sour cream. There are two little girls in the family, Maharita and Nastia (just finished 4th and 5th forms), and although we've been going to the same church for over a year, we got properly acquainted that night. At first, I was worried, because the girls seemed shy, but very soon that turned into, "And this is our room--this is Nastia's side and this is my side and this is my photo album and this is a picture of my best friend and do you want to put together a puzzle and here are our dolls and this is the cupboard where they live and Mama made these doll clothes but we made these ourselves..."


I really liked seeing that the girls made doll clothes...I love the Y kids to pieces--they're my family here--but I could never see any of the girls there sitting down to sew doll clothes. Someone else would go over to them and destroy the partially completed project, and then they'd start arguing, and in the meantime the needle would get lost and someone would step on it... I think the next time I go over to the Shevchenkos, I'm taking an old skirt lining I have and we'll learn how to make drawstring skirts for dolls.


Friday evening, I took the elektrichka an hour south to visit some other PCVs. The PCV down there had had a camp last week, and on Saturday, the counselors were all going on an excursion to Sviatahorsk (Holy Mountain), an Orthodox monestary just over the border into Donetsk Oblast. My friend Erin McS was coming to visit me after camp ended, so I had the chance to go on the excursion also. Friday night, we all (1o or so of us) went out to a cafe in the town and went dancing. Some of the American guys had had a bit much to drink (to put it mildly), and they were very active dancers to begin with...they were trying to dance with Ukrainian girls, but the girls were somewhat freaked out and pretty much kept fleeing the dance floor. Entertaining for those of us who were sober. Also fascinating was that in the center of the dance floor, there was a post with mirrors on all sides of it, and when the Ukrainians danced by themselves, they all watched themselves in the mirror. Cultural differences...


We got home around 1 am and then I got to take my first hot shower since February or thereabouts. Ahh, bliss...


Saturday morning, we got up and took a van down to Sviatohorsk. I had looked it up in my guidebook the day before and knew that, as a woman, I had to have a headscarf, but we stopped by the bazaar to get scarves for Erin and Jessica, the other girls. We had to have our heads covered, something on our shoulders (no tank tops), and skirts that were knee-length or thereabouts. The bazaar had all sorts of filmy-type scarves, and many people there were wearing scarves wrapped around them as a skirt, if they'd come in shorts or something. The guys were supposed to have long pants.


We saw the lower monestary and were able to go in for the end of the service that was going on, which, as always, was beautiful with everything being sung acapella. Then we went on a short tour and had a picnic lunch on the other side of the river. It was an interesting comparison, because everyone had to be so covered up at the monestary, but in the picnic area, the same people would strip down to bikinis and Speedos.


After lunch, we were feeling overwhelmed by Ukrainain hospitality and over-organization of what was supposed to be a relaxing day, so us girls took off to the bazaar by ourselves to go shopping. I bought two headscarves, a filmy white one and a navy blue one with gold flowers, and two candlesticks made of clay that I was told was from the mountain and glazed dark blue. The candlesticks, unfortunately, broke on the way home, but they were only about 40 cents each USD and since they broke cleanly, I think I can glue them back together.


Then we went on a hike up the mountain and back in the fields to a grave of one of the monks from long ago...during Soviet times, the monestary had been a hospital for psychiatric patients (I think...), but this grave had been hidden and wasn't discovered. Then we went to the upper part of the monestary, where we could see all the way back to the town where we'd been staying, a forty-minute drive away.


Facing the monestary on a different cliff was a huge Soviet-era statue of the first Party secretary, or someone like that. One of the Ukrainians who was with us commented that he found it poetic justice that the area around the statue is eroding, while the churches are being rebuilt.

Then we all went back to the town where we were staying, went out to a cafe for dinner, hung out at one of the houses where some of the guys were staying, and then went back to the cafe where we were the previous night. Our apartment decided not to stay late, so we had french fries and then went home for more hot showers.


One of the really neat things about the weekend was that Ethan, one of the PCVs who was in the apartment I stayed at, is a Christian, which is always encouraging to find out here. He went to Liberty University, where he majored in biology. We've had dissimilar experiences here--unlike me, he was involved with a church in his town during training and made some good friends there, but when he got to site, there's no Evangelical church there, so he hasn't been able to go to church for five months. We were able to chat a bit about being believers out here, which was really cool.


Sunday morning, Erin and I got up and took the train back up to Balaklia. We had a fun time--the highlights included watching the brass band in my town rehearse while a dad and his two little girls danced on the outdoor stage by the Palace of Culture; making the ultimate sacrifice when the electricity went out and we had to eat a half kilo of vanilla ice cream with strawberries; making homemade pizza; and watching Walk the Line.


Yesterday we went up to Kharkiv, got Erin her train ticket back to Kyiv, and then went out for Italian food (yes, food was an important part of this visit!). We wanted to go to the second hand store I really like, but it closes early on Mondays, so we went to a bookstore instead, where I found a children's jigsaw puzzle that's a map of Ukraine and Erin bought an armload of ESL story/fiction books in English to use with her kids.

So it's been a great weekend, but I'm tired.

yesterday, today, and this summer

Once again, posted a day later than I wrote it because Blogger wouldn't let me post. Not sure what's wrong with Blogger...

Yesterday was fun. I didn't have anything going on at school, so I hopped the 11:50 elektrichka to Kharkiv after making photocopies for my lesson today. When I got into the city, I went second-hand shopping at the store I went to a couple of weeks ago, but this time I actually had more than 15 minutes to look at and try on things. I found three books, all more-or-less mediocre but in English and quite cheap, and three shirts--two tank tops (one is white with a teal flower and the other is pale blue with some Old-West themed writing and design) and a light purple dressy summer blouse with embroidered flowers on it. All together, I spent about $15, which is a bit stiff for used clothing over here, but it's all really good quality and I needed some more summer tops.

After shopping, I hung out with Mike, who was also in town. We sat on the cement steps near the opera house and talked, complete with beverages (I found bottled lemon iced tea!). Later, we were joined by Marie, a French girl who's been studying at a university in Kharkiv for the past year but is going home on Thursday. I was planning to take the 6:50 train home, but we went out for supper and the pizzas we ordered took FOREVER and showed up less than 10 minutes before my train would have left. So I just took the next train. (Yes, Tif, the infamous 8:20 out of the main station!) The pizza was pretty good...pepperoni and red pepper slices. The crust on the edges was REALLY good, crisp on the outside but chewy within, and with a good flavor, but in the center it was too thin and the pizza was a bit greasy. But overall, good.


~*~


My summer plans are being formed, and I'm amazed how quickly my calendar's filling up.


Now-End of June-ish: Praktika at school


June 22-July 6: Tif's visit


July 14-July 29 (tentative, pending application approval): working as an assistant at the Summer English Intensive Program at Donetsk Christian University. I'm really excited about this opportunity. I was looking up evangelical weddings in Ukraine the other night (prompted by Yula's upcoming wedding), and ran across a mention of DCU. At the time, I thought that one of Nadia's cousins who I'd met at New Year's had studied there (it turns out he actually studied at a Bible college in Dnipropretrovsk...I knew it was something with a "D" in southeastern Ukraine), so I checked out their website and found the summer program. They still have a few slots open for workers, and I cleared it with PC, so hopefully everything will work out!

Early August (no definites, many possibilities): Brandi's visit? / Crimea with the Ys? / Lithuania with Kathryn? / Odesa with the oblast girls? / Krakow on my own? We'll see...

August 26-30: Peace Corps COS (Close of Service) Conference in L'vivska Oblast. Scary how soon all of that's coming up...

September 1 (most likely September 3, since the first is a Saturday...but you never know here): School begins again!

~*~


It's funny...I was not at all thrilled about working at praktika (summer school), but several PCVs have said that they're sort of jealous of me because I have something going on right now...they're bored. At least two people were like, "My school doesn't include me with anything like that." Mike also added that no one tells him when staff meetings are and he's not expected to show up for them...if I don't show up to ours, the director grills Nelya about my whereabouts and then I hear about it from Nelya that I really do need to come.


And I've been having fun. It's more laid back, and I'm not teaching every day. Half the time, I come, check papers for an hour, and go home; and yesterday, I got the day off. But today, I did music with my 10A form and we had a lot of fun. The kids complained about the music choices--"When are we going to listen to music that's popular in Ukraine?", but they had fun. And I picked several songs that they were at least slightly familiar with. I didn't, however, include rap or heavy metal, which is very popular, because a) I don't have any, b) you can't hear the words, which defeats the purpose, and c) the English-speaking artists that are the most popular here tend to have very profane/vulgar/obscene lyrics, which aren't appropriate for school.


Our playlist today:


"Honey" by Tina Karol
"Don't Know Why" by Norah Jones
"Oxford Town" by Bob Dylan
"Don't Worry, Be Happy" by MadHeads XL
"The Great Lakes Song" by Lee Murdoch
"Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer

a kindred soul, somewhere in cyberspace

Found while surfing the Internet:

Nobody who can read is ever successful in cleaning out an attic. (Anonymous)

This explains my cry of horror when Jason told me a couple of weeks ago that he was going through his bookshelves and getting rid of a few books.

"You can't! I'm not coming back until December! You can't just get rid of books without giving me the chance to browse through them and borrow them!" I then explained how that, when I was growing up, Mom, Kate, and I all had to get each other's approval before getting rid of any books...which often just meant a transfer of ownership rather than any books actually leaving the house.

Jason assured me that the books he was getting rid of weren't anything I'd have any interest in reading, and since he is a trustworthy individual, I'm going to believe him.

~*~

Today's batch of iced tea is strawberry-flavored. If it turns out well, I think I'll combine these two attempts and have my third batch be strawberry-mint. The weather's a bit better today...still warm, but there's a good breeze.

spring has sprung

It's officially spring...I saw my first dandelion yesterday!

It's better for me mentally if I just think of this week as "Teacher Inservice Week" rather than Spring Break, I've decided. I feel less gypped this way. :)

Today we had a three-hour long staff meeting...I think one of the focus issues was teaching across disciplines, which the music teacher and I demonstrated at the close of the meeting by singing "Do Re Mi" in English, which I'd taught him at his request. I gave a short "presentation" on the poetry book my 7th formers had made, which, for being told just before the meeting started that I'd be presenting at some point during it, went pretty well. The book got passed around from teacher to teacher, and I don't know what they thought about it, but they looked at it.

Yesterday was a good day. After having lunch with the Y's after church, Natalia and I went for a Walk (the length is what gives it the capitalization) all over the center of town. It was a gorgeous day out (granted, a little windy), and she told me all sorts of stuff about the history of Balaklia that made me wish my language was better so I could fully appreciate. Then we walked out to her place on the edge of town...we cut across the fields to get there, and it's on this little dirt road with old houses and a well that some of them apparently get drinking wanter from. She said it's a nice neighborhood to live in. We were "just going to have tea", but her mom is a true Ukrainian baba, so that meant a big bowl of borsch, bread, fried eggs, fish, candy, three cups of tea, and I don't remember what else. I felt like it sort of defeated any exercise I got from the walk. :)

I really like hanging out with Natalia...she taught as a volunteer teacher in Germany, so she has some idea what it's like to live away from home. She's also a reader...she told me yesterday that she underlines things in books and hates to lend them out except to people who are as passionate about reading as she is. She likes traveling, is helping her students with an environmental project, and is also appalled at the cheating that is so common among kids (and agrees that it's in part due to a lack of moral values). I just wish that we had more language than my Ukrainian/Russian in common...but I don't speak German!

I had a great weekend. Saturday, I enjoyed the luxury of free high-speed Internet and returned library books (that were due in October...I'm so glad that Kyiv-Mohila Academy is kind enough to not charge me late fees!), and then headed out to the Malkos in Zgurivka. I was well-fed by Mama Luda and had my usual good-hearted, bi-lingual sibling bickering with Sasha. The highlight of the visit was going sledding on cardboard boxes with Sasha and one of his friends. I haven't been sledding in years, and I had so much fun!

Then I caught a ride back to Kyiv with some of the Malkos' neighbors, rather than take the bus (warmer, cheaper, faster) and spent the night at my friend Tanya's. It was a lot of fun, very slumber party-ish: we watched The Princess Bride and Serenity, swapped music, and had supper with her parents. As I said, very much like a slumber party growing up, except that I chatted with her parents in Russian instead of English.

And today...dun dun dun...my medical checkup and the dentist tomorrow. Ugh.

But on the bright side, I just inheirited the Lonely Planet guide to Ukraine from the office library. It costs $22.99 according to the cover, and I got it for free!