roll call!

Ooh! Two posts in one day! I know, you can hardly believe it...

This is just a "fun" post about blogging. I use StatCounter to see how many hits this blog gets, and I've noticed that I've gathered a small, faithful collection of regular readers. Now I know that I know a fairly large number of you (I'm assuming that the majority of Michiganders are people I know, and Milwaukee and Fayetteville also need no explanation), but this is directed to all those lurkers out there who read my blog, both those who know me and those who just stumbled across me somehow.

Who are you? How did you find my blog, and what led you to keep reading it? I'm really curious. I love reading random people's blogs, so I'm glad that you found me. Also, for everyone who knows me in real life, you can also leave a comment, because I'm not exactly sure who's still reading this.

Also, for your amusement, key words that people had been searching for when they found my blog this month...here are the highlights:

~lots of permutations on "Ukraine," "Peace Corps," and "experiences". No explanation needed (although there have been a lot of "bad peace corps experiences" referrals, which probably didn't get them what they wanted).
~ukraine boys (my opinions on the breed are those of a teacher; once again, probably disappointed the searcher)
~plakhotnyk kyiv-the capital of ukraine (this has to have been another PCV searching for lesson plans)
~wears slips (well, I do...)
~balaklia milk combinat (I'm the only search result...)
~ukraine luxuries (hot water?)
~peace corps had sex (once again, disappointment for the searcher)
~christian missionaries in the peace corps
~bite your head off babushka (Tif should appreciate that one)

my new favorite time-waster

I follow some online journal communities about applying to grad school. Today on one of them, a link was posted to FreeRice.com as a way to practice vocabulary.

This site is cool. It's a basic vocabulary quiz--you are given a word with four choices for synonyms. For every word you get right, 10 grains of rice are donated to a hungry person through an international aid agency. Apparently the idea is to support learning and fight hunger. I like this combination. 10 grains isn't much, but it does add up...I'm up to 2,000 grains donated today! (And since I'm supposed to be writing my statement of purpose for grad school, it's likely to increase before I go to bed...)

Also, it's fun to see how well I can do. There are 50 levels of difficulty, but apparently it's almost impossible to get beyond Level 48. I've ranged between 39-45, mostly around 43ish.

So all of you people trying to boost your vocab/waste time/make a difference...go play at FreeRice!

Valera's Thoughts on Christian Marriage

Conversation between Valera, Liza, and I at the Yukhemetses' on Sunday afternoon.

Liza: How old are you?
Me: 24.
Valera: But you can get married at 22! [not sure where that figure came from] Why aren't you married?
Me: Um...it hasn't happened yet. I'm waiting. So when are you getting married?
Valera: I'm only 10!
Me: Well, I meant later anyway. And who are you going to marry?
Liza: He's going to marry Lilia [a girl in his class]!
Valera: [horrible face] No, I'm not! She's not a Christian, and you can't marry non-Christians, right?
Me: Right.
Valera: And you can't marry your sisters, either.
Me: Riii-ght.

Good to know he has the basic requirements for Christian marriage down. :)

Not much is going on these days...well, actually, I'm quite busy, but none of it's huge. School has more or less settled down into a routine, I'm tutoring four people this semester outside of school hours--Julia, Andrey, Andrei-who-fell-off-the-roof (who is much, much better but not going to school this year, so we provide home-bound instruction), and Vlad, who is a manager for a grain elevator in a village near here run by Cargill, which is apparently a huge international company. We talk farming, which is fun for both of us and good practice for what he actually needs English for--to advance in the company. In addition to all of this, I'm working on grad school apps and cleaning out my apartment.

In case any of you want to know what sort of country I live in, here's a description, courtesy of a site devoted to romantic phrases in Ukrainian (perhaps for wife hunters?):

Ukraine is the land of love. The people have ledgendary [sic] beauty and are raised in a dreamy snowy naturalistic landscape far from the distractions of the west. Most people here have a classical education that is rich in literatire [sic] and romantic classical music. I beleive [sic] that when you grow up with less stimulation, such as in Ukraine, your mind develops its own stimulation in the form of fantasy and dreams. This is why Ukraine's people are true romantic and love is possible.

Sounds like a great country...I'll have to check it out sometime!

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. :)

Evangelicalism in Ukraine--links

I decided to post these links that I've recently found while poking around the Internet in hopes that you all (or at least Mom and Mrs. Green) might find them interesting and that they can shed some light on what evangelical Christianity looks like over here--the ways in which it is similar and dissimilar to evangelical Christianity in the US.

Protestants in the Former Soviet Union: What Survey Findings Reveal: Fascinating, but also troubling in spots--the average pastor's salary from the church work he does is roughly $70/month (for the percentage that answered the question on the survey). Most people I know have an average monthly salary of $100-$120 and think that it's difficult to live comfortably on that amount.

Ukrainian Evangelical Culture: This site is primarily designed for people coming on short-term mission trips, but there's a lot of interesting information about the structure of church services and the lifestyle of many Christians here...it's interesting for me, because I learned most of what's written there over a period of observation and interaction, and here it is all written out!

a long post to make up for the lack of them this past week

I have a webcam!

Greg and I had a shopping day at Target (not the US Target, but the biggest grocery/department store in Kharkiv) on Wednesday. Greg found blue cheese, a mop, sticky-tac (apparently you can find it in Ukraine!), and a bunch of other random stuff, and I got my webcam, white-out, two copy-books, and peanut butter, which comes in little packets apparently, rather than jars. I haven't tried it yet, as I keep using my bread for other things (ie sandwiches), but I hope to soon.

So now when Jason and I talk with each other on Skype, we both have webcams and can see each other (although he generally looks sort of like a Monet painting, a little fuzzy around the edges, and when he moves quickly, the resemblance is closer to Picasso's work). It's almost (but not quite) as good as being able to actually go on a date. :)

~*~

My 10th form topic this week was "Making Suggestions." For their Thursday night homework, I asked them all to brainstorm three problems that they had in their lives. On Friday, I put them into groups and had them come up with answers to these problems. Below is a sampling, with suggestions in italics.

~No money (a very common problem): Need to work
~I get bad marks: Need to study
~My CD player doesn't work: Throw it out, buy a new one (which went back to "No money")
~I'm lazy: To overcome it (I was very proud of Natasha, as she looked up "overcome" in the dictionary to answer Olexi's problem)
~I live in Vilavatka (a village south of us) and I have to take the train to school (because the school there closed due to lack of students and the kids have to come to our school now): Move to Balaklia (to which Olena replied, "No money!")
~No boyfriend (from Lyuba, a very sweet girl who gets mediocre grades but works very hard for them): Yura, the class clown, said that he was available. Lyuba smiled in a way that said, "Not on your life!"

~*~

The highlight (perhaps "main event" is a more appropriate term) of yesterday was trying to fix the lock on my outer door. It hadn't been oiled since I moved in (or ever?), and yesterday, the key finally stopped turning...that is, when I could actually get it in the lock. Lena, my second-floor neighbor, told me that I needed car oil, what the container looked like, and that I needed to go to the hardware store. I went to the hardware store, and the following conversation ensued.

Me (holding up an empty oil container lent me by Lena): Excuse me, do you have car oil?
Shop-assistant: No, we don't.
Me: Where can I get it?
Shop-assistant: At a hardware store.
Me: Aren't you a hardware store?
Shop-assistant: Yes, but we don't have it.
Me: Well, at what hardware store can I get it?
Shop-assistant: At the bazaar. [which was already closed for the day by that point]
Me: My problem is that I can't turn my key in the lock. Do you have anything that would help me?
Shop-assistant: No, we don't.
Me: Thank you. Goodbye.
Shop-assistant: Goodbye.

At that point, I really missed Cantwell's in Lakeview.

I then walked down to the bazaar, on the off-chance that it was still open. It wasn't. Neither was the other hardware store right by it. So I did what I usually do when in a dilemma, and called Nadia. Valera answered the phone, which meant a bit more talking to do before I could convince him to go find his mom. When I got ahold of Nadia, she asked me to call back in a few minutes (I think so she could go look for oil).

I walked home, was met by the neighbor girls (who have been visiting me quite regularly with bouquets of weeds and grass all week), and decided to ask my first-floor neighbors, an older couple. It turns out that "Uncle Misha" (the girls said that since he was "Grandpa Misha" to them...no relation...he would be "Uncle Misha" to me) is a very good fix-it man who took my lock out of the door, oiled it, and put it back in, all while chatting with me about why on earth I speak Ukrainian instead of Russian. He prefers Russian. However, he told me he was glad that I'd asked him when I had a problem and that he helps out everybody in the building when they have problems. So I'm going to bake him cookies or something as a way to say thank you, I think.

~*~

Yula, Viktor and Nadia's oldest niece on Nadia's side of the family, was back in church this week. She'd been living with extended family and working as a nurse in Zhytomer, in western Ukraine, since just before New Year's, and the original plan was that she was going to settle out there. However, just before moving out there, she had met a guy (I can sympathize), and after a few months there, decided to move back home. It looks like Yula and Serogia are probably going to get married...they'd been thinking this summer or early fall, but Nadia told me today that it might be as early as next month. On Saturday, apparently, his pastor and close family members are going to meet with the adults of Yula's family (which includes aunts, uncles, and grandparents...her grandfather is also our pastor) to discuss the feasibility of this. So Yula's side of the family was going to get together this evening to talk it all over. It's very different from the US, with such a high degree of family and church involvement.

From what I've read, traditionally at such meetings between both sides of the family, if the girl wasn't interested in marrying, they'd give the guy a pumpkin. Yula's definitely interested, but I want to know where they'd get a pumpkin this time of year if she wasn't.

u gotta read nwz artcl, its v intrstng...understand?

I ran across this article today on Yahoo...it's funny, because I never thought about texting when I lived in the US (I didn't even have a cell phone), and now I text quite a bit, since it's cheaper than calling people. I can even text in Ukrainain, sort of.

I'm definitely not up to the speed of those kids, though...but I can text without looking with a very small percentage of errors. (This was discovered last summer on a day when I was really, really bored...)

gooooooogling

Thought for all of you to ponder: do the verses in I Corinthians 14 prohibiting speaking in tongues without an interpreter also apply nowadays to people singing in a foreign language in church? I don't mean once in a while, like if you have guests from a different country, but on a regular basis. My pastor here occasionally asks if I'll sing a solo in church (part of the weekly service is devoted to special music in small groups, duets, trios, and solos), and I don't know what language to sing in. If I sing in English, I can accompany myself on the piano and know that I'm pronouncing everything correctly...but no one can understand me. If I sing in Ukrainian, it's harder for me to read the words of the song and the piano notes at the same time, especially as I don't get to practice playing the piano often...also, my accent's noticable enough that I don't know how easy I'd be to understand if I sang a song people didn't already know.

Either way, I feel awkward. I love singing in our "older group" (i.e. anyone over 18 who can carry a tune...we sit together and function as sort of a very small choir), because I'm part of it, just another member of the church. If I sing a solo, everyone looks at me, and no matter which language I sing in, everyone's reminded that I'm the American. I spend my life over here being the American...at church, I just want to be another Christian. But my pastor keeps asking me to sing, and I don't think that trying to explain all of this to him would help.

~*~

In other news, the Y kids and I watched E.T. dubbed into Ukrainian this afternoon, which was a lot of fun...I hadn't seen that movie in ages!

~*~

These are the best of what comes up when I type "Sally needs" into Google:

*Sally needs a suitor who is capable of tending to her dreams and is willing to be second priority so that the people can come first. (I followed the link...it's about Sonic the Hedgehog, of all things!)
*Sally needs to be reminded to multiply before adding
*Sally needs to learn how to stay on task during independent work
*Sally needs to increase her positive interaction with peers
*Sally needs $50000 to buy a Pete's Postage Post franchise
*Sally needs to get a real gun
*Sally needs to work in such an unfulfilling job
*Sally needs sunshine
*Sally needs to make her best underwater documentary film in order to attract backing for future projects
*Sally needs a hug

I am a goldfish.

While I've spent a great deal of time online this week, reading sites on all sorts of topics (mostly pointless), I don't seem to be blogging all that much more. Time to remedy this.

Tuesday night was my friend Natalia's birthday party. About a dozen of us were at a cafe near her house...a mix of her friends (mostly teachers) and former students. A lot of her former students spoke English a bit, and once they got over staring at me and being shy, we had a nice conversation. It was a fun party...good food, watching Natalia do an impression of a popular Ukrainian singer while dancing, and just a nice chance to be social.

However, around 9 pm, as the bar crowd was starting to collect in the front of the cafe, two of my 10th form girls came in. They were with older (ie mid-20s) guys and drinking beer. One of them, Maryna, is one of my wilder girls, so while I was disappointed to see her, I wasn't surprised. But the other girl, Natasha, is a "good girl"...does her homework, behaves, etc. She's the sort of pretty, romantic girl who wants a boyfriend and so is willing to settle for the first relationship she can, whether or not it's the right one. Sigh...

Four different students had seen me over the course of the evening, and so yesterday at school, kids kept asking me, "Miss Sally, were you at the cafe in Novoselivka (the neighborhood where Natalia lives) last night? Why? Did you like it? What did you drink?" I felt, as I often do, like a goldfish in a big tank. I have no private life, it seems.

Dealing with allergies and sinus headaches this week. Ugh.

I stopped at a shop on the way home today and found cinammon bread with raisins, which is very similar to a cinnamon roll, but the size and shape of a loaf of bread. Yummy. :)

Public Announcement

I HAVE INTERNET IN MY APARTMENT!

(After the guys were here for three and a half hours trying to install programs in various languages, dealing with an obnoxious firewall, and other such inconveniences. But it's all good now.)

:) :) :)

I also have Skype...will be emailing my contact info out in the next few days.

Happy day-before-Easter! (Which is also Vitaly's birthday, the Annunciation according to the Ukrainian calendar, and my 1 year anniversary of knowing the Y family!)

one of those weeks...

I'm in the mood for a bit of irony today...

...that while I've been lectured lately by Nelya for not keeping my apartment clean enough (which she didn't see, but heard about from my director, who heard about it from my landlady, who came in when I wasn't home because that's legal here), my 6th formers (and many, many other people here) see nothing wrong with throwing their candy wrappers and chip bags on the ground outside because "someone will pick it up later." At least when I don't clean my apartment it doesn't cause an eyesore for everyone who walks by.

...that I was wearing an ankle-length skirt with a back slit to the knee today, and Nelya was upset because my slip showed. "The children will notice," she said. This in a country where I don't think anyone wears slips and where my girls come to school in very short, tight skirts...and tight, low-cut tops with suggestive phrases on them in English. Honestly, I don't think it matters much if a very small portion of my slip shows through the slit in my skirt.

I keep trying to track down my landlady at the school where she works to ask about Internet. I haven't talked to her yet, but today my director came up to me and asked what was up. I have no idea how she knew that I'd been there...sigh...I live in a fishbowl. I left it at "I have a question for her," because Sally Getting Internet doesn't have to be everyone's business. Then again, in Ukraine, maybe it does.

Palm Sunday is called Willow Sunday in Ukraine, and no one knows why

I'm in Kharkiv...spent the night at Kathryn's and am going to have lunch with Greg. Last night, Kathryn, Janice, and I were at the main square in Kharkiv after Kathryn finished her Windows on America presentation (about ballads!), and we saw Hare Krishnas walking around and chanting, plus a theatrical performance by a travelling troupe that involved people reading newspapers, people walking on stilts, and lots of fire. We didn't understand it...and since they weren't talking, it had nothing to do with the language. We decided they were just trying to be artistic.

It's been a good week...I worked at school or went to meetings in the mornings (I got to spend a lot of time doing Internet research at school!), and in the afternoon, I spring-cleaned (got about half my apartment done as far as going through cupboards and closets, and then got busy...at least what I worked on is clean and all visible areas are good) or hung out with people. Spent a lot of time at the Y's...I've got a story about them, but it hasn't finished happening yet, so it'll wait for a future post.

Oh, and I have the chance to get high-speed Internet in my apartment!!! Assuming, of course, I can get ahold of my landlady (the phone number I have for her is the wrong one, so I'm trying to track her down at her school) and she says it's okay...which, as it won't involve anything more than a tiny hole in the windowframe and I'll be paying it myself, I really hope will be okay. Just think how often I could post! (j/k) But seriously...Skype...AIM...my phone bill might even shrink!