Wuthering Soviet-style apartments...nope, doesn't have the same ring to it

The literary character I most identify with tonight is Catherine Earnshaw. No, I'm not planning to haunt anyone, and Jason is definitely not Heathcliff (thank goodness). It's more that the wind is decidedly wuthering around my apartment building tonight, and thanks to my drafty windows, I get to experience this more fully than I'd prefer. (It doesn't help that in order to use the Internet, I have to have my laptop on my desk, which is right by the window.)

This past week was mostly spent working on a booklet for our teachers' seminar, which meant that I did a lot of typing in English and Ukrainian (so much fun typing in a different alphabet...note sarcastic tone) and made several trips to the copy center at the library. I think the one woman there sort of groaned inwardly whenever I walked in the door, because the teachers at my school wanted it all just so, but of course they sent the American to try and explain what they wanted when they hadn't told me clearly to begin with. I'm still not sure why they kept sending me...because the files were on my flash drive?

Went to Kharkiv on Friday for a goodbye party with the other oblast PCVs, as all the rest of Group 29 that's out here is leaving this coming week. Before the party, Robert and I went to the art market and I bought my going-away gift from my kids (which will now be given to them to give to me). I found a bread board with a Ukrainian cottage painted on it, which was what Nelya had suggested as a nice gift, and also a set of three paintings of flowers to hang as a set. I like them and they seem packable, which is a huge plus. Teresa came to the party straight from her goodbye party at her school, and she showed us the foot-and-a-half-tall ceramic vase that her school had given her. It was pretty, but I'm glad it's not my job to transport it back to the US!

32 days!

kyiv, the money pit

I'm in Kyiv, doing my COS medical, shopping for Christmas presents for everyone I hadn't gotten yet (I'm quite fond of the t-shirts I found for various male relatives, having been able to match interests and shirts), hanging out with friends, and just generally feeling poor, as it seems to be impossible to do or eat much in Kyiv for less than 25 hyrven.

Facts of interest:

~a group of us have a very nice apartment just off of Maidun Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), which has worked out to about $17/night/person. Not bad, especially for Kyiv. If my sofa-bed didn't fall apart quite so easily, it'd be even better (and I thought I lucked out when I was the only person with my own bed!).

~COS medical was not a particularly pleasant experience, at least not the parts that I generally find unpleasant when doing a physical. However, Dr. Sasha was nice and gave me Valium to help me relax. I hate to think what it would have felt like without it.

~Related to that, when you're on Valium, don't try and find your way up Andrievsky Uziz (a twisty, turny little street with lots of art stands) by yourself to meet friends, especially when they think they're at the bottom of the hill but they're really halfway up. It's confusing.

~Last night, I went out for coffee (okay, hot chocolate and tea) with John, a guy I was a camp counselor with six years ago. Since then, he's converted to Orthodoxy and for the last three months, he's been in Ukraine serving as a short-term missionary at an orphanage for severely disabled children. We'd been hoping to connect up while we were both in the country, but hadn't been able to until last night, the night before he was leaving to go back to Michigan. It was neat to see how his experience here has compared to mine.

~I'm going to go take my LPI in Russian now. I'm still a little loopy, so this should be fun...

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!

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!

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

sorry so late...

Please note: This was written on Monday, but then Blogger had issues and wouldn't let me post. And I was out of town yesterday. Please, don't lynch me for not updating in over a week. Mom says that it's like having her own personal serial to watch, reading my blog, so assume I was preempted by the Movie of the Week or something.

Well, I know it's been a week since my last post, but since Mom hasn't mentioned that people have been asking her why I wasn't posting, I think I'm in the clear. :) For those people who want to know, a) it was in the mid-90s most of last week, leaving me without the ability to think clearly, let alone type; b) while playing badminton last Monday, I somehow pinched a nerve in my right arm, which made extended computer time, especially typing, challenging (much better now); c) the end of the school kept me busy; and d) I just wasn't in the mood. :)


But now my arm is back to normal, the temperature has dropped to the mid-70s (perfect!), and "praktika", the Ukrainian version of summer school, is in full swing. It's different from US summer school...each homeroom of kids has certain subjects that they're supposed to come to school for (and it's not just the slower kids), and each day is only one subject, which is usually supposed to last 5 hours but never does. And part of the time, the teachers take the kids on field trips instead of book stuff...Nelya took her class to the town museum today, and last Friday, I ended up helping as a chaperone with the 1st-5th formers, taking them to a concert at the Palace of Culture for Children's Day and then going with the 5th formers and Olha Ivanivna afterwards to go swimming/wading in the river. (So nice, especially as last Friday was very hot.) I have my oh-so-unmotivated 10-A class twice this week, and the topic I was given was "listening comprehension", so I think that on Wednesday, we're going to listen to music and on Friday, we'll watch one of my DVDs. I spent this afternoon looking up song lyrics and translating the difficult words into Ukrainian. As a result, I ended up with a cheesy pop song that has versions in both Russian and English stuck in my head. Have been playing soft, pretty music like Fernando Ortega to scrub out my brain.


While at the supermarket today, I found something resembling ranch dressing. At least, it resembles my faint, far-off memories of ranch dressing. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of consuming, while not a huge amount, more than my stomach could easily handle, so then I got to follow it up with Pepto-Dismal-type tablets, cherry flavored (yes, the D for B is intentional).


Well, Blogger ate the second half of this post earlier when I tried to post it, so let me see if I can remember what I posted...


Yula and Serogia's wedding plans are progressing...they had hoped to keep the guest list down to about 100 or so, but apparently as soon as all the extended family heard that Yula was getting married (before the invitations were sent out), they all started calling Nadia to tell her that they were coming...and had already bought their train tickets! It looks like the Y house is going to be filled with people, as they are the family members who have a true gift for hospitality. Nadia says she keeps telling people that they'll fill up all the floor space, and she doesn't know how she's going to feed everyone! (Viktor suggested tents out in their huge garden and letting people cook their own food over campfires...)


Ihor Y (age 5) asked me on Sunday why I don't have kids. This is the second time he's asked me something along these lines...I think he really wants more kids to play with! Or maybe he just can't comprehend an adult without kids. :)

On Saturday, I'm going with a group of PCVs on an "excursion" to visit an Orthodox monestary just over the border into Donetsk Oblast. I'm looking forward to it, and then on Sunday and Monday, Erin McS, a PCV friend of mine, is coming to visit me. Yay for company!

tak, ya mozhy paracladate (yes, I can translate)

My favorite moment of the day happened at McDonalds, as Julianne and I had an early supper after the PC beerfest get-together to welcome the new PCTs. We were discussing how we love McDonalds here but don't really care for it in the States.

Julianne: It's our homeland.
Me: Yeah, Homeland Security food.
Julianne: *rolls eyes and groans*

Glad to know that I haven't completely lost the pun touch.

~*~

Update on Andrei: he's doing a bit better, I'm gathering, and his condition has stabilized. On Friday, the kids said that they'd talked to him and he said to tell me "Hi". Thanks for all the prayers...and don't stop! He's got a long, difficult recovery ahead of him.

~*~

I spent Thursday through today, except when I was at school, helping Robert, the new PCT who'll be in my town starting in June, with language stuff and general acclimation. They've only have language classes for six weeks before site visit (I remember those days...), so I did a lot of translating for him and his organization, as his director/coordinator doesn't speak any English. We also hung out with his host family, who are very nice and told me I need to come back and visit them even while Robert's still in training. I was amazed how many of the same people I knew that they knew as well. Really, it's not that large of a town.

Today, I missed church (*sad face*) and went with Robert up to Kharkiv, where us oldies had a welcoming celebration for the newbies at an outdoor cafe. It was nice to chat with everyone, and I have leads on a couple of trips people might be taking this summer to Odesa and Lithuania, which I might be able to join up with. Plus, I met Daisy, a girl volunteer who'll be about 30-40 minutes away from me by train, and we're planning to hang out. The other girls in the oblast all live on the other side of Kharkiv, so when they have "girly nights", it's hard for me to be able to go.

It's really hot...yesterday it was in the 90s, and I think it was today as well. This does not bode well for school this coming week. Friday was bad enough...the last class (11th form) decided to just go crazy and throw paper wads, and all my yelling in Ukrainian had no results. I look forward to someday working in a country with a better discipline system with a more clearly defined set of consequences and punishments.

the life of a substitute teacher...yes, me, not my parents

No real updates on Andrei...the kids at school told me he's doing a little better and is going to live, but what I could understand of the conversation in the teachers' room today seemed a lot less hopeful, both for his chances and then for what condition he'll be in if he makes it.

I'm spending this week and next week as a substitute teacher for Olha Ivanivna, who had to go to Kharkiv for teacher training. This is a challenge, because not only am I substituting, it's also right at the end of the school year and I have to give the year-end exams. Which I also have to write. For students I don't teach, which means I don't really have a good idea of what they've covered or the level they're at. I also got the fun job of giving the sixth forms English tests from the Ukrainian Ministry of Education...they're experimenting with standardized testing. Yesterday was grammar, which almost everyone flat-out bombed. Out of 25 tests or so, on a 1-12 scale, I had an 8.5, two 6s, a 4.25...and everyone else was lower. I feel bad for the kids...the material wasn't new, but it involved a format that we haven't really worked with and often they had to choose what tense to put a verb in rather than just being told which tense. Some of the girls wanted to know their grades, so I told them. Fortunately, there were no tears (which I half expected), and they don't seem to be blaming me. :)

After a year and a half of being the only American (or native English speaker, for that matter) in my rayon, another PCV is coming to Balaklia to work at a non-profit organization in town. His name is Robert, and he's 46 and was previously a PCV in Namibia. He's coming for site visit tomorrow through Sunday and then moving here in late June. He sounds like he'll be interesting to get to know. Also, another small town about 30-40 minutes towards Kharkiv from me is getting a youth development volunteer, and my friend Mike is also getting a YD PCV in his town (yes, Tif, School #2 finally caved in). So there'll be 3 new PCVs within an hour of me. Wow. It's gonna get crowded! :)

Funny moment from the 6B class I'm subbing for today: Today they had to translate a page of text about the USA into Ukrainian as a year-end test. One girl wanted to know how to say "second" in Ukrainian. Once she figured out what it was, she said, "Oh, second hand!" Used clothing stores are known as "секондь хенд", or "second hand" here, and they're sort of looked down on here. Then she asked me, "Miss Sally, do you go to the second hand stores?" The majority of my clothes are used (from such diverse sources as Nadia, Tif, the PC office, and the infamous second hand stores, which I love), and today's outfit, a light pink sweater and a knee-length denim skirt with front pleats, was from Nadia and the PC office. So I said, "Yes, and what I'm wearing is second-hand" (granted, not from the store, but still used). The kids all stopped, looked at me, and one of the girls said, "Well, it sure doesn't look like it!"

Really, I think the prejudice against used clothes here is silly. According to Guisella Kotlar (who has a new baby, Raphael!), "everyone shops there but no one admits it." I like the used clothes shops here because I can find more Western-style clothing that's better quality for the fraction of the price I'd pay at the bazaar. Plus, they sometimes have English books!

Weekend update/picture post!

It's been a good weekend. Yesterday, I went to Kharkiv for a going-away party for one of the PCVs in the oblast. We had a picnic out in the woods in one of the larger parks, and it was a nice chance to visit with people. Over 20 people showed up, a mixture of oblast PCVs, visiting PCVs from other oblasts, and foreign exchange students who live in Kharkiv. I took no-bake cookies, which were a hit. Pictures are here.

Question for all of you: do you know what no-bakes are? A lot of people yesterday (Americans) hadn't heard of no-bakes before, and I hadn't thought that they were a regional thing.

Today, I was the pianist at church because our regular one, Inna, was at a wedding with her mom (who is also our best soprano...we were slightly lacking today). I started out rather shaky, but felt moderately confident by the end.

The weather was gorgeous today, and I took pictures of various Y family members after church, including Nadia, who's never let me photograph her before. Pictures are here.

Oh, and for people who like to keep up on news, Yula and Serogia are officially engaged now and getting married at the end of next month. The date's not set yet, but they have two possible weekends.

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!

"scream and translate"...now I have a phrase for it!

After the no-shower disappointment, I had breakfast at a little coffee shop down the street from the PC office and then went to the Young Learners manual meeting (YLMM?). Tetiana gave me a chocolate bar as a birthday present, and she'd brought us pastries from the coffee shop where I'd eaten breakfast. If I'd only known, I could have saved myself a few hryvnia. :)

The meeting was good...there were 3 teacher trainers and only two primary teachers, which I think is a skewed dynamic, so we're talking about trying to get some more PCVs who actually teach in on the project. But we decided to make our manual based on the National Curriculum objectives, rather than on any one particular textbook series, especially as we'd like to steer classes away from bookwork and more towards communicative activities.

When I was describing my 4th form on Monday, one of the girls was like, "Oh, the teacher was using the 'Scream and translate' method," which made me laugh. I didn't realize that there was an "official" term for it...SaT. :)

The meeting got out a little after noon, and I wandered around Kyiv during the afternoon. I went to Globus, the big underground mall, and felt very ovewhelmed, very unfashionable, very overweight, and very poor after looking at the clothes. Bah. I then wandered over past the cathedrals down Andriivsky Street, planning to go to the Mikhail Bulgakov museum, but apparently it wasn't open for visitors because it was already full with a group from Moscow. Or something like that. So I came back to the office to discover that we had no electricity and hence no Internet. Hung out in a comfy chair for a bit, and then Shannon, another PCV, and Pasha, her boyfriend (who's Ukrainian), and I walked down to McDonalds for ice cream, and when we came back, the power was back on. So now I can waste time on the computer!

happy birthday to me!

It's my birthday. One year less than a quarter-century, which, when put that way, sounds rather old. My biggest disappointment so far today (at 7:30 am) is that the shower at the PC office, where I am for a meeting, doesn't work, so I don't get to give myself a hot shower as a birthday present. It's sad when I consider this a "present".

Wednesday was "Meet and Greet" in Kharkiv, where the oblast PCVs and Vasyl (our manager) went out to lunch at a Very Nice Restaurant that Peace Corps reimbursed us for. I had a salmon fillet and wild rice. Very good. Then we had a very quick meeting at a park for the "business" section of the day. Lots of people wished me happy early birthday, Greg gave me flowers (he'd originally given them to Julianne as a Women's Day gift, since she was the first girl he saw, but when he found out it was my birthday on Friday, he took them back from her and gave them to me!), and Mike and I are planning to meet up for breakfast on Saturday.

I spent Wednesday night at Kathryn's apartment in Kharkiv. Kathryn's an older PCV who works at a university in Kharkiv, and this was the first chance we've really had to hang out. We spent yesterday wandering around the center of Kharkiv, figuring out the schedules for the opera, philharmonic, and organ concerts and making plans to become cultured individuals. Then we went out to lunch at Adriano's, my favorite restaurant in Kharkiv, wandered around a bit more, and then Kathryn treated me to tea and cake at a coffee shop (yes, Jason, it's the one we went to). We then finished up Women's Day by shopping, and I found a very nice dark brown sweater with a cowl neck for 70 hryvias.

(It matches my scarf that Jason sent me for Valentine's Day very nicely. I also found boots I like that are on sale that go with it all, which I'm considering buying when I go back to Kharkiv on Saturday. This might turn into a pretty expensive V-Day gift. :) Just kidding.)

On the train, I shared a compartment with a guy who was half Ukrainian and half Greek. He had served in the Greek army and currently does manual labor in England, where he was headed. (I've known several young guys who do this--work in England for a year or two and earn more money with farm or factory jobs there than they can with white-collar jobs here.) We talked for about four hours about culture, the need to know languages, the strengths and weaknesses of Ukraine, and how travel makes us better-educated people. It was an awesome conversation.

a happy smile :)

It took 40 minutes each way to walk to the dentist's, uphill and down, through water, snow, ice, and slush (all on the street, the sky is precipitation-free today so far). It only took 30 minutes or so total at the dentist office itself.

They're very thorough...I felt as if I was being sandblasted at times. The woman told me, "It won't be painful, just maybe unpleasant." I was curious how she differentiated the terms. At any rate, no cavities but I need to floss regularly.

Courtney (who went to U of M), Susannah, Nathan, and I went out to Vesuvius Pizza last night. We decided to order two large pizzas (one onion/mushroom, one onion/olives), but they were HUGE when they came, and we failed to finish them. We had a good time talking about music and swapping stories about our sites. Then Susannah and I went to the Brat and discovered that, despite having cable with channels in Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, and English (one channel in English, mostly pop culture-ish news), there wasn't really much on.

Currently wasting time by looking on Travelocity at airfares and dreaming of world travelling...in warmer, drier weather!