The Cookie Connection

After school today. Wait. Let me rephrase that (with a tired sigh): After I tutored two Zhenias after school today, and after I got a computerized phone call in Ukrainian that I actually understood and didn't hang up on and after it reminded me kindly to pay my phone bill by tomorrow or else and after I rushed off to try to change the dollars I had scrounged up because I'm out of money and there's not a bank nearby where I can take money out of my account unless I want to pay a big fee and after I found out that I got to the bank too late to change money ("The program's done for today, dear," said the teller not unkindly) and after I used the last of the money in my purse to pay my phone bill and sped-walked home, two of our school's best English speakers, Anya and Larisa, came over to my apartment for some speaking practice before tomorrow's big Olympiad.

I'm seriously so done with boring lectures, worksheets, textbooks, translations, preparations. So I chucked it all and we baked cookies. It was awesome. They stayed for over two hours. We babbled about everything, from what we like to do in our free time to what it's going to be like to leave home and go to the big city for school. They were mostly talking with each other - in English - the entire time. I'd occasionally fill in some, just enough to give them some examples of how to say what they wanted. I'd say less than 5% of our conversation was in Surzhyk. Fun! It kind of felt like girl time, too. I hope they had as much fun as I did.

I got to school this morning at 8 a.m. to tutor my businessman. Did I tell you about him? Our first session was last Friday morning. He's the guy who just wandered into school one day looking for me to teach him English. During our first meeting, I kept trying to aim the tiny little space heater over toward us, since the room was freezing. I wasn't even trying to be obvious about it, either, but his eyes lighted up and he exclaimed, "Aha! I will buy you a convector! I will put it in this afternoon!" A convector is the local parlance for a sort of convection heater that is attached to the wall. It's the thing keeping my apartment warm and toasty this winter. They're great.

So he's going to install a convector for us in our English room, but he didn't get a chance yet because when he walked into the room this morning, his nose was bright red and his eyes had a sort of sunken, Lurch-like cast to them. "I'm very sorry," he apologized, "I have been sick this weekend, and..." He trailed off. I excused him (hee hee, that's right, I'm the teacher now!) and we planned to meet later in the week.

After I got home, I let Kathryn go home (she stayed over this weekend for a popcorn and pizza and pumpkin pie extravaganza, it was awesome) and waited for the electrician, who actually came! Finally! It took him two hours and several trips to the nearby village for parts, but I now have a new wall socket and fuse box. He also spliced a new end onto my space heater, miracle of miracles, and so now I can heat my kitchen, no worries about carting that thing to the office in Kyiv for a replacement.

For my first annual Kuibyshevo Pumpkin Carving Party on Friday (it was so fun. Five eleventh formers and eight seventh formers showed up. Three pumpkins were carved. Crossword puzzles and word searches were dutifully solved. The older kids wrote a scary story and read it to the little ones. We had a race to fill cups with water from a big bowl using only spoons in partners. The seventh formers really got into a game where two kids left the room and the others wrote two words on cards, then taped them to the two kids' backs. Those two had to stand in the middle of everybody, hop on one foot, and the first to read the word on the other person's back was the winner. The darlings got into it so much, it was quite hilarious. They bounced up and down, cheering and laughing right along with the competitors. And all this, including the awarding of the grand prize - a jar of candy to the one who guessed the number of pieces - and clean up in the space of two hours. It was great)...anyway, for the party I'd arranged the desks into a big U shape, with two desks in the top of the U together for a demonstration table, and a big open square shape where we played games. I have been wanting to arrange the desks like this forever. It's so conducive to every kind of learning activity imaginable. The kids love it, too. I'm going to fight tooth and nail to keep it like this.

For example, Olya wants me to go back to teaching the entire tenth form class, instead of half. We'd tried splitting it in parts, but it's apparently giving her a headache. That's fine. With the desks like that, I don't mind a large class, since I can take attendance around the room, keep my eye on every single person at once, and call on whoever I want whenever I want. I am the center of attention if I want to be, but they can all see each other, too. The most people a single person can bother or talk to is two, and it's easy enough to feel like everyone is watching you goof off, which they are. So today we were reading this quite abominable story called "Witches' Loaves" in our beloved Plakhotnyk readers about a spinster who falls in love with a draughtsman, who she believes is really a poor artist because all he does is buy stale bread. So one day she puts butter in the bread, dreaming of true love happily ever after, but it turns out she ruins everything! Doesn't everyone know that draughtsmen prefer to use stale bread instead of India rubber to rub out the pencil lines on their drawings? And to think he absently rubbed that butter all over the drawing of City Hall that would win him a prize! He even shouted "Fool! You stupid old cat!" at the poor woman. So apparently she's the witch, because she plotted and schemed, I guess.

Anyway, I digress. We read the story and acted it out and wrote three interesting endings and it was fantastic. Of course, their teacher scolded them afterwards for not knowing enough, but at least she did it when I couldn't see it and I only found out later by being gossipy. I don't understand. I thought they did a good job and paid pretty good attention for such a strange little tale.

Zhenia from the tenth form came out of the blue and asked to read a story with me. How could I say no? And little Zhenia came and found me today, too. She's such a cutie. I like making friends with her. We're reading "Charlotte's Web", and it makes me remember being a little girl all over again. I wonder if I was like Zhenia when I was that age, kind of spacy and self-absorbed but in a completely innocent, smartish way, bookish and outgoing, but shy with my peers, wanting attention but unsure how to go about getting it, awkward but really quite a beautiful little girl.

Last Saturday I hung out at school all morning, tutoring again. Anya and Larisa came to see me. We discussed the topics from last year's Olympiad and I tried to give them strategies for speaking more. The best one I gave them was a variation on "say what you know": talk about yourself. "As for me," they say. "In my life," or "What I do..." It's working, though, because today they were already speaking more about the topics. I hope it helps.

Well, it's early but I'm going to bed. I have another long day tomorrow: the rayon Olympiad and a couple of seventh form lessons. After school, I kind of hope I can go home so I can plan my six lessons for Wednesday. Then Thursday and Friday morning it's Mr. Businessman tutoring time, and my eleventh formers on Thursday afternoon. Nope, just remembered. I've got to get the eleventh formers ready for the make-up test for American Country Studies tomorrow after school. Oh well. So much for free time. It's overrated, anyhow. Right?