Days 4-11, Condensed and Sweetened Like Milk

So. Finally back at home via Konstantinovka--Harkov--Zolochiv--Senkove--Zaporizhia! It was awesome to do some travelling, and thankfully by the time I got on the road, the sickness had completely passed. I was afraid it would rear itself back up, reappearing in the lungs or sinuses, but it has done no such thing.

On Thursday I was in Konstantinovka to be a guest teacher at my friend's school. I've made friends with his coordinator, Inna Borisovna, and it was fun to be able to give her a favor as a speaker in her classes (I taught 5 lessons!). My own school had nothing for me to do: they had cancelled all my classes for the commission (and most of my classes last week, too, for the same reason), all the teachers were frantic about the commission, and the poor students were attending more than 8 classes a day all week to get ready for the commission. So I figured I should just do some long-term planning for my site instead of getting in the way. And it turned out great!

It was really neat to see the kind of situation other volunteers teach in. My friend's school is specialized in English (unlike mine, which is specialized in math and biology), so the students all have tons of English classes every week and English is a major priority there. It really makes a difference in the quality of the English being spoken and taught. I'm jealous!

After teaching, my friend and I headed in to Harkov on Friday night. We caught a ridiculous "S" class, which we were really hoping meant "Sleeper". No, it means you sit up in a slightly reclining chair for the duration of the trip with fluorescent lights shining in your eyes the entire time you're trying to sleep. By 3 a.m. I was hallucinating. But we survived.

Harkov at dawn was gorgeous. I got some shots of the train station and we had breakfast blini at a nearby Potato House restaurant. Not too bad, except for the sawdusty cappuccino and the ridiculous eighties dance music. Time then traveled to a weird standstill/fast-forward motion sort of thing. We wandered past the giant Lenin statue trying to find everybody...More than 100 volunteers were rumored to be gathering for the party...Finding each other involved lots of stomping around in circles and getting the sun in our eyes. Eventually we rendezvoused at the Shevchenko statue (awesome, by the way) and found our way to the apartments. The whole thing was wonderfully executed and went off without any problems. I was so impressed by the organizational mojo of the volunteers who thought this thing up. It was awesome.

Anyway, we all rested (some people had gotten in at like one in the morning) and ran out to get liquor and food. My friend Diane and I made hash and scrambled eggs for 10 people while we all talked and got tipsy. It was a fun time. We all ate and climbed (or wound) our way into our costumes and then set off for the club. The Ukrainians we passed on the streets seemed to love our costumes. I tipped my cowboy hat to them to be polite, and they laughed. It was hilarious.

The Harkov crew had reserved an entire club for us. You went in on the first floor and then down the stairs to a sweet dance floor. The second I got there I was running on complete sensory overload. There were so many people in so many amazing costumes. I think my brain went into its own orbit. We danced and made merry and it was absolute heaven.

That's Diane as a "Nich" or magical nighttime creature, Jason as the Mummy, me as Cowgirl, and Katie as Ukrainian Girl Scout. We rocked.

Then on Sunday I made my way to Zolochiv with a little group of volunteers. I am now an afficionado of
Flight of the Conchords thanks to Max (someone who loves me, please please please send me the DVDs! Also Arrested Development, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Royal Tennenbaums, and The Big Lebowski - hell, just send me a Cohen Bros. Box Set. Oh, and any cartoons you don't want, to show to my kids!).

We were invited to speak at a methodology seminar the three Zolochiv volunteers were putting on for their new resource center, so Monday morning we had a chance to interact with teachers from all around the region. It was really rewarding to interact with interested Ukrainian English teachers, to field their questions and learn about their interests, not to mention learning about the projects other volunteers are taking on. It's super cool the way each person finds a way to interact with their site in a unique way. The teachers were really interested in my "Culture Exchange Project" since they are also just learning how to use computers and the internet in their teaching. I hope I gave them some good ideas.

Tuesday we headed to Jeremy's village. It's always so neat to go there, since it's so tiny. Sasha drove us from the bus station in a nearby town in his enormous, gas-guzzling boat of a car. We made another great dinner and played poker. I was not a shark. Dammit.

Wednesday Hilary and I began the long journey home. She was heading to Odesa actually to fly away somewhere wonderful and exotic. We ate lunch in Harkov at Charly's (the hummus was pretty good but it was made with tahini, not chickpeas, and could have used more garlic, but the burger was delicious even with coleslaw on top). My train got me to Zaporizhia by 9:30 and I headed over to Rich and Cathy's to hang with them. I can't believe they'll be gone by the end of the month. It seems so soon. I will miss them so much.

Today I slept in, ate a fabulous as usual breakfast with R & C and went book shopping. I got some Anton Chekhov and some fairy tales in Russian. Edward, who is a very smart person, recommended I start reading with the Chekhov, so we'll see. At least I'll have something to do in the long, cold, dark winter months ahead. As if I'm not busy enough! Sometimes I feel like all I do is get up in the morning, start typing, and don't stop until I go to bed at midnight. I'm about a third of the way done with the American Country Studies manual Tatiana wants me to make, and I try to make every lesson count now that I have a printer.

I have to remember to take the check in to school Monday for the copies I made for the Olympiad. It cost 87 hrivnias! That's a big bite out of a volunteer budget. We'll see. It was worth it to have the materials for the Olympiad, though. I was so proud of my students for coming even though all their math and science teachers were trying to make them take extra lessons like crazy before the commission came.

I hope everything will be different now that the commission has been and gone. All the "changes" we were supposed to make at school just completely got subsumed by the idea of the commission coming. Tatiana, my coordinator, hasn't been to a single one of the eight meetings we've had for "our" culture exchange project. The other teachers are just as busy. They say they want to meet or for me to meet with their students, but whenever I suggest a time there is always an excuse: the students will be too tired, they are too busy, we are too busy, we are too tired, it's too dark, someone will be too hungry. One of the teachers who promised to help with the Olympiad never even showed up until the very end (literally, the last student was writing her last sentence when this teacher came in). I don't know how to overcome this dichotomy of [we really want results] vs. [we won't help you get them].

I suppose it's by taking baby steps, one after the other. Let's hope I don't trip up too much.