I Own Two Handkerchiefs And I'm Not Afraid To Use Them

At least, I wasn't, until today. Now there's a big green booger in one of them that I'm afraid to face.

Ha ha! Maybe that borders on TMI, but I don't care. This post is an irreverent act of defiance against my bad, sad mood. I miss home today. It's quite true.

Let's see. How to begin. Where to start. What to divulge, and how.

Yesterday I had a pretty full day. I taught my seventh formers, ninth formers, and one of my eighth form classes. The kids all seem bored, or perhaps it's my moody lens bringing their boredom into focus. I had to berate all of them for not listening or doing their homework (I sounded cross and mean, I hate myself for that). In my ninth grade class, I had the smarty pants help me by asking questions of his classmates to elicit certain responses, such as "What are you going to do this evening?" For some (teenage) reason, he managed to be just fine until he got to the two girls in the back covered in makeup but not much else.

"[Her name]," he said deviously. "Who are you going to kiss tonight?" The class tittered. I made sure she could take the teasing and then said to her, "Tell him 'I'm not kissing anyone you know tonight!'" She doesn't speak English, though. But my student got the hint. His face seemed to be slightly chastened.

But then he moved on to his next victim. This is a girl who I've seen at the local beer tent getting wasted and smoking. She has gone from a fresh-faced darling when I met her last year to a pasty-faced, saggy-eyed, frazzle-haired, middle-aged-looking pre-adult. My heart aches for her. All she wants is to feel alive, and getting wasted is the only way she knows how. I relate to her, remembering what my teenage years were like. I wish I could reach her somehow. I have no idea what I could do, though.

Anyway, to this girl, he asked, "[Her name], will you eat chalk tonight?"

For a second the question seemed so absurd I thought I hadn't understood him. But then the girl's face started turning pink and she burst into tears. I swept my gaze around the class, trying to assess what was happening. Did she have some sort of compulsion that made her eat chalk? Was this some kind of code for something nasty? Was it a joke that she didn't understand? I walked back to her and patted her on the back. "I think you should apologize," I said sternly to the student. He did. I made sure the poor girl was alright and carried on with the lesson. But I still didn't get what had happened.

When I asked Tatiana, she told me that some women eat chalk because they believe it is a beauty secret or something along those lines. Apparently this girl really does eat chalk. Who knew?

And today was Thanksgiving Day. Tatiana called me in the morning to tell me she wasn't going to be at lessons today because she was going to Zaporizhia instead, to trade in some books and a suit she'd gotten her husband that was too large.

She called me again later this evening to say she was hurrying home, but they got into town about 7:30 tonight. I live about a 25-minute walk from Tatiana's house, past the only bar in town. Last time I went over there, I ended up walking home alone at 10:30 at night. It's freezing, dark, and scary. So this time I asked her if they could pick me up and drop me off. "I don't know, Sarah," she said, a worried tone in her voice. "Vova is so tired, you know. He works so hard." Mind you, this is a 5-minute car ride. I explained my discomfort and she said she'd ask him about the rides and call me back. When she did, it was a no-go. "I have bought a cake for you and I was thinking of you all alone in your apartment on your holiday and I wanted to have you as a guest," she rattled off. "And so I wanted you to come over. But Vova said he is too tired to drive, please understand, Sarah," she finished, a pleading note in her voice. I told her it was fine, no problem, we could get together on Sunday. Relieved, she said, "As you know I have so many lessons tomorrow, and it's getting so late..." I think she was secretly pleased at the way things turned out. I guess it's the thought that counts.

And there is something wonderful to be thankful for: my businessman installed a brand-new convector in the English room! No more studying in shockingly cold temperatures. Hooray!

Grandma sent me some great fairy tales on DVD, too, so I tried to have a cartoon club today after school for my seventh formers. When I popped into their classroom to give a little reclama (advertisement), they all gasped with delight at the thought of watching cartoons on the big projector screen like a real movie, and I thought I'd have them showing up in droves. Plus Thursdays are our regular club day, and I added the extra enticement of having a letter from their American Grandma to read. But when the bell rang after the sixth lesson, only seven brave little souls showed up, and only three regulars came. What happened?

After they had gone home, I went looking for the guys to close the computer room and found Vlad, Sasha, Marina and Aliosha in the other computer room playing Counter Strike. They were playing against each other, cackling gleefully. I wistfully stood around watching, wishing I could invite myself to play without disrupting the playful camaraderie in the room, when Aliosha got up and said he had to leave. Marina didn't give me a choice. "Vlad," she ordered, "Show Sarah what to do." It was so awesome! I got the hang of it pretty quick and was able to get a couple of sneaky kills. But the best moment was at the end, when it was a showdown between me and Sasha, who was trying to snipe me. I snuck around a corner and mowed him down with my machine gun. Everyone cheered in awe, Sasha grumbling cheerfully. It was fun.

(Side note: I found out today that, according to Nikitin, the central government in Kyiv bought all the schools in Ukraine computers and projectors and projector screens. Even, in principle, the village schools. I wonder how this works. He told me when I asked him where the computers all came from. The government. Sounds...unbelievable? But where else could they have come from? And if the government is buying schools things like computers and projectors, what the heck is Peace Corps doing in this country?)

And today, during school, my eleventh formers didn't let me down. For the most part they did fine. However, in my second class three boys kept talking during the lesson in a way that made me think they were cracking dirty jokes or something. Certain students laughed in that way that people laugh when something is obscene, and others looked uncomfortably from the boys to me to see if I really didn't understand what they were saying. One of these boys is the son of a particularly important person in my school. On top of interrupting my class and not doing his (incredibly simple) homework, his cell phone rang in the middle of the lesson.

All my students know my rules by now: if I see your phone or hear your phone during class, it's mine. Most hand it over without me even asking for it now. But this student didn't. He played with it for a moment and realized I was staring at him, so he tried to hide it. "Why don't you put that on my desk, please." I told him. "What? Put what on your desk?" he said with a giant, angelic smile. "Your phone." I told him. "You know my rules."

He tilted his head defiantly, smiling all the while. "It's not a phone." As if that solved things. "I don't care what it is, put it on my desk." I said. He stared at me. "No," he said.

I hate showdowns, especially with my older students. This was going far enough. "You can either give that to me, or we can go speak with your [powerfully placed parent] after class," I said. "Well, I'm not giving it to you," he answered, daring me to keep the fight going.

"Fine, that's your choice," I said, and carried on with the lesson. Afterwards, I went to his parent and told on him. I hate this. I remember what it was like in school. I remember how much I hated some of my teachers for how they didn't understand me, especially in the classes I thought were boring and dull. I hated doing this to him, and to myself. But I am also tired of being disrespected.

I went to my next lesson and about ten minutes into the class, the parent appeared at the door and pulled me out. The student was there. The parent said to me, "He says you're making this all up." I was amazed. "Really? You think so?" I asked him. "What was this, and that, and this?" I asked. The parent decided the charade would not go on. "Give me your phone," the parent demanded. The student refused. He also refused to apologize, ending up with his parent marching him down the hall to the office. I went back to class.

About fifteen minutes later, the parent came in again. "Please come to my office," this person requested. "I want you to tell his father what happened." God, this was getting ridiculous. So I went to the office, said what had happened and why I was offended, the student paced up and down, and finally I ended up begging the student, "Please, I want to make friends with you. You know that. I want to be friendly, but I can't do it if you disrespect me. Don't you understand? Please help me, even just a little bit." His face contorted and he wouldn't make eye contact. I couldn't tell if he was about to laugh or cry. The whole discipline thing seems like such a farce to me. It's all I can do not to giggle or look unserious. I empathize too much with the victim and feel it's all so random anyway. Sigh.

I was upset by the whole thing. All this, on Thanksgiving Day? I wanted to be with my family and friends, eating turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce. I wanted to have people around me who understand me and like me and truly want to work with me. I took some deep breaths and composed myself, mentally shaking it all off. You'll be fine, I told myself. You can do this. When I rejoined my class, the aftermath of my feeling frustrated, existential, lonely, and sad written upon my brow for all the world to see, my student Kolya took one look at me, blinked, and spoke up in a concerned tone, saying, "Mrs. Sarah! You cry? We can help you?"

Let me tell you, that almost actually made the waterworks let loose. I really wanted someone to tell me it was all going to be okay, that this wasn't all for nothing, that I was doing a good job and my poor little sacrifices were appreciated by someone somewhere. Instead, I smiled and said, "You can help me by studying and asking me questions. That's what you can do."

And, for the rest of the lesson, that's almost what they did. Little angels.