After a winter of icy roads and bitter winds, I’ve gone on my first few runs of the season! It was pretty glorious to be able to run again, though after a false start at spring we got more snow, and my 3rd attempt to run left me slipping, sliding, and dodging vehicles as I tried to pick my way down the middle of the road. All winter long I’d been “going in for” yoga, and I think it’s definitely made me stronger, because picking up running after such a long break wasn’t as painful as it normally is. My hope is to run a half-marathon organized by another volunteer on April 17th in the Carpathians, although with my level of training that may be a foolhardy goal. It’s something to work toward though, and at the very least I’ll run the 10K. At any rate, a trip over the mountains and a hearty frolic through the hills is in order. I ran for 100 minutes last week, which is longer than I’ve ever run in my life, and I was pretty pumped. I got plenty of strange looks too, which always amuses me. I stare back and smile until they look away.
Anya and Matt came over one Saturday, and we made the first brownies she’d ever had in her life! Then she fell asleep while we were watching “Wedding Crashers.” It was nice to have them over to my house and not just go out to a café.
I can’t possibly convey in words how much the sunshine has put a spring in my step (as well as on my doorstep). I walk around with a smile on my face, commenting on the weather to anyone who will listen. One nice day I set out to find the stadium—I knew we had one, but I hadn’t seen it yet. I found it on an island in the middle of the river—which I also hadn’t seen before—and my counterpart said it used to be the old Jewish cemetery (I didn’t ask why it was turned into a stadium).
International Women’s Day is a national holiday (March 8th) in all the countries of the former Soviet bloc. I don’t know why we don’t celebrate it, because it started as a female garment workers’ protest in New York City 100 years ago. (Maybe its socialist origin made it an undesirable event in the states?) On Thursday, students came up to me between lessons, speeding through the well-used phrase, “We congratulate you on the [insert special occasion here], wish you happiness, health, etc. etc.…” and presented me with flowers, chocolate, and other nice things. I spent the actual holiday baking in the kitchen and cleaning in the house, the irony of which was not lost on me. But it was by choice, since I invited Andrei, Pasha, and Kamilia over for tea and homemade cookies. Pasha recounted how in his dream Arnold Schwarzenegger killed him, and then we had an honest conversation about drug use and fabrication (many drug users in Ukraine also know how to produce their own drugs). An interesting afternoon altogether.
On Wednesday I visited Katia and Co. in an attempt to reconnect with them (Lena’s extended family, who I haven't seen since Winter Break), and we made fresh salads for dinner—I had more green vegetables that meal than I’d had all winter! She bought broccoli in Poland and asked me what to do with it, since people don’t really eat it here. All our toasts were to women, since the men of the house were absent.
I’ve discovered a new “секoнд гeнд” store near my school, which is a dangerous development given my love of thrift stores—but you can’t really argue with dress pants, a dress shirt, and a skirt for $8, right? (Except if you remember that’s almost twice what I make in one day, but shhh!)
I invited another volunteer from GAD to hold a self-defense seminar for my 9th form girls in honor of Women’s Day, and it worked out great! We took them out of English and PE, and set up mats on the stage in the auditorium, and they learned about domestic violence and how to protect themselves. They were really enthusiastic about practicing the punches, kicks, and blocks, and as a grand finale Jean taught them how to throw an attacker and they practiced on her. The girls all wanted to know when she could come back, and the boys were very interested in what we were doing (they kept trying to peek into the auditorium), so I hope to build on that enthusiasm for future projects! We stayed at Kamilia’s the night before, since Jean went to her village school in the morning and then my school in the afternoon. Jean’s puppy came too (she terrified Djora at first, until he realized he was bigger). The second night they stayed at my apartment and she whipped up a spicy meat sauce with macaroni while I pretended to lesson plan, and then we watched a movie and had a half-night’s sleep before she had to wake up to catch her train at 5 am.
That night I smelled smoke in my apartment and found my fuse box fuming. Mr. Fix-it came to the rescue, and I will live another day. I also had to consult my brother on an urgent matter of technical support. He advised me to restart my computer. Brilliant! Also brilliant: Russian Vegetable Pie! Thank you, Babuysia’s Cookbook.
Another personal victory I’m rather proud of: I finally finagled the downstairs neighbors for tea and cookies! They are very elusive, so I ambushed the husband while we waited for the garbage truck, and asked when I could bring them the cookies I had baked (I’d been slowly eating them and soon there would be none left for the intended recipients, but like I said, they’re hard to track down, and cookies sitting on your counter are just asking to be eaten). But we finally got acquainted, and I made them suffer through my photo album while their 5 year old played with his trains.
This past weekend I was supposed to meet my cluster for a reunion to celebrate Alia’s birthday, but plans fell through and I ended up having a bizarrely impromptu yet satisfying weekend at home. On Friday, Kamilia, Slavic, and I met with someone important to get the go-ahead to inform vice principals of our project. He was very friendly and Polish and liked my last name; he said to stop by for tea sometime, and did I prefer muscular or intellectual men? I said intellectual, and he said he’d work on it. Note to self: good person to go to if I need something done in town. Afterwards, Slavic and I ended up going to a beauty pageant that Kamilia had prepared one of her students for. I have never seen an audience more excited for a non-sporting event. They were wild, and it was hilarious. There was an evening gown contest, as well as an improvised song-and-dance talent portion. Out to coffee later, I discovered Korean carrots (spicy, garlicky, delicious) and a Frenchman (choose your own adjectives) in town. I was pretty excited about both.
On Saturday I invited Kamilia, Slavic, and Andrei over to bake apple pie. We added walnuts and rounded it out with vanilla ice cream for a satisfying culinary experience. Djora came too, and I set up “Hercules” on my computer for him to watch, because I promote Disney at every opportunity. Slavic kept retreating into the kitchen to do the dishes, protesting that he hadn’t helped cook. I wasn’t going to stop him! Later I went to Polish language class, just because. There I saw everyone I knew in town: my neighbors, my counterpart and her sister, a teacher I’d met at Olympiad, and one of the girls that comes to my “Adult English Club,” who I ran into as I was walking there, and who was also going for the first time just to check it out. I didn’t really learn very much (they’ve had several weeks of lessons already, and not knowing the alphabet or the proper pronunciation slightly limited my understanding) but I had a good time. At the end, the teacher asked if I would be joining the Polish folk dancing group for a concert in May. Why not? So I went to rehearsal on Sunday, and blundered my way through a waltz-y folk number before going out to drink milkshakes and talk about boys and more serious things with Luda, the girl from my club who is enamored with all things Italian. I rounded out the night watching a Reese Witherspoon film in Russian. Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian in one day? Why not?
On Monday I had a nice chat with my counterpart, going over all the things we’re supposed to talk about. Our “meeting” occurred during the 45 minutes we were waiting for the bus, which is all the proof I need that I can get to school faster on my own two feet.
Tuesday after Adult English Club (is it just me or does that name sound slightly risqué?) I walked with Kamilia back to her house (we picked Djora up from her mother’s on the way) and we prepared a power point to present our project to the vice principals of extra-curricular activities on Friday at the lyceum. The presentation accomplished what it needed to, and the two Slavics joined Andrei, Kamilia and I to visit Pasha and Sasha at work, and then bum around town for a bit. I like these Friday afternoons, when I never know what will happen.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
An Exhaustive Account of My Life for the Past 5 Weeks (Don't Say I Didn't Warn You!)
The second to last Saturday in January, my coworker Lena and her daughter came to my apartment and we made pizza, Ukrainian style. This involves lots and lots of mayo, as well as hardboiled eggs, chicken, and canned corn. It took about 3 times longer than it should have to bake, because my oven doesn’t ever go above 200 degrees. Its only functional setting is “flame.” In the meantime we played bananagrams, which the 21-year-old daughter really got into.
My Regional Manager came for a site visit one Friday. We met in the library at my school and talked for over an hour about how everything was going, then we had a rather awkward meeting with the English teachers because they got yelled at for not giving me class lists, not having regular meetings to discuss issues and ideas, and making it known the to kids that my lessons are considered supplementary and not obligatory. Natalia Frantsivna has been on edge lately because she’s up for observation this year, so anyone can come at any time to see her classes and the town administration never gives her any notice. My RM was surprised because Natalia Frantsivna usually likes to laugh and joke, but that day she was at her breaking point. After a quick chat with the landlady/VP about the high electricity bill due to heating costs, we rode in the Peace Corps Vehicle to my apartment so Natasha could check it out before leaving.
After she left, I had one hour before meeting Slavic and Pasha for tea and pizza at “The Cube” near my apartment, a fast food restaurant/café/bar whose cubical façade is constructed of some multicolored semi-transparent material that makes it a convenient landmark and meeting place. I had a great time chatting with them for a few hours in Ukrainian/Russian/English, about American films and music (Pasha is a devoted Natalie Portman fan) as well as religion, because they are both active members of an American-based Protestant denomination church that meets in the Community Center in town, whereas I describe myself as a “Cultural Catholic” who is spiritual but not religious, because I think any way that you choose to manifest your faith or worldview is equally valid as any other. My adult English club meets in the same place as their church, because the club’s members are drawn from the church parishioners who want to learn or practice their English. It was a little difficult to navigate at first, due to their varying levels of English proficiency (one guy worked in England for a few years picking fruit and now has a British accent, whereas the pastor knows only a few words in English and stopped me every few seconds to write a new one down), but I asked them to think about their expectations and what we can all get out of the club, and so far it’s been going well just conversing. I’m glad Slavic asked me to start it because I always enjoy it, even though I drag my feet on the way to yet another commitment during the busiest part of my week. They’re all interesting people and I’m looking forward to hanging out with them more in the future, as well as developing future projects and partnerships. In fact, they were the main reason I invited Kamilia to the PEPFAR conference with me, because knowing a group of former drug users who go around to local schools giving presentations on healthy lifestyles seemed like a great resource to draw on for a future HIV/AIDS project. I also hope to draw on their youth group connections to maybe spark an interest in some kind of organized volunteerism at my site.
That Saturday I went with Kamilia to Vinnytsia; we were going to go skating because she has never been, but it was really cold and we weren’t sure it would be open before English club, so we settled for tea at Nadia’s. I left the club early to report to Region 3’s designated Consolidation Point for a test of the Peace Corp Emergency Action Plan, i.e. What To Do If Something Really Bad Happens. Then we all went out for pizza and had a meeting of The Collaborative, which is basically a chance for volunteers near each other to gather on a semi-regular basis and exchange ideas, compare notes, offer support and advice, etc. “Near each other” is a relative term in Peace Corps Ukraine, however; two girls spent the night at my house since it was too far for them to get back home that same day. I sent them off to the train station the next morning, ran to the bazaar, and met up with Kamilia and the guys to do some PEPFAR project planning in a mix of Russian/English/Ukrainian at a pizzeria.
Since my last post, I’ve had several sleepovers and cooking adventures at Kamilia’s apartment—once on a weekday when I went to her house after school and didn’t go home again till after school the next day. Together we’ve baked carrot cake and cinnamon buns, and then chicken, cheese, and mushroom blinchiki (crêpes) with Andrei, a great cook who lives with Slavic and Pasha in a dormitory owned by their church, which also runs the adjacent rehab center that they went through a few years ago.
Cooking has become my new hobby (mainly to facilitate my principal hobby of eating, but also as a productive means of procrastination), so I’m slowly making my way through the Babuysia’s Cookbook, and have resolved to make at least one new dish each week. (For an up-to-date accounting of my culinary exploits, check out the tally I’m keeping in the sidebar.) Then there are the days when I eat strange combos from my fridge that I find appetizing but few others would, I’m afraid. I have very low standards for edibility, and I get a weird thrill from efficiently ingesting leftovers. I also can’t throw any food away, even if it’s other peoples’ food and even when I’m not hungry. My dad earned the nickname of garbage disposer in college for the same trait, and my mom used to guilt me into finishing my plate by saying there were starving children in Africa. The food would probably be better off feeding stray dogs from the trash than adding to my own fat stores, but my mouth just won’t listen to reason. Today in Vinnytsia the Country Director (sitting next to me in the Italian restaurant we went to after our Meet Your Neighbors Meeting, and several times offering me his leftover slices of pizza, none of which I refused) remarked that I ate quite a lot. I nodded in simple agreement. It’s true.
I was visited once more by Lena, this time accompanied by her falcon-taming husband, who fixed the broken door on one of my cabinets while Lena helped me translate my newly minted “Rules of the Classroom” into Ukrainian. Later, over tea, I got to hear about her husband’s fascinating profession: apparently he trains falcons, and they’re really valuable (or they would be, if there was a market for them in Ukraine); he loves all animals, so their house sounds like a menagerie.
I invited my neighbor over for tea and she brought beer and fish, so we had a good time. We’ve since gone through a couple more rounds of blitzkrieg food battles: I hand her a plate with something, turn around and she’s gone and filled it up with something tastier. We haven’t had time for tea again, but she did stop by to show me some new pictures of her mischievous granddaughter.
The next weekend I went to Ivano-Frankivsk for the Tourism working group meeting on Saturday. We discussed project ideas to promote tourism in Ukraine, and talked about the website of travel information we’re putting together for volunteers. Alia was there and Sean lives only an hour away, so he came up after the meeting to hang out. It was great to catch up with him, and then everyone went to a nice restaurant for dinner and another café for dessert or beer (I opted for chocolate over malt beverages). Saturday night 10 volunteers slept at one guy’s apartment, and miraculously almost everyone had some kind of cushiony surface. John, the volunteer who hosted us, is 65 and used to be a ski instructor for the Army, brought a waffle iron to Ukraine, and was wearing Euro-trash teenager jeans. We woke up the next morning to the flash of a camera, as he documented the most volunteers he has ever squeezed into his apartment. To get to Ivano I was really excited for my first overnight train, but didn’t know how anything worked. The conductor handed me a plastic-wrapped package with two sheets, a pillowcase, and a towel. I asked the lady across from me what to do, and instead of just explaining she jumped up and made my bed for me (you grab a mattress from the top shelf, fold the sheet over it, and get a blanket and pillow from the stack at the front of the compartment). Other interesting observations: you can get hot water from the samovar, so most people bring their own mugs with all their other picnic supplies; they also change into pajamas—you can ask people of the opposite gender to leave the vicinity while you do this—and have slippers for the train. Traveling platzcart is the train equivalent of steerage on the Titanic, and it’s just as fun as the scene when they’re all dancing and drinking beer (I haven’t seen any dancing yet, but I’ve seen plenty of beer drinking). People are very friendly and willing to strike up a conversation. On the way back, Pete and I hung out with a young couple from Fastiv; they shared their hardboiled eggs, sausage, butter, and bread, we got off at a long stop to buy beer, and played cards till it was time for bed. The tricky bit is vaulting into the top bunk, if that is where you’re sleeping, because there’s no obvious way up. It’s always funny when you get on an overnight train in the morning, because everyone riding it for the long haul is still passed out. Two overnight trains and 27 travel hours later, I was back in Kozyatyn by 4:30 a.m. Monday morning, and back at work 4 hours after that.
I went on an accidental date the other day, accidental because I thought it was an interview and he was under different illusions. A guy had come to my school looking for the American (the third person to seek me out at school) and I was busy preparing for my next lesson during the break, so I asked him quickly what he wanted. From what I understood (this was all in Ukrainian/Russian), he was writing a thesis on the psychology of teachers and wanted to get an American perspective. I consider it part of my job to talk about America, so I asked how much time he needed and said I could meet him next week. Unfortunately I couldn’t set a time then so I had to give him my number. When we sat down at the café I turned to him and asked, “So, how can I help you? What do you want to know?” He replied laughingly, “Oh, right down to business! Why don’t we just sit and chat?” So we talked for a while and sometimes he seemed to be asking legitimate questions, but I don’t think he is writing a paper on the psychology of teachers. When I tried to leave, he begged for 10 more minutes, and I obliged but finally stood up to go. He walked me most of the way home (which is normal in Ukraine, because girls can’t be expected to walk anywhere by themselves), but I stopped him on the corner to say goodbye so he wouldn’t know exactly where I live. He asked if he could see me again and I mumbled something vague before walking away. I complain about my lack of dating prospects, but then I turn away seemingly nice guys for tricking me into dating them.
A week or two later I got a call from an unknown number (in America I don’t answer those, but in Ukraine if someone is calling my phone I usually need to answer), so I did—and it was Accidental Date Guy. He wanted to invite me—not to an interview this time—but to tea or even borshch. I told him if he wanted to invite me to hang out with his friends in a group I would be perfectly happy to do that, but I wouldn’t hang out with just him (in Ukraine if you’re alone with a guy in public, you’re assumed to be on a date, even if you’re just walking somewhere—more on that later). He thought I was shy and promised to behave, but I tried to make it clear that I simply did not want to go on a date with him. Finally I just hung up, and 3 missed calls and 2 hilarious English text messages later, he’s even farther than he was before from getting me to go out with him. (Exhibit A: “Please a telefone. Im bad speak english. Im have a speak. You no anderstand me. Im apologize.”)
The main reason to avoid casual dating in my town is the strength of the gossip chain. Almost 30,000 people live in Kozyatyn, but everyone says it’s really just a big village, and here’s a case in point: when I went to grab the key to the English room from the Vice Principal (who is also my landlady), she smiled knowingly at me and asked who I went out with last night. I knew instantly what that meant: either she or someone she knew had seen me walking with Pasha to our Tuesday night English club. I laughed and clarified that he was technically my student and definitely not my boyfriend.
A teacher I met at Olympiad back in December called to invite me to tea with her students at School #1 to celebrate their English Week, so I brought my pictures and chatted with a group of 8th-11th formers for 3 hours, eating pierozhky plus all the chocolate and cookies within reach. I asked them for recommendations of Ukrainian bands and we had a photo shoot afterward.
When you make plans to meet someone, they invariably call you 5 minutes before you’re supposed to meet them, to make sure you’re still coming. I find this both mildly insulting, because it implies that you’ll back out on your word, and counterproductive, because at that point I’m usually walking toward the designated meeting point, and then I have to stop to find and answer my phone.
I went to my first GAD meeting in Kiev over Valentine’s weekend. On Friday I took the electritchka from Kozyatyn to (almost) Bilky, but got caught up in a conversation with two old ladies and so lost track of the stops, accidentally exiting at the village before my training site. Unfortunately it was cold and snowy and there were no buses or trains, but I reasoned that if I walked along the tracks I would eventually get to Bilky. I did—pride slightly wounded, but sense of humor intact—and Olha and I baked and ate and chatted for a few hours before I headed on to Kiev for the night with Lauren and Camille, who are both also in GAD and had come back to Bilky to visit their host families as well. The next morning we treated ourselves to delicious cappuccino and cake for breakfast before 8 hours worth of Gender and Development in Ukraine. It was a grueling but inspiring day and I had trouble narrowing down my subcommittee options before deciding on the newspaper, summer camps, and Women in Development. I was nominated for President but the bid for power was short-lived. After dinner with the Bilky crew, we made our way to the disco for a PCV Valentine’s Day party. We had to pay a cover to get in, and then realized how frumpy we looked in our cardigans and jeans compared to everything that is stereotypical about European nightclub fashion (ie tight and glittery with short skirts and long heels and nothing but skin in between), so we went to the bathroom to assess the situation. We had paid, we were committed, we were going to make it work. Logical or not, we decided the best way to be less underdressed was to take off more clothes, so off went the jeans, and the long underwear was reborn as “sexy” leggings tucked into our winter boots. Parading around a disco in my underwear necessitated a quick succession of drinks to justify the decision, and then I was at peace with my degradation and ready to dance. We slept in our winter coats on the floor of an apartment rented by PCVs we’d never met because we didn’t want to wake up someone to let us into the GAD apartment that late. I woke up surprisingly refreshed the next morning, stopped in Bilky to collect my laundry and several days’ worth of rations, and then it was home sweet kozy-town.
Two weeks later I went to the PEPFAR training conference with Kamilia at a Soviet resort in the woods outside Kiev. We had sessions on the biology and transmission of HIV, stigma and discrimination (a huge problem in Ukraine where people won’t go for treatment because their neighbors will see them entering the HIV clinic, and many still believe that AIDS is only a drug-users disease), project planning, implementation, and evaluation, a practicum, and a panel of people living with AIDS. I got a lot of great ideas and hopefully we’ll be able to start our series of lectures traveling to local schools, with contests to be judged at a concert in May. It was also great to meet volunteers from older groups and get to know them better. The Sunday after we got back, Kamilia and I went to Andrei’s to project plan over chai.
At a teachers’ meeting on Wednesday, I learned that anyone who wanted to go to the town concert for Women’s Day had only to say the word and they could leave after 6th period to make it in time. I felt bad cutting my last lesson short, but I had to miss our school concert and teachers’ party on Friday for “Meet Your Neighbors” in Vinnytsia, and I wanted to see at least a little of how the holiday is celebrated. On Thursday in school my students kept coming up to me with chocolates and flowers and congratulating me with the 8th of March. I love Women’s Day—thank you, female garment workers in New York, for inspiring the International Socialist Party!
Last week it warmed up to 40 degrees for a few days in a row and a lot of snow melted. I was able to see Kozyatyn from a whole new perspective—what lies beneath! It was fascinating to see what I’ve been walking on this whole time without even realizing it.
Imagine my consternation one day after ingesting coffee and grabbing hold of the door handle to the little girls’ room (true tale, students and teachers pee together) to find it locked. I checked back a little later. Still locked. Slightly worried about when I would be able to empty my bladder (identifying opportunities to pee is always a top priority for me), I asked the Vice Principal about the bathroom situation. She said, “Oh, there’s no water in school today, so the bathroom is closed.” I eventually learned that there was one outside, but that one had open stalls with no doors. My long Ukrainian coat came in handy when girls from my next class joined me in the latrine. Yay for the Ukrainian outhouse equivalent of the towel-wrap trick at the beach, when you can change in the middle of a crowd and not get cited for public exhibitionism!
I finally ventured to our school canteen, hoping to buy a bun like I see my students with all the time, but instead I got sat down by the ladies in the kitchen and served a plate of food, just like the first formers. The older grades don’t get lunch, but the American gets fed like the children.
The last time I bought water at the bazaar, the water lady invited me into her shack for tea. Didn’t go yet, and she hasn’t mentioned it again. Bummer.
Memo to the guest of honor: for birthdays in Ukraine, the tab is on you. Mum’s the word when my birthday rolls around—this system does not give you incentive to celebrate and sing yourself. I went to a bar with Anya and Matt for her birthday, and instead of letting me buy her a drink, she bought me a whole meal.
The scene: a quiet apartment, rug folded back and yoga mat spread out, my arms and legs striving for a graceful expression of Warrior Two, when the calm voice guiding me in the pose is replaced by the terse foreign commands of a railway worker. My computer speakers have an un-zen-like tendency to pick up somehow on the local frequency of the railway station, which I wager would make anyone fall out of tree pose.
After our Meet Your Neighbors “zoostrich” the whole group went out to an Italian restaurant for dinner with the Regional Manager and the new Country Director, and then Safefy and Security Director Papa Serhiy kidnapped us all in fancy Peace Corps Vehicles and took us back to a rented apartment to film a party scene for a safety video that future generations of trainees will watch to discuss how to avoid similar situations. I find it pretty hilarious that I will be forever immortalized in a film about what not to do. Papa Serhiy graciously dropped me off at the train station afterward, smooth-talking his way out of a speeding ticket on the way by kindly requesting the officer to check out his diplomatic plates.
The actual teaching part of my job has so far been a bit of a rollercoaster. I’m embarrassed to still be learning student’s names, but I’ve manufactured at least a half dozen excuses as to why it has taken me so long: they don’t always find it necessary to come to “individualnie urok” (when I have students on my own it is not the whole class, so it is an extra lesson for those who do come), so I can’t keep track of who’s who, plus I didn’t have class lists for the first two months, and on average 20 % or so of students were absent with the flu (or in my case slept in late or went home early or had to go to the music school or got detention for writing bad words in the bathroom), and then the final problem is distinguishing between chubby and tiny Max, redheaded and blonde Katia, and all the triples and quadruples of recurring first names in each class. There are moments when I love it (when a 5th former hands me a valentine’s card, or when a 6th former bashfully asks if he can join my class too, or when they GET it and the lesson works) but more often than not I’m stressing out about creating balanced lessons from scratch each week: drawing half on the current topics and half on issues I want to cover, searching out or creating audio and visual materials, deciding how to incorporate speaking, listening, reading, and writing and at what level, as well as how much to focus on vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation for 9 groups of students from 5th-9th form takes a lot of time for someone who’s never taught before.
I’ve learned to hate the system of daily grading, because after every activity and especially at the end of the lesson they swarm on me and ask if they have marks, and I’m supposed to instantly rank them on a 12 point scale based on every little thing they did during the lesson, which I don’t usually remember because I’ve been concentrating on teaching the lesson and getting everyone to participate, not taking notes on mispronounced words and incorrect grammatical constructions. I can tell by the students’ reactions if I’ve marked them too high or too low, based on if they’ve jumping up and down and asking me to sign their daybooks or if they go all quiet and walk away looking like they want to sulk or cry—or worst of all, try to convince me to give them a higher grade. That boggles my mind, since my idea of a teacher’s authority and the respect it should engender does not seem to prevail here in Ukraine. This is especially true when it comes to homework, which they simply don’t do. Maybe I was unusual, but as a child the idea of not doing my homework was inconceivable. When a student gives a presentation in class, the other students call out suggestions for his grade at the end, and if it’s too low he whines to the teacher. At our last Collaborative meeting, another volunteer shared the idea for a classroom activity called Messenger and Scribe, in which a text is divided into sentences placed around the room, and student pairs must alternate reading and remembering each sentence to retell to their partner, who then writes it down as dictated. I tried this with my 8th form, but they were so focused on getting the right answer that they completely disregarded the purpose of the activity (to rely on memory) in favor of taking pictures of the text with their cell phones, writing on their arms, shouting the sentences to their partner across the room, etc.
Also, our current system of team teaching needs work: half of my weekly lessons I co-teach with three of the four English teachers at my school, but we do not sit down together and co-plan like we did for team teaching during training. With Lena and Larissa we usually look at the lesson in the 10 minute break before class and decide who will do what from the book; sometimes I call Natalia to see what she wants, or she asks me to plan some specific activity, but then she will often ask in class what else I’ve planned, and seem surprised when I say nothing. And yet I wouldn’t presume to plan more when I don’t know what else she wants to do with them, since technically they are her students and she meets with them without me so I never know where she’s left off. Sometimes I teach the whole lesson and she sits in the back and does her own paperwork, asking me at the end what grades I have assigned, and sometimes we haven’t talked before the lesson so I haven’t planned anything and she says, “Not to worry, I will do everything,” leaving me sitting uselessly at the computer table off to the side, feeling somehow chastised. My biggest problem with this system is that the purpose of team teaching is to combine efforts, exchange ideas, and learn from each other, and it seems like little of that is happening here. I try my best to use the communicative method, but with so little planning, much comes straight from the book, and my positive example is limited to NOT calling children stupid and lazy to their faces, and trying to get everyone to participate fully. They are all more experienced teachers than I am anyway, so in terms of skills transfer, I don’t know how much I can offer yet.
I am the third volunteer at my site, and I sometimes wonder if applying for a volunteer has become a habit rather than a need for my school. I don’t mind providing free English lessons to students, but I hate the little voice in my head that sometimes whispers that’s the only reason I’m here, to ease the teaching burden of the other English teachers. I’m being overly cynical here, but it is an important thing to think about. On the other hand, I’m inviting another volunteer to do a Self-Defense/Domestic Violence seminar for the 9th form girls next week, and both my counterpart and the vice principal are excited about it and support the idea, so I think I’m the one who needs to take a step back and see what is important for my site. But a remark my counterpart made in passing again gave me cause for concern. She wasn’t interested in PEPFAR (which is fine, because it’s not her job to teach kids about HIV/AIDS), but she thinks an HIV/AIDS project is unnecessary at our school since the kids are “bored with it,” and making copies one day she turned to me and said, “If you want to know what you can do to help, see how this copier doesn’t work very well, and the computer is very old? That’s what we really need!” This is what I personally struggle with as a PCV in Ukraine: how necessary am I, when a replacement computer is the highest priority? I wanted to go where I thought the need was greatest, but Africa twice fell through, Turkmenistan turned me down, Latin America didn’t work out, and now I’m in Eastern Europe. Yet Peace Corps is in Ukraine because there IS a need.
At the same time, I recognize the great potential PCVs here have to make an even bigger difference, precisely because Ukraine is more developed than most Peace Corps countries. We have more resources at our disposal, and we can do more with them, but the desire has to come from the community. So while I don’t think getting a new computer by itself is a Peace Corps worthy endeavor (when we already have one that usually functions), if I can get the English teachers comfortable with and committed to using technology in the classroom, then it suddenly becomes sustainable and oh-so-worth-it. Our classroom used to have access to the internet, and I would love to get it back. With the internet, a computer, and a projector (which my school acquired through a grant written by the last volunteer), our students’ English learning opportunities would be almost without limits. One future project idea I have is to start a journalism club with an online school newspaper, exploring topics like democracy, citizenship, domestic violence, and environmentalism. To be honest, it could be any topic, I just want my students to learn to think critically about what is important to them. I also really want them to get involved in volunteerism, so I’m hoping to do something small for Earth Day this year and look into longer term more regular activities, maybe with the orphanage or rehab center that I’ve been told are both in town. But all of these things are my ideas, and if I want anything to be sustainable I need to spend more time talking to teachers, administrators, and students at school to see what they want and are willing to support. And for that I need better Ukrainian skills, but unfortunately studying is the last thing I want to do in my rare and therefore precious moments of free time! The only thing less likely to get done than studying is my laundry.
As a TEFL volunteer I struggle to reconcile myself to the fact that I live my life here in English. I skyped with Meredith the other day and we laughed at the irony of our mutual resentment of speaking English with people who know other languages—we would much rather be learning theirs than teaching ours! This is not an immersion program; as much as I love learning and speaking foreign languages, I’m here to teach my native tongue. With my students, coworkers, and friends I speak English. I plan my lessons and projects in English. I have a few friends and acquaintances who don’t speak any English, but I don’t see them on a regular basis, much less a daily one. In fact, I’ve been recently trying to reconnect with all the families I spent time with over the holidays, because I haven’t seen or heard from them since then. I went so far as to show up on my neighbor’s door (though of course armed with an apple crisp!) two nights ago, hoping to have tea and catch up. We did, and it was great, though it lasted three hours (which, on a side note, I’ve found to be the minimum amount of time I can respectably spend as a guest at someone’s home). We watched the video of Zlata dancing in the town concert for Women’s Day that I had gone to on Wednesday (I hadn’t realized she was in it), toasted to women and crazy love with homemade wine (those are traditional toasts, I’m not making this up), and played with their adorably obliging tabby cat. They also showed me their efforts to digitally re-record and preserve Lida’s old family home videos that her father had made in soundless black and white, like films from the 1920s. It was really fascinating to see films originally recorded on old reels, and I admired her father’s knack for capturing poignant childhood images, as well as some great historical clips from the Soviet era.
It takes me forever to write these updates so please comment; think of it as signing the summit log of a really tall mountain that you just climbed to the top of, and your reward is the eternal glory of an electronic signature. It also proves your superior reading skills, by being able to get through such a disjointed set of observations and musings.
My Regional Manager came for a site visit one Friday. We met in the library at my school and talked for over an hour about how everything was going, then we had a rather awkward meeting with the English teachers because they got yelled at for not giving me class lists, not having regular meetings to discuss issues and ideas, and making it known the to kids that my lessons are considered supplementary and not obligatory. Natalia Frantsivna has been on edge lately because she’s up for observation this year, so anyone can come at any time to see her classes and the town administration never gives her any notice. My RM was surprised because Natalia Frantsivna usually likes to laugh and joke, but that day she was at her breaking point. After a quick chat with the landlady/VP about the high electricity bill due to heating costs, we rode in the Peace Corps Vehicle to my apartment so Natasha could check it out before leaving.
After she left, I had one hour before meeting Slavic and Pasha for tea and pizza at “The Cube” near my apartment, a fast food restaurant/café/bar whose cubical façade is constructed of some multicolored semi-transparent material that makes it a convenient landmark and meeting place. I had a great time chatting with them for a few hours in Ukrainian/Russian/English, about American films and music (Pasha is a devoted Natalie Portman fan) as well as religion, because they are both active members of an American-based Protestant denomination church that meets in the Community Center in town, whereas I describe myself as a “Cultural Catholic” who is spiritual but not religious, because I think any way that you choose to manifest your faith or worldview is equally valid as any other. My adult English club meets in the same place as their church, because the club’s members are drawn from the church parishioners who want to learn or practice their English. It was a little difficult to navigate at first, due to their varying levels of English proficiency (one guy worked in England for a few years picking fruit and now has a British accent, whereas the pastor knows only a few words in English and stopped me every few seconds to write a new one down), but I asked them to think about their expectations and what we can all get out of the club, and so far it’s been going well just conversing. I’m glad Slavic asked me to start it because I always enjoy it, even though I drag my feet on the way to yet another commitment during the busiest part of my week. They’re all interesting people and I’m looking forward to hanging out with them more in the future, as well as developing future projects and partnerships. In fact, they were the main reason I invited Kamilia to the PEPFAR conference with me, because knowing a group of former drug users who go around to local schools giving presentations on healthy lifestyles seemed like a great resource to draw on for a future HIV/AIDS project. I also hope to draw on their youth group connections to maybe spark an interest in some kind of organized volunteerism at my site.
That Saturday I went with Kamilia to Vinnytsia; we were going to go skating because she has never been, but it was really cold and we weren’t sure it would be open before English club, so we settled for tea at Nadia’s. I left the club early to report to Region 3’s designated Consolidation Point for a test of the Peace Corp Emergency Action Plan, i.e. What To Do If Something Really Bad Happens. Then we all went out for pizza and had a meeting of The Collaborative, which is basically a chance for volunteers near each other to gather on a semi-regular basis and exchange ideas, compare notes, offer support and advice, etc. “Near each other” is a relative term in Peace Corps Ukraine, however; two girls spent the night at my house since it was too far for them to get back home that same day. I sent them off to the train station the next morning, ran to the bazaar, and met up with Kamilia and the guys to do some PEPFAR project planning in a mix of Russian/English/Ukrainian at a pizzeria.
Since my last post, I’ve had several sleepovers and cooking adventures at Kamilia’s apartment—once on a weekday when I went to her house after school and didn’t go home again till after school the next day. Together we’ve baked carrot cake and cinnamon buns, and then chicken, cheese, and mushroom blinchiki (crêpes) with Andrei, a great cook who lives with Slavic and Pasha in a dormitory owned by their church, which also runs the adjacent rehab center that they went through a few years ago.
Cooking has become my new hobby (mainly to facilitate my principal hobby of eating, but also as a productive means of procrastination), so I’m slowly making my way through the Babuysia’s Cookbook, and have resolved to make at least one new dish each week. (For an up-to-date accounting of my culinary exploits, check out the tally I’m keeping in the sidebar.) Then there are the days when I eat strange combos from my fridge that I find appetizing but few others would, I’m afraid. I have very low standards for edibility, and I get a weird thrill from efficiently ingesting leftovers. I also can’t throw any food away, even if it’s other peoples’ food and even when I’m not hungry. My dad earned the nickname of garbage disposer in college for the same trait, and my mom used to guilt me into finishing my plate by saying there were starving children in Africa. The food would probably be better off feeding stray dogs from the trash than adding to my own fat stores, but my mouth just won’t listen to reason. Today in Vinnytsia the Country Director (sitting next to me in the Italian restaurant we went to after our Meet Your Neighbors Meeting, and several times offering me his leftover slices of pizza, none of which I refused) remarked that I ate quite a lot. I nodded in simple agreement. It’s true.
I was visited once more by Lena, this time accompanied by her falcon-taming husband, who fixed the broken door on one of my cabinets while Lena helped me translate my newly minted “Rules of the Classroom” into Ukrainian. Later, over tea, I got to hear about her husband’s fascinating profession: apparently he trains falcons, and they’re really valuable (or they would be, if there was a market for them in Ukraine); he loves all animals, so their house sounds like a menagerie.
I invited my neighbor over for tea and she brought beer and fish, so we had a good time. We’ve since gone through a couple more rounds of blitzkrieg food battles: I hand her a plate with something, turn around and she’s gone and filled it up with something tastier. We haven’t had time for tea again, but she did stop by to show me some new pictures of her mischievous granddaughter.
The next weekend I went to Ivano-Frankivsk for the Tourism working group meeting on Saturday. We discussed project ideas to promote tourism in Ukraine, and talked about the website of travel information we’re putting together for volunteers. Alia was there and Sean lives only an hour away, so he came up after the meeting to hang out. It was great to catch up with him, and then everyone went to a nice restaurant for dinner and another café for dessert or beer (I opted for chocolate over malt beverages). Saturday night 10 volunteers slept at one guy’s apartment, and miraculously almost everyone had some kind of cushiony surface. John, the volunteer who hosted us, is 65 and used to be a ski instructor for the Army, brought a waffle iron to Ukraine, and was wearing Euro-trash teenager jeans. We woke up the next morning to the flash of a camera, as he documented the most volunteers he has ever squeezed into his apartment. To get to Ivano I was really excited for my first overnight train, but didn’t know how anything worked. The conductor handed me a plastic-wrapped package with two sheets, a pillowcase, and a towel. I asked the lady across from me what to do, and instead of just explaining she jumped up and made my bed for me (you grab a mattress from the top shelf, fold the sheet over it, and get a blanket and pillow from the stack at the front of the compartment). Other interesting observations: you can get hot water from the samovar, so most people bring their own mugs with all their other picnic supplies; they also change into pajamas—you can ask people of the opposite gender to leave the vicinity while you do this—and have slippers for the train. Traveling platzcart is the train equivalent of steerage on the Titanic, and it’s just as fun as the scene when they’re all dancing and drinking beer (I haven’t seen any dancing yet, but I’ve seen plenty of beer drinking). People are very friendly and willing to strike up a conversation. On the way back, Pete and I hung out with a young couple from Fastiv; they shared their hardboiled eggs, sausage, butter, and bread, we got off at a long stop to buy beer, and played cards till it was time for bed. The tricky bit is vaulting into the top bunk, if that is where you’re sleeping, because there’s no obvious way up. It’s always funny when you get on an overnight train in the morning, because everyone riding it for the long haul is still passed out. Two overnight trains and 27 travel hours later, I was back in Kozyatyn by 4:30 a.m. Monday morning, and back at work 4 hours after that.
I went on an accidental date the other day, accidental because I thought it was an interview and he was under different illusions. A guy had come to my school looking for the American (the third person to seek me out at school) and I was busy preparing for my next lesson during the break, so I asked him quickly what he wanted. From what I understood (this was all in Ukrainian/Russian), he was writing a thesis on the psychology of teachers and wanted to get an American perspective. I consider it part of my job to talk about America, so I asked how much time he needed and said I could meet him next week. Unfortunately I couldn’t set a time then so I had to give him my number. When we sat down at the café I turned to him and asked, “So, how can I help you? What do you want to know?” He replied laughingly, “Oh, right down to business! Why don’t we just sit and chat?” So we talked for a while and sometimes he seemed to be asking legitimate questions, but I don’t think he is writing a paper on the psychology of teachers. When I tried to leave, he begged for 10 more minutes, and I obliged but finally stood up to go. He walked me most of the way home (which is normal in Ukraine, because girls can’t be expected to walk anywhere by themselves), but I stopped him on the corner to say goodbye so he wouldn’t know exactly where I live. He asked if he could see me again and I mumbled something vague before walking away. I complain about my lack of dating prospects, but then I turn away seemingly nice guys for tricking me into dating them.
A week or two later I got a call from an unknown number (in America I don’t answer those, but in Ukraine if someone is calling my phone I usually need to answer), so I did—and it was Accidental Date Guy. He wanted to invite me—not to an interview this time—but to tea or even borshch. I told him if he wanted to invite me to hang out with his friends in a group I would be perfectly happy to do that, but I wouldn’t hang out with just him (in Ukraine if you’re alone with a guy in public, you’re assumed to be on a date, even if you’re just walking somewhere—more on that later). He thought I was shy and promised to behave, but I tried to make it clear that I simply did not want to go on a date with him. Finally I just hung up, and 3 missed calls and 2 hilarious English text messages later, he’s even farther than he was before from getting me to go out with him. (Exhibit A: “Please a telefone. Im bad speak english. Im have a speak. You no anderstand me. Im apologize.”)
The main reason to avoid casual dating in my town is the strength of the gossip chain. Almost 30,000 people live in Kozyatyn, but everyone says it’s really just a big village, and here’s a case in point: when I went to grab the key to the English room from the Vice Principal (who is also my landlady), she smiled knowingly at me and asked who I went out with last night. I knew instantly what that meant: either she or someone she knew had seen me walking with Pasha to our Tuesday night English club. I laughed and clarified that he was technically my student and definitely not my boyfriend.
A teacher I met at Olympiad back in December called to invite me to tea with her students at School #1 to celebrate their English Week, so I brought my pictures and chatted with a group of 8th-11th formers for 3 hours, eating pierozhky plus all the chocolate and cookies within reach. I asked them for recommendations of Ukrainian bands and we had a photo shoot afterward.
When you make plans to meet someone, they invariably call you 5 minutes before you’re supposed to meet them, to make sure you’re still coming. I find this both mildly insulting, because it implies that you’ll back out on your word, and counterproductive, because at that point I’m usually walking toward the designated meeting point, and then I have to stop to find and answer my phone.
I went to my first GAD meeting in Kiev over Valentine’s weekend. On Friday I took the electritchka from Kozyatyn to (almost) Bilky, but got caught up in a conversation with two old ladies and so lost track of the stops, accidentally exiting at the village before my training site. Unfortunately it was cold and snowy and there were no buses or trains, but I reasoned that if I walked along the tracks I would eventually get to Bilky. I did—pride slightly wounded, but sense of humor intact—and Olha and I baked and ate and chatted for a few hours before I headed on to Kiev for the night with Lauren and Camille, who are both also in GAD and had come back to Bilky to visit their host families as well. The next morning we treated ourselves to delicious cappuccino and cake for breakfast before 8 hours worth of Gender and Development in Ukraine. It was a grueling but inspiring day and I had trouble narrowing down my subcommittee options before deciding on the newspaper, summer camps, and Women in Development. I was nominated for President but the bid for power was short-lived. After dinner with the Bilky crew, we made our way to the disco for a PCV Valentine’s Day party. We had to pay a cover to get in, and then realized how frumpy we looked in our cardigans and jeans compared to everything that is stereotypical about European nightclub fashion (ie tight and glittery with short skirts and long heels and nothing but skin in between), so we went to the bathroom to assess the situation. We had paid, we were committed, we were going to make it work. Logical or not, we decided the best way to be less underdressed was to take off more clothes, so off went the jeans, and the long underwear was reborn as “sexy” leggings tucked into our winter boots. Parading around a disco in my underwear necessitated a quick succession of drinks to justify the decision, and then I was at peace with my degradation and ready to dance. We slept in our winter coats on the floor of an apartment rented by PCVs we’d never met because we didn’t want to wake up someone to let us into the GAD apartment that late. I woke up surprisingly refreshed the next morning, stopped in Bilky to collect my laundry and several days’ worth of rations, and then it was home sweet kozy-town.
Two weeks later I went to the PEPFAR training conference with Kamilia at a Soviet resort in the woods outside Kiev. We had sessions on the biology and transmission of HIV, stigma and discrimination (a huge problem in Ukraine where people won’t go for treatment because their neighbors will see them entering the HIV clinic, and many still believe that AIDS is only a drug-users disease), project planning, implementation, and evaluation, a practicum, and a panel of people living with AIDS. I got a lot of great ideas and hopefully we’ll be able to start our series of lectures traveling to local schools, with contests to be judged at a concert in May. It was also great to meet volunteers from older groups and get to know them better. The Sunday after we got back, Kamilia and I went to Andrei’s to project plan over chai.
At a teachers’ meeting on Wednesday, I learned that anyone who wanted to go to the town concert for Women’s Day had only to say the word and they could leave after 6th period to make it in time. I felt bad cutting my last lesson short, but I had to miss our school concert and teachers’ party on Friday for “Meet Your Neighbors” in Vinnytsia, and I wanted to see at least a little of how the holiday is celebrated. On Thursday in school my students kept coming up to me with chocolates and flowers and congratulating me with the 8th of March. I love Women’s Day—thank you, female garment workers in New York, for inspiring the International Socialist Party!
Last week it warmed up to 40 degrees for a few days in a row and a lot of snow melted. I was able to see Kozyatyn from a whole new perspective—what lies beneath! It was fascinating to see what I’ve been walking on this whole time without even realizing it.
Imagine my consternation one day after ingesting coffee and grabbing hold of the door handle to the little girls’ room (true tale, students and teachers pee together) to find it locked. I checked back a little later. Still locked. Slightly worried about when I would be able to empty my bladder (identifying opportunities to pee is always a top priority for me), I asked the Vice Principal about the bathroom situation. She said, “Oh, there’s no water in school today, so the bathroom is closed.” I eventually learned that there was one outside, but that one had open stalls with no doors. My long Ukrainian coat came in handy when girls from my next class joined me in the latrine. Yay for the Ukrainian outhouse equivalent of the towel-wrap trick at the beach, when you can change in the middle of a crowd and not get cited for public exhibitionism!
I finally ventured to our school canteen, hoping to buy a bun like I see my students with all the time, but instead I got sat down by the ladies in the kitchen and served a plate of food, just like the first formers. The older grades don’t get lunch, but the American gets fed like the children.
The last time I bought water at the bazaar, the water lady invited me into her shack for tea. Didn’t go yet, and she hasn’t mentioned it again. Bummer.
Memo to the guest of honor: for birthdays in Ukraine, the tab is on you. Mum’s the word when my birthday rolls around—this system does not give you incentive to celebrate and sing yourself. I went to a bar with Anya and Matt for her birthday, and instead of letting me buy her a drink, she bought me a whole meal.
The scene: a quiet apartment, rug folded back and yoga mat spread out, my arms and legs striving for a graceful expression of Warrior Two, when the calm voice guiding me in the pose is replaced by the terse foreign commands of a railway worker. My computer speakers have an un-zen-like tendency to pick up somehow on the local frequency of the railway station, which I wager would make anyone fall out of tree pose.
After our Meet Your Neighbors “zoostrich” the whole group went out to an Italian restaurant for dinner with the Regional Manager and the new Country Director, and then Safefy and Security Director Papa Serhiy kidnapped us all in fancy Peace Corps Vehicles and took us back to a rented apartment to film a party scene for a safety video that future generations of trainees will watch to discuss how to avoid similar situations. I find it pretty hilarious that I will be forever immortalized in a film about what not to do. Papa Serhiy graciously dropped me off at the train station afterward, smooth-talking his way out of a speeding ticket on the way by kindly requesting the officer to check out his diplomatic plates.
The actual teaching part of my job has so far been a bit of a rollercoaster. I’m embarrassed to still be learning student’s names, but I’ve manufactured at least a half dozen excuses as to why it has taken me so long: they don’t always find it necessary to come to “individualnie urok” (when I have students on my own it is not the whole class, so it is an extra lesson for those who do come), so I can’t keep track of who’s who, plus I didn’t have class lists for the first two months, and on average 20 % or so of students were absent with the flu (or in my case slept in late or went home early or had to go to the music school or got detention for writing bad words in the bathroom), and then the final problem is distinguishing between chubby and tiny Max, redheaded and blonde Katia, and all the triples and quadruples of recurring first names in each class. There are moments when I love it (when a 5th former hands me a valentine’s card, or when a 6th former bashfully asks if he can join my class too, or when they GET it and the lesson works) but more often than not I’m stressing out about creating balanced lessons from scratch each week: drawing half on the current topics and half on issues I want to cover, searching out or creating audio and visual materials, deciding how to incorporate speaking, listening, reading, and writing and at what level, as well as how much to focus on vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation for 9 groups of students from 5th-9th form takes a lot of time for someone who’s never taught before.
I’ve learned to hate the system of daily grading, because after every activity and especially at the end of the lesson they swarm on me and ask if they have marks, and I’m supposed to instantly rank them on a 12 point scale based on every little thing they did during the lesson, which I don’t usually remember because I’ve been concentrating on teaching the lesson and getting everyone to participate, not taking notes on mispronounced words and incorrect grammatical constructions. I can tell by the students’ reactions if I’ve marked them too high or too low, based on if they’ve jumping up and down and asking me to sign their daybooks or if they go all quiet and walk away looking like they want to sulk or cry—or worst of all, try to convince me to give them a higher grade. That boggles my mind, since my idea of a teacher’s authority and the respect it should engender does not seem to prevail here in Ukraine. This is especially true when it comes to homework, which they simply don’t do. Maybe I was unusual, but as a child the idea of not doing my homework was inconceivable. When a student gives a presentation in class, the other students call out suggestions for his grade at the end, and if it’s too low he whines to the teacher. At our last Collaborative meeting, another volunteer shared the idea for a classroom activity called Messenger and Scribe, in which a text is divided into sentences placed around the room, and student pairs must alternate reading and remembering each sentence to retell to their partner, who then writes it down as dictated. I tried this with my 8th form, but they were so focused on getting the right answer that they completely disregarded the purpose of the activity (to rely on memory) in favor of taking pictures of the text with their cell phones, writing on their arms, shouting the sentences to their partner across the room, etc.
Also, our current system of team teaching needs work: half of my weekly lessons I co-teach with three of the four English teachers at my school, but we do not sit down together and co-plan like we did for team teaching during training. With Lena and Larissa we usually look at the lesson in the 10 minute break before class and decide who will do what from the book; sometimes I call Natalia to see what she wants, or she asks me to plan some specific activity, but then she will often ask in class what else I’ve planned, and seem surprised when I say nothing. And yet I wouldn’t presume to plan more when I don’t know what else she wants to do with them, since technically they are her students and she meets with them without me so I never know where she’s left off. Sometimes I teach the whole lesson and she sits in the back and does her own paperwork, asking me at the end what grades I have assigned, and sometimes we haven’t talked before the lesson so I haven’t planned anything and she says, “Not to worry, I will do everything,” leaving me sitting uselessly at the computer table off to the side, feeling somehow chastised. My biggest problem with this system is that the purpose of team teaching is to combine efforts, exchange ideas, and learn from each other, and it seems like little of that is happening here. I try my best to use the communicative method, but with so little planning, much comes straight from the book, and my positive example is limited to NOT calling children stupid and lazy to their faces, and trying to get everyone to participate fully. They are all more experienced teachers than I am anyway, so in terms of skills transfer, I don’t know how much I can offer yet.
I am the third volunteer at my site, and I sometimes wonder if applying for a volunteer has become a habit rather than a need for my school. I don’t mind providing free English lessons to students, but I hate the little voice in my head that sometimes whispers that’s the only reason I’m here, to ease the teaching burden of the other English teachers. I’m being overly cynical here, but it is an important thing to think about. On the other hand, I’m inviting another volunteer to do a Self-Defense/Domestic Violence seminar for the 9th form girls next week, and both my counterpart and the vice principal are excited about it and support the idea, so I think I’m the one who needs to take a step back and see what is important for my site. But a remark my counterpart made in passing again gave me cause for concern. She wasn’t interested in PEPFAR (which is fine, because it’s not her job to teach kids about HIV/AIDS), but she thinks an HIV/AIDS project is unnecessary at our school since the kids are “bored with it,” and making copies one day she turned to me and said, “If you want to know what you can do to help, see how this copier doesn’t work very well, and the computer is very old? That’s what we really need!” This is what I personally struggle with as a PCV in Ukraine: how necessary am I, when a replacement computer is the highest priority? I wanted to go where I thought the need was greatest, but Africa twice fell through, Turkmenistan turned me down, Latin America didn’t work out, and now I’m in Eastern Europe. Yet Peace Corps is in Ukraine because there IS a need.
At the same time, I recognize the great potential PCVs here have to make an even bigger difference, precisely because Ukraine is more developed than most Peace Corps countries. We have more resources at our disposal, and we can do more with them, but the desire has to come from the community. So while I don’t think getting a new computer by itself is a Peace Corps worthy endeavor (when we already have one that usually functions), if I can get the English teachers comfortable with and committed to using technology in the classroom, then it suddenly becomes sustainable and oh-so-worth-it. Our classroom used to have access to the internet, and I would love to get it back. With the internet, a computer, and a projector (which my school acquired through a grant written by the last volunteer), our students’ English learning opportunities would be almost without limits. One future project idea I have is to start a journalism club with an online school newspaper, exploring topics like democracy, citizenship, domestic violence, and environmentalism. To be honest, it could be any topic, I just want my students to learn to think critically about what is important to them. I also really want them to get involved in volunteerism, so I’m hoping to do something small for Earth Day this year and look into longer term more regular activities, maybe with the orphanage or rehab center that I’ve been told are both in town. But all of these things are my ideas, and if I want anything to be sustainable I need to spend more time talking to teachers, administrators, and students at school to see what they want and are willing to support. And for that I need better Ukrainian skills, but unfortunately studying is the last thing I want to do in my rare and therefore precious moments of free time! The only thing less likely to get done than studying is my laundry.
As a TEFL volunteer I struggle to reconcile myself to the fact that I live my life here in English. I skyped with Meredith the other day and we laughed at the irony of our mutual resentment of speaking English with people who know other languages—we would much rather be learning theirs than teaching ours! This is not an immersion program; as much as I love learning and speaking foreign languages, I’m here to teach my native tongue. With my students, coworkers, and friends I speak English. I plan my lessons and projects in English. I have a few friends and acquaintances who don’t speak any English, but I don’t see them on a regular basis, much less a daily one. In fact, I’ve been recently trying to reconnect with all the families I spent time with over the holidays, because I haven’t seen or heard from them since then. I went so far as to show up on my neighbor’s door (though of course armed with an apple crisp!) two nights ago, hoping to have tea and catch up. We did, and it was great, though it lasted three hours (which, on a side note, I’ve found to be the minimum amount of time I can respectably spend as a guest at someone’s home). We watched the video of Zlata dancing in the town concert for Women’s Day that I had gone to on Wednesday (I hadn’t realized she was in it), toasted to women and crazy love with homemade wine (those are traditional toasts, I’m not making this up), and played with their adorably obliging tabby cat. They also showed me their efforts to digitally re-record and preserve Lida’s old family home videos that her father had made in soundless black and white, like films from the 1920s. It was really fascinating to see films originally recorded on old reels, and I admired her father’s knack for capturing poignant childhood images, as well as some great historical clips from the Soviet era.
It takes me forever to write these updates so please comment; think of it as signing the summit log of a really tall mountain that you just climbed to the top of, and your reward is the eternal glory of an electronic signature. It also proves your superior reading skills, by being able to get through such a disjointed set of observations and musings.
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