post 18 october- 2

I taught the first lesson of my Peace Corps life on Monday. We were assigned partners, classes, and topics, and tutored on crafting good lesson plans to fill the eighty minute class period. Good work overall, I think, and nice to be in a situation I more or less understand. Of course, my partner, Lucas, and I were given the exciting task of teaching about the primary and secondary education system in the United States, which might not have been my first choice of topic. Still, the class—fourteen enrolled, nine in the room—was very pleasant and encouraging. All girls, they worked very quietly, even whispering during group work time. Apparently this is not unusual, nor is the fact that they stood up when the bell rang to start class—a sign of respect for the teacher that students here start when they start school—and stayed in their seats until the lesson was done, not even twitching when the bell rang, much less ten minutes beforehand.

Have you noticed how long my sentences are sometimes on this blog? I guess I just have a lot of information that I’d like to share, preferably all at once. J

This week also brought more of the up-and-down adventure of the Peace Corps trainees who found out at their staging event that they were not, in fact, going to be going to Turkmenistan, due to the country’s decision to deny them entry. I believe their group was made up of about sixty people, and Peace Corps has been trying to place them elsewhere. Nine were taken in by Ukraine, and I’m not sure about the rest. We thought that our cluster would be getting one more member, to replace Matt, the teacher trainer who went home in the first week. However, at the last minute, this other teacher trainer decided to stay in the United States, so our cluster will stay at four.

What else this week? Today we went to a history museum in Chernihiv, which was an interesting experience. Artifacts and maps are interesting, but it turns out to be pretty helpful to be able to read the text in the displays. Of course, we had our TCFs [technical/ cross-cultural facilitators] with us to help translate, but there was a lot of guesswork involved. As exciting as it was to recognize certain words and names [googleplex Gogols], sounding a word out does not its meaning make. Ukrainian is a very phoenetic language, so the way it looks is the way a word sounds, but if it’s not a cognate or a known word, that’s where the recognition ends.

Yesterday the trolley I was trying to take home went out of service instead, and everybody knew except me. Luckily, though, I was able to walk the few blocks back to the right route, and back to the apartment. Success! Also, it was raining. It has rained off and on several days this week, which leads to item two.

First item one, though, which is that the heat was turned on on Wednesday. In most of the city, a governmental official—in my understanding—turns on the heat on a set date. In some private homes, the heating system is independent, but where I live, I’m happy to have the heat on. This means that I was able to dry my gloves and jeans and shoes [somewhat] on the radiator when I got back home on Friday.

Item two: I went boot shopping today. The shoes I’ve been wearing are very nice flats, and they are comfortable enough for all of the walking I do every day. However, the rainy conditions and occasionally somewhat choppy walking routes lead to the conclusion that every single female inhabitant of Ukraine has already reached: boots are a good idea to keep your feet and legs warm and dry. So, a few other girls and I went to several shopping centers, stores, and finally the bazaar in search of boots. The choices are predominately black leather, with exceptions made for suede, and occasionally bright random colors, too. Although I have a pair of excellent winter boots that I purchased at home for when it’s snowy and really cold, I was looking for something about knee high and probably black. So, that was about 80% of what was available. Take out the super-high heels and lots of ornamentation, and you’re down to about 25%. Add in the fact that I wear size 9 or 9 ½ , and that’s about 7%. Also, I don’t want to pay a ton, since I’m basically making enough money to eat a very cheap lunch every day, buy tissues, and take public transportation. Our language teacher suggested that we might be able to get fairly cheap boots for about 300, but when we started looking, everything was at least 600, and more often 800 or so. Keep in mind that this is hryvnia, which I had previously changed for dollars at 8.4h per dollar. To end a long and fairly repetitive story, I ended up with a pair of boots from the bazaar, which I inadvertently negotiated down to 350h, exactly how much I had brought along for the purpose. Pictures already posted. :)