post 9 february

Yes, it’s been about a month since my last post, but no, I haven’t forgotten about you. In fact, I think of you, and think of you often!

For as much as I love to write, I wonder why it’s so hard for me to keep up with a blog regularly. I guess the answer is that I’m trying to do things worth blogging about, but that’s really not much of an excuse.

The biggest project of the moment is the International Writing Olympics, a creative writing contest organized by Peace Corps Volunteers in eleven countries. This is the first year we’ve brought the contest to Ukraine, and I’m working as the national coordinator, so there’s a lot to work out. The official prompts have just come out, and so all kinds of students and all kinds of proctors and judges all across the country are generating lots of creative energy right about now. Ponder some of our sample questions for yourself: What would you do if you were invisible? What would happen if music were illegal? What do clouds think about? Want more questions? Send me an email and I’ll send you last year’s official questions.

The new semester has just started, too, and I’m teaching teachers at the Inservice Institute, as well as Applied Linguistics 5th year (masters) and 3rd year students, plus Country Studies for 1st year students. This schedule is subject to quite a bit of variation, plus the addition of a class at the Humanities University within the next few weeks, but it’s a good start.

I went to language refresher camp a few weeks ago, which was good, but pretty different from the summer camp. This one was a bit more low-key, and less, well, camp-y. Fine with me, though, as it was cold out.

Meetings: Our regional Collaborative meeting, which I co-facilitated, was great, as was the Collaborative meeting in Lvivksa oblast. I’m hoping to attend another Collaborative meeting in Chortkiv, Ternopliska oblast, this Saturday, but we’ll see! I’m the Western Regional Collaborative Facilitator, so I feel like it might be a good plan to try to be as involved as possible in as many of the meetings as I can, but also, it’s fun to travel around and hang out with new people. Okay, you’re right, it’s not always fun to spend ten hours on a bus in one day, but, really, the people were great.

Conferences: With any luck, I’ll be presenting at a TESOL Conference in Zhytomyr in April, as well as another conference in Kyiv around the same time. At the TESOL Conference, my presentation will be on “The Case for Creative Writing,” but at the conference in Kyiv, there’s a bit more uncertainty. I was asked to present, but it turns out that the focus of the conference is on translation. Yes, I’ve worked on three translation projects—the Cossack book, the subtitles of the film about the Black Sea Fleet, and, most recently, the University website—but all of these have come to me in at least mostly English form. I’m at a bit of a loss about what to present about—much less what to write a 6-page article about for the conference Book of Papers—but my tentative title is “English to English: An American’s Reflections on Editing Translations in Ukraine.” Pretty original, right? Phew!

So, I regret that this entry seems a little dry, but I’m working on it. If I could stay updated better, I’d have more of a chance to tell you the interesting little bits of my life here, which are, well, more interesting than sweeping overviews. But, hey. It’s something.

Actually, you should read my friend Kate’s blog. She’s super-good at keeping updated, and she’s an entertaining storyteller with an entertaining life. Plus, sometimes some of her stories involve me! Take it away, Kate! http://katemarieschmidt.blogspot.com/

:)