Below are a bunch of photos I took in the last 3 weeks. The first picture is from an abandoned ship yard in the neighboring town of Mironivka where our cluster goes weekly for our technical sessions. In the photo to the right of the castly building is a picture with our instructor Tatiana who teaches us the art of teaching each week.
Below these 3 pictures is a picture of the "Love Bridge" I believe I explained that in the first set of photo posts that its where all couples here in Boguslav go after getting married for good luck in their marriages. There is a picture of the 4 of us girls there waiting for Matt to arrivefor us to film our Russian Language video!
The picture with Matt and the goat is actually at the abandoned Ship building - there was a woman feeding her 2 goats just in the field and she took them across the bridge - it was incredible to watch them follow her diligently!
Next are the 2 photos from the bazaar that I explained in the post - my mom bought fish and meat at the bazaar - it was a hopping place! Everyone goesto the bazaar on Sundays to get their week's fresh produce. It was really cool to see.
The last two group pictures are first us with the school principal who is extremely supportive of us in the school and just a wonderful person. She has been so helpful for us and welcoming!! And then following that is a picture of me with my host family. From left to rigth there is Iryna my mom, Sergey my dad, Rimma next to me- my 19 year old sister and Max is in the back. He normally wears these super cute Harry Potter glasses but he wont take pictures with them on.
Hello from Boguslav in the beginning of my sixth week here in Ukraine! Though a lot has happened, I am having a hard time deciding what I want to share first! To start I want to remark that things are going very well for me in my language skills. I have been practicing with as many people who will speak with me! To date I have now had about 6 months of SSM/NU worth of hours of Russian in the 5 weeks I’ve been here – I find these statistics incredible to throw out there as I am absorbing as much as possible in such a short span of time!
When I wrote my last blog post, I was on the eve of teaching my first class at the school here in Boguslav. To explain the school situation first, there are three schools in Boguslav that go from the 1st through the 12th grades but the school we are teaching at is the Specialized School. This means that the students were selected as top learners when they were little and allowed to attend this school. Each class selects a specialty when they are in the third grade choosing from English, Math or Ukrainian and for all the following years their classes are heavily focused on the specialty they have chosen. My cluster is teaching students from the 3rd form through the 9th form in all of the specialties but our classes are not focused on these specialties – just learning English. My first class was on October 13th taught alongside Kelsey. We taught the 4th form. It was a really exciting experience as we had to teach the subject “to have” along with items in a bedroom. Kelsey drew a bedroom on a large poster and we had post its of items – the kids were to put the items on the board and say what was in the room as well as what they had in their rooms. The English language education in Ukraine is heavily focused on grammar and translation – somewhat like Latin is taught in the United States. There is little focus on conversational English and so our activity with simply getting the kids out of their seats was a huge excitement for them! I promise a picture of us with our class in our next post.
Following this lesson on Thursday the 15th, Matt and I taught the 8th form. Due to lessons heavily focusing on translation rather than communication – many students are excellent at memorizing large passages of English and repeating it word for word rather than sharing their own opinions – it’s actually quite impressive to hear how much they can memorize in an evening. Matt and I taught the class the subject “Navigating the Newspaper.” We had a copy of the Kyiv Post which Peace Corps provides every trainee/volunteer as it is a quality newspaper written in English and perfect for the situation. We had students write an index for our newspaper as well as read an article that they then titled themselves. The class was really enjoyable and I am finding myself really comfortable teaching both the age levels which is an exciting sensation knowing I have 2 years of teaching ahead of me!
In total we have all been able to teach our classes twice; however this leads me to the next topic of this blog post. The Swine Flu apparently is rampantly spreading throughout Ukraine and people are dying daily from its affects. It has become such a problem for Ukraine that they have actually quarantined well pretty much everything. This being said all schools have been shut down for the next 3 weeks and people have been advised not to go to large gatherings or public places to ensure the disease slows its spread. Though the Peace Corps is not considering this a threat to volunteers – it is a huge “threat” for our training as this means that 3 weeks of our opportunity to practice our teaching skills and interaction with the children has been cut off. Though we will now have more chances for Russian Language class – in truth we are worried as only a couple of us have teaching experience and so these few weeks we have for training are crucial. Please feel free if you are interested to Google the situation on the kyivpost.com
On a more positive note I wanted to say a few more words about my group’s trip to Kyiv! I uploaded pictures of the trip when I was able to finally get pictures of my town online, but I did not have time then to make a post on the trip so I want to add a few words now. We went by bus to Kyiv on October 18th getting to the city at 9am. Kyiv is an incredible city but not very large – everything is very central and therefore easy to get around both walking as well as by metro. Kyiv is referred to as the “mother of Russian Cities” as it was once the center of the great state of Kyivan Rus which began in 5th/6th centuries. Once in Kyiv we headed directly to the city center with a short stop at the Peace Corps office which is a very nice facility of 5 floors including a room filled with books to swap up and a computer lab with internet! Following our fill on technology we headed out to Maiden Square also known as Independence Square – my pictures in the previous post include a description of the importance of this square due to its use as the center of the Orange Revolution. As an additional note – this coming January there will be presidential as well as prime minister elections once more making it a very interesting time to be in Ukraine. Though there is little understanding as to who holds the majority vote, there is also little expectation that another revolution will occur which though it would be interesting to view, is a safer situation for foreigners in country. Just north of Maiden Square is St. Sophia’s Cathedral. “Sofia” comes from the Greek word meaning ‘wisdom’ and the church was built in 1037. It is a beautiful church with the most recent addition built in the Ukrainian Baroque style. The church is famous for its mosaics and political graffiti on the inside – unfortunately our group didn’t get a chance to enter on this trip but we plan to return once the quarantine ends so that we may see the inside of the churches as well as see the famous Caves of the Lavra church. Following St. Sophia’s we saw both St. Michael’s and St. Andrew’s – two churches you may see in the photos on the last post. Kyiv is a beautiful, large city and I cannot wait to return to see more of its art and hopefully the Chernobyl Museum which I’ve heard is incredibly well done.
The last topic I wanted to mention in this post is my family. To start – after my last post my host sister Rimma got engaged! I am very excited for her as the guy is really nice and I told her I would love to attend the wedding so I can see what a Ukrainian wedding celebration looks like! This will not take place until the spring so await a description of the festivities then! I also finally got a picture taken with my family so please check that picture out below! My host mom, Iryna, took me last Sunday with her to the bazaar in Boguslav which was a treat. In Ukraine the most popular place to shop for all your needs is at an open-air bazaar where you may find anything from food to oriental rugs. That day my host mom was shopping for the weekly essentials – eggs, chicken, beef, vegetables, a crazy amount of fish and a few household products. I’m attaching a picture of the meat room where the most common item is “Salo” which is straight pig fat slabs – so imagine bacon and just leave the fat – generally eaten uncooked. Ukrainians eat this cut into pieces on bread – I have politely declined to consume it separately but it is included in most Ukrainian dishes so I cannot avoid this altogether. Today at the market I happily found wool yarn to knit myself a scarf – this lead to a wonderful conversation with the woman at the stand who I discovered has a son at the school we are teaching – she said my Russian was very good for 1 month, which was a nice compliment! I am planning on visiting that stand again next Sunday so hopefully I can exploit the opportunity to work on my Russian some more!
That is it for now. I will be sure to include the update of the quarantine in my next post and whether or not the schools were closed for the entire 3 months –we are all praying this to not be the truth so we may continue working in the schools but the health of the country comes first. A belated Happy Halloween to all and I hope you have a wonderful November!
