Winter Update from Ukraine

Dear Friends and Family,

            Happy New Year and Happy Old New Year!! Since my last post following Christmas in 2009 I have experienced a few Ukrainian holidays and been able to take a few small trips that I would like to update you all on in this blog post!

            As I wrote about in my last post, Christmas here in the Eastern Orthodox religion is celebrated on January 7^th and is actually not as large a holiday as New Year’s Eve/Day. So my first Ukrainian holiday came on New Year’s Eve. That week in school the teachers had a special little New Year’s party that began with gathering in a room with a New Year Tree (decorated like a traditional Christmas tree in America but called a New Year Tree), we held hands in a circle and sang a traditional Ukrainian song while Yuri (the Music School teacher) played along on his accordion. It was a really neat experience to walk around in the circle as the teachers all sang along though the general Ukrainian words of the song flew over my head. Following this song Santa Claus (the gym teacher) presented all the teachers with bags of candy for a New Year’s treat. It was a huge bag of chocolates. Ukraine does not have Santa Claus but Father Frost and Snowgirl (his granddaughter often a blonde girl who helps Father Frost) but the teachers had gone with a Santa Claus costume instead. It is tradition to receive presents on New Year’s Day much like we receive presents on Christmas Day. That day, following school, I had plans to head to Nova Kakhovka – the neighboring site where my friend Alia Scheirman is a volunteer (and a native Minnesotan!).  As I was going to miss New Year’s day in Velyka Lepetykha, I swapped gifts with my host family that night. I received a new pair of socks with a large tiger on them (this is the year of the tiger and it is therefore good luck to have tiger items). I gave Tolia and Lyuda both shot glasses from Minnesota. They liked them and are now proudly displayed in the kitchen. Following the swap I walked to the bus station on the outskirts of my town and took the 2-hour bus to Nova Kakhovka where Alia, Lucas (a Michigan native volunteer living in Berislav only 20 minutes from Nova Kakhovka) and Lucas’ counterpart, Natasha picked me up to head to Alia’s apartment. We dined on chili Minnesota style and Ukrainian salads while we watched Ukrainian New Year’s celebrations on the television. At midnight we ran outside of the apartment to light our sparklers though this one 12 year old kid made our sparklers look like baby’s toys as he shot off bottle rockets and roman candles from his hand in the middle of the apartment quad. The obsession over one’s personal safety is just not the same here as it is in the US! I spent the whole weekend in Nova Kakhovka, a city of over 50,000 and was able to shop at the Walmart like “Oscars,” eat at a pizzeria and walk through an outdoor zoo complete with turkeys, goats, and muskrats! It was a very nice weekend and a great escape from my small town!

            When I returned to site it was actually the holiday vacation but Velyka Lepetykha had faculty meetings Monday-Wednesday before Christmas Day on Thursday. I only was required to attend the meetings on Monday and Tuesday for the English teachers though both meetings were entirely conducted in Ukrainian, what’s a Russian speaker to do!? Haha.  I was anxious for Wednesday as my good friend Kelsey Rote from my training cluster came down to visit me from her site in the Kirovograd Oblast (located about 8 or 9 hours by train north of Kherson) as she was also on her holiday vacation and quite bored in her small town and thought it best we spend our free time bored together! She arrived in my town in the middle of a snowstorm that turned into a rainstorm that then turned into sun the next day for us to walk around my site! I’ve added some pictures below from our tour of my town including our time down by the river. The Dnipro was not that cold despite the freezing cold weather of that week. I showed off my Minnesotan skills of surviving the cold by pretending to sunbathe near the icy water (Kelsey is from Oregon and does not take the cold weather well at all!) The best part of our time together was our trip the next day to Nova Kakhovka where Rudy (another cluster mate of mine) was visiting Alia for her holidays and so we were able to spend the weekend all together. Unfortunately the timing of Kelsey’s visit meant that I did not spend Christmas day with my host family, but I found they do not celebrate the holidays as over the top as the traditional Ukrainian. Instead the plan for Christmas had been to sit and watch TV all day and eat dinner as usual. Therefore, I do not have much to update you on as to Christmas traditions that I personally have experienced. To me it seems to be more along the lines of a Thanksgiving holiday where a family eats together and spends most of the time relaxing rather than doing such things as gift exchanges or singing holiday songs etc (these are saved for New Year and Old New Year). However I have heard that many Ukrainians celebrate both Christmas as well as New Year’s very over the top with food, drinks and a massively large amount of family members gathering together under one roof.

The one holiday that I did get to experience which I thought was very interesting is the celebration of the Old New Year. Before the Gregorian calendar was adopted, Ukraine used to celebrate the New Year on January 14^th. The tradition to celebrate the Old New Year is still very special for many Ukrainians. On the evening of the 13^th, women and young girls go around from house to house singing to men and boys and throwing grain on one another for good luck. Then, following midnight, men and boys go around from house to house singing to the women and girls and throwing grain back at them for good luck. My experience with this tradition came on the evening of the 13^th, three woman and a male (so not exactly following the rules) came to our house and sang 5 different traditional Ukrainian songs with interludes offering hopes that our family would have wealth, happiness and health in the new year. It was really nice and I recognized the carolers as members of the faculty from my school – they were fabulous singers! The following day the entire school was covered in a thick inch of grain throughout the building as kids had brought to school the grain to throw at one another. This became a bit of a discipline problem during class but was really crazy to see how everyone got into the act of decking each other with grain and screaming “good luck!” At what point in American traditions is it ok to chuck things at the teacher and have it be a good thing!

            Lastly, I wanted to write a little about teaching in Velyka Lepetykha. Following the New Year vacation I began to teach full time. My first week I taught the 4^th graders but this was swapped for the older crew of 9^th graders so my final span of students includes two sections of 5^th grade as well as two sections of 6^th grade, and then one each of 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th grades. I teach 3-5 classes a day all days of the week a total of 18 hours a week. I am working with three different English teachers including my counterpart Tonia. I am actually co-teaching which means that I do not teach all 45 minutes of the lesson but provide the communication and activities of each lesson and therefore get about 20-25 minutes a lesson. This has allowed for my introduction into a full schedule of classes to be a bit more relaxed as I do not need to stress over full lessons, however it has also been a bit of a downside as I cannot do as many activities or any longer activities due to my shortened time frame. I am hoping that once I prove myself unquestionably able to teach and handle these students then I’ll be able to teach more classes for the full 45 minutes. As a sum up of my experience thus far teaching is difficult!! The level of English of my students is surprisingly low at all levels. What makes life most difficult is the range of levels within one class as within each grade there are students who blow me away with their English vocabulary as well as students who cannot tell me their names. This disparity has made partner work and general communication quite difficult. My 5^th and 6^th graders are quite enthused to do just about anything I attempt in class (though quite rowdily) where as my 7^th graders drag their heels through anything that I attempt to teach them. My 9^th graders have been some of the most interested of my classes as I believe they are old enough that they realize me being there is an advantage for them in learning English and they pay attention with great detail. I have begun my first English Club after school with the top 10 students of my 9^th  grade class. I taught an introduction lesson with a side theme of New York which went very well and I have a lesson on baseball planned for this week! I am also starting a communication hour with the four English teachers so that they may work more on their own English skills. One of Peace Corps’ favorite words is “sustainability” and so I want to help develop the communication skills of the English teachers over time so that they may arrive at a more comfortable level personally and in turn push their own students in the future. I am looking forward to viewing their progress as the teachers here are very well equipped for read and translate exercises but speaking freely does not come easily for any of them and I would like to help expand that.

            On a personal note, I have begun Russian Language tutoring. I had my first meeting with a tutor this last week and spoke Russian for 2.5 hours solid! I will continue to meet with her weekly to improve my own communication skills. Another activity I have picked up for fun is music lessons – I am learning how to play the traditional Ukrainian instrument the Bandura. This 54-string instrument looks like a very large ukulele and sits on one’s lap and is plucked. I had my first lesson last week and I will continue to work on it weekly! I was very excited to pluck through the C Major scale for the first time on the bandura and my teacher Olga immediately put me through 4 short songs to practice. I plan to be more committed in my practicing than I was with the violin. And I promise to get a picture of myself with a bandura for a future post. I am also going to try to see if I can get a short video clip of myself playing the instrument for a future post too! As my town is so small, there really are very few things to do following the school day and so I am working on filling my time with other means of entertainment. The English lessons/classes and my own Russian and Bandura lessons will sure help! I also am continuing to think of future trips to take and places I want to visit while in Ukraine and Eastern Europe! I went to Kherson, the capital of my oblast, this last weekend for my H1N1 shot and spent a wonderful weekend with Americans eating baked spaghetti one night and chicken the next – it was delightful! I am planning on heading back to Kiev in February and then to Crimea the following week for a Peace Corps meeting – both trips I will be happy to comment on in the upcoming post! Traveling is my own personal high and anytime I can see a new place I am so energized that I feel these future trips will allow for the more difficult moments at site to be all worth while!

            Ok, I think that is enough updating for now. I do hope that you all passed a wonderful New Year’s and that 2010 is treating you all very well! I cannot believe it but I have now been in Ukraine 4 months! Only 23 to go!

                        Have a wonderful and happy February,

                                   Love, Megan

P.S.I began this list the other day as I feel I have gone through so many different cravings over the last 4 months that it would be interesting to note down what a Peace Corps volunteer may crave when in a country that does not have everything a simple stones throw away!

 

Cravings:

Dad’s French Onion Soup

Mom’s Christmas Cookies/Bars/Treats, Kristin Ostebee’s Sugar Cookies

A big cheeseburger! (I’ll be in Kiev in February so I will see how good McDonalds looks then)

Banana bread/cake –especially SSM middle school banana cake

Grilled Vegetables, fresh red and yellow peppers

Chipotle

Ranch Dressing

Brown Sugar

Mexican Food, Mom’s Chicken Enchiladas 

Pictures Below include: My clothes out on the line (please enjoy the NU tshirt!), the bridge in my town connecting the two halves of Velyka Lepetykha, the New Year's Tree in my school, Santa delivering presents to the teachers, a picture with my school director Tamara on the left and Tonia my counterpart on the right, the old movie theatre in my town, a statue from the WWII monument with an angel and a bandura, me sunbathing by the Dnipro, Kelsey touching the river, in Nova Kakhovka near the river, at the Zoo cafe with Rudy,Alia, and Kelsey, at the disco in Nova Kakhovka (we were practically the only ones there so each song was dedicated to the Americans!), near the New Year's Tree in Nova Kakhovka and then by a snowman while in Kherson this last weekend with Alia and Lucas.