One Day: Leadership Seminar at School 16

Last Saturday, my counterpart and I organized a seminar to give Melitipol students and teachers some lessons on civic education. We received a SPA (Small Project Assistance) grant from USAID which helped us get the things we needed to make our civic education project a success. That included office supplies (paper, markers, tape, notebooks, folders...etc), a projector and a screen, a laptop, and a video camera. While these things are great for projects, they are just that—things and things don't get us as far as the exchanging of ideas does. At these seminars, I saw students and teachers rise above the material world and use common sense and creativity to create potential and doable volunteer projects for Melitopol's community.

We split up the kids and the grownups. Students learned about leadership and participated in an active discussion about volunteerism with a living library (thanks to my dear fellow volunteers!). The adults stuck with Cynden and Logan for Project Design and Management and Fundraising training. After lunch, we did group work and had students create a potential volunteer project, with the guidance of their teachers. During this activity, I noticed that the students were more active than their adult counterparts. I also noticed that they had in their lexicon words like attainable, sustainable, and realistic.

When everyone was finished creating their project poster, we moved to the hall so the students could represent their posters and talk about their project. Everyone walked around, listened, and voted on their favorite. The winning project was called "Discover Yourself." It was a hobby club taught by volunteer students. Maybe this is not the most original idea, but they wrote down their goals and objectives, outlined steps for implementing their project, discussed potential fundraising ideas and a plan for future growth. This is very promising.

Ukraine is a great country, but it can be confusing at times. It can make you feel like you're being pulled in multiple directions: East vs. West, Ukrainian vs. Russian, "I miss the soviet union; The roads were taken care of..." vs. "The young people don't know how bad it was; They don't know that we had to eat dirt." I saw some of this at the seminars, the tension between the new generation and the older one. But it had a kind of balance. The fact that they participated showed that they care. Almost everyone tried and contributed something interesting to all of our discussions and activities and this made me happy.

At the end, I thanked the teachers for showing their students how to be good leaders. Some students came up to me afterwards to say that they really enjoyed the seminar. These are the students who will lead Ukraine into its bright future...one day.

April and May Holidays

Look who has come crawling back, out of the dust which lies untouched on the top of all my shkoffs because April was poetry month. Ok fine, that dust has been untouched since forever because I hate dusting, but I did spend an entire month writing poems and stories and one of them is going to be published in the postcard prose section of The Literary Bohemian in June!

Other than writing, I have been waking up to blue skies. It has not rained in weeks and it is sunny every day. You'd think that every day would just melt into the next, but going to a Ukrainian wedding, planning a teacher seminar, showing up to a non-existent parade on May Day, experiencing Orthodox Easter, and seeing Stalin's flag waving on Victory Day have broken the days up quite nicely.

Ukrainian Wedding: Lena and Sasha, 2013!
We went to our friend Lena's parent's apartment to witness the fun and games before the official wedding ceremony. Logan and I stood outside the apartment building where family members and friends were gathered. Sasha arrived and was immediately asked questions in order to be allowed to pass through. We guessed he answered right when he stepped into the building and started up the stairs. We were really confused as the guests trailed behind him, making their way up the stairs too, so we followed them until we made it to the fourth or fifth floor. There, Lena was held captive until the captors were convinced that Sasha was telling the truth as he confessed his undying love to his wife to be, "я люблю тебя!" The ceremony was short and sweet and Logan and I were the only ones who did not bury Lena with flowers. (Why do we always forget the importance of flowers in Ukraine?!) The reception was held at a Crimean restaurant and it was lovely. It was similar to an American wedding reception, but with more games including one where a man had to be wrapped like a baby in a diaper. Sorry for the blurry photos; I was basically dancing the whole night and my camera just can't hand my moves!

Teacher Training Seminar
I received a SPA grant to help promote Leadership and Volunteerism in Ukraine and we had our first seminar this April. My counterpart was ill so a colleague stepped in to help. The seminar was very active, which was perfect, although I wished I could have had a little more time to do a recap at the end. I want to thank the Peace Corps Volunteers that helped me create a living library about Volunteerism at this seminar (Thank you Joey, Rachel, Cynden, and Logan!).

May Day Mayhem
We (Logan, Joey, Cynden, Kristen, Sarah, and I) went to the square in the morning and waited for a parade that never came. We think it was because the mayor is in jail and the intermim mayor has gotten too wrapped up in mayhem to remember to organize a parade to celebrate Melitopol's workers. When we saw no balloons or flags, we decided to walk to Gorkova Park and get some shashlik. After the men left for their camping trip in Crimea, the ladies got together and had a feast with cookies, fruit, champagne, and the like until there were just two of us left. The day was young so Cynden and I called a cab and visited our friends in Krasnaya Gora. I'll let the pictures finish this story.

Ukrainian Easter (Paska)

Orthodox Easter was celebrated on 5 May this year. I went to my counterpart's house and baked some paska (a lot of paska) and the next morning we went to the church to "bless" eggs and bread. We stood outside the church at seven, waiting for the gates to open so we could be pushed in like cattle and find a place to stand in the churchyard. People laid out bottles of wine, opened bags of cheese, uncovered their paska, and the priest came around and sprayed us with water. It was actually really funny. Everyone was laughing, dripping wet,  and wiping water away from their eyes, except Logan who used me, Olya, and her daughter as a shield. 

Victory Day, 9 May

There was no parade for Victory day, either, but there was a ceremony in the center of town. It was a blast from the Soviet past and I loved it. The Ukrainian national anthem, the speeches made by Melitpol's oldest to youngest, the flag of Stalin blowing in the wind, the triumphant singing, the marching, the letting go of balloons, the watching them fly away. A man passed out in the crowd and a woman took photos of him being carried away on a stretcher to an old ambulance that looked like a drawing a little kid made sixty eight years ago.

Oh, and then there was this gem:

Look closely at the family in the background

Oh, I Keep Forgetting

I'm sad to say that my brain is not a good diary. The moth that's living up there is leaving little holes. So, before I forget everything, I've got to blog it out.  No more excuses. A lot has happened in the merry month of March. The bare bones of what I've been doing can be seen in the outline below, but if it's meat you're looking for, read on. And don't worry--there are lots of pictures! 

International Writing Contest through Peace Corps
English club at School 16

St. Patrick's Day in Konstantinovka

6 hour school concert

Lecture on gender roles at the local Pedagogical University

A visit from Zap's finest
A visit to Zap Our Visa's into Place

International Writing Contest through Peace Corps

Logan was the oblast coordinator for a writing contest sponsored by the Peace Corps. I proctored and judged the competition at my school and some of my school level winners are being passed on to the next level, so I'm excited. I gave my classes one lesson on creative writing before they participated in the contest and they were some of the best lessons so far. All in all, the contest was a lot of fun, but some students had a lot of difficulty tapping into their creative sides. It's my goal to help them do this over the next two years.

English Club at School 16

Thursdays are my craziest days. I have six lessons in a row and they are filled with ups and downs, but that's what makes being a secondary school teacher fun, right? Anyway, it keeps me on my feet and I'm grateful for that. Sometimes, I'll be walking down the hall to my next class and I'll hear a few "Hello Miss Kerries" from students that I (sometimes) don't even recognize because I do not have classes with them. I only teach the linguistic-track students so I don't usually get the chance to speak with the students who are on a different track (like economics, science...etc). But, some of them are just as eager to talk and practice their English so I decided to start an English club, with the help of my counterpart. It's for older students, 9th grade and above, and I had my first club meeting a few weeks ago. It was wonderful. After such a long day, I ended up staying about two and a half hours more just talking and listening. They even played music for me and sang! I love Thursday suprises!

My goal for the English club is as follows:

to improve listening, speaking, and writing skills

to talk about topics that matter to students

to help students go outside their individual experiences and learn new things based on their pupils' interests and talents. 

to provide an online forum for their words and ideas

In short, I want them to go outside the box and be creative. I want us all to teach each other new things, to take their skills and share them with the class. Maybe we'll throw all our skills and talents into a hat and learn something new at each meeting. I'm still working out the goals in my head. Next week, we're talking about food and I'm going to bring in some chocolate chip cookies!!!

St. Patrick's Day in Konstantinovka

I've been told that Konstantinovka (константиновка) is the biggest village in all of Europe. Wikipedia did not tell me this (so I don't know if it's true or not) but the sky definitely feels bigger there. As we left our fellow Peace Corps Volunteer's house in the evening, the stars were shining and I remembered what it was like to see stars! Maybe I haven't been looking up enough lately. Anyway, my St. Patty's day was filled with peeling potatoes and carrots, making stew, drinking Guiness, hanging with good friends, and an Irish ditty on the ukulele while waiting for the bus to take us back to Melitopol.

I'm a Leprechaun!

St. Patty's Bunch

6 hour school concert

I sat and watched a 6 hour long event. Each class at school 16 presented on different culture topics while a panel of judges chose the winners. 6 hours. I didn't leave the assembly hall once. I said to myself, if the panel of judges can do it, so can I...and I'm still alive. Some of the older forms did presentations on Cyprus,  Japan, Australia...accompanied by dancing, singing, and powerpoint presentations.

Lecture on Gender Roles at the Pedagogical University

This was a really great, yet difficult day at a local University. When I first arrived in Ukraine, life here didn't seem that different, but just the history of Ukraine alone has paved a different path for its citizens and this has created complex roles that I try every day to understand. I know we have common threads that hold us together, but the differences are what define people as a culture. Things here are different here in Ukraine and I truly felt this when Cynden and I gave a lesson on gender roles, stereotypes, and breaking "out of the boxes" that "society" puts us in. It was two American go getter gals up against 50 Ukrainian women with different ideas of gender roles, different traditions, different histories. It was a challenge, and although we had our differences, the students liked the lecture and welcomed us back to give another in the not-so-distant future.

This is not at the Pedagogical University, but at School # 5, where Cynden had a leadership seminar.

A visit from Zap's finest

A weekend with good friends, pizza parties, Lenin statues, and talk about good ol' Melitopol honey and days to come.

We'll call her the Gorky guest who is supposed to be in charge of the playlist.

P-I-Z-Z-A...did I happen to say, "I want pizza?!"

A visit to Zap Our Visas into Place
Travelled to the Zap to apply for new Visas. I think everything is going smoothly with the whole process of getting new visas, thanks to my amazing regional manager, the Peace Corps, and my lovely counterpart.