A Good Day For Sleeves

Today was a good day for sleeves and it wasn't because of the cold that has set in. I had my last class with my 10th form students today and I just couldn't fight back the tears when it all became quiet and they thanked me for my time with them. I love all my students and teachers at my school, but how I love them is different because love needs that. It needs to find different pathways. With this class, I loved them from the start. The first time we met, I felt their energy and saw in each of their faces such great potential.

I made them a short video to thank them for being such great students and in this video, I included a picture of them from the first year that I started teaching. They were so young and silly and now they're older and more mature (and much taller). I am so glad that I could witness their growth and be a small part of their lives here in Ukraine.

So yes, it was a good day for sleeves, but particularly the sleeves attached to the sweater which I have hand washed, laid on heaters, and worn for two years. I think they were waiting for this moment, preparing and stretching so they could fit far enough over my hands to wipe my eyes from the hardest kind of tears. Is life always this bittersweet?

I know I'll come back to Ukraine. Our heartstrings will forever be entangled. I know it's not my native country, but it has been my home for two years, and a good one, too. I have gotten used to it. I have learned its customs, I have drunk its conyak, prepared and eaten its varenyky, corrected its lack of article grammar mistakes, ridden on its busses, slept (or laid awake on) its night trains, nodded my head through confusing Russian conversations, eaten whatever anyone wanted me to eat, sang Ukrainian harmonies with my teachers in the forest, and found so many dear friends. It has all become a part of me, just like all of the other homes I've found over the years. Homes may not always be tangible, but I have marked their places on my map so I will never be lost.

Don't be fooled. I rolled up my long sleeves and quit being a baby to take this photo...

Давайте Play: Balancing Work and Play in the Classroom

This is not a "how to" post because I haven't exactly figured out how to balance work and play in the classroom. I've been at my school for two years and because I am the first American and Peace Corps Volunteer there, I still get giggly "hellos" and even "avtograph" requests. I know, I know, I'm awesome, right? Nope. If I was awesome, students would listen to me all the time during my lessons, but they don't. One reason might be because they have figured out that I have no real authority at school. I'm not allowed to escort student on trips or kick kids out of class, I usually have no idea what's going on at my school  when it comes to events, concerts, and good old surprise holidays, and the marks I give aren't always taken seriously. For example, when I give a student a 10 (out of 12) and their actual teacher says, "how about an 8 instead" the students excitement turns into disappointment and then into them not caring as much about trying hard in my class. I'll never fully understand the grading system here and I'll never fully like it...

Another reason they get a little crazy is because they kind of expect me to do something fun all the time. When I first started teaching here in Melitopol, I wanted to make a good impression so I created fun dynamic lessons. This is hard work and sometimes I get a little lazy and I just want to slip into classic "to the books" teaching mode. Don't get me wrong, I love to have fun with my students, but we can't just play games all the time, no matter how much fun I have tricking them into learning. Sometimes the English classroom should be quiet. Sometimes students should write their ideas down in their notebooks, while they peacefully ponder and make grammatical errors for me to check.

The other day, as I walked into the classroom, on of my tenth form students said, "Давайте play!" Let's play!  Only three students showed up that day due to illness, so I gave in and we played my favorite game, Celebrity (for rules on how to play, see this list of games). In that case, it was OK to play a game, but later on that day, my eighth form class did not deserve the same treatment. They were terrible. They were loud and scatterbrained and I couldn't hear the answers from the serious students in the front. Sometimes, I do the silent thing and wait until it's quiet. The students eventually get bored and confused about what to do and then they get it. This time, I did that and wrote the number 9 on the board and asked them to guess what it meant. It was the number of lessons we had left before I leave Ukraine. I said, in a calm voice because I don't like yelling, "Is this how you want to be? We have 9 classes left and you want to be noisy? You want to do nothing? 9 lessons. What do you want to do?"  Some of the students were surprised, some of them were teary (including myself), and one student decided to answer my question. She stood up with excitement and shouted, "PLAY GAMES!" Some students agreed and cheered and ruined my attempt at being sarcastic, but I could tell some students saw my frustration and respected it.

I told them we could only play games if they had good behavior and I'm trying to stick to this plan, but sometimes, I give in and put some extra effort into making class more fun. I don't know if this is good or bad or if the teacher who has to teach the kids after me suffers from leftover game energy...but I'm working on finding the balance and for now, I'll do my best to stay strong.

I've compiled a list of my favorite games on my other blog, teachloveplayenglish.blogspot.com. Here's the link to my Repertoire of Games.

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.

The Attack of the Idea People

Occasionally, I get ideas.

However, a lot of the time, they get tossed in a made-up file drawer or scribbled on a piece of paper way too small to get the point across. I can't count how many times I have started a sentence with a "wouldn't it be awesome if I..." and finished it with something that can't survive once exposed to the Earth's atmosphere. Just last week, I shouted a similar question into an empty room. Logan answered back from the kitchen, his voice muffled by the distance between us: "we're idea people," he said. At first, I took this to be a good thing, a compliment, proof that my brain works or is at least allowing me to voice real thoughts in my mind in real time. Now, I'm not so sure...Wouldn't it be awesome if I could just get paid to travel and write about whatever I wanted? We're getting the band back together! Is it too late to become an astronaut? 

I feel like a cartoon character with spinning stars around my head. I've been hit by the reality of the future, the end of my Peace Corps service, and the beginning of "the next step." It has caused an explosion of possibilities, ideas, and dreams and choosing one seems unfair.

In college, I had a professor tell me that I was like a goose, flying around in the clouds. That's me, pictured on the left. As goosey as I am, I think I've at least been flying towards the same goal, maybe just not so straight and steady. I did almost finish 27 months as a Peace Corps Volunteer and I wanted to join since I was a kid. It's funny how you get to the places you get to (and hey, maybe I wouldn't have gotten here if my spirit animal had been a more direct non-flying one).

Getting ready for the next chapter is not easy and it seems to get harder and harder (stranger and stranger?) the closer I get to December. I go back and forth between knowing and not knowing, feeling confident and forgetting what confidence means, being cocky and shooting myself in the foot like an idiot. It's all OK, though. я знаю. Всё будет хорошо, как всегда! I really do believe this.

The original title for this post was "The Curse of the Idea People," but I changed it. It's not a curse to have ideas, even if they're silly, even if they involve trying to go to Mars (this is real, by the way). It's a curse not to do anything with them, even if you realize that they're actually not what you really want. If you are like me and you're flapping around in the sky while others are soaring on steady wings and making decisions like BAM and getting things done like POW, it's time to launch an attack--on your motivation and on your flying skills. I wish you luck and the power of focus. I say, you can fly as high as you want, as long as you get to where you want to be. Like the quote in the Peace Corps lounge says: "It's not the journey, but the destination."

Technology, Romance, and The Lack Thereof

When I thought about Peace Corps during my pre-service days, I thought about living in a thatched dome, having a goat as a best friend, taking bucket showers (or none at all), and letters from distant family and friends being the only contact from home. Here in Ukraine, there are some volunteers living in villages with no Internet access. They might have a goat, cow, or pig for a best friend (until it becomes dinner, at least). They even have to take bucket showers and use an outhouse in the middle of the night. In the dead of winter.

Constantinovka, Ukraine

That is not the case for me and Logan. We live in a city of about 150,000 people and we have access to modern conveniences and technologies. We have a toilet and WiFi in our apartment. In the city center, we even have a Wallmartesque store that really creeps me out. I am happy with my site, but also a little envious of the village experience, which seems pleasantly detached from modern technology. There, people only dream of the newest iPhone. Or, maybe they don't even care about it at all. This is probably not true. It seems like everyone and their mothers have smart phones in Ukraine. But, I have this image of village life and in it, technology is shunned upon because villagers don't have time to play with touchscreens. They're too busy living in a glorious bubble in which flower beds line the streets, neighbors show up at each others' doorsteps with a bottle of wine and a story, and pies on windowsills are cooling with the setting sun. I wish I had a piece of straw and a little harmonica fill for that last sentence.

I feel like technology has taken some of the romanticism out of life. So much of our time is spent on another plane of existence. I'm not saying that this plane is a bad place to be, but it's definitely an intangible place competing with a tangible one. We have digital souls now and I wonder if it means we have another soul, or if it's part of our original one, ripped off. I was facebook creeping the other day and I looked at the page of a friend that I don't know very well. After clicking through his photos, I felt like I had grown up with him by seeing how he posed in his awkward you-had-to-be-there-kind-of-thing photos and even in the evolution of his haircut into the modern age. Is this called digital soul searching?

Relationships are different now. The internet has great potential to make them more dynamic and creative, even, if used properly. I know people who have found their true loves online. There is definitely hope, but I don't think everyone is that lucky. Sometimes, I write e-mails or text people instead of calling them. I look up every single thing I don't know how to do online instead of asking a person (and maybe if I did ask someone, they'd tell me to "google it" because the world is at my fingertips). For someone like me (a half shy homebody), dancing around on the interwebs can be dangerous. It's so easy to slip into a world of no physical contact and this scares me.

Maybe communicating through the internet makes us braver. I am about to make this post visible to the entire world. Would I be able to articulate these ideas in person? I don't know if this happens to you, but when I wear sunglasses, I feel pretty awesome. When people can't see my eyes, it gives me some kind of confidence, like I have the advantage of looking into their eyes, into their souls, and they don't. Yes, this is all in my head, but it still feels real. Take away the internet and put people face to face (no sunglasses allowed) and I bet some of us would whither because we are out of practice standing next to people, having a conversation in real time, accidentally brushing up against someone in an elevator. Is this sphere endangered? If it is, maybe we should all become creepers and go around touching people or getting really close to their actual faces. Quick. Hurry, before it's too late!

Cheers to Skype!

I don't want to be too pessimistic. I think technology is cool. I like gadgets. I think it's cute when the elderly say things like "what's a google?" I like the fact that I can send messages to my brothers the second I remember something funny that they did as kids. Communication through technology is, after all, what allows me to publish this blog and how I keep in touch with family and friends back in the states. I wonder how the first Peace Corps Volunteers fared so far away from home, without skype or a guarantee that letters would arrive at the addresses written on their envelopes. As much as I love and miss my family and friends, that sounds pretty romantic to me. I almost want to unplug myself from this online universe to see what life would be like and to really feel how much it has changed (future blog post, maybe).

Technology is changing and so are we. We will continue to change with technology as it changes and grows. I'm still figuring out how much I want to let myself change. Until I decide this, I'll keep writing, surfing, facebook spying, googling, and waiting for the robot takeover to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

The Final Countdown But Not The Venus Part Or The Final Part

I just looked up a countdown generator and I don't know how I feel about it. It counts down the seconds, minutes, hours, and days to any date. I thought about getting one for the day I return to the states after Peace Corps but I just don't like the sound of a bunch of numbers that add up to zero.

By counting down, I feel like I'm somehow subtracting from my life. It's a vacuum sucking up all the things that I'm bound to encounter these next few months only to leave me with a clean surface. Though I like to get rid of clutter and see things reflecting off of a shiny clean floor, I want to go slow. I want to take each moment, dust if off, and put it on the shelf instead of throwing it into a dusty bag of hodgepodge memories. What better way to put things neatly on a shelf than to blog it out? Also, what if I get Alzheimers? I've already told you about the moths that keep chewing holes in my brain. I have to try to document things over the next few months in order to recollect the details long after I leave Ukraine.

I want to start by reflecting on the Close of Service (COS) Conference in Chernigov. Yes, we talked about important things like adjusting to life after service, reimbursements, and de-registering from Ukraine, but it was so much more than that. It was an opportunity to see everyone in one place, reflect together, compliment each other, and sing songs until the early morning about burnings and yearnings and all the other -ings of our Peace Corps lives.

This specific blog post is my big hug to all the volunteers I have gotten to know over the past two years. I've decided against the countdown. I'm not counting down anything because those clocks are not going to stop. I've met some pretty special people here. I think you know who you are but if you don't, I'm going to tell you using super secret awesome code names that you will have to decipher for yourself and/or pretend that it's you as an excuse for a hug. (This is the part where all you non-PCVs scroll down to the pictures in order to avoid the total dork-fest about to ensue.)

Some touchy-feely hug shout outs to: Rasamaxa who can make a lot of deviled eggs, Sparkle the friendle who reads from her Kindle, Daddy-o because Daddy's creepy, The Boy who called wolf and actually saw wolf, PB&butt cherades, Merby my early morning lady, Ray of sun and the case of the dancing mushrooms, Solver of evil problems, Yekaterina the Great and her bananas, Curly Sue Master of Compliments...and many more!

I leave you with this final thought about Europe (get it?). I never actually listened to the lyrics of The Final Countdown, but they're just so relevant right now--except the whole going to Venus thing unless your a super poet (if you know what I mean):

We're leaving together
But still it's farewell 
And maybe we'll come back, 
To earth, who can tell? 
I guess there is no one to blame
We're leaving ground (leaving ground)
Will things ever be the same again?
It's the final countdown!

(But not really.)

Watch out now! Cynden's got her Colorado ppoint ready to go!

Cluster mates!!!!

That's why it's called...missing the group picture!

Mmmm box filled with pizza 

Oh Babe I Hate to Go

I worked at a teacher training summer camp with some (of the best) Peace Corps Volunteers and on the "last" night there, we had a bonfire with all of the teachers and three guitars. We sang pop songs, old Ukrainian folk songs, and we forgot the words to a lot of half sung American folk songs. At the end of the night, after all of the teachers headed back to their rooms, a few Peace Corps Volunteers stayed behind to sing a couple more songs. We ended up singing "Leaving on a Jet Plane." This song used to bring me back to the moments after Thanksgiving dinner when my family would gather around the table after cleaning up to sing songs with Uncle Tom. Now, this song has another meaning for me. It didn't hit me until the next day, when a friend mentioned that he got teary-eyed when we were singing. "We're literally going to be leaving on a jet plane soon," he said. I almost cried.

With a little under four months left in Ukraine, I look at the roll of garbage bags and eight boxes of matches left in my kitchen and wonder if I'll even need to buy more.  Everything we do feels like our potential last time doing it--it might be the last time we see this person, walk that street, or sing that song together. I don't like "lasts" these days, and I hope that they aren't as real as they seem. I'm leaving on a jet plane, but who's to say I won't come back? And who's to say that all of the people that have had such an impact on me won't come and visit me in America?

Speaking of America, I'll be back there in December. I am so excited to see everyone, but at the same time, oh babe I hate to go.

K

Last Last Bell

We celebrated the last bell on Friday, 24 May. I realized it was my last last bell in Ukraine and so I took a lot of photos, to document and to remind me later. Every great moment felt like saying goodbye, even though we still have seven months left. However, time does not pass in a normal way when you are a Peace Corps Volunteer. I know that seven months will transform into 7 days, into 7 seconds before take off back to America. I've got to stock up on my memory capital. Here's some I'd like to share with you:

Old School Uniforms and Dance

This metaphor is very popular in Ukraine

Setting up the table for eating, drinking, and drinking.

Back at the Liman, smell of fish and salt

Ladies of the Liman 

Three small swallows and a giant falling

We are the tide coming in 

Pioneer Boy lost his hand in battle

Games

Choreography

Tra la la-ing in the forest

My Manfairy

Congratulations 11th formers on graduating!
Congratulations School 16 for finishing a wonderful year!

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