Well, I am behind myself. I had meant to tell you about the spring snowstorm with snowflakes like mini snowballs; the trip to visit a friend in Stariy Krym, where we found "Cognac Country"; and my second trip to Kyiv, during which I found out just how boring a 15-hour train ride can be. But I'm going to limit myself to just a few topics.
This is still going to be long.
New Apartment
March 27 was the day, Moving Day. I longed for it, dreamed of it, worried over it. From the day I arrived in Chernomorskoe, I had kindly souls telling me, "You need an apartment in the summer? Impossible!" My host mother, my coordinator, and the principal of my school all told me not to worry, but said nothing else. In February I heard that an apartment had been found, then two weeks later heard it had been rented to someone else--news heard only from indirect sources. So I stressed, and waited, and counted the days.
In the end, everything pulled together at the last minute, like a miracle. I saw the apartment on the 27th and moved in on the 28th--only one day late.
How to describe the apartment? It's in a small building, three stories with only about 9 apartments in the whole building. The bottom floor is given over to shops, most of which are empty. There's a small food store (I want to type "magazine," which is Russian for shop) and a store called "Everything for Home," but which didn't have any extension cords the one time I went in there, and only small sponges. My apartment in on the 2nd floor and the shop space underneath me is empty. Broken windows show a dark space, but I haven't looked too closely. It doesn't interest me.
The apartment itself is two rooms, which makes it a pretty big place by local standards, especially for someone living alone. Of course, two rooms doesn't mean two bedrooms. It means one bedroom and a living-room, plus a kitchen and bathroom. All this space is stuffed full of everything I could want, and then some. For example, I have two TVs, both about as old as you can get and still have color. One of them even works. (I get two channels.) I have an iron that stains anything it touches. I have probably 500 dusty old books...in Russian, of course. If I ever feel up for some light reading--Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, or Pushkin--I've got a whole library to choose from. (This is, by the way, highly unlikely to ever be within my reach.) When I first moved in I pulled seemingly unlimited quantities of books off shelves and stuffed them into closets and cabinets, until I ran out of closets and cabinets. There are still a couple of bookcases sagging under several layers of books, but I was able to clear off enough to leave plenty of room for my own things.
The TVs, books, fancy shot glasses, and piles of old linens that threaten to rip when you touch them...well, they're only the beginning. There's also the abundance of furniture. Some Volunteers have empty apartments. I have so much furniture I don't know what to do with it. After I'd been here for a couple of weeks, my landlady told me that the neighbor, who had apparently planned to buy a couple of armchairs that were in the apartment, had changed her mind and would be bringing them back. I had no idea where they were supposed to go. Eventually I shoved them into a corner, displacing two regular chairs, which are now blocking one of the two doors to the balcony.
The upside is that I've got a nice big, unused table in the living room, and I bought a jigsaw puzzle to do. It's a perfect table for a jigsaw puzzle.
Still, there are surprising things missing. For example, I have only two teaspoons and only two knives. The knives don't really surprise me, actually--no one seems to have sharp knives--but considering how much tea people drink in this country I'm shocked about the teaspoons.
I had a friend come visit me the first weekend I was here. She was the first Volunteer to come see me in my town, let alone my apartment. She agreed that my apartment is very nice, for all the full cupboards and over-abundance of furniture. (We both got a good laugh out of the at-least-12-year-old sugar, "Made in the USSR," when we found it in the kitchen.) But she wasn't particularly impressed by my town. Her advice was to send lots of pictures home for sympathy so I'll get more care packages. It's certainly worked for her, because when I went to Kyiv last weekend she had 4 or 5 packages, and I had to help her carry one of the boxes home. She couldn't manage them all herself. (The joy of opening a package from home, by the way, is fabulous--even when it's not yours. "Is that peanut butter?" "Three jars! And peanut butter cups!" "Can I have one?" "Oooh--are those magazines?" "Julia Roberts had twins?!" "Look at all these spices!" "Hand sanitizer. You want some?" "No thanks, I have." And so on.)
I know my town isn't beautiful, but really to me it looks just like everywhere else I've seen. Sure the apartments in the Dimitryva district are ugly, but I don't think they really rate the Ugliest in Ukraine award. There's an awful lot of competition for that prize. Besides, I have a beach! And things are starting to clean up nicely as people prepare for the summer tourists, and all around things turn green. For a couple of weeks every tree in sights seemed to be covered with thousands white or pink blossoms, which--if a couple of freezes didn't kill them all--will turn into apricots and other fruit. There are no ornamental trees in this country.
The Walk to School
My new apartment is further from my school from where I lived with my host family. Actually, it's in a whole different town, called Novoselskoe--although I don't really see how it's any different from Chernomorskoe itself. But it does have it's own dot on the maps.
And I now have a much more rural walk to school, or at least the first 15 minutes of it. My walk takes me down a dirt road and past a small field where there are generally animals grazing--geese, chickens, and some bird that I think must be a turkey. (Guess I'm not a country girl if I don't know for sure!) Lately there have been sheep grazing there, strange long-haired animals that don't look like they've ever been shorn. I wonder what they're for? But they do have lambs that look the way lambs are supposed to. Sometimes I see cowns wandering around.
I walk down this little dirt road, and up a short hill that is so broken up and torn that I wonder how any cars manage it. (I've only seen one try it in the month I've lived here.) Someone told me that the kids use this as a sledding hill in the winter, even pouring water down to make it more slippery. It looks like a pretty dangerous and rocky sledding hill to me. Don't you generally want smooth hills?
Next I walk through the field of trash. It saddens me to see all the litter everywhere in Ukraine, but this field is worse than most. It borders the big apartment farm called Dimitryva, so I guess it must attract the debris from all the people living there. There are hundreds of plastic bags snagged on the grass, scraps of paper blowing here and there. Empty bottles. I would like to see Ukraine start up a public awareness campaign, begin to change people's attitudes. Some people realize that it's a bad thing, all the trash everywhere, but still they will throw a wrapper on the ground even if there's a trash bin two steps away. It makes me sad.
After this field I am in Chernomorskoe. It takes me about half an hour to get from my apartment to school, which is not a bad walk at all. There are also marshrutkas (busses) I can take, but I'm resisting figuring out their routes. The walk is good for me, and I have a feeling that once I learn how to take the marshrutka I'll walk less and less.
Teaching
I am ready for summer. The last day of school is June 1st, and I am anxiously awaiting it. Teaching has been hard and frustrating, especially now that the weather is nice and all the kids are halfway out the door to vacation. I don't feel like a real teacher, either--more like an imposter. I don't get the respect that other teachers get, which I suppose is natural. It's difficult to impose discipline when you can't fluently communicate. And since I'm on my own in the classroom most of the time, there is no other authority figure to make sure that the kids behave. Everything is made worse by the boys in the back of the room. Every classroom has a hefty percentage of students who have never bothered to learn any English but, because of the way the education system works here, are still in the same class as the kids who are interested and have learned a lot. The boys in the back of the classroom constantly talk, throw things, roughhouse, and just disrupt everything. They're very hard to deal with.
We Peace Corps Volunteers use the "Communicative Method," which means we try to make learning fun and play a lot of educational games in class. I draw pictures, play Bingo, give weird assignments like "What would you do if you had a million dollars." (Which ties in well with the If I had a Million Dollars song by Barenaked Ladies.) I hand out chocolate Easter eggs my mom sent me from America when one of the 7th formers tells me how they celebrate Easter (which was Sunday in Ukraine), and the prize for winning a game of Bingo is one playing card from a deck that has pictures of America on it. This is very different--most Ukrainian kids are used to learning things by repetition and rote memorization. It's exciting and they like it, but it makes they see me as something other than a "teacher," and more like a joke. I remember one of the Spanish teachers in my high school. She was from Uruguay, and everyone wanted to be in her class? Why? Because she was an easy grader and you wouldn't have to work veryhard if you were in her class.
I am now that teacher.
These days just the thought of school makes me grumpy, so I've been pretty grumpy for the last month or so. (This is why I haven't been writing. I can write when I'm depressed. I can write when I'm happy. But when I'm grumpy? Impossible.) Completely normal, but it's one of those endless loops of grumpiness. I'm in a bad mood. I know I'm in a bad mood. I can't do anything about being in a bad mood, which just puts me in a bad mood. Agh. This is why I'm looking forward to summer, to a couple months to clear my head and get things back in perspective.
Because really I know, intellectually, that they are learning from me. There's a lot a native English speaker can offer.
I wanted to share with you all one of the reading selections from the 9th grade textbook, used in almost all schools in Ukraine. (I have typed this very carefully to make sure I got it just right.) No author is cited, but it's the standard V.M. Plakhotnyk 9th form textbook, used everywhere in Ukraine. For your enjoyment...
THEY All ARE CRYING
Once during a family quarrel little Jim was punished by his parents. Being offended he decided to run away from home. By doing so he thought he would teach his parents a lesson. It turned out, however, that he could hardly stand even one day absence from home, especially when he learned from his neighbour that all home were crying after him. That is his story:
"I was slowly walking in the direction of Fryingpan Alley when I suddenly met Jerry, my next door neighbour and a good friend of mine. He embraced me with his arms, showing that he was glad to see me.
"What, Jim? Where are you going?" asked Jerry.
"I really don't know where I'm going, Jerry," I replied (answered) shaking hands with him. I am thinking of going home just to see..."
"Then you haven't been at home since the morning," Jerry's voice was trembling as he asked the question.
"No," I replied, "I've been away all day. How are they all, Jerry?" Jerry made no reply to my question. "If you haven't been at home, you had better go now," said he, giving me a jerk in the direction in which he wanted me to go. Jerry's behavior at once aroused my suspicions.
"I can go without your pulling, Jerry. What are you pulling me for?"
"Why, they are crying after you at home."
"Who is crying?"
"Who? Your father, and your mother, and young Poll."
Everyone is crying for me! My eyes filled with tears.
"Are you quite sure, Jerry?" I asked getting on my legs.
"Absolutely. I am telling you. They are all crying after you, and are waiting for you to come back."
