6th day April 10, 2010

I forgot to mention the young man we met on the train to Lviv. His name is Roma and he was on his way with a group of students to Lviv for a shooting competition. He had been listening to music the night before, but in the morning he overheard our conversation in English and wanted to "ask one question"- if I was English. I understand that it is rare here for students of English get an opportunity to practice with a native speaker. We talked for quite a while. His English was quite good; I gave him my card and hope to hear from him.
Saturday morning,we awoke in our hotel and went to the breakfast buffet, which had a much more extensive, more American style breakfast with eggs and sausage. I most enjoyed the COFFEE!Then we took the tram to the town center to purchase more of the tiny painted eggs at the market, but most of the stalls were not yet set up. We finally found some and I also bought a shawl from a wizened old lady after bargaining a bit. Back in the square, we caught the tram to go out to Shevchenko forest on the outskirts of town. We climbed up a hill in a nice area of town to finally arrive at the forest at the top. In amongst the birch, oak and fir trees stood many transplanted cottages from the Carpathian mountains originally from the 19th century, a living museum, so to speak. These were wood shingled churches and homes with thatched roofs. Each house had a large square hearth, with flat bench areas to sit next to the fire to tend it, and a flat surface above and behind the fireplace for sleeping. Many of these homes had no chimneys, as these as well as windows were subject to taxes. I can only imagine how sooty everything became! The small chapels were of dark wood, with gleaming icons and rose-colored windows.In one cottage, we tried on the peasant clothes and posed for a dozen pictures, looking very domestic--baking bread and serving food, etc. This was all great fun. Lyudmila has such a wonderful sense of humor, that she's a terrific travel companion.
The entire day it threatened to rain and became quite cool at times, but it held off for awhile. We returned on the tram, where Lyuda was scolded and fined for not stamping our tickets in the little machine that we didn't know we were to use. Lyuda called the two chastising women "snakes" each time she referred to them! When we returned to the Opera plaza, we found an expensive new shopping center tucked in the buildings, a gleaming 4 story arcade with cafes, luxury clothing, and "La Piazza" where we ate German sausages and garlic soup to warm up. Before we left, we went down to the bottom floor to the small market for coffee and yet another sweet!
After lunch, we began to walk to another tram stop, but we had to stop again for a sweets shop. Lyuda loves these chocolates. We stocked up with several small bags of goodies for the train ride home. The trip back on the train was really interesting. Some construction workers were returning to Russia after being home for Easter for a visit to their families. Their trip would last 2 1/2 days, so they came well prepared with plenty of food and vodka. By the time we got on the train, I had gotten chilled from the rain. However, the "builders" offered some vodka to warm up. I find it interesting how readily strangers break out the food and drink to share, so much more so than in the states, where everyone ignores each other. They are more willing to talk to each other as well, but for the most part they talk quietly and try not to disturb others. They don't gesture much either. Though they can get noisy when drinking, (later that night they kept us awake a bit) it could have been much worse. One of the workers spoke with us for a long time. Unhappily, he was leaving his wife and young son behind. He had a 6 month contract and had been paid only intermittently. Life is hard for those who must work abroad.

fifth day April 9, 2010

I slept only intermittently on the overnight; the bedrolls are thin and the train noisy of course. The toilets are, as Lyuda says, "stone age", but I've seen worse. I wish I'd rolled up my pant legs a bit before going in, though, as the floor was very wet. The countryside is steppe, flat farmlands with poplar and birch trees breaking up the landscape. We talked about schools, education reforms, employment, and garbage problems in her town. The this morning at 10 AM we left the train and were met by a shuttle driver on the platform. He took us directly to the hotel Ryker, which means "train". This hotel is beautiful and new, set back from the street so it is also private and quiet. The restaurant is classy, but on the whole, expensive. After a bite eat, we met with hour English speaking tour guide for a 3 hour tour of Lviv. Igor was very well spoken and knowledgeable about the city; when I asked about his English, he said he had not lived abroad, but was a "brilliant student" of English. Though he was a mathematician, he earned most of his income by being a guide. He told us there were 68 churches in Lviv, and I think he may have shown us most of them!! They are beautiful,Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or a combination. We saw the inside of several and then up the City Hall tower where we had a view of the entire city. He also took us through the Jewish quarter and the Armenian quarter. At the end of our tour, he took us into a shop where I bought a lovely doll (matonka) for around $30 (250 Hr). I wondered if it was too much but paid it anyway. Later we went to the outdoor market with many goods for tourists: post cards, magnets, painted eggs, traditional Ukrainian blouses and embroidered linens. There I bought several things: a blouse (vyshyvanka), belt, and headband(chichka); a tablecloth; several wooden eggs (pysanka); ukrainian military pins and hats for the "boys"; a doll for my sister; some amber jewelry I'm going to pull apart and distribute amongst my beading friends; post cards; playing cards with scenes of Lviv; spikey wooden clubs for Dmitri and Angus (bulava). After an hour at the market, we went to the main square in front of the beautiful opera house. After another bite in an uninspiring cafe, we walked back to the hotel, stopping along the way for coffee (instant) and a beer. It was an odd little place, not uncommonly tiny-- about the size of Rick's study at home. Having finished the coffee, we returned to the hotel, dropped our things and then ventured further down the street to the nearby Catholic church and the Stepan Bandera monument at sunset. We finally returned to the hotel, exhausted, for long hot showers in the wonderful bathroom. The trip was expensive but worth it. Lyudmila did an amazing job planning everything!

fourth day April 8, 2010

Today was another busy day with many lessons, first visiting Natalia Tretiak's English classroom. To apologize for missing her lesson yesterday, I brought her some US chocolate cherries from Washington. Her class was very busy with many activities planned; students created dialogues about being a tourist abroad and they had some of the quietest group discussions I had ever seen. I even had to video record it! (see the video post). In Oksana's classroom, she taught a Ukrainian language lesson, but I had trouble understanding the sequence of the activities. In one part she worked with them on numbers, using proverbs and sayings to help them learn. In Lyudmila's 9th form, there were only 9 of 19 students, as the rest had gone to the hospital to get their vaccinations. We worked on the "This Land is Your Land" lesson here and then later with the 7th form, who seemed more interested in the lesson and trying to pronounce things correctly. I videotaped them as well (see video post). I was so proud of how well they did! I also showed them some pictures of NYC, Moscow, and MJHS. Students seemed really interested in the skate park, the pool, and how clean the town was. They liked all the parks, too.
After this, we left school to get ready for our train trip. I returned to the hotel, packed, and rested until time for dinner. The hotel owner and his friends were "socializing" in the adjoining room; one of them came out to use the toilet and began trying to talk to me, and when he discovered I was from the states, he said "Utah" and "morman". Then the owner discovered him talking with me and had quite the time trying to get the rather drunk friend away from me. He was very apologetic, not that I knew exactly what he was saying, but I got the idea!
Soon, Lyudmila came to pick me up and we headed to the train station for our 7:30 pm train. There we got on, and found our seats in the middle of the 6th compartment, 2 benches with a small table between and a bench above each side and then a third, higher shelf for goods. Across the corridor were two small seats and a table with another sleeping bench above. Lyuda is always concerned that we have enough chocolates to eat, so much that I'm almost sick of chocolate! I thought that was impossible!

third day April 7, 2010

This has been a long day! It started off well, with the owner of the hotel giving us a ride to school because I was bringing all of my video equipment and we were about to take a taxi. We arrived at school in plenty of time and I began to set up, when I realized to my horror that I'd left my small bag of all the connecting cords back in my room. With no taxi available, Lyudmila persuaded a colleague to take me back and pick them up. However, he misunderstood and thought we were waiting for her to come with us, so I was standing around as he threw out the ball to his gym class. Finally, he went to get her and she told him where to go (apparently, very few people even know there is a hotel in town, let alone where it is). I was able to return in time to do the lesson, but I had missed the lesson the other English teacher had prepared for me to observe, and this made her very upset. The students were disappointed as well. This was not start I wanted!How embarrassing! After that rocky start, I taught the 5th formers "Home on the Range". The lesson went very well and the students worked hard.
Next, I visited a Ukrainian language class, with 2nd or 3rd formers. Many of the girls were very nicely dressed with fancy white ribbons in their hair. Later I had lunch in the cafeteria with borsh soup and mashed potatoes and chicken, tea as well. The children clean up after themselves and are very orderly. The cafeteria in the basement is small but still light and airy, and the cooks wear tall hats of white linen.
When I needed to use the bathroom at lunch time, Lyudmila seemed quite embarrassed to tell me the regular ones were outside (outhouses). I used the only inside one off of the kitchen, which I still did not sit down on it and it only used gravity and a scoop of water from the calcified scoop and tub of water from the room next to the WC. What we don't bother to appreciate at home!!!
After lunch we went to a short teachers' meeting where they spent 20 minutes in intense debate over which style of uniform to adopt for the school children. We met in the computer lab (the only one in the building, with 12 computers) in order to see the choices on the internet. Lyudmila tells me the internet is very slow. I don't think anything was settled.
That afternoon, the school prepared for a folk performance in my honor. They have no central auditorium, so the main corridor in the upstairs was cleared out and Lyuda displayed the girls' embroidery work. After core classes, the girls go to the equivalent of Home Ec, and the boys to "labor training" classes. I saw no evidence of many of our elective style classes-- art or music, etc. They have some opportunity for these in after school volunteer programs. The students presented their hour long show with several skits and songs, the youngest performed about the coming of spring; older students acted out tales of a young woman who turns into a poplar tree as she yearns for her lover, and another story about a girl who is promised to marry the csar. The acting style was very theatrical and demonstrative, and it was evident that they had worked very hard.
At the end of the day, we left the school and were driven outside of the city-- the director of the region, whom I had visited yesterday, had arranged for a car and driver to take us around. Lyuda, like most of the women, does not drive, and her husband was cone to Kirovograd for certification classes each day for these two weeks, so the arrangement was really helpful. First the driver took us to see a new hotel being built on the edge of town; they call it "green tourism" when referring to country/recreational trips. The new building is a nice brick 2 story place with large garden areas and a fountain which will overlook the river. The river area is very pretty, but much of Novoukrainka is terribly littered with garbage. Lyudmila says that while there is a garbage collection service, no one has the money to pay for it, so they just toss it everywhere. The banks of the river, the parks and the city streets are strewn with piles of garbage.
From there we drove out to a village where Lyuda met with a former director of the region, now a wealthy farmer with 5,000 hectares. His office was in a very non-descript building (very few businesses have obvious signs, so it is difficult to tell if there is anything inside and there are no large window fronts on the buildings). Serge drove us himself, in his "very nice car" (his Lexus, with a GPS tuned to somewhere in Florida-- it seemed to be only a conversation piece), to his ostrich farm. Serge had spent 6 months learning American farming in Indiana and toured 21 states. He spoke some English, and Lyuda said the was a very good "master"-- not just as a businessman, but as a philanthropist who donated money. At the ostrich farm we met his father, and got close up to his 20o ostriches. I boldly asked him for ostrich feathers and received one black and one white. From there, he proposed we head to an adjacent forested area (mostly birches), where we sat at a picnic table amongst the blooming violets and drank Crimean cognac and at hazelnut chocolates. What a lovely way to spend the afternoon! Afterwards we returned to his office and met up with the first driver who took us further out to the "sanitorium", where we walked round the building along the river and among the lovely oak trees.
Finally, at the end of the day, we stopped by the market (about the size of Otto's produce) for a few things as I had not ordered dinner back at the hotel.

2nd day April 6, 2010

I have had both breakfast and dinner here now, some soup/tortellini stuff this AM and some soup, salad (tomato/cucumber/onion), and a piece of meat with cheese and mushrooms. I've been eating all day; mid-day we stopped in at a teacher's classroom for a snack that consisted of wine, jellied meat, and sweets (to celebrate her birthday and my arrival). We toured the school library and some classrooms, saw the students; the school is old and has limited resources. The halls are wide, the classrooms big and light-filled, but the sinks in front of the cafeteria are ready to fall off the wall and the steps are much like those in my hotel, uneven and poorly measured. It feels like walking in a fun-house. However, the students are eager to meet me and are well disciplined. I was surprised to see several classrooms unsupervised. Even the young students were without a teacher, and in one classroom they were playing with only a few Legos. The students were obviously anxious to practice their English, greeting me in the hallway with "Good morning!" From there we went downtown to see another, more privileged school. While the students themselves were better dressed, the building itself may have looked even worse. The rooms and halls were crowded and dark; few open spaces are well-lit. At this school, we talked in a round table discussion with 12 students and 3 teachers, as well as the Peace Corps volunteer who joined us. She, small world that it it, is from the Portland area. The students here at the Gymnasium are amazing and their English is excellent. They spoke about wanting to work abroad as lawyers and interpreters. They study a great deal, with no time for sports, and like English, computers, and "jumping in the streets" which sounds like skateboarding with no board.
After this, we visited the local director of the district, Alecsander Yacovich. In his office, we were ushered in, given sweet wine and specialty chocolates. He then spoke of his pride in the area, his changes to the community, and plans for a celebration in May honoring the WWII siege and the survivors who might visit. He then presented me with a needlepoint of a cossack (hetman)and a straw and dried fruit/vegetable ornamental picture that seems to be a protectorate for the home.
Finally, we stopped at the Palace of Culture (much like the local community theater) where we picked up rented costumes for tomorrow's Ukrainian folk festival. The building has the same problems of much of the town, lack of maintenance makes it appear to be falling apart.

I didn't think I would miss coffee so much, but I had tea for breakfast and almost jumped when Lyudmila offered me coffee in her home this afternoon.

First day April 5, 2010

I've been in Ukraine for 24 hours now. Yesterday I arrived at 5 pm in the Kiev airport (pop.2 million), much smaller than I had anticipated--only somewhat harder than Lewiston's (an airport serving an area of about 60,000 people). I went through customs with no questions; no one even looked in my bags. Lyudmila and her son Sasha were there waiting for me with big hugs. We waited for a "real taxi", one called, instead of one on the street front. We took the taxi to the bus station, had a bite to eat there, then got on the bus for a 5 1/2 hour ride to Kirovograd, talking all the way about school, the country, her children (Sasha is a dance teacher in Moscow, Russia, who is visiting until Saturday). After a long ride, L's husband met us at 1 AM in the bus station at Kirovograd and then we drove to Novoukrainka. The roads are in terrible shape, with huge potholes, and unlit. It made me glad I was sitting in the back so I couldn't see the road. About 45 minutes later, we arrived at the hotel, then spent some time debating how hot the water was and how cold the room was. I have 2 large rooms, bed and sitting room, and a private bath; I eventually showered in the sauna downstairs, because the water in the room wouldn't get hot but I took the wrong bag downstairs, so without shampoo, I had to wash my hair with soap--it looked terrible this morning!