Alison's World Map Project, Eating Mexican Food and Visiting a Village School

I know its been a few weeks since my last post, I apologize since I was sick for about a week. I traveled to my friend Alison's town to help her with her World Map project two weekends ago. The Peace Corps World Map mural project is a project where volunteers have been painting on walls, floors, walkways, and virtually any flat surface since 1988 when PCV Barbara Jo White launched the idea in the Dominican Republic. As you may know, 2011 is the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps, the 41st anniversary of Earth Day, and the 23rd anniversary of the beginning of this map project. I was proud to be able to help Alison and her students with this project at her school :)

Step 1: The students divided into 4 teams to work on different corners of the map.

Step 2: They outlined the countries in pencil.

Step 3: Draw the outline of the countries in black marker. This is Alison and Brooks working with the kids on drawing North and South America.

Step4: Paint each country's flag on the map. Alison and I are working on America and Canada.

Alison and Ira working on South America.

A group of students working on Australia.

I went to Kharkiv with a few other volunteers from my oblast and we found a nice little Mexican restaurant called La Cucaracha (which means cockroach in Spanish) on Sumskaya Street. I wish I had taken some more pictures inside the restaurant because it actually had the feel of a Mexican restaurant from home. The menu consisted of traditional Mexican food dishes, transliterated from Spanish into Russian and then with the ingredients listed in Russian. Our waitress was super sweet and spoke English very well.

Andy loves his fajita!

I got hard shell tacos... and then ordered a quesadilla because I was still hungry after these 3 tacos haha.

I also went to visit one of the nearby village schools with my friend Oksana. The village is about 30 minutes away from my town by car, and it has about 70 students and 15 teachers. Oksana is the only English teacher at the school and all of her students were really excited to meet me and practice talking with a native speaker. I don't have many photos from my camera, so here are a few for now and I will post some more later when I get Oksana's photos. 

The front of the school building, which was apparently built in 1963.

Oksana's students made me a welcome banner!

The school was having a small Ukrainian festival/market... kind of like a school bake sale with homemade food and some small handicrafts.

The 9th form table was still being setup but they have some traditional Ukrainian embroidered cloths.

7th form prepared some lollipops, cookies and blinchiki (pancakes).

Me with two of the 9th form girls, wearing one of the traditional flower headbands.

This week is spring break at my school... I'm being boring and hanging out at home, then working at my friend Sasha's weekend camp next weekend. I am teaching lessons about the Southern United States so this should be fun :)

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Peace Corps, Making Friendship Bracelets, Indian Food Night and International Women's Day

Sorry for the delay in updating my blog, the past couple weeks have been a little hectic! I wrapped up the International Writing Olympics by selecting winners from each form (8th-11th) and typing up their entries to submit to our Oblast coordinator for judging. Kharkiv Oblast will then send its winning submissions along to the National level in Kyiv. The water was also out in my apartment for a full week... Going to the well to draw buckets of water when it is icy and like -20 degrees outside really makes you appreciate having running water inside your apartment! It turned out that the pipes in my building froze over and the water returned when it finally warmed up a bit to -5 degrees.

Image designed by Danny Zawacki, courtesy of the PC Ukraine creative team.

On March 1st, Peace Corps celebrated its 50th anniversary! The United States Peace Corps was founded by President John F. Kennedy on March 1st, 1961 and this year also marks the 20th anniversary of the Peace Corps in Ukraine. My school's alumni magazine published an article about the Peace Corps, including alums who are RPCVs and I was highlighted as a current PCV! You can check out the article online here.

An excerpt from the GT Alumni magazine article, courtesy of Kimberly Link-Wills.

Last week in English club, we made some friendship bracelets! My 5th-7th graders have been bugging me about how to make the bracelets for a few weeks since I wear a bracelet made by my sister Celina on my left wrist. I finally bought the embroidery string and taught the students how to make the chevron-style bracelet, using 4 different colors. I drew a picture of how to tie the knots onto the strings to help the students visualize and supplement the instructions in English.

Some of my students making friendship bracelets in English Club.

Separating the strands of embroidery thread, keeping them in the right order to make the chevron pattern.

A closeup of the chevron pattern friendship bracelet, scotch taped onto a desk for easier braiding.

Last weekend, I traveled to my friend Jillian's site to enjoy some tasty home-cooked Indian food! She lives about 3 hours from Kharkiv, in a small town about the size of mine. Her town has some cool statues in the center, along with a small church.

Maybe George and the Dragon?

A statue of an angel.

The church and a small tank.

Jillian received a box of spices and assorted other ingredients to make Indian food, so she invited the Kharkiv Oblast PCV's over to share the feast. We each made our own naan (Jillian made the dough from scratch), also had a few different curry dishes, some chicken and rice :)

Step 1: flatten the dough.

Step 2: Erika and Jacob demonstrating how to put the dough on the pan and fry it in oil.

Step 3: Whitney flipping the dough over as it begins to turn golden brown.

Step 4: add some assorted spices to your naan.

Step 5: enjoy your naan with the rest of your meal!

We also celebrated International Women's Day on March 8th. In Ukraine, we can say "Поздравляю всех девушек и женщин с праздником Международный женский!" in Russian - which translates to I congratulate all girls and women with the International Women's Day holiday! Last Friday, many of the students were dressed up in the "official" black and white business professional school uniforms and the 11th formers greeted all women at the front door of the school with a song and chant of congratulations!

The 11th formers with their little spring headbands :)

With Jenia and Marina, two of my 10th formers.

I am so excited for spring to be here! The days are getting longer and the sun doesn't set until after 5pm now. And the snow is finally beginning to melt in my town... which means that I need to bust out my trusty Yak Trax since the streets have turned from packed down snow into slick solid ice.