A Day in the Life of Ukraine: May 5th, 2012

I've been really behind on my blog since our school had exams to finish up the semester, and now that school is out I have a little more time on my hands... This blog post was my submission to "A Day in the Life of Ukraine," a project organized by two Peace Corps Volunteers, Melissa Krut and Andrew Cartright. The idea of the project is to capture a glimpse into the diversity of life in Ukraine, with many people from all over the country sharing their personal stories and experiences on one day of the year. 

On May 5^th, 2012 my sitemate Sam Choi and I conducted a mini-camp for students from our schools. This camp was focused on HIV/AIDS education and awareness, and each of the volunteers taught a lesson with the help of one of Sam’s 11^th grade students. The camp was funded by Sam’s PEPFAR grant – also known as the Presidents Executive Program for AIDS Relief.  

The students are showing off the posters that they made about HIV. 

Due to a lack of education about HIV and AIDS, many Ukrainians are afraid of anything associated with this disease. This leads to an enormous stigma attached to being HIV positive in this country so therefore, many people choose not to get tested because simply being seen walking into a testing center may lead to problems in their professional and private lives. These are just a few of the reasons why it is especially important to teach accurate information about prevention and transmission to better educate our communities, hopefully also reducing stigma and discrimination. 

We began the camp by playing some classic American summer camp games as icebreakers, such as “Let Me See Your Funky Chicken,” "Baby Shark" and “Boom Chicka Boom”. Ukrainian kids always think that these types of active songs and games are hilarious because they don't tend to sing such songs at Ukrainian camps. 

Acting out "Baby Shark" - this is the part where they saw a shark... 

After that, the students were divided into 5 teams and we began teaching our lessons. I taught a lesson with one of Sam's 11th form students, Ira Melenchenko, about HIV Biology and Transmission. 

The other lessons were Prevention, Stigma and Discrimination, Statistics and a condom demonstration. The students rotated through all of the lessons during the day with their teams. I think that the students enjoyed the team-taught lessons, we did our best to make these serious topics interesting so that they would pay attention and be active participants. 

10th form boys listening in their lesson. 

Learning about prevention.

Discussing stigma and discrimination. 

The camp lasted from 10am until 4pm, and we invited several other Peace Corps Volunteers from our Oblast to come help teach lessons and work with the students. Sam conducted a “training of trainers” with some of his students last year, and they have been actively helping him with his HIV-related projects during the course of this year.

Kyle lesson planning with 2 of the girls.

We took a break during the afternoon to have some relay races and let the kids run around outside. The Ukrainian kids had never participated in what Americans would consider to be classic outdoor games, such as a 3-legged race or wheelbarrow race. This was an interesting cross-cultural moment: whereas American children think that its perfectly normal to run around barefoot, Ukrainian children are mildly appalled by this idea and some of them actually grimaced at the thought of taking their shoes off. 

The boys are ready to start the wheelbarrow race. 

The girls thought taking just 1 shoe off was crazy... 

Working together to figure out how to make a pyramid with 6 people was challenging. 

But they got it... this team was the winner! 

Throughout the day, each team of students worked to help paint two benches that Sam bought for their AIDS Memorial Garden. Each student had the opportunity to paint their name or a fact about HIV. Some students even painted statistics that they learned during the day! 

Starting to paint the red ribbon for HIV awareness. 

a few girls working on their sections. 

The two finished HIV/AIDS Memorial benches! 

The last step in Sam's PEPFAR grant is to plant some red flowers in the shape of a giant red ribbon, and they will place the two benches along the garden to complete the AIDS Memorial. Sam is still currently working on digging the garden, so I'll post up some photos here when he is finished (maybe in a week or so). 

Ukrainian Easter Celebrations, the Euro Cup 2012 Kickoff Party, and Victory Day in Kharkiv!

Still catching up on my spring photos from Kharkiv.... Ukrainians celebrated Easter here a week later than America, because they follow the Eastern Orthodox calendar. They bake traditional Easter cakes called "paskas", which looks like a giant Funfetti cupcake but is actually more like a sweet bread with raisins. Here are some photos from the Easter display in Kharkiv's Freedom Square (Площадь Свободы).

The display was huge!

with the Easter egg tree. 

GIANT Easter eggs and cakes :D

Since I'll be working as a UEFA volunteer for Euro Cup 2012 in Kharkiv, I was invited to attend the Kickoff Party along with the 400+ other volunteers. We met at a place called Chateau Ledo in downtown Kharkiv and hung out for a few hours. I wanted to meet the other people who will be working with me in Ticketing, but there were so many people that it turned out more like a disco than an orientation (which is what I thought it would be).

The main stage.... they hired a famous Ukrainian DJ who spoke so fast that I didn't ever catch his name.  

The DJ guy with 2 players from FC Kharkiv Metalist. 

The presentation was in pure Ukrainian and the DJ spoke super fast, so he was really difficult to understand. I would catch maybe 2 words out of each of his sentences, then I tried to ask my Ukrainian friends near me and they had a hard time hearing what he said too (though it was because of the loud sound system, not because they were having problems understanding the language). Overall, the party was okay but not something I would have attended if I had known it was going to be all in Ukrainian. Since English is the official language of UEFA and of EuroCup 2012, I was hoping that they would have run this event in both English and Ukrainian. There are many other volunteers from different countries around the world, so I definitely wasn't the only foreigner who was having a hard time understanding what was going on.

My friend Yulia and I got a photo with the Euro Cup 2012 mascots.

We also got a photo with Papa Gueye, the Kharkiv Metalist defender from Senegal.

Ukraine celebrates Victory Day (День Победы) on May 9th every year, it is an official public holiday and we had school off so I traveled to Kharkiv to check out the celebrations there. They had a large stage setup in Freedom Square, and a parade to honor all the veterans of WWII. In the evening, they had a concert with some famous Ukrainian and Russian singers, but I was afraid of getting lost in the crowd of thousands of people so I stayed at home and watched it on TV instead :D

setting up the stage... I took this photo at like 4pm and people were already waiting in the front row for the concert which started at 8pm. 

policemen guarding the jumbotron. 

soldiers salute. 

thats right, they rolled tanks through the square. 

marching in perfect unison.

Spring Break: English Speaking Countries Camp in Izum

My spring break was the last week of April, so I'm still lagging a little behind on my blog posts. I spent a few days in the nearby town of Izum, where my PCV friends Danny and Shannon organized a mini-camp for their students. Izum is the second-largest town in Kharkiv Oblast (after Kharkiv) and they are known for their raisins! The word Izum in Russian means raisin, but I'm not sure if the town was named after raisins or vice versa.

The PCVs with Shannon's counterpart. 

The theme of the camp was English Speaking Countries so we had quite a few interesting country studies lessons. Shannon taught about Australia, Kenny taught about South Africa, Erika taught about Belize, Sam taught about Jamaica, Danny taught about Ireland.

Kenny with his team. 

Erika showing different exotic animals from Belize. 

Sam showing Jamaican food. 

Shannon playing Australian Jeopardy. 

Danny's rendition of the east coast of the United States is possibly the best free-hand drawing of a map I've ever seen!

I taught a lesson about India including a Fact File, traditional foods, traditional clothing, and some popular monuments like the Taj Mahal. We also tried to do a little bit of yoga but ended up only doing standing poses because the kids didn't want to sit on the floor :) Here are a few highlights with my team of 7th and 8th grade students.

I had my team design their own henna hand drawings. 

Our team's henna hand poster!

this is how we can we portray the Taj Majal.

and a peacock looks like this...

tree pose!

gliding from Warrior 3 haha

me and Team India!

We also had an egg-drop challenge, where each team was given an hour to construct something to protect an egg from breaking. All the teams had the same materials: newspaper, plastic forks, drinking straws and scotch tape. Shannon dropped the eggs from different heights outside on the playground, and the winner was the team whose egg dropped from the tallest height before breaking.

my team building their egg contraption. 

ours looked like a mini hot air balloon. 

Kenny's team made something like a helicopter. 

Shannon dropping the bowl-like thing that Danny's team made.

Erika's girls made a box which worked pretty well. 

At the end of the camp, each team prepared a presentation about their country. It was interesting to see how much the kids learned from their team leader. Each team also colored a number of individual squares, and then we glued them together to form a patchwork World Map.

This is where South Africa is... 

Showing off the Eurasia continent!

I n d I A ! 

Danny with Team Ireland

Erika and her team

Shannon being some sort of Australian animal haha

Sam sang Bob Marley's "One Love" with his team :)

After the camp, we hung out outside and enjoyed the spring sunshine. Erika and I walked around the town a little bit while the other volunteers played soccer with a bunch of neighborhood kids. Here are the photos from our Ukrainian-style photo session :D

swings!

a funny park statue of an old grandfather and grandmother. 

the Ukrainian "tri-zub" symbol (which translates to 3 teeth, but is really a trident). 

with Lenin. 

yeah, I've got mad gymnastics skills... look at that pointy toe!

just hanging out :P