Winter Adventures in Ukraine

Brrrrr... its so cold here in Ukraine now! It has been between -10 and -20 degrees C in my town, which is definitely a lot colder than winters in Atlanta, GA. Many children are getting the flu, and schools across Ukraine tend to either shorten classes or cancel school altogether when it gets too cold outside. Many of my friends who live in the Donetsk Oblast have quarantine at their schools, meaning that school has been canceled to prevent the students from getting sick from each other. Well, I'm not sure how cold is "too cold" to go to school, but my school is still operating normally for now. My town newspaper published an article about me coming to work at the Lyceum and about my sitemate Sam who works at the Gymnasium in our town. Here are two photos from the newspaper- I uploaded them and can't seem to rotate them back to horizontal (sorry, blogfail!).

My picture from the front page.

In the classroom with a few of my 8th grade students.

This past weekend, I traveled to visit my friend Alison in the neighboring town (about an hour away from me). Alison lives in an apartment building close to her town's Бокзал (vokzal - train station) and right next to a swimming pool! We went swimming with a few teachers from her school, which was quite the adventure... they made us take legit showers (including washing our bodies with soap) before we put on our swimsuits, only then were you allowed to get into the pool area. Most swimming pools have a rule that you should shower before swimming, but this was honestly the first pool that I have been to in many years that strictly enforces the shower before swimming rule.

The pool turned out to be a 3 lane by 20 meter pool, which was completely strange and foreign to me. I've traveled to quite a few countries and swam in their pools, and this is the FIRST pool that I have encountered that hasn't been one of the international standard lengths of 25 meters (short course), 25 yards (American short course), or 50 meters (Olympic size/long course). They only had one lap swim lane, and no T on the bottom or flags... but they did have blocks! I wish I could have taken a photo of the pool, but I forgot to bring my camera with me.

There is also an outdoor skating rink and football stadium near Alison's apartment. While the football field is completely snowed over, the ice skating rink is super cute. You can rent skates and go ice skating there for just $8 UAH (the equivalent of $1 USD) per hour. Alison goes ice skating there frequently with students from her school, and they invited me to go along with them!

Yasa and I - she is one of Alison's cute 6th graders.

Alison and a few more of her students.

Yesterday, Alison's sitemate Tiago met up with us downtown and we went to their Bazaar (open air market) to go shopping for some fresh food. We decided to make pizza using lavash (the Ukrainian version of tortillas) and random toppings such as pineapple, ham, cheese, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, beans, and red bell peppers. The pizza was really easy to make and turned out delicious!

so many toppings!

Today, Alison and Tiago and I decided to go check out the old steel mill on the edge of their town. The Kharkiv region used to be a very busy industrial production area with many factories about 50 or 60 years ago. It used to be one of the biggest steel mills during Soviet times, and they employed around 35,000 workers. I'm not sure what happens in the steel mill now (since my industrial Russian vocabulary is pretty limited), but there are still guards posted at the entrances to the mill and the factory is still surrounded by barbed wire. We were hoping to be able to walk inside and take a look at their production lines or operations, but the factory is closed to the public so here are some photos from our walk around the outside of the steel mill.

This sign says that this is a Soviet factory.

maybe an old shipping/receiving dock of their warehouse?

One of the old gates to the factory.

piles of old materials covered in snow.

A crane and some sort of conveyor belt behind the gate.

This week at school, I taught the Past Continuous tense to my 5th grade class. I wrote out a bunch of different verbs, pronouns, and all the names of the students for them to come up to the board and build a sentence in the Past Continuous tense (disclaimer: the teacher that I work with wrote the stuff on the chalkboard). Also, I applied for Darien Book Aid and my request got approved! That means that 20 lbs of free English books will be shipped to my site soon. I'm really excited to see what they send us :)

Helping one of my students learn Past Continuouse.

5th graders love talking about playing football!

 One of the English teachers that I work with at my school was nice enough to give me a jar of pickles and a jar of pickled squash. Her name is Svetlana and she hosted the Peace Corps volunteer that my school had from 2006-08. She brought me pickles because she remembered that the other PCV girl loved pickles... I love Ukrainian pickles too! The pickles here are all home grown and home-made, canned in glass mason jars. And this reminds me of  The Pickle Project, a project by two girls who worked in Ukraine as Fulbright Scholars. You can check out their project here about the local foodways of Ukraine, including the sustainable food practices of growing and selling produce locally.

Mmmm... pickled squash and cucumbers!

Gifts for My Ukrainian Host Family and Friends

Almost every Peace Corps packing list has advised us to bring along some gifts for our host family in Ukraine, and for the friends that we will meet along our journey. Many PCVs also give gifts to their Ukrainian counterparts at their school or in their workplace. The packing lists that I have read have recommended small things that are made in the USA or souvenir-type trinkets like shotglasses, magnets, postcards, puzzles, hats, ties, small scented body lotions, stickers, etc.The gifts are expected to be generic, and apparently Ukrainians really enjoy things from your hometown or with pictures of life in the United States.

So I went down to Chinatown here in San Francisco last weekend to do a little souvenir shopping. You really can't beat Chinatown's prices for things like this... shotglasses that were $1 in Chinatown would sell for like $4.99 just a few blocks away in Union Square. And Ukrainians love shotglasses since they are useful and some people even collect them as a hobby. I bought some San Francisco shotglasses, magnets and keychains. I also bought a bunch of postcards and I have some New York City postcards from our family trip as well. Sasha, my Peer Advisor, recommended that I go buy a few cheap frames to frame some of the postcards. She says that framed postcards actually look classy and are nice gifts - she gave one to her coworker and Sasha's coworker keeps it on her wardrobe in her living room!

While I was downtown with my family, we ate dinner at a nice Italian restaurant. I forgot the name of it, should have grabbed a business card or something. My sister ordered a Create-Your-Own-Pizza dish, which she thought meant that she just picked the toppings for it. She picked tomatoes, meatballs, and mushrooms. To her surprise, our waiter brought out the raw pizza dough, tomato sauce, cheese, and toppings for her to actually put the pizza together herself! She was really excited and here is a picture of her pizza creation!

I picked up some cheap puzzles and flashcards at Target. One of the puzzles is a map of the United States and the other one is of a $1 dollar bill. The flashcards are US History and Presidents.... two things that I need to brush up on myself! I can use these in the classroom for activities and games with my students. Its also recommended that we bring some dice and the card game Uno to play number games with.

My sister wanted to go to the Niketown store in Union Square, so we went inside. They were giving away some free Nike Silly Bandz to promote something, so I grabbed a handful of those to give to the high schoolers (or kids) that I teach in Ukraine. I have no idea if they are popular there, but I'm sure they will be since my sister is in high school and pretty much obsessed with them.

We also saw a Rolls Royce outside of Chinatown. There was a wedding at a church on Grant Street, and the drive had rolled out a red carpet leading from the church doors right up to the Rolls Royce. So fancy :)

 Another exciting thing is that my Russian/English Pocket Dictionary came in the mail yesterday! It is not as pocket-sized as I thought it would be... its about 2 inches thick. But the reviews of it online said that it was a good dictionary to have. Plus I bought it pretty cheap on Amazon.com, so I think it will be worth its size and weight that it takes up in my luggage. I was proud of myself when I was able to translate the Cyrillic font on the spine to "Anglo-Russki".