Back to School!

Yesterday, my lyceum had its "First Bell" ceremony, the traditional first day of school opening celebration... a full student body assembly outside with tons of parents and grandparents. And yes, yesterday was Saturday. All primary and secondary schools in Ukraine traditionally start on the 1st of September, so we started our school back up on a Saturday. This is what "First Bell" looked like: all of the students lined up with their teachers to form a huge circle in front of our school, with anxious parents and grandparents forming the outer ring. This is my last semester in Ukraine, so it was my last first day of school : )

Kids line up from 1st through 10th grade by class. This is the side with the younger students. 

The line stretches all the way around to the entrance to the school. The 11th graders (the graduating class) is placed in the center, directly opposite the entrance to the school.

In case you didn't notice, a lot of the girls are wearing GIANT fluffy white hair bows. This is part of the traditional Ukrainian school uniform. Most schools will describe their uniforms as "black on bottom, white on top" - meaning a white shirt or blouse, and black slacks or a skirt. However, the more traditional uniform for girls looks more like what many Americans would imagine a French maid costume to be like... a lacy white apron over brown or black pleated Girl Scout dress-thing, complete with white knee-length stockings and black shoes.  A lot of the boys wear suits and ties as their school uniform, and its especially adorable to see little 6 and 7 year old boys with little 3-piece suits.

The 5th graders from the 5B class, with their teacher Liliya Nikolaievna behind them. 

The 11th graders standing behind the 1st graders.

More 5th graders... they are excited to be start their first year of secondary school (primary school is from 1st through 4th grade here).

As with any other Ukrainian holiday, we had girls singing and dancing and even a few poetry readings by the 1st graders. They were really cute while reciting poems in Ukrainian. Usually there is a presentation of traditional Ukrainian-style dancing, but this year the girls prepared a beautiful dance with ribbons.

Girls dancing together. 

Beautiful ribbons! 

A few little girls singing during the presentation of the school emblem (the circular sign held on the left by a boy and a girl from the 10th grade). 

Its also a Ukrainian custom to present bouquets of flowers on holidays, therefore many of the children brought flowers for their teachers. At the end of the assembly, the schoolyard turns into a zoo of children running around to try to find their favorite teachers to shower them with flowers.

Liliya Nikolaievna being showered with flowers from her 5th graders. 

The First Bell ceremony ends after the ringing of the "first" bell by the oldest and the youngest student. Usually it is the oldest boy from 11th grade carrying the youngest girl from 1st grade on his shoulder, but sometimes it can be the other way around.

 Don't worry, we didn't keep the students for any lessons - we just had the opening assembly at 8am then all the students went with their homeroom teachers for a few announcements. I decorated the door to my classroom last week with the "henna hands" that my 6th graders drew last year, during a lesson that I taught about India as an English-speaking country.

High-5 for the first day of school!

If you'd like to read about the "Last Bell" assembly that is held on the last day of school, you can check out my post about a Ukrainian style graduation here. The post is from 2011, because it rained last May on the day of the Last Bell and we had to have the whole ceremony indoors... there is hardly enough space for all the students to stand inside a corridor inside our school, so everyone was really squished and unfortunately I didn't take any photos. And just for kicks, here is a photo of our World Map!

I'm very proud to say that it survived untouched throughout the summer and I hope it lasts for years... though that probably won't happen since all the kids will probably want to touch it and measure their hands haha.  

The 23rd of August: Celebrating Kharkov City Day and Liberation Day!

On August 23rd, 1943, the Soviet Army liberated the city of Kharkov from German soldiers. The city had been occupied since the fall of 1941. Kharkov now commemorates this date as its "День Города" (city day) and the Day of Liberation. If you've never been to Kharkov (also spelled as Kharkiv in the Ukrainian style), it is my favorite city in Ukraine! It is known for being the "first capital of Ukraine" and also 2nd largest city in the country, after Kyiv. Its a bustling city of about 1.5 million people, most of which are university students. Kharkov is also one out of only three cities with subway systems in Ukraine and was a host city during the EuroCup 2012 football championship. You can read more about the city of Kharkov here on Wikipedia. Here are some photos from the military celebrations (you can read the original article here).

Militiamen place wreaths in honor of all veterans at the Memorial of Glory in Kharkov.

Children place red carnations around the memorial.

The flame burns in remembrance of all those who gave their lives for the country during the "Great Patriotic War" (WWII).

Decorated veterans visit the memorial in honor of their fellow soldiers.

This year, the city of Kharkov celebrated with the grand opening of "Gorky Park" - the first amusement park of its kind in Ukraine. This park was reconstructed this past year, with the walkways re-paved, flower beds re-planted and the addition of theme park attractions like roller coasters and the biggest Ferris wheel in Ukraine at 55 meters tall. This park will probably become known as the "Disneyland of Ukraine" with family friendly entertainment, rides, and prices of 35 UAH for adults and 15 UAH for children (per ride/attraction).

The opening ceremonies at Gorky Park included a lot of familiar cartoon characters like Cheburashka and friendly actors on stilts (source). 

In honor of the grand opening, all rides at the park were free of charge all day... this meant that thousands of Ukrainians flocked to the park because they couldn't believe that it was actually free. The park officially opened at 10am, and I joined the swarming masses around 11am with Erika, a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, and a few of my Ukrainian friends.

Walking down the park, just inside the main entrance. 

Pirates "Barbados" ride. 

A castle-shaped cafe in the center of the park. 

The "Haunted House", opening in September 2012.

Our timing was unfortunate, for it started raining almost immediately and the lines for all of the rides were already ridiculous... the park builders hadn't planned for any sort of barriers to regulate crowd control into a single line. As someone who has studied the process flow of systems (like the flow of people waiting in line to be served at a bank), this drove me crazy. If you've ever been to Disneyland, Disneyworld, or Six Flags then you'll understand exactly what I'm talking about - usually you have to walk through what feels like miles of snaking metal barriers just to get to the front of each ride where you actually step on or into the seats for the ride. This was a huge cultural moment because Ukrainians aren't used to actually waiting in lines - they tend to just push their way to the front of a crowd and whomever gets their first gets served first, plus they like to "save" spaces for their friends and let anyone and their mother cut in the line.

The Американские горки (roller coaster) that everyone was eagerly waiting to ride... notice that people seem to just be swarmed around the base of the roller coaster without forming any sort of determinable line.  

We walked to the end of the roller coaster line, which took over 4 minutes of walking from the entrance to the roller coaster - what I estimated to be probably about a 4 or 5 hour wait. .After waiting about 30 minutes and moving only about 25 yards in line, we decided to leave because the roller coaster had been shut down due to thunder. After that, I took a few photos with the mascots and we left the park to seek shelter from the rain.

Bugs Bunny!

Making my best "duck face" with Donald.

Erika with Masha, Darina and Anya in front of the Ferris Wheel. 

An interesting totem pole, near some sort of Indian-themed ride. 

About an hour after we left the park, the sun came back out. We decided to just walk around the city center instead of dealing with the crowds and crazy lines at Gorky Park. There was a small arts and crafts market near the Opera house, where I bought a traditional Ukrainian flower wreath headband as a souvenir! We also checked out the new monument in Constitutional Square, near the "Исторический музей" (historical museum) metro station.

Darina and I in a bed of flowers near the Держпром (Derzhprom) office buildings. 

Erika and I wearing traditional Ukrainian flower wreath headbands near the art market. 

with the new statue in Constitutional Square, near the Historical Museum.

A closer look at my handmade traditional Ukrainian wreath headband. 

After walking around all day, we were too tired to hang out in the city center for the Kharkov City day celebrations - a free concert featuring "Gems", "Disco Crash", Vera Brezhnev, "Boney M" and Liz Mitchell, "Okean Elzy" and several other artists, parades and fireworks show. So here are some photos of the concert in Freedom Square and fireworks! You can read more about the festivities here.  These photos also help capture the immense size of Freedom Square... it is famous for being the 2nd largest square in Eastern Europe and the 12th largest open air square in the world.

Boom!

View of Freedom Square from Sumskaya Street, with the main stage at the far end and the Derzhprom buildings outlined in lights behind it.... so many people! 

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.