Ukraine: PDO (With Pics)

This is one of the harder things about Peace Corps: you get completely cut off from information for a time and then it just hits you. Three days without any access to news to come back to headlines about the US probing a bomb. I then have to do a internet search to find that London had three of them go off. News like that just wrecks you.

But in any case, the Pre-Departure Orientation (PDO) was a lot of fun. Just to catch everyone up, American Councils, in conjunction with literally dozens of other organizations and the US State Department, run a program called FLEX (Future Leaders EXchange program). Yes, the government loves acronyms. FLEX sends qualified high school students from former USSR countries (who have to pass through three rounds of testing, essays and interviews) to America to study for a year. Before they leave, though, they have to have a three day orientation covering topics like "Living in a Host Family", "Stereotyping", and "American Schools" (which differ a lot from Ukrainian schools, if I ever get around to writing about them).

So it was 60 kids, 4 American teachers, 4 Ukrainian Teaching Assistants and 3 American Councils staff in a sanitoria (a bit like a small hotel in the woods), and it was a lot of fun. These kids were just fantastic, literally the best Ukraine has to offer. They were motivated, hard-working, excited and very creative; pretty much the perfect class for any teacher.

And some of these kids are going to be living in great places, too: Portland, OR; Lafayette, LA; Las Vegas, NV; Lakeland, FL. Of course they had a hundred questions about they places they would be living and it made me wistful and jealous describing the ones I had visited. I educated them about Mountain Dew and Krispy Kreme and instructed them to drink and eat these for me.

I just put up the pictures and be quiet now:



Some of my students role-playing sorting out host-family differences



Students exchanging autographs




Some of my kids



All of my kids (the infamous Group 4) and me (being held up by Misha, also for an unknown reason)



The rest of the American teaching staff



Some of my students, prior to the skit competition



My students competing in the skit competition



Other students competing in the skit competition



Misha with the "Tophat", TOPHAT being an acronym they have to learn in order to know how to respond to their host families: Talk, Obey, Participate, Help, Affection, Trust. I went ahead and made a tophat to help illustrate it.



The staff in togas (I'm not exactly sure why, though)