Ukraine: Bikes and Work (Pics)

Below are some photos from the second bike, um, "thing" with Zhytomyr's orphans. Originally, they agreed to let us take the orphans on excursions into the countryside, where we have waterfalls, cliffs, the ruins of a palace, mass graves from the holocaust, etc. But the last two scheduled times they had us bring the bikes to the orphanage (which requires rounding up ten people to bike an hour to get them there) and they're only allowed to ride them on orphanage property due to legal restrictions. Hopefully they're warming up to us and I can find an orphanage employee willing to come on the excursions. Haven't had a lot of time to do so: the last time we were there, there was also an impromptu visit from the mayor (who has been under fire for allegations of voter fraud from the last election) with a camera crew in tow. We were told the kids could ride for 20 minutes and then we had to leave. We've scheduled an excursion for non-orphans on Sunday, so hopefully we'll have our first one that actually leaves the city. I wanted to have both orphans and non-orphans on excursions so they could make friends (the orphans are isolated at the orphange), but the beaurocratic headaches might make that not happen. Still, even if they're not getting to bike out of the city, they still are getting the ACET information sessions and they have a great time just biking around (at the highest possible speeds with homicidal intentions after having surreptiously removing their required helmets).


Two of the Polissya girls who rode the bikes 30KM to the orphanage


At the orphanage


I swear I yelled at them for having their helmets off right after I took this picture



In other work news, I had my last session with this group of teachers yesterday. It was on teaching grammar and at the end I gave them a list of about twenty phrases or words that Ukrainian students consistently use incorrectly because they're incorrect in the textbooks. "I jealous you" and "I go in for sport" are common ones. They're not huge problems, just consistent ones. The problem is that the teachers tend to resist that these are wrong. "This is how we teach them!" I know. "This is how they are in the books!" Yes, I know. But they're wrong.

I can understand: how would you feel if you were told you had been teaching something wrong for years? This is the general defense, brought up even later when a teacher used a phrase I hadn't even put on the list: "Have you a mother, father, sister, brother?" Slavic languages don't have articles and don't put a conjunction at the end of a list, so this is an easy mistake, it being a direct translation. But, yes, it's also the phrase written in the books. When I tried to explain that it's "Have you A mother, A father, A sister OR A brother?", the offending teacher said: "That is American English. We teach British English."

At which point I have to explain, nicely, that I've been to Britain, I have British friends, I watch British sit-coms, I dated a girl for three years who was raised in the British Commonwealth, I have a good grasp of the differences between British and American English, and this isn't one. Don't feel bad, it's not your fault, you learned it incorrectly. That's why native speakers are here to help.

But they still don't want to admit that.