Ukraine: The Wall: Mark II (Pics)

Temperature dropped again. Along with a constant snowfall, climbing the cliffs was out this weekend, but that's why we built a wall!

Here are pics from yesterday. Polissya has been constantly working on the wall: adding plywood pyramids to make the routes more interesting, adding bolts for lead climbing, and adding about two dozen more holds to the bottom five feet for bouldering. What's being used as crash pads, you might ask? Backseats pulled out of junked cars, of course!

We also broke in one of the newest volunteers in the Zhytomyrska oblast: Erin! She was tired after only two routes, but promises to come back for more.


Tanya, Jon and their children: rope 1 and rope 2.


Igor, topping a route


Yulia and Erin watching (and belaying) the action


Marina, kicking the overhang pyramid's ass


Tanya and her sister Anya. Apparently name originality is not a strong point in the family


Ira, who momentarily confused rock climbing with a magazine shoot

Ukraine: Flooring It (Pics)

And life revs up.

It's not that I've been depressed or down the past few months, but I have had that feeling you get when you've been flying down the interstate for hours and then have to drive 25 MPH down suburb streets.

I've been waiting for winter to be over before pushing down on the gas, but it seems like an early spring has arrived. The temperature came up (although it'll probably go back down), but what also came up is a massive escalation of my projects.

Jon and I met with some of Peace Corps admin yesterday and they kicked the Across-Ukraine relay up to a new level. We came away with a fistful of contact numbers and suggestions to get Okean Elzy, the Klitchko brothers and Ani Lorak on board, too. I don't know if it will happen, but we may have a kick-off concert in the East and a closing concert in the West. In any case, this project is getting bigger and more real each day. Peace Corps is behind it and is going to pay for lodging for have oblast representatives come into Kyiv and get this project spread out. We also got a fundraising specialist on board who has a tiny team of university student minions to do her bidding. Our initial needs for the project were kept low, and so between the fundraising and a Democracy grant, we may end up with more money than we need, which will just get funneled into HIV/AIDS organizations.

Between working on this and all the plans I have for the climbing camp, the climbing wall, being a Master Teacher for American Councils in June and, oh, everything I already do anyway, I feel like life just hit 110 MPH.

It feels damn good.

Here's some pics from last weekend's climb:


I feel I look very pimp in this picture. Me, a wall, some snow and a fist full of climbing gear. Sweet.


It was a beautiful day: The view


Jon climbing. Jon wasn't able to take a pic of me because he doesn't trust himself to belay and take a pic at the same time. Or maybe it's because he values my life more than I do his


I call this picture: Fire and Ice


Jon, apparently examining the snow


This is such a picture for Sarah

Ukraine: The Olympiad Report

Here's the report on the Olympiads:

The students I tutored won first and second place! Of course, the winner is also the daughter of my coordinator, who runs the Olympiads. One would think that this obvious conflict of interest would cause problems, but this is Ukraine. Besides, who am I to judge?

Actually, I am someone to judge, and did so for the 9th and 10th grades. I refused to judge the 11th grade students because those were my students. Many teachers were perplexed at me giving up this obvious advantage in having my students win. One teacher, who only knows me because I briefly dated one of the teachers at her school, asked if I wouldn’t please judge 11th grade to give one of her students (and the brother of the teacher I dated) some “help”.

“What kind of help?” I asked, eyebrow arched.

“You know,” she said, conspiratorially, “help.”

I later found out that the teacher I had dated had been pressed to also ask me to “help” her brother, but she had refused, knowing my answer.
I would think these people would want me as far away from their students as possible. Not only were the tests I wrote deemed “too hard” by the teachers (ьy response: “It’s the Olympiad. It’s supposed to be hard”. My coordinator laughed. The rest scowled), but I was grading the writing tests hard, too.

The first day of the Olympiad consisted of listening, reading and writing tests. Although it was easy to grade the multiple-choice listening and reading tests, the writing tests, like the speaking ones the next day, had a really arbitrary grading system. Different topics like grammar could receive within certain point scales (0-8 in this case), but there was no rubric for how many or which mistakes would mean the difference between a point. As the night wore on and we stayed up late grading all the writing tests, there was many a disagreement amongst teachers over what would constitute lowering a point.

After I realized that there was a lot more red ink on the papers I was grading than those graded by fellow teachers, I began to ease up. This became especially clear when one teacher handed me a checked paper and asked about one small grammar point, and my scanning eyes found four mistakes that she had missed. I didn’t point out the third and the fourth when I saw how embarrassed she was when I had pointed out the first two. After that, I let things slide because I didn’t want to unfairly punish students whose papers happened to be checked by the American. I especially let slide those things I know are incorrectly taught in Ukraine like “I feel myself sad” (the direct translation of the reflexive Russian phrase “Ya chustvyoo cebya) and emotions being used as verbs (“I jealous him”). If their teachers don’t know, how could they?

Possibly I added too much to the unfair grading karma because it came out in full force the following day during the speaking tests.

One by one, the students came in to nervously draw a topic from a pile and then speak about it before a panel of five teachers. Despite their nervousness, most would launch into beautiful speeches, most having nothing to do with the topic. For example, a question about volunteering in school led the student to spout memorized platitudes about school before she segued into life in general and friends followed by seven proverbs in a row: “And I would just like to say that a friend in need is a friend indeed and that two heads are better than one and that one old friend is worth ten new ones and that…” I literally started laughing when she hit proverb number five. She never once talked about volunteering.

They’re taught to do this: to relate any question to a subject they’ve memorized and speak wonderfully about it until you redirect them back to the actual topic. That’s when they begin to flounder trying to find the English to answer it. But as only five points out of thirty are for the topic and the rest are for grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, there will always be a skewing towards bringing in memorized answers.

Those students that came in and answered the question, even with more mistakes, I thought, deserved better scores because they had better English skills. One other teacher was with me in trying to give memorized answers lower scores, but the other three thought that this was fair play.

I’d be less annoyed if we could all judge as we saw fit, but even though we each had a scorecard, all scores had to be agreed upon by the panel before we could write them down. These scorecards didn’t matter much, though, because any score could be changed at any time. This is what angered me most last year, when the first place winner was knocked down to second by a retroactive score change. “She has worked hard all this year and deserves it,” I was told, when I protested the change. On one level I understand it: how can you really know the English level of a person by a stressful competition? But if how a person performs outside of a competition will influence it, why have it at all?

Compared to one retroactive score change last year, there were three this session. If a student performed better than a previous one but still had a lower score, they wouldn’t raise the second student’s score (because they were getting to close to that perfect 30 points, and it’s expected that 10th graders can’t get a perfect score) and instead would lower a previous student’s score. When I complained about the first one, one other teacher backing me, the teacher who was conducting the whole session got nods from the other two and said to me “it is three to two and this is a democracy.” She then changed the score. One seriously contested retroactive change (when another teacher wasn’t sure the girl was really better and was leaning towards my side, thus upsetting the “democracy”) resulted in the girl’s scores for the other parts of the Olympiad being pulled out. When it was seen that her score in speaking still wouldn’t put her into the placing categories, it was decided the retroactive change wouldn’t be needed.

Despite going light on the writing judging, I did try to set a good example in speaking. When my only 10th grade student came in, I said I had to leave the room. I was cajoled to stay, but I didn’t even want the appearance of impropriety. When I came back in, though, they were still arguing over his score and asked me how he was in my class. If he had worked hard, they thought, than he deserved the higher score. I refused to answer the question until his score was written down.
For all I know, though, they changed it after I left. As they say in Ukraine, the only place you can feel comfortable earning is fourth.

***

In other new, American Councils has asked me to train their teachers for the upcoming PDOs, which I'm proud of.

Also, two grants I sent proposals in for came back positive (which, unlike an HIV test, is a good thing), but now I have to have the rough drafts of both grants written by Monday. This would be easier had I already not made plans to A) Meet with Peace Corps tomorrow in Kyiv about the Across Ukraine run, B) go to MultiCultural Awareness Group meeting, also in Kyiv tomorrow, C) Meet with someone who may be handling corporate fundraising for the run, also in Kyiv and also tomorrow. And, oh wait, I'm supposed to go clubbing Saturday night and climbing Sunday morning. And, oh yeah, I also have seminars on Monday to plan for.

What are the grants for? To build bike trails around Zhytomyr and buy Polissya some mountain bikes to conduct tours with kids.

You know, for someone who said there wasn't a lot about work to write about, it's becoming the dominant theme. It's going to be a busy weekend.

Ukraine: Dead Body

Really couldn't think of a good way to title this post.

I was on the way to the institute and came upon a dead body. Carrie said almost every volunteer sees one while in Ukraine, but I still wasn't prepared for it. There it was, lying on the sidewalk in the melting snow. It was a man, fairly tall, lying on his back, heavy boots pointing up, ivory-white and blue-streaked hands sticking out of his coat, fur hat sticking out at an angle from under the purple cloth covering his face. A trail of blood ran from underneath the cloth, down the sidewalk and pooling in the street, diluted thin by the water.

An ambulance sat silent in the street and two policemen interviewed what I assume were eye witnesses. I glanced up at the eves of the buildings: there are a lot of injuries from falling stalagmites when the temperature comes up above freezing, as it has been for the past few days. But the eves were clear. The only thing I could think was that he slipped on the ice, hit his head. He was right in front of the candy store, and I somehow found that ironic.

Mostly I was sad and disturbed. He was right by the door to the institute and I had to step over the trail of blood to go inside. The first thought was: "interesting", then I was hit by a pang of sadness, then I was worried at my first reaction. Then I put it out of my head.

I was even more disturbed when I left two hours later and he was still lying there. The police were gone. The ambulance was there but there was no one in it. People walked by, glancing at the body as they passed. Were the police waiting for it to be identified? Why was it still there? No yellow tape, nothing to stop me from again having to step over trail of blood, feet passing within inches of his boots, me looking closer this time, letting my gaze linger a little longer at the brown coat, dark jeans, black boots, purple cloth. The hands were the only part of him that made it seem like anything other than a mannequin. My sister, who is a nurse and has lost patients, says that they stop looking human when they die, that they don't look like a person anymore. I had that thought while looking at his hands, because I thought they did look real, almost hyper-real, the skin so white and the veins so blue.

I looked forward and kept walking.

When I was going back to the institute a few hours later, I had to push my way through a political rally for Yulia Tymonshenko. "The shit I have to go through to get to work," I thought. When I arrived at the institute, the body was gone and the blood washed away. I made sure not to step on the place where the body had lain--as if that was somehow sacreligous--and went inside.

For the rest of the day, I tried not to think about it.

Ukraine: Projects

Awesome. It'd take three blogs to go over the last two days:

Regional Olympiads finished yesterday and included a lot of scuzzy judging. I'll write about it later.

Jon (climbing buddy) came in on the way back from his Ukranian language training and last night we drank way too much vodka in celebration of a birthday. We got up with three hours of sleep and hangovers to climb all day (and it was a gorgeous day) on cliffs covered with snow, taking breaks to stoke our pitiful fire. I'll write about it later.

What I want to write about is what I'm excited about: After climbing, Jon and I met with Tolic, head of ACET, a Ukranian HIV/AIDS awareness organization that has a lot of grant money and a small army of enthusiastic volunteers. Tolic is now completely on board with both our projects, and with his organzation we're going to get some major things done. Normally I keep things under wraps until they actually happen, but these are looking like sure things and I'm so pumped I want to talk about them:

My baby, which isn't as cool as Jon's: two week-long camps this summer for climbing and healthy lifestyles. When the kids aren't climbing or playing games they'll be sitting in on 45 minute lessons on HIV/AIDS, STDs, alcohol abuse, narcotics, etc. The two things I'm doing different from most volunteers (and let's hope they work):

1) It will be done in Ukranian and Russian. Most volunteer camps are done in English and usually only those students with the best English make the cut; this means volunteers are often only working with the best students, who probably least need our help. Our participants will be randomly drawn from those who apply, meaning anyone can participate. Tolic's people will be teaching the lessons and Polissya will be teaching the climbing. Currently there's only three Americans involved and we'll be teaching climbing in Russian or, in Jon's case, Ukranian. This, hopefully, will let the camp be sustainable. Diana and I had a long discussion on this because she feels that if Americans are there, English will be a draw. She hasn't quite understood that A) When it comes to climbing I don't want any language confusion leading to unsafe climbing, B) Any lessons on healthy lifestyles will be watered-down by a language barrier and C) I want this to happen even if every American were deported from the country tomorrow. So much of what we do in this country would collapse if we were to leave. I've only got nine more months here and everything I do now needs to be sustainable.

2) Also adding to the sustainability: the money for the camp will not come from grants (which many camps are run on and require reapplying every year) but from a fundraiser, in this case a car wash. Tolic's people went nuts (in a good way) because fundraising from Ukranians is never really done. They think I'm a little crazy, but I have a gut feeling it will work. Another volunteer I know in Poltava did a Christmas-gifts-for-orphans fundraiser that everyone said would fail: Ukranians don't donate, they said. They ended up with more gifts than they had orphans! The students who are a part of the camp will do a two-day car wash to raise the money for the camp itself. Hopefully this will empower them and can create a yearly event to sustain the camp after I'm gone.

Tolic also brought along Natasha to the meeting, who has been running a camp for the past four years for at-risk youth. She had a million organizational questions I hadn't even considered and a lot of good ideas. Jon has also worked as a camp director and has put together a whole book of camp games. This will be sweet. I may have a nightmare in store for me, but I see nothing but good things.

But although that is my baby, much of Jon and I's organizational and creative energy lately has been going into his: an across-Ukraine relay run from the eastern border to the western one to raise money and awareness for HIV/AIDS.

What Jon originally envisioned using only Peace Corps volunteers has now exploded due to a huge amount of interest from Ukranians who want to run. Right now it's coalescing as a bus that will go the whole route, plastered with corporate advertisements (the corporations will donate things like bottled water, tee-shirts, etc.) with runners getting on and off as they can manage, with a awareness team on the bus that will set up a booth and hand out brochures at every city center, and with a small group to coordinate food and sleeping, which will be done in tents donated for the run by Polissya. Each oblast raises money for one organization within the oblast and one large partnership grant (to which people in America can donate) will raise money for an AIDS orphanage.

We're now at the level of extreme excitement and fear. This is huge and we both know it, but we're getting enough people on board (Tolic's people will be helping coordinate in four out of eight oblasts), that it's looking feasible. Regardless, once that bus gets going and people start running, I guarantee the media will be covering it, even if its only local media in each oblast, and that will generate a lot of awareness. Right now the problem is not whether anyone will do it, but how to best direct the tide of interest we've been getting.

You know, teaching is great, the wall is cool, but I finally feel like I'm going to have done something worthwhile when I finally leave. I'm also really nervous, but I'm trying to just channel that into getting work done. Still, it's been a great day.

Ukraine: It's a Territorial Thing

I feel the need to hurt something.

My coordinator (whom I adore, despite what the rest of this blog may imply) asked me again about setting up a resource center. "Other oblasts have resource centers and we should have one," she said.

I'm all for a resource center, but I've been to the center regarded as Ukraine's best--the one in the Kirovograd Oblast--and it is in a room barely larger than a closet and locked up much of the day. It has the problems of every resource center that's been tried to set up by volunteers, the problems that causes the SPA grant application to specifically mention that they're not a good idea: access and organization.

Someone has to be present to A)Guard the resources, which inevitably include a copy machine and B)Check out the resources and make sure they get back. No one can afford a salary for this person so it's often left to the volunteer (as in Kirovograd) or a methodologist to unlock the room at certain times and monitor usage.

The thing is Zhytomyr already has a teacher resource center, but it's at the Pedagagical University and they only want their students using it. It was the reason the SPA grant was denied to Gail, my predeccesor: if you're not using the one you have, they said, why should you get money for another?

I actually came up with what I thought was the perfect option: I have a really good relationship with the oblast library, which recieved a Windows on America grant. Consequently they have a television, a VCR, a copy machine, two computers, a printer, free internet access, space and four librarians on the payroll. What they don't have is teaching materials. My coordinator has nearly a thousand books donated by British Councils and other groups, most of which sit in boxes at her house and which she distributes a few at a time to teachers. Why couldn't we put these two things together? The librarians could organize and make available the materials and teachers could copy or borrow books or video tapes with the available equipment. It would be open all day and materials would be widely available to all teachers. I could still get a grant, but it would be for things they didn't have: video and cassette dubbing machines so teachers could copy A/V materials.

But it's a territorial thing. My coordinator balked at the idea of someone else controlling (her word) the books. We discussed this at length for nearly an hour, me for the first time feeling our relationship could stand me disagreeing with her. I implied several times but never directly said they were not "her" books but donated for teachers to use. I don't think she ever understood the full weight of the implication, but her idea of ownership certainly came to the fore when she pointed at my laptop and said (turning my words back at me) "would you give that to the library to use because it's good for the teachers?" to which I responded "if it had been donated by British Councils, yes" at which point she got a little miffed and made clear that the books stayed at the institute. I made the suggestion that she just let them use the books in the boxes, but she said that just because she wasn't using the books now didn't mean the books wouldn't be used in the future.

I'd like to stop and point out that the materials are being distributed to teachers through her, they are getting used. She's not hoarding them, just controlling them. But still, she creates a bottleneck. If a teacher wants to look through materials, they can't. All they can do is (when she's not teaching or working on Olympiads) say what they need and look through the books she then chooses and loans to them. Actually, her not being able to suggest materials was one of her arguements that the books being at the library was a bad idea.

Okay, library was out. Well, how about have them at the insitute's small libarary? I suggested. She could be down there to suggest, but our librarian could keep it open all day. No, then the librarian would be responsible for them and it would be too loud for my coordinator to do her work. Well, if the director of the institute would have donated a room if I got the grant, why not just get a room now, have the books there and see about getting a copy machine later? No, the impetus for the director to give a room would be new equipment, she said; otherwise he'd just loose revenue he's getting from renting out institute rooms for business meetings. Can we use the institute's copier? No, it and the overhead projector she also wants and which the institute also already has, is only used by some people and locked up the rest of the time. I tossed out a couple more suggestions, including the teachers fundraising for equipment (I might as well hvae suggested we storm the Vatican for the look of disbelief I got) but it finally came down to: any scenario that did not have her in her own room with a copy machine, a computer and all the books was out of the question.

I still love her and I still think she's great, but she was pissing me off today.

It comes down to the way things are done here. A little bit of cooperation would mean we could achieve the goal of having a great resource center without the problems of access and organization. But apparently that's not the goal. Others limit her and her teachers from using the the projector, the copier or the resource center at the university, so why shouldn't she be territorial with her resources? I get where she's coming from, I just don't agree.

I may have to decide to be less hard-headed myself. I can get a non-SPA grant for such a center, but I've been picking my projects carefully and throwing my weight and work behind a grant that will ultimately produce one more bit of territorialsm grinds me the wrong way. Sigh. Before all is said and done I'll probably do it her way: the good will not be as great, but it will help some teachers and that's what it's all about anyway.

Still, the way I feel right now, I think it'd be nice if we went back to settling territorial battles with maces and swords.

Ukraine: Staying In (Pics)

So I was back in Prolisok for a week for a Russian language training and also to help conduct some training sessions for Practical Project and to work with the new group on lesson planning. Had a lot of fun. Met a lot of cool new people. Ironed out some Russian grammar problems and learned that I say "like" and "you know" in English a lot when I speak Russian without even noticing (since I don't notice I say them in English, I don't even translate them when I speak Russian).

They feed us there and the classes are there, and so with the low temperatures, I had every incentive to stay inside the whole time. It was cold in Prolisok: you had to wear a sweater no matter what, but there was none of the four-layers on/off ritual that I do several times a day in Zhytomyr. I happily watched through glass windows as the snow fell and ventured out to get some fresh air only twice.

So what do some seventy volunteers do when stuck inside for a week? That's what the pics are for:


You jam on guitars as Shanif and Caitlin are doing here


And as I am doing here


You discover creative recipies, like Dave eating a banana and chocolate sandwich


You learn the fine art of scavenging, as Amy as done here, leaving the dining room with many a midnight treat


You let your hair get a little wild


You learn to knit (as I did, being man enough taking one of the in-Russian optional classes), and let other bored people play with your wild hair


You marvel at the bathroom in your room


You have nightly dance parties DJed by iPods hooked up to speakers. And then you still manage to get up at 7:30 AM the next morning to go to class.


You get a little crazy dancing at those parties


Really crazy.


You eventually wander outside.


You walk along a frozen river. This shot is particularly interesting to me because the first day I was in Ukraine I was on this floating pontoon watching the sun painting the water as it set. Now it's just an expanse of white.


You watch some Ukranians do some ice fishing


You try not to piss off the wolves that wander around (Okay, so they're wild dogs, but they're maybe one generation from hunting elk and haven't forgotten how).


If you're like Lauren (who's from Georgia) and I, you scrape aside some snow and wonder at the fact that you really are just standing on frozen water.

And then you get cold and go back inside...

Naked Desert

This is what happens in Ukrainian dance clubs...

Finally! I've gotten so used to random things happening to me that when they don't, I start having withdrawals. Luckily, a fix came. The past 12 hours have been very, very cool...

I was in Kyiv the day before an in-service training, as were many others. I had expected it to be sedate and spent the day doing what I came to do: abusing the internet and printer to get work done for my site. But in the evening, munching pizza and watching "Desperate Housewives" at the Peace Corps office with some others, a discussion emerged: we should all go out to a club. It was a Wednesday, but what the hell?

A number of volunteers wanted to go to Art Club 44, a live-music club that plays dance music late at night, nixing my proposition to go to Club 112, which plays good dance music all the time. The reason? Art Club 44 had no cover.

Regardless, I couldn't immediately go because I had to meet my host for the night. I had met Peter through Carrie, whom he worked had with, and in addition to being a great guy, he has an apartment in the center of the city, walking distance from both Art Club 44 and Club 112.


Peter and his girlfriend Masha

I met Peter at a bar near his apartment, where he was engaged in some very Ukrainian traditions with four other Ukrainians: his girlfriend and her friends. Not wanting to slight the customs of this great country, I soon joined in on the toasts and the vodka flowed. Sitting to my left was a very cool Ukrainian named Denys, who lives in London and manages a bar there. I now have so many connections in London that the gravity of them all will surely drag me there soon.

Two bottles of vodka and some new friendships later, all the Ukrainians had decided to come to Art Club 44 with me. Peter begged off, having work in the morning. He gave me a spare set of keys to his place so I could let myself in and headed out. I led this merry band of Ukrainians across the artic tundra that is Kyiv at the moment and we arrived at Art Club 44 just in time for the live band to end. No dance music followed: they didn't play it on Wednesdays.

So, collecting the Americans and met there by Sasha, whom I taught with at a PDO last summer (and who also works with Peter), we decided to go to where I wanted to go in the first place: Club 112.

And now is when it gets interesting…

The sign at the ticket window said "Fruity Wednesday" in Russian, and I thought maybe that referred to the drink specials. But we came in just in time to see a very attractive girl wearing only a thong lie down on a table. Then a man and a 60-year-old woman (her mother?) proceeded to tastefully decorate her in fruit and whip cream.


The woman getting decorated in fruit and whip cream

This was pretty damn cool in itself. But then they invited everyone to come eat fruit off her--without using our hands. We weren't sure if they were serious, but one at a time people went and ate a piece of fruit or a dollop of whip cream off of her. I went up. A small dollop was on an erect nipple a few inches from my face, but I wasn't sure of the protocol and instead sucked up a dollop from her arm. I love my life. And I’d been lacking in fruits this bitter Ukrainian winter.

Why haven’t more parents thought of this incentive to get their kids to eat healthy?


One of the first to try a bit of fruit


Me, enjoying a bit of whip cream

And it kept going: they started playing rap and hip hop, a rarity in Ukraine, and it turned out that in the year she had lived in America, Sasha had learned how to rip as good as anyone you’d see in a music video. When it comes to popping and locking, she’s even better than me! [The ego speaks! But when it comes to dancing I feel it’s warranted]. She and I wrecked a near-empty dance floor while Ukrainians and Americans watched on.


My old teaching partner, Sasha, with whom I wrecked the floor.

And it kept going: crashed on Peter's couch but only got a couple hours of sleep because he had to get up early to go to work. No mind: I got to take a hot shower with water pressure that was more like an assault (and oh so sweet) and Peter made us breakfast: eggs with melted blue cheese (not the dressing, the cheese) and green Tabasco sauce. Awesome.

And it kept going: we both had to get on the same metro line and we were still coming down the stairs as one pulled: normally too late to get on. But it just sat there, possibly due to some technical problem, but as if it were waiting for us. We got on and the second we did, the doors closed and it started moving.

And it kept going: I got to Peace Corps office to a mob of people all coming for the training. The new volunteers had all just picked up packages sent to them from home, and one very, very kind one offered up Cheese-its and pudding. I accepted this offer (as did many others), bought a Pepsi, and am about to have a very beautiful junk-food lunch.


My beautiful junk-food lunch

Heading off to a week of training and no internet access. So I’ll be off the radar, but hopefully this streak of luck won’t be...

Did I mention I licked whip cream off a near-naked woman in a club? How the hell does that happen?!?

Ukraine: More Work and a Sadness

So remember those speaking tasks I told you I had to slog through and write? Well, they're not using them this year. Yep, they liked them so much (and I'm not being sarcastic, they really did like them) that they want to use them with the 11th graders next year. The 11th grade (the highest grade in Ukranian schools) is the important one at Olympiads: the winners get free rides to university. Since my questions are so good, and since this year's 11th form questions are already written, they'll save them for next year, I was told. Glad my work will live on after I go.

Of course, the replacement questions were simply taken out of a book and handed to me to type. Also handed to me were this year's handwritten questions for the 11th graders, which I judiciously edited as I typed so that questions like:

"Explain why it is wrong for mothers to pay strangers to watch their young children while they work."

became:

"How do you feel about mothers paying people to watch their young children while they work?"

And while I was told to write 6 original listening tasks (which requires hunting down appropriate articles and writing 10 true/false questions and 10 multiple choice questions), only three will be used (not a total loss, I'll use the others in my teaching materials packets) and the reading tasks, which follow the same format and, one would think, would also be original, were once again taken out of a book and given to me to type.

I am the American secretary.

On another note, we had two birthdays at work this week. This events, while quite enjoyable, involve large lunches during which I am forced to consume much food and drink much alcohol and then am pressed to play songs on the guitar for the birthday person. The humerous thing to me is that all these teachers, now quite toasted, all go and teach right afterwards. Me, I was back in the office and typing, concentrating on keeping my fingers moving correctly.

And lastly, the sadness: Peace Corps has a newsletter called "Nu Shcho?" ("Well, what?") that I've had an article in every single issue since I came to Ukraine. My reputation (other than as the climbing guy) is as "oh, you're the guy that writes all the articles". I even had one prepared for this issue and was waiting for the "request for articles" email that always came before. The editor was sick, the email never sent and it was today, in Kyiv, that the editor asked me: "no article this time?" and when I, realizing the implication, asked if I could get one in last minute, was told it was already laid out and done. Saddness. The streak is over. I'm slighly upset. Not torn up, but really dissapointed. What can you do?

Back to work.

Ukraine: The Pepsi and the Problems

Good news! The store near my apartment has some Pepsi in stock! They had some last summer and then ran out, and I've had to hike three miles several times a week to a store that does carry it. But I went in yesterday and they have it!

Went climbing on the wall on Saturday and it proved to be too cold: managed only two routes before my fingers hurt too badly. Also got into a heated discussion (in Russian, which I was proud of) with the head of Polissya, the non-profit that built and is managing the wall.

Although a lot of people have used the wall in my absence, none were under 18. The head teaches at a university and he's been bringing a lot of his students. So our numbers are good, but not for what was (for me) the target group: kids who need an alternative to sitting in internet cafes or out in the street drinking.

Polissya promised $200 in advertising, of which they have done none and all their planned advertising is, once again, at the universities. They are also pushing to start charging from 18 and up (it is currently free for those under 21) in order to have funds to expand the wall and replace gear. This I'm fine with, as long as it stays free for those under 18.

But the problem is they now refuse to bring in under 18 year-olds on their own. They don't want to be responsible for them in case one gets hurt. I can bring all the students I want, he said, and they can keep using the wall when I'm not around, but Polissya wants to target university students, which defeats the reason the grant was given in the first place.

So we argued for about twenty minutes about this. The way things were going, when I leave in November, Polissya wouldn't be bringing any students in and would be charging the people they did, which made it nice for Polissya but killed the long-term purpose of the grant.

Finally, though, he agreed to advertise in schools, that we'd get forms so that parents could absolve Polissya of liability, and they'd split their efforts between students and university students.

In the short term this isn't horrible: with other volunteers I have the gears turning to have groups of about 20 students coming in on mini-field trips from their schools, with half being trained on the wall by volunteers and the other half listening to HIV/AIDS presentations by ACET, a Ukranian awareness organization, and then rotating. We need warmer weather for this so by late April through the summer we should have a large turnout on the wall by students, but I want it to keep going when I leave and that's threatened at the moment.

I understand Polissya has its own interests and originally wanted to build the wall for its own use, but when you accept $3,000 you accept the conditions, too. Things seem to be back on track now and hopefully everything will turn out for the best.

That's it for now. Did I mention the store near my apartment has Pepsi?

PEPSI!

Ukraine: Work

So in addition to my mom's comment that "your blog makes it seem like Peace Corps is one big party", comes a couchsurfing email of "what do you do in Peace Corps?" and Steve's father's advice of: "you know, you should probably put something in about your job in case a future employer finds your site." As these all piled onto one another I figured, huh, maybe I should write about my work.

As to why I haven't: while I really enjoy my projects, I assume no one else wants to hear about them. Few bookstore shelves house tomes on "What I taught today" but there are enough about "Ukranian life and customs" and even far more about "I visited X amount of countries today, freezing my cajones off before getting mugged, attacked by dogs and suffering from ameobic dysentry while getting it on with 17 Scandanavian women in Greek-ruin strewn waters."

By the way, all of the above are true for me and scattered amongst the archives of this blog, save for the 17 Scandanavian women. In actuality, they were Ukranian.

Anyway, my job:

Today I only had one seminar, which went really well. The topic was Writing Skills and by the end my teachers had written some poems, rewritten the lyrics to "Hotel California", done some freewriting, filled in the word balloons on some "Calvin and Hobbes" strips, discussed Product Vs. Process writing, discussed error correction in writing (particularly I'm trying to get them to stop simply writing in corrections and instead am trying to get them to write comments like "go is an irregular verb" on the paper if the student wrote "goed" and make the student look up how to properly conjugate the verb; helps retention and prompts self-correction), touched on resume writing and using pen-pals and then I gave them a packet of writing activities. Hopefully they'll use some or all of what they did with their students.

In an hour I'm going to conduct my movie club at the library. It's attended by a group of university students with really good English (who, tit for tat, force me to practice my Russian when we hang out on the weekends), so we really get into the themes of the movies during the post-viewing discussions. Today we're watching "Breakfast Club" and will probably discuss teen culture and themes of popularity, alienation and acceptance.

After that I'll put on some music and write the 30 Olympiad Speaking tasks that my coordinator needs by tomorrow so we can get the test packets done by next week for the Olympiad competition the following week. Those are a bit of a slog. Every task has a topic followed by three particular points the student should address, and coming up with original tasks takes some brain racking. As seen in previous Olympiads I've judged, most students come with pre-memorized answers to nearly every topic imaginable and I feel my job is to throw them curve balls so I can see what their English level really is, not the English level of the tutor they paid to write the answers for them.

So that's my work for today. I'll probably study Russian for 20 minutes when I eat lunch here in a few minutes and tonight I'll prep for tomorrow's seminar on Listening Skills.

After that I'll pop some popcorn, though, and watch a DVD. It can't all be work, you know!

Ukraine: Sacrifices

Normally you think the Peace Corps sacrifices would be, well, normal: no running water, no electricity, eating insects, etc. Ukraine does entail the first two, but only on an intermitent basis, so they're more an annoyance than a sacrifice.

Cold weather aside, Peace Corps Ukraine doesn't seem to require TOO many sacrifices, but I'd like to point out a few some Zhytomyr volunteers are making at the moment:

1) Leave-without-pay days, once liberally granted, are now allowed for emergency use only. Many in my group thought we'd be able to use leave-without-pay days for summer travel once we'd used up our vacation days, and so burned through most or all of our vacation days last summer. In my case, I only have six days left, which was a slice across the jugular for all of this year's travel plans. Every other Group 27 Zhytomyr voluteer is in the same boat, so for all of us: No travel.

2) Two Zhytomyr volunteers tested postive for tuberculosis during mid-service medical (I, thankfully, was not one of them). They are now both on a nine month cycle of medication, during which they cannot drink alcohol! So for those two volunteers: No travel. No drinking.

3) One of those two volunteers also tested positive for displasia (abnormal cervical cells). She will have to undergo treatment for it while she's being treated for the tuberculosis, during which she will be unable to have sex with her boyfriend.

Her boyfriend is not happy. Neither is she.

So for her: No travel. No drinking. No sex.

Suddenly eating insects seems quite pleasant.