The Good, The Bad, and The Candy

The weeks just fly by! I'm all settled in, getting ready to enjoy a nice three-day weekend. Life is good.

It's been almost two weeks since I last wrote, and that's mostly because the week before last wasn't anything amazing or out of the ordinary. However, it continually surprises me how much easier teaching has become. The first week, maybe even the first month, I didn't know how I was going to be able to survive five months teaching English. Between planning double the usual amount of lessons, incorporating all the various ILP guidelines, and just plain dealing with small children, it was hard and still is at times. But it's been so gratifying to see how far I've come and how much I've adjusted to my life and responsibilities here.

Last week actually had a weird, but super awesome trend--Pre-K never showed up! The terror I associate with Pre-K has diminished, but my heart rate still picks up in the moments before it begins. Last week, though, everyone was MIA, giving way to the faint hope that Pre-K would be suspended indefinitely. Unfortunately, they were back this week, although teaching them has slowly (like really slowly) become more enjoyable and definitely a lot easier. It's all about how to handle the little crazies.

Another interesting tidbit: our host family has been without a car for probably around two or three weeks now, which means we get to school by using a modge podge of different host drivers, like the grandparents or the terrifyingly fast driver neighbor. We also have been getting home by ourselves every night. This really isn't an issue, except that we live in some random village on the edges of Kiev meaning we need a super specific marshrutka to get to the center of the village. And this little marshrutka comes maybe every twenty minutes and for some reason likes to zoom past the metro stop we usually wait at after our first marshrutka ride from the school. We learned this the hard way after we missed it and had to wait in the humid cold for who knows how long before we could frantically flag down the next super specific marshrutka. Believe me, when I say flag down I mean audibly yelling and spastically waving to make sure the driver notices us. We tried to experiment and take the first marshrutka to the next metro where that super specific marshrutka actually slows down for a few seconds--yeah that didn't work out. Both times we tried it on different buses, we turned off the road and went in a completely different direction and we ended up having to backtrack up some hill and across the street. So we take our chances with flagging down the super specific marshrutka.

Last Thursday, Kate's mission call came! It arrived at her home in Utah and her parents scanned it and emailed it to her so she could be the first to open it. I obviously wanted to know right away, but Kate is responsible and thoughtful, and decided to wait until her whole immediate family could Skype in and be with her when she opened it. That also meant that we had to wake up at 2am in order to Skype. Curse this enormous time difference; I have a hard enough time waking up at 7:30am. Kate woke me up and apparently I said, "Is it loaded?" That doesn't make any sense. It took a while for her family to all get on, so I was sprawled on the bathroom floor wondering how I got there. Finally it was time and it was so exciting! She is going to the Chile Concepcion Mission, Spanish speaking (obvi) and she will be leaving for the MTC on July 16th! Super exciting stuff, both her mission call and the fact that I could go back to bed.

I'm just going to apologize right here because I definitely thought my life had been bone dry week before last, but looks like I was wrong. It only gets longer from here folks, so turn back now if you're not up for it (although personally, I think the better stuff is coming up.)

That weekend was some kind of pancake festival or whatnot celebrating the first day of Spring. And when I say pancake, I actually mean crepes. Lots and lots of crepes. My grandpa used to tell us how in France they would make crepes for some special crepe day, but they would put alcohol in them and then get drunk from crepes and start slapping each other with crepes. I think that's amazing. Unfortunately, I didn't see any of those shenanigans (although I really wish I had,) but we did go to this park with a bunch of old Ukrainian villages. Basically, it was this place representing Ukraine in old times with little model houses and churches and the like. It was pretty awesome, made even better by our picnic that consisted of, you guessed it, a ton of crepes. I actually think I'm going to throw up from the sheer amount of sweets I've eaten in the last two weeks (you'll understand much better in a few paragraphs.) We only stayed for a little over an hour before we left because it was wet and cold. Hopefully, we can make a return trip in the spring because it sure was cute.



It's the first day of Spring!



This man and his mustache are my heroes



A replica of an old church, completely made from wood

Inside of above church



My hair did not appreciate the humidity



Eating crepes and drinking tea like the fancy people we are

I can only imagine what this place looks like in the *real* Spring

Gah!! Monday it snowed, but luckily it didn't stick. It's mostly been raining and overcast, but the sun did come out on Friday which was beautiful!

For the past few days Kate and I have been watching these little kids pull out massive packs of huge wafers for their snack. Sometimes we're lucky and they share, but on Wednesday after school we decided to get some of our own at a little store down the street. One pack of wafers turned into three each and soon we were each walking up to the cash register with arms full of candy, chips, and some random sweet bread we picked up. The lady who rang up our "food" was laughing at us as we raided the nearby candy shelf for some of our favorite candies, Pueros. She started talking to us in Russian, and then found the situation even funnier when she realized we are foreigners.

The haul

Thursday was a sad day. Our group of teachers was allowed to go down to the center of Kiev where the protests have taken place over the last few months. There were hundreds of thousands of flowers piled all across the center to honor those who died in the protests. Our head teacher bought some flowers for us so we could pay our respects. One building was charred black from being on fire and there were still many barricades and tents up. The cobblestones from the streets were sitting in stacks from having been pulled up to be used as weapons against the police.  As we walked down from the bridge where most of the people died, I saw two girls standing in front of a memorial for one of the people who died. One girl was attempting to comfort the other, as the other cried. It was emotionally hard to be around so much suffering and sadness. It was very surreal and the gloomy, overcast weather added to the dreariness. It was humbling to really understand what other people go through all around the world in order to obtain the freedoms and privileges that I have enjoyed my entire life. 

Paying my respects to the fallen

 

 

 

This building was used as a hospital for the protestors and caught fire

 

 

Torn up cobblestones

 

The weapons the police used on the protestors

 

 

This is where the majority of the casualties occurred

 Friday, in contrast, was a very happy day. The sun was shining and the air was warm. Pre-K was so fun to teach, even though I got the hiccups and that was very distracting to the little kids. (If you know my hiccups, you know they sound like a small dog is being kicked.) 

Singing songs and having fun

Little Alyssa and Andrew

For lunch, Kate and I decided to make a trip back out to the main street to buy some street food. We decided on shawarma, even though a girl in our group has gotten sick from it and our foreign coordinators has advised against it. It was delicious. We probably won't be getting that everyday since there are risks, but I'm glad we tried it. It was such a nice day that we decided to keep walking past the first bus stop while munching on our contraband. Little did we know that the next bus stop would be incredibly far down the road and that marshrutkas wouldn't stop very easily. But it was sunny and warm, so I didn't mind. 


It was sooo good



Waiting in the sun for the bus that never comes

Teaching had more kids than usual, but it was Women's Day which is actually really celebrated here! A lot of our students brought us chocolate and flowers, which made me feel so special. 



The loot

 For dinner we had waffles with Nutella and then our host dad Alex made us try pickled garlic cloves and pig lard on bread. It was not tasty, but at least I tried it, right? Relating back to what I said earlier, I am going to die from the amount of sweets that are in my body and continue to be presented to me.

Case in point: for breakfast this morning, we had straight up candy. It was two plates of candy. Maybe I should fast again this Sunday, just so I can cleanse my system. 

But I do have a brilliant plan. I told my mom that I would like her to take me out to get Mexican food when I arrive in Salt Lake in June because Mexican food is delicious and I miss it. She asked if she could just bring me Chipotle, and since I'm flexible and easy to work with, I agreed. But being me, I get a little obsessive over planning for the future, so I promptly downloaded the Chipotle app and crafted my order, all ready to be sent in when I arrive back in the US. I also took a screenshot of my order and sent it to my mom, and now I will show all of you beautiful people.   



Just take it all in