Auburn Team update: Group B

Nathan, Morgan, and one of the groups

Matching game led by Nathan

Students participating in activities prepared by the Auburn team

me, Renee, and Margarita

More to come...

Oh, Life in Ukraine

Well, it looks like I'm mostly over the illnesses. I'm still tired and weak, but at least I can leave the house occasionally, which is excellent because a volunteer team from Auburn, AL arrived last night! They'll be working with us this week, teaching in the schools. We're really excited. Rachel is extra excited because...drum roll...her parents surprised her by coming on the trip!

Unpleasant surprises: snow. Again. Friday, the temperature got up to 45, and we were ecstatic, thinking that spring was on the way. The next day, however, snow covered the ground. Sigh...

Second unpleasant surprise: my landlord called EARLY this morning to harass me about talking to my supervisor. He was planning to come right on over (while all three of us were basically still in bed), and I had to do some fast work to make sure that didn't happen. It did not start my day off happily. Grrr...

REALLY good surprises: all kinds of gifts and goodies from home! It was just like Christmas, as Rachel's parents unloaded all kinds of food and gifts. SO good!

Public Transportation is a contact sport

After more than a week of being sick, I ventured forth today for 2 hours to teach a class with Hannah (unfortunately, Rachel is now sick...). The teaching wasn't the tiring part. At least it wasn't the bulk of the exhaustion. The real problem was transportation. Thankfully, on the way to the school, I was able to snag a seat. On the way home, though, we had to stand.

Standing constitutes maintaining balance, tensing muscles, fighting for hand-holds, surreptitiously edging/ pushing people out of the way, and fighting like a football player to get to the doors.

I'm totally wiped out.

The best remedy for being sick? Sleep

...but the universe works against me every time.

I haven't slept well at night since I got sick. Something about not being able to breathe, constantly coughing/sneezing, and sweating/having the chills from the fever seem to prevent me from actually sleeping. Ergo, my best opportunity to sleep occurs during the day.

The problem is that I have too many people who like me enough to make sure I'm alive. Thus, without fail, when I have gotten to sleep, the phone rings or I get a text message or my cell phone vibrates or the doorbell rings. Hannah and Rachel did a great job deterring visitors earlier in the week. But then, my landlord discovered that I'm sick. So, this morning, the doorbell rang in the way that only the landlord rings it. It woke me up out of a really good sleep. I could hear poor Hannah trying to deal with him, so I just got on up and went out there. I had to do some fast talking (ha! It was in Russian, so there was nothing fast about it.) to convince him that I did not need a doctor or medicine.

I just want to sleep...

Flu shot? I laugh in the face of the flu shot!

Before I left home, I got a flu shot. Amanda Pennington was there to witness it. I've gotten a flu shot for the past 4 or 5 years and have successfully avoided the flu.

Ukrainian flu, however, does not take kindly to the flu shot. In fact, it looks on the flu shot and says, "I laugh in the face of the flu shot. Take that, Erin!"

I'm sick with the flu. I'm a little grumpy about it.

It's not normally my style, but...

My reading materials around this place are a little slim. Correction: my reading materials in ENGLISH are a little slim. However, my supervisor's wife, the lovely Mrs. Linda, graciously supplies me with whatever reading material she has available.

Right after I arrived here, she sent me home with mountains of books. Among these books was a series of six books (I have since learned that there is a seventh! I'm currently scheming to acquire it from the States...), entitled The Russians by Michael Philips and Judith Pella. This series is a kind of Christian-romance-historical-fiction. Normally, this is SO not my style. At all. However, when the pickin's are slim, I'll read whatever.

I started to read these books at the end of January. Even with the 16 classes per week, I've finished all six books, Rachel has finished five, and Hannah has finished four. We just keep passing them. We're somewhat addicted.

Why?

Because: these books are set in tsarist-pre-revolution Russia and follow the lives of several families whose stories are intertwined. I've always been somewhat fascinated by the Romanovs and the events leading up to the rise of Communism, and these books take that information and couch it in interesting storylines. The stories are especially interesting to those of us in Ukraine, because of the Slavic culture presented in the stories.

With the danger of sounding like "Reading Rainbow," I would highly recommend these books to anyone interested in the history of Russia/USSR, anyone who likes a good and twisting story, or anyone planning to visit/live in Slavic countries.

Happy reading!

For Jaclyn...

Dearest darlingest Jaclyn,

In response to your questions about what ESL sites I often use, I am dedicating this post to you. Rachel, Hannah, and I teach approx. 16 classes a week, all different levels. We take a lot of ideas and materials from these sites and adapt them for the level with which we're working:

1. http://esl.about.com/od/englishlessonplans/English_Lesson_Plans_for_ESL_EFL_Classes.htm
This has a lot of good activities/ grammar information. It has many dialogues for practice, as well.

2. http://www.eslsite.com/
I love the game ideas on this site. They can be very easily adapted for almost any level.

3. http://iteslj.org/questions/
This site has lots of discussion topics and question prompts. It can easily be adapted for different levels, as well.

4. http://edhelper.com/crossword_free.htm
We use online crossword puzzlemakers to make puzzles to review vocabulary words/ concepts. You can have students work in team or individually.

We FREQUENTLY use tic-tac-toe as a competition: divide the team in two. Ask each team a question from the lesson. When they answer correctly, let them choose where to put their x or o. Surprisingly, this is a big hit.

Hangman is also a crowd-pleaser. When we teach vocabulary, we often play Hangman (in teams) to review. Once they have the word, have them orally define.

We also play BINGO, Charades, and Jeopardy. All are big hits. BINGO and Jeopardy require a bit of preparation, but the BINGO cards and the Jeopardy can be reused.

I'll try to update you on other activities we use that seem to be effective. In fact, I'm just going to start blogging about it: www.erininukraineesl.blogspot.com. Hope this helps you some!

Love,
Erin

More on Names

Another confusing name predicament: diminutive forms.

I find this characteristic both really sweet and really mindboggling. Slavic languages typically have many "sweet" versions of each name, as well as common nicknames. Our equivalent of the nicknames might be Robert-Bob, Rebekah-Bekah. Some of them make sense:
Irina - Ira
Dmitri - Dima
Katarina - Katya
Vladislav - Vlad

Some, however, I just don't get:
Yevghenia - Zhenya
Alexander - Sasha
Daria - Dasha

I don't understand the Alexander - Sasha situation because, well, it doesn't make sense. I don't understand the Daria - Dasha combo because Dasha is hardly shorter than Daria.

A few years ago, I read The Brothers Karamozov by Dostoevsky, having no idea how very much a part of my life the Slavic culture would become. I had a great deal of trouble following the story at times because of all the different names that were used to reference one character. Because of all the diminutive/ sweet forms of a name, one person can easily go by 4 or 5 variations of his or her name. Example: Alexander = Sasha = Sanya = Sashka = Sash = Alex

For almost any name, there's a "sweet" version. Example: Ira = Irachka and Andrei = Andruzh. My name becomes Erinichka or Erinochka.

Seriously, it's confusing.

What's in a name? Culture lesson on names, pt. 1

Something that will always be baffling to me...Slavic names.

The thing about it is that there are fewer "first" names that are used in Slavic countries than in the States. Theoretically, you can name your kid anything in the States and get away with it. Little One might catch some flack for having an unusual name, but eventually, that tends to blow over as they get older.

However, in Slavic countries, there is a more limited list of names that are used. Most of the names correlate to a saint that has been canonized by the Orthodox Church. Therefore, your Slavic friends frequently have the same names as each other. Having an unusual name becomes more of a stigma here than it does at home.

This naming conundrum presents negative and positive scenarios:
1. Positive: if you don't remember someone's name, just guess one of about 15 names and you'll probably get it right.
2. Negative: it's very hard to remember which of your friends is which.

Here's a (non-comprehensive) list of names that I have run into most frequently:
Boys
1. Sergei
2. Sasha
3. Igor (pronounced: EA-ger)
4. Andrei
5. Pasha
6. Dima
7. Kostia
8. Kolya
9. Viktor
10. Ivan (pronounced: ee-VAHN)

Girls
1. Ira
2. Tanya
3. Yulia
4. Oksana
5. Anya
6. Olya
7. Masha
8. Lena
9. Marina
10. Sveta

More to come on names...get excited!

Ping Pong Tournament

Our church has a weekly outreach ministry on Tuesday nights: SMS Club. Text messages are called SMS, and I guess it's a play off that. Usually, SMS club consists of a central theme, discussions, games, and sometimes a drama or music. This week, however, we had a ping pong tournament!

It was a great time to involve new people in SMS, and some of our English clubbers came, too. To start the festivites, each of the 18 participants (all guys) were given a match. They proceeded to ceremonially light the "Olympic Ping Pong Torch."After the historic lighting ceremony, they began duking it out. We stayed for round one of the brackets. We haven't yet heard who won, but we'll try to find out tonight.

Olympic Torch

Vova laying down the rules to all the participants.

Part of the cheering section: me, Nastiya, and Masha