My life in a nutshell

Usually I make a comment here about how fast time is going, and how i can't believe it, it's flow by so quickly. But I won’t this time around. Time is time and it always moves in a linear direction because that is its nature. So obviously right now I am at 2 weeks left to go in my training because time has drug me here. But still…I have two weeks left of my training.

Next week we will hold our seminar with our English teachers at school #3. 

Topic: How to effectively teach culture through English. Have I left grad school? No, apparently not. But it will feel good to finally have that out of the way because then we will have our language test soon following before being whisked away to meet our regional managers for our new sites (YEEEEE!) 

Here’s a quick recap of my life to fill the gap I have left you in:

Food:

Always, always food. 

Vereneky. Simple, delicious

Cheese vereneky 

I did some gardening.

Shovel in hand, hole was dug!

We made a good team!

I are strong!

See! Show that corn who be boss!

Chickens were rather happy about our upheaval of the yard.  

There was a birthday! 

Surprise Katie! 

Now is not the time for a quarter life crisis. 

So happy with her Frisbee and cards!

"Dane Harozhenya" in Ukrainian

There was English week at school number 3 that included some "wonderful English lessons" (literally, the English teachers called our tech coordinator and asked her to ask us to create "wonderful" English lessons for English week). We decided to teach the youngin's about holidays in America. We did this with 4th, 5th, and 8th graders. We all had a station where we conducted a mini lesson on the holiday of our choosing--mine was Thanksgiving--and then we rotated until all the kids had been at each station. I decided it would be fun to show them how to make hand turkeys.

I should never be in charge of fun. 

I never want to see another hand turkey or talk about Thanksgiving ever again. I see hand turkeys in my dreams now. Likewise if I hear "jingle bells" or "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer" one more time I might scream.  

The kids were cute though, however exhausting. I have a new appreciation for elementary school teachers now. Keeping those children's attention for 7 whole minutes was torture.

I may look calm and collected but on the inside i'm like:
"dear god there's so many of them. And they're all looking at me"

"Stay calm. I'm pretty sure they can sense fear." 

"They seem to be responding well. Keep it up." 

"Oh god, they're starting to loose interest, what do I do? Don't panic!
What did I get myself into...just keep talking, this will all be over soon"

 They all successfully drew a hand turkey though!

Whitney on St. Paddy's day

Robertiv on Valentine's day

Katie with the fourth of July

And Jake with Christmas carols. Or rather, with Jingle Bells, over and over and over and over....

"Jingle hell, Jingle hell, when can I go home"

Before our lesson though, these adorable little hellians put on a play for us. In English. About some animals that lived in a house and then a fox comes along and they sing a song about not wanting the fox in the house and then it was over. 

Gotta tell you. I about lost it when the kid with the bird declared proudly
"I am a cock!"
Really, Jamie? You're terrified of children yet your maturity level is here? For shame. 

Here's a taste of what traversed. Did you know that there were more verses to that song?

I also had my last class I had to teach here in Kozelets. It was a little bitter sweet but also it's nice to think that I don't have to do anymore lesson plans for a while haha.

I don't have any pictures from this class but I can tell about it. I taught my 9th graders that I wanted so desperately to like me and the English language by the end of this and well, I think I at least got them a little interested in me at the least but they probably feel the same indifference towards English as they did when I first came into their lives. 

The topic was "protecting our environment" (which I learned that I have been spelling "environment" wrong for YEARS"). It's a tough subject with difficult vocabulary but they have been going at it for a couple weeks and I taught them a couple lesson in the topic so I figured we wouldn't have much trouble. I created some materials that featured Portland and our green-ness, naturally. I had lots of activities that went over really well, they all seemed to be responding to them and things were happening. 

And then, I look up from helping a group out with putting sentence strips in the right order to see Valentina, their Ukrainian teacher, holding one kid by the ear while yelling at another. 

I don't know what happened to cause her to react so, and I probably don't want to know. Whatever it was though, ended quickly, with little disruption for the rest of the class. However, one of these clowns did have to stand at the back of the classroom for the remainder of the lesson. 

Whatever though, I thought the class went over rather smoothly with about 65% student participation and by-gone-it, those kids were able to tell me what it meant to be green by the end of the lesson so, well done!

-Jamie