International Volunteer Day

This isn't anything super exciting, but I don't get snail mail that often. So when I got some from the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Senate, I was excited and intrigued. As it turned out, they were congratulating me on being a volunteer in the Dnipropetrovsk region for International Volunteer Day!

I thought it was cool, especially since I'm not sure how often thank-you cards are given in Ukraine.

The outside

The inside

Final Two Weeks of School - DUN DUN DUN

December 7 will be my last day at my school, which means I officially only have two more weeks, or ten days, left of teaching.

Say whaaaat!

I have a tentative exit plan, which mostly involves me putting all the materials I've handmade over the past two years and extra exercises into chronologically arranged folders for each class and making them look pretty. I also need to buy some small gifts to give to my English teachers as a thank you for letting me work there (I've already done this for one of them).

This is one of the ways I teach vocabulary. I was pretty proud of myself for that pitcher of water.

I have some small paperwork items to be completed for Peace Corps, but these will be fairly simple.

One of my English teachers will be at re-certification courses for these next two weeks, so guess what that means: I'll be solo teaching her classes! Exciting, right? Yes? No? Maybe? One of those classes is the tenth form, and they're fairly unambitious so while I'm not looking forward to it, it shouldn't be too bad. The other class is the third form, and this is the one I'm most worried about. They're a large class, they're young and energetic, and they need very specific, detailed instructions in Ukrainian to understand what to do. Their lesson could either be a little rough but fun, or pure mayhem. Then I remind myself that the worst that could happen is they go bananas and yell and scream and run around for 45 minutes, and I stop worrying so much.

Anecdote of the week: I told my counterpart teacher when my last day of school would be, and she said okay and then started rambling on about how I've done good work or something. Except, I don't remember exactly what she said because I was too mesmerized by THE HUGE SMILE ON HER FACE. I can't really do anything but laugh about her inability to keep her true emotions off her face.

And in between now and my last day of school, another glorious event will be happening: Luba's (my landlady) birthday! I'm always happy about chances to celebrate her wonderfulness.

This is All Over the Place

I'm just going to start chronologically with this post, because it's all over the place. So, to start:

 An autumn sunset

Right before I came home, I went to my close of service conference. This was mostly a bunch of information about how to officially close out my service and the work at my site, with some extra bonuses of resume writing and slideshows. Oh, and the hotel where it was held was on top of a nuclear bomb shelter!

Luxurious, no?

 I took this mostly because I think it's very considerate to have an actual toilet in the bomb shelter, even if it doesn't have a seat, rather than one of those squat toilets they seem to prefer for daily use

 Should you not feel like walking through doorways, you can just crawl through these

 Ventilation system

 Random crap near plank beds

 Only the best bomb shelters have a ping pong table!

The following picture I took while riding a train home one evening. There's usually also a sign that has a bottle that's crossed out that I presume means you're not supposed to drink, but, come on - no one follows that rule. I'm not really sure what these signs are supposed to mean: are you supposed to throw your counterfeit bottles out the window? Are you supposed to stand and look wistfully out the window? Are you supposed to throw your counterfeit bottles out the window and then watch them tumble away to rest with the multitude of other discarded bottles? 'Tis a mystery.

I've had some people in my life say some rather funny things lately, such as:

"Well, you should get a boyfriend so he can take you on a tropical island trip too."

"Well, I hope you enjoy your last month of teaching. Because, wow, you're really only here one more month." Which made me realize, wow, I am only in my village for one more month. Weeeeeird.

I had one of my classes where a number of boys decided to say multiple variations of the eff word one day. First, this makes it quite clear that they have the brain capacity and ability to remember (bad) English words that they've heard in movies or songs, so it's mostly their lack of ambition to blame for their poor command of English. Second, the teacher part of me wants to be like, "You're not even saying it correctly! You say it like this! [Expletive!]."

Shannon came to visit me during our fall break, where we proceeded to do our normal routine of lounging, eating, and watching American television. We also went to Dnipropetrovsk one day specifically to find the T.G.I.Friday's there and eat a lot. Which is exactly what we did. Here's the evidence:

This is actually only the appetizers, but we were too distracted by its deliciousness to remember to take pictures of each course

And just to round things out, here's the obligatory picture of the kitty, with a particularly salty expression on his face.