But today I am forcing myself to do it. So here goes:
1) My landlord has baby chicks! They were adorable for about three days, and then they started to get big, get real feathers, and peck at each other. Also, they smell and they are living in the spare room in my house in a crib. There are more eggs incubating so I guess there will be another batch of babies soon.
2) Earth Day was this past Friday! I decided to do lessons about the environment and ways to save water and prevent pollution. My first three lessons with the 10th, 6th, and 7b students were fairly successful. There were only six students in my 7a class so I decided to take them down to the sporting competition and watch that instead. Unfortunately, my last class of the day, and my favorite, the 5th form, was canceled so kids could go home early for the holiday weekend. I really wanted to get a picture with them and their Earth Day artwork so I had something to show for it.
Here's a picture of a trash pocket in my village. Lovely, eh?
3) Students in Ukrainian schools are given designated territories to keep clean and beautify. Because Easter was approaching, students spent most of last week outside raking leaves, planting flowers and cleaning. After all the cleaning is done, it's custom in Ukraine - at schools and at homes - to paint the bottom halves of tree trunks, curbs, and edgings of walkways white. I will post a picture of this as soon as I remember to take one.
4) I spent Easter with my landlord's family. I think traditionally there's 4am mass, followed by a blessing of food by a priest but the church in my village is very far away and I don't think many people often go to it. My landlord's family just visited for the weekend and had a barbecue Sunday night. My landlord's granddaughters and their friends gave me some Easter eggs and traditional Ukrainian Easter bread, called paska. I also went for a walk Sunday evening and the physics teacher at my school saw me, and gave me more painted eggs and bread. I also talked with her, her son who is in my 7b class, and her daughter for about an hour. This is a good example of Ukrainian hospitality.
5) I met a 23 year old! This probably seems like a weird statement, but most volunteers have trouble finding friends our own age. The problem is, once students finish secondary school, most either move to large cities to find a job or go to university, or they get married and start having kids. There's only one other young woman I've met in my village, and she's 22, married and has a four year old. The young woman I met goes to university and lives in Dnipropetrovsk but comes back to visit her family in Mezhyrich sometimes. Hopefully, we will be friends.
6) My schedule is starting to be a little more full, which is nice. It took three months, but I finally started to get really bored with nothing to do in my village. I could go to the discotech, in theory, but it probably wouldn't be very fun to go by myself and then I would have to deal with all the rumors that I was drunk at the discotech (this would happen most likely whether or not I was actually drunk, or even had a drink).
7) A fun fact about the Ukrainian education system: You can't fail. Literally. You can not fail, even if you rarely show up and don't really do any work. Also, when you miss a class, you don't have to make up the work. Provides a lot of incentive to show up and learn, right? I have kids in my classes who I'm supposed to see three times a week, every week but who have actually shown up a handful of times since January. Also, the grading scale is from 1 to 12 but there's really no objective way to grade. I have to ballpark what I think a student’s level of participation and quality of work is worth. Next year, I hope to enforce a more objective rubric so students know what they have to do to get a good grade.
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