OVERVIEW OF WORK AND DAILY LIFE
As of October 2001
The Work:
By contract, I’m not allowed to teach more than 16 hours a week at the university. However, like a psychiatrist, one 80-minute “double period” is considered a two-hour shift, so I don’t teach more than 8 classes a week. The downside is that I teach 8 different groups once a week. The department feels it’s fairer that way, so that everybody gets a chance to talk to the native speaker. I have four groups of 4th year students and four groups of 5th year students—it is felt the advanced groups have the best chance of understanding a native speaker. Each group is studying English plus one other language—French, Persian (Farsi), Japanese, Chinese, or Turkish. (There are also English-German students but not in the 4th and 5th years). For the fourth year students I’m following the thematic units of the national EFL curriculum: higher education, law and crime/courts and trials, politics and elections, and music. For the fifth year students there was no national curriculum (it was finalized in October) so I made a series of seminars based on students’ interests and questions (like British vs. American English and games for the classroom). For both groups I’m emphasizing listening and speaking skills. Each class is between 5 and 20 students, so I see on average 75 to 90 students a week, and most of them are named either Oleg, Oksana, Sveta, Liana/Lena, Anya, Sasha (can be a nickname for a boy or a girl), Andrei, Yulia, or Ola/Olga. I’m recognizing faces but even after six weeks I’m having the worst time matching names with them, which is really embarrassing for me.
Student Life:
In some ways I think college in Ukraine is more like high school in America. As of September 24, students are in class 30 hours a week Monday through Saturday (reduced from 40 hours a week). The classes are all in one building, not spread out among a campus. (Well, there are two other buildings of the university downtown, but these are for different departments, the administration, and the library; no student has to travel between these buildings to take classes). There are even bells that ring at the end of a period. Some students live in dormitories (which my students call “hostels” in English), and some students have said it is difficult to have visitors in these hostels after midnight.
The Apartment:
I live in what is called a two room flat in an apartment complex across from the university. One room is a living room/dining room, the other room is a bedroom. I also have a kitchen with a small dining table in it. The toilet and the bath are in separate, adjacent rooms. The apartment is furnished and decorated with wallpaper and oil paintings. There is a phone (pulse), but the connection is sometimes really bad. I don’t mind it when I’m calling in Kharkiv, but to pay 2 dollars a minute to call the States on a phone that makes it sound like I’m calling from Sputnik itself is really irritating. The stove is gas and I have to light the burner with a match every time I use it. There is a washing machine in the apartment, but it’s electric and made of plastic. My landlady indicated through gestures that I’m supposed to use it in the bathtub because water will drain out of the washing machine through a rubber tube. But she doesn’t really know how it works, she says. So instead I just wash my clothes in a small plastic basin in the tub and hang it on the clotheslines over the bathtub. Tide makes a special powder detergent for hand washing clothes (at least that’s what the picture on the box indicates), so I feel like my clothes are getting clean. I have a small balcony, but haven’t figured out a way to hang clothes out there as other people here do.
One thing about the apartment--many of the buildings in this complex look very similar, as do the playgrounds, fences, schools, bread shops, and other landmarks between school and my house. There are no street signs and sometimes not even a paved walkway. It took me a week to make it home from school or the internet café without getting lost.
Shopping:
Grocery shopping, once I learned a few basic words and numbers in Russian, is fairly easy. There is a nice western-style supermarket near me called Keva, but I’ve just found out that it’s owned by the mafia. Many people prefer to buy their fruits, vegetables, and meats from sellers in the rynok, an open air marketplace. I always buy my fruits and vegetables there. There are good apples, bananas, potatoes, onions, grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers, and red peppers (both paprika and chili peppers). The eggs are really fresh too. I see lots of lemons, cilantro, parsley, and dill as well. In addition, there are a lot of small “magazin” (store) and “producti” (grocery) shops where I can buy bread, juices, ketchup, pasta, ramen, very good cheeses, and sausage. There are also special bread shops, bakeries, and dairy product stores. Near the metro, babushkas sell seeds (like roasted sunflower seeds), beer, cigarettes, hot dogs, gamburgers (the Russian pronunciation of “hamburger”), sweet pastries, and piroskhis, a fried pastry with potatoes or cabbage inside. Inside the metro walkways are kiosks where you can buy school supplies, tea or coffee, potato chips, chocolate bars, fruit, juice, cigarettes, sweaters, bras, underwear, pantyhose, hair care products, dog and cat food, and more. These kiosks also sell nice plastic bags from Western European or American shops and department stores which people use to carry their purchases, schoolbooks, or anything else. Most men and women carry a plastic bag with them. Popular brands include Springfield, Oriflame cosmetics, Nivea, Davidoff cigarettes, a German shoe store whose name escapes me, and Gordon’s Joyeros (apparently the Spanish branch of Gordon’s Jewelers). The Metro kiosks are open until about 9 p.m. and the stores are usually open until 10 p.m., even on Saturdays and Sundays.
Water and
Electricity:
The tap water in Ukraine is not really potable. My colleague Gallina said I should let the water sit in a bowl for two days, then boil it. A Peace Corps fellow said boiling it still won’t get rid of all the mineral deposits. And my faucet doesn’t have a filter, so I use bottled water for everything except taking a shower and washing the dishes. This includes making rice or pasta and brushing my teeth. As for hot water I’ve been very lucky so far—I had one stretch for a week and a half where I didn’t have hot water from the tap and I had to heat it up and pour it into a carafe for washing dishes and taking showers. Some of my colleagues have been without running hot water for over a month. I’ve had similar luck with electricity—it went out for about an hour one Sunday night, but I was able to get by with a flashlight and candles. I’ve heard it may go out several times a day in the wintertime. I’m not looking forward to that.