OVERVIEW OF WORK AND DAILY LIFE
As of March 2002
The Work:
After an exam week in December and a three-week break (which meant a four-week break for me), classes resumed January 14. However, the department waited a week in January for the timetable to “stabilize” before giving me my classes. I have the 5th year students again until the second week of March. This time I’ve been taking on the teaching of cross-cultural awareness. In some ways my students are more culturally sensitive than I thought, but I still get the occasional remark like “everybody celebrates New Year this way” or “I don’t have a problem with Jews, they have a problem with us.” And a lot of people here don’t like Arabs. I’ve tried to do more writing with the students this time, but I’m not sure if I’ve made any progress with them on it.
I also am teaching a “special course” for the 3rd year students on Varieties of English. The first five weeks of the course were lectures to large groups, and the second five weeks are seminars in smaller groups. With the seminar schedule plus the 5th year students, I’m teaching 10 double periods instead of 8, and I’m teaching courses on Saturdays. Fortunately this is not for very long, and I have Fridays and Sundays off.
As soon as I’m finished with the 5th year and 3rd year students, I will work with the 4th year students again, who had teaching practice in January and February. Then they’ll have exams and there will be a two-week break (thus a three-week break for me). I’ll have classes for about a month in May. Graduation is June 8.
The other thing I’m doing is trying to help students in my department organize a student assembly. There have been a lot of stops and starts, a lot of pessimism, and even some heated arguing, but I’m pressing on with them as best I can.
I went to a TESOL Ukraine conference in Chernihiv (see my description of Chernihiv for more information) and made a presentation there. I’ll do the same again in Crimea at the end of April. But I’m most excited about going to a mid-year meeting for my program in Istanbul in March.
More Celebrations:
At the end of January my school celebrated the anniversary of the school newspaper. The two-hour spectacle included a beauty pageant for men and women (to select “Miss Press”) and dancing. Valentine’s Day is growing in popularity here. March 8 is Women’s Day, which in some ways is similar to Mother’s Day but includes all women regardless of whether they have children. The English department had a dinner at a café to celebrate. Orthodox Easter is May 5, and Victory Day is May 8 or 9.
The Weather:
December was the worst month for me weatherwise; it was always below zero Celsius. On a good day the high was -5 (23 F) and the low was -10 or -11 (12-14 F); on a bad day the hhigh was -10 or -11 and the low was -14 (7 F). It wasn’t much warmer in the apartment, and my electric blanket wasn’t holding up. I ended up taking a friend’s advice and turning on the oven for an hour or so at a time and sitting really close to it to stay warm. Plus everything was snowy and icy. On the other hand, when it snowed and the trees were all white and little kids were being pulled by their parents on small metal sleds it was like a scene from a Courier and Ives painting. (No pictures from December because of a camera snafu, but I got some nice snowy tree shots when we had a storm in March). The roads and sidewalks are not cleared very well here so walking is difficult at best and treacherous at worst. One English Language Fellow in one of the “Stans” (a former Soviet republic like Kyrgystan) talked about having “Ice Encounters of the Tush kind”. One day I slipped at least three times walking to my apartment.
I came home for the holidays so I missed the really deep freeze when it got as cold as -28 Celsius (-18 Fahrenheit) around New Year’s. When I came back, it was a balmy 0 degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit). The sidewalks were a single sheet of dirty ice for a couple of weeks. I have a picture of a portion of the sidewalk being chipped away by a babushka. (Well, I got the ice—the woman wouldn’t let me take a picture of her. She said it wasn’t necessary, and asked if I would like to try her job. I respected her wishes). It’s been above freezing so long since then that all the ice and snow has melted. It has even rained a few times. It’s like being on the East Coast again, which means I can survive it.
Shopping:
In December I went back to Barabashova (this time on a Tuesday with someone who could speak Russian and bargain like nobody’s business). I bought a pair of winter boots (black leather with fur trim) for $16. I call these shoes four wheel drive for my feet; since buying them I have slipped on the ice but not fallen down once. I also bought a new coat. My poor wool coat was losing buttons and lining, and my landlady laughed at the sight of it to indicate it would not be warm enough. The new coat is a chocolate color, suede on the outside and lined with fake fur (feels like a bathroom rug but it keeps me warm) and it has a lined hood and fur trim on the sleeves. My brother calls it “the bear.” I look very Ukrainian in it. I bought some super cheap socks and gloves too. But I’m fast learning that at you get what you pay for. Three months later the socks and gloves have holes in them, and the shoes are losing their lining.
Billa, an Austrian supermarket chain, opened its second supermarket in Kharkiv recently (between Historichny Musey and Centralny Rynok). I wasn’t impressed at first; it seemed like it sold the same traditional Ukrainian groceries at a higher price than places like Target. Then I discovered things I could splurge on like Moevenpick ice cream, and Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies. I still don’t know if Billa will put the rynoks out of business, but it sure had a long checkout line the last time I was there. That line really made me feel like I was in an American supermarket.
In the Metro stations, the folding tables of goods have been nearly folded up for good and are being replaced by permanent glass and metal kiosks for vendors to sell their products from (see the October 2001 report for a list of products). Not sure how the vendors like it, but it looks more “developed” from my point of view.
One of my Ukrainian friends has generously lent me an old TV, so a few weeks ago I got brave and went to MKC (pronounced M-K-S), a major audio-video and home electronics store (like Circuit City in America or MediaMarkt in Germany) and bought a VCR. This is the first time I feel I can say that the service in Ukraine was better than the service in America. The salesman gave me a computer printout of the product I wanted. Then I went to the cashier (kassa) on the first floor and paid for it. Then I went to line to wait for the VCR to be brought up from the warehouse. No, that was not the good part, this is: when it arrived, an employee opened the box and made sure all the parts were there. He then hooked up the VCR to the TV to make sure it worked. I had a videocassette handy and put it in; it worked just fine. He even filled out the warranty card for me. I was very impressed.
Elections: