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Published: December 22nd 2009
Potato Salad
Quite tasty. Bit mushy though.So moving on from last week, I felt like I was really starting to settle in a bit more. Getting lost sortof helped me find out more about the area, and the place that I'm at is pretty close to the city centre, so I can walk around without getting too lost, as long as I can get back on to Karla Marksa, the Queen Streen of the area, if you will.
I guess I should start off with the good news. After I did the English Speaking Club over the weekend, I mentioned to Marina that I was still trying to work out issues with my job, and that the director of the company was being quite bleh. So the next day, I ran into her at a restaurant, and she found out that I hadn't started yet. Luckily for me, I had made a good impression with her, and the director of the school (Svetlana), and they offered me work at Sunshine! So I've been working here for the last week, and I'll describe my classes a bit later on. Everyone here is extremely nice, and go out of their way to help me, especially Svetlana. When Alice
Sunshine
The people who came to the speaking club, despite the horrible weather. and Rita came to visit, she sat down with us, and helped us plan a long trip to other cities in Ukraine over the New Year/ Christmas break =D.
In terms of accomodation, I got lucky again. The hostel that I'm staying at has some kind of partnership with Globus, a school that Rita works at. So if I work for them for a a few hours a week, I can stay at the same place that I am. Needless to say, Rita is quite pleased =]. The place is quite nice, warm and liveable in. The kitchen is a bit bleh, but I'm sure we'll get used to it. The lack of washing machines does mean that I have to handwash my clothes, but it's not a huge deal for now.. (yes mother, it is hilarious). But it's walking distance from Globus, Sunshine, as well as the city centre. So getting lost will probably happen less. We're hoping to have a flat warming soon, as small as the place is, but we hope to get all the trainees together soon.
The English Classes are pretty cool. When I started off most of them, I gave them my
Out in the snow
Me, playing the NZ farmer, next to the snow covered tree usual speil about NZ, what we're famous for, facts etc. It's surprising how much I actually know about the country, when I sit down and have a think about it. For many of the students, it's rare to see a 'native english speaker', and they usually have a lot of questions and queries for you. I've had a lot of people tell me that they have been looking up having a holiday in New Zealand, and even two students ask me about the migration process there. Either I'm more persuasive than I though, or NZ just sells itself. The people are usually quite keen to talk, I really enjoy classes where we have long discussions, or even mini debates. It's not always the ones who are the best at English that speak the most, but more often the ones who are the least shy around foreigners. It's not often that I find myself in a situation where women my age and older are shy around me.
Apart from classes, we usually try to meet up when we can, but it's a bit harder due to clashing schedules. Schools usually have morning to afternoon work, whereas language centres work evening
Deep snow
Liam's boots saved my life so many times. I have yet to fall. to nights. As a result, we have the afternoon to catch up and walk around. It's been really cold though, it was quite slippery after the snow melted and froze over. But while I slip and slide around, Ukranian women walk as usual in their high heel boots, and then I feel just silly. It snowed again this week, and a lot this time. When I left to go to work in the morning, I was surprised to find that the snow outside was about a foot deep, and I was very glad to have boots (Cheers Liam). The weather is getting colder as well, and apparently next weekend is going to be close to -20 degrees.. I think we're going to spend as much time as we can indoors. In spite of the inconvinience, it still paints a very nice picture, and the city is starting to look more like a winter wonderland. I hope that we can go out and play in the snow too; I'm really keen to have a snowball fight, and make a snowman!
On Friday, Steve and Alice visited is in our hostel, and that was quite a lot of fun. We managed
A successful meal
WIth our little trainee family to cook a good set of dishes, and even the bad pasta that we bought managed to make a half decent meal. Since then, we've had more luck with our cooking, and want to try and see if we can do some baking as well, if we get the oven to work. Successful dishes so far include macaroni with white sauce, potato salad, and noodles with veggies. All our meals seem to include egg, which is pretty unusual for lunch and dinner, but a good addition to the meal. And I seem to have passed my cravings for cheese onto Rita, and we now have to top up on that pretty often. If anyone has any simple recipes that they would like to pass on, feel free to. Equipment we have includes a frying pan, a saucepan, and 2 moderately competant hotplates.
Last weekend, the trainees were invited to the final night of the New Horizons conference in the nearby city of Donetsk. It was a 3 hour train ride each way, and it was exceedingly warm on the way there. Once we got there, we relaxed in a very substandard hotel room, which ironically overlooked one of the
Traffic jams
..when you're already late. The tram was actually edging forward slowly, but cars weren't stopping newest and biggest soccer stadiums in Europe. There was a gala night, where the high point was Dnipro winning an award for most traniees raised, so go us! The rest of the night involved a lot of socialising with Aiesecers and some trainees from other cities, just to catch up and see how everyone was doing. It was nice to just have some time away, where we could just be togther and relax, and we all had a lot of fun.
I've sorfof been getting more confident about walking around the city, I haven't actually seen AIESECers in a long time. I think there are plans to meet up, and I hope they go ahead. I've been buying food by myself as well, even though my Russian hasn't improved at all, I've been more confident in my pointing and nodding. Also, repeating the phrases for 'I'm vegetarian' and 'no meat please' helps. While wandering around, I managed to spot a little roadside shop that had some Russian written on it, which I managed to interpret as Falafel. Abandoning all I heard about eating road side food, I quickly went and ordered a falafel roll, with the works. It was
Falafel
I was very pleased with the purchase actually quite tasty, and a lot cheaper than a meal at Puzata Hata. I think I will be visiting that place again. I also decided to buy a camera again, with my limited knowledge on the subject (Sorry Wendy and Kesh). After a long deciding process with Fiona and Alice, I managed to find an English speaking salesperson, who helped me pick one. Unfortunately, that one took AA batteries, and I managed to get them to swap it for another. So look foward to lots more photos taken by me in the future =].
Also, I am able to skype people during the night now, yay. Cheers to Anna, Alim, Tim, Harry, Wendy, ALice and Briar so far, it was great talking to you guys, and hopefully I can organise more skype meetings with others. I managed to get a Skype app on my ipod, and there's a restaurant nearby with free wi-fi, so I usually go in and talk there. Needless to say, I get a lot of stares while there, a brown person, sitting at a booth talking very loudly in English to what appears to be himself. I've sortof gotten used to it by now though.
Snow angel
Maryna demonstrating the technique My skype ID is jeremo90, so feel free to add me, and I try to come online at 10pm or later NZ time.
My blog entries are starting to catch up more with the actual time, and I'm less that a week behind now. So as I get more photos, and write more, I'll be up to date in no time. Writing these entries help me keep up a standard of English that I deem acceptable, because after numerous speaking classes every week, ranging from elementary to upper intermediate, my speaking skills are starting to take a hit. Even when I meet up with other trainees, we find that our speaking skills are slowly deteriorating and we start questioning random parts of our speech that sound funny. So if I come back to NZ, and sound complete fobbed out, or my blog starts to sound a bit more foreign, it's only because my ability to speak in simple, structureless English is of a high value here. As you might be able to tell by my whiteboard lesson..
Point to ponder.
Phones here are really popular. There's this one network, which is basically like the Vodafone in AUckland of
Fails
I'm just to big. Ukraine, where you can call other people on the same network for free, as long as you top up the equivalent of NZ$6 per month. And you can then use that credit for other stuff as well. Having a phone is very handy, when planning meetings, if you get lost, or even if you just want to catch up with people you haven't heard from in ages. International calls will cost me the equivalent of NZ$0.20 per minute. HOpefully New Zealand gets some good deals, because I am quickly getting accustomed to using my cell phone for actually making phone calls (shock horror). Call me on +38 935 4353
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Anna
non-member comment
Fun
Hey, sounds like good fun. Is it really that cheap to call international from your cell phone? That's crazy cheap I'm so jealous. Esp from cell phone!