24 Hours in Kiev Like This..

Next week is when ILP's directors are coming for the mid-semester visit.. I can barely believe it. Time passes so fast. I hardly know what to write when I have the time to. So this will be very random and out of order, but will hopefully make sense anyway.

Maybe I'll start with my routine, what a normal day is like for me (in depth, I am happy to say). I wake up around 9 am, my roommates gone to work already. I peer out the window to ascertain the weather, and sleepily shuffle into the kitchen to turn on the radio. My iPod has a transmitter, so the music is familiar, and much mellower than anything on Kiev's airwaves. I attempt to flick the lighter to start the water heating up for my hot chocolate, usually getting frustrated and rummaging to find my lighter that just has a button to push. After washing up I'll eat breakfast and sing along with the music. Breakfast consists of bread without fail, peanut butter/Nutella, or possibly instant oatmeal, french toast or an egg, depending on how much time I have. Juice makes an appearance every so often :) Then I'll finish getting ready, bundle up and tramp down the stairs, happily bouncing to my personal soundtrack.

Pushing open the graffiti covered steel door, I step out to the potholed asphalt and walk a little ways to the tramvi stop, generally feeling Ukrainian as I wait for the driver to open the doors; standing with my hands in my pockets, a carefully closed expression on my face. Flashing my transport card, I'll sing along silently and daydream as I stare out the window. The route is familiar to me now- so particularly close attention isn't required to get me where I'm going. The ride is 25 minutes long if the driver puts the pedal to the metal (doesn't happen too often) so I arrive at Beresteiska metro around 11 am usually. One stop to the west is Nyvky, where I hop off and race up the steps, enjoying the agility I employ to be first of the group departing the metro to make it outside. After a quick scan to see what marshrutka is waiting, I trudge up to the curb, avoiding trash-filled puddles and cigarrette vendors. I can't help but check myself out on the shiny cerulean side of the stall located right where bus 90 pulls up. Everybody else does it too, which amuses me to no end. I find it easier every day to keep my smiles to myself, selfish as I feel doing so.

Lately bus number ninety has been avoidng me I think, so I've taken marshrutka number 13k the rest of the way to school. It's easy now to wave it down, and to notify the driver when my stop is coming up. I always have a little sense of accomplishment when I make it to my stop successfully, and skip over the potholes to Gymnasium Premier. There are still 2 hours to go until lunch, so I'll fine-tune lesson plans for the day, practice guitar, chess, and just enjoy the company of my fellow teachers. If we've been diligent enough in preparing, sometimes we'll go exploring before school, meeting at random metro stops.

Lunch is at 1:30, and is always a major highlight of the day. Rye bread is growing on us all immensely, definitely more than the borscht. Soup is ever present as the first course, followed by potatoes of some kind or buckwheat (also an acquired taste) along with random meat. Chicken usually, fish, or somehing unidentifiable. Once it was liver, but thankfully it was only once. We've perfected the art of swiping bread baskets from adjoining tables, ending up giggling as crumbs litter our table, feeling less guilty with full stomachs I think.

Then there is perhaps a quick run to the shop down the street to pick up cookies or some such nonsense, and the final prep time begins. The kids trickle in anywhere from a quarter til 3, and then we start. We rotate which teacher is in charge of of opening, so they count off and the others run watch to make sure the kids are standing in their spots. We sing a few songs, drawn from the song bag by whichever kid we select as being the quitest, smiling the biggest, possibly with the littlest eyes or biggest hair or something similar. Our repertoire of songs includes Little Bunny Fufu, B-i-n-g-o, the Milk song, and our perennial favorite, Purple Stew. What follows consists of much singing and gyrating of hips, maybe some yelling and running around also. Then we split for rotaions, teaching 3 different classes before snack (or 'eating' as the kids shriek at 4:25 on the dot). Enforcement of the 'no Russian, speak English' rule is tougher to manage at this point, but we're working on it.

The last two rotations seem a bit slower with full tummies and antagonization provided by several of the children. This is our third set of 3-week rotations, so I am teaching kitchen for 4th rotation. Always fun, but a challenge to keep sneezes and coughs to a minimum, hand sanitizer applied liberally and frequently. Another issue I've had recently is keeping peanuts out of certain children's noses.. you'd think the bacon flavoring would burn, but whatever.. then we count tokens (each kid has their own token bag, to keep tokens in. They get a token every time they express a certain concept we're highlighting for the day (in English of course) and they can use their tokens to buy prizes from store.

I've ordered a couple 'Heppi Mils' at McDonald's to acquire a few coveted prizes, which have been priced higher than usual store items. There are several students racing to get 250 tokens to get the robot and giga pet on display. After store we play games such as Duck Duck Goose, Doggy Doggy Where's Your Bone, Who Stole The Cookie From The Cookie Jar, etc until their parents arrive to take them off our hands.

Usually we require a little grace period to recover, eating whatever was left over from kitchen and discussing the day. Then we make our way to whatever we have planned for the evening (depending on the day) could be FHE, Russian class, Institute, internet cafe, exploring or grocery shopping. Whatever we do ends around 9:30-ish, so I make it home around 10:30 or 11. The long ride home is more or less alright, depending on the tempurature and how long I had to wait for the tramvi. Daydreams ensue on this ride as well, and the walk across the tracks is better when there are puddles- the rows and stacks of glowing windows reflect on their surface and make me want to sing out loud! My iPod keeps me very good company in this country :)

Up the stairs and through the door, shoes off, water boiling.. I'll make some raspberry-vanilla tea and write the day's events in my journal, roommates already sleeping, covers pulled over their heads and bedroom door shut. My writing takes awhile, phrases coming slowly it seems. A little reflection as I drain my cup, and then to bed by midnight, to dream away one more night of my time here.

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