Tuesday, May 6, 2008

I can't possibly say everything

I have less time to write in my blog because I’m working more? Sort of. The last two weeks have also been full of travel. The week of Easter vacation was quite enough relaxation, and now I’m ready to get back to work and take advantage of the few free lessons that I have to really teach some interesting topics. The schedule always seems to get a little crazy around exams, and at this school it seems to have left me a few extra days to fill with what I want, in English of course. I have four more solid weeks of classes then two weeks of summer school. During summer school I can play games outside, take kids camping and teach almost anything I want. More like camp I guess.
So, instead of writing a comprehensive discourse on my adventures, I am spending my computer time preparing to teach about creative writing (how not to plagiarize), alcoholism, gender equality and Billy Joel. I will summarize my week since the PEPFAR in one, completely incorrect, mostly incomprehensible, but interesting sentence. Sort of like real life.
Easter was a lot of church, amazing ceremonies, blessings of the bread, eggs, and meat which lead to three days of eating because lent was so hard without, more meat in the forest on a spit over a campfire, delicious, hosted two volunteers for a night, convinced I have the best apartment, super slow train to Ivano-Frankivska, long bus to Kosiv, up into Kosmach Music Festival where Ukrainian president showed up while forbidding festivities on the first day because a helicopter crashed in the Black Sea, met a grandma on a mountain who didn’t believe the four of us were really Americans, she bought us juice and thought that John could take a train to NYC, many nationalities, Italian folk music met cool reception among Hootzle fans, UPA veteran proud of his country and it’s freedom, cotton candy not as good as fresh goat cheese “Brenza” on fresh bread new favorite snack, left before the music ended, met a political science major and fiancé on the bus who want to go camping this summer, home in time for soccer practice on Friday evening, fitting that it rained for Saturday’s practice because yesterday’s game was played in a downpour, trees disappear to the north, looks like Kansas hill country, bus stopped in almost every village to get a bucket of water out of a well and refill the radiator, starting to be able to get some humor and personality into my Ukrainian, back to my old tutor, she has a 1 month girl with reflective silver eyes, want to discover a community project, still learning my community, lots of work to do.