Also the first day of summer!
Friday was the last day of official classes.
Saturday was graduation for the 11th formers (high school ends at 11th grade here) and the weather was perfect as they had thier ceremony out in front of the school. The major differences between my high school graduation and theirs were...
They didn't have to wear silly robes.
They played the national anthem twice rather than once.
Three students marched with the flag.
All the students marched around the square three times for good luck.
The orthodox priest gave a long speach and everyone crossed themselves multiple times.
Everyone let a baloon float into the air instead of throwing hats when the ceremony was over.
There were many more flowers here, many of my students gave them to me, other teachers got them, graduates got them, young kids, everyone.
There were many awards anounced, from the region, oblast, school, and other organizations.
The military band played a little award jingle for every award.
Only half of the students had University spots, the other half still awaiting test dates and other hurdles.
That's all I can think of, it seemed pretty normal all in all.
Sunday I let myself sleep in, waking up yesterday for graduation was a violation of my normal Saturday policy.
The day of Velyki Mosty started around 12 with speaches, a band, awards and dancing in the center park. I was momentarily jealous watching the group of young people break dancing thinking how much cooler they are than me. Then I realized that there are things I can do that they can't, and if I really wanted to learn to break dance, I could be good at that also, although I would probably have to sacrifice something else. Not that I want to start break dancing, but I do want to have a strong body and many of those moves showed body control, strength and flexability of which I am jealous.
Then the celebrations moved to the stadium for the young soccer game, then my soccer game (we won 2-0, starting to realize that we are the only city in a division of villages). Immediatily after my game, fake trees, tall obstacles, flaming hoops, bags with drugs and coats hiding guns were spread across the field. It was a dog show with the german shepards from the local border patrol base. The highlight was watching them take down suspects who tried to run (wearing protective clothing of course). I wonder what the wounds would look like if you were taken down by a german shepard wearing only a tee shirt? It was cool to have my host dad there explaining the personalities of all the dogs I was watching because he is the veternarian for the base and knows all of them.
After the dog show, I stopped to do some tourniques (like pullups but you pull yourself up, invert, sticking your feet straight into the air and then rotate all the way around the bar before lowering yourself down) on the way home for dinner and a shower. At first when my host brother showed them to me I couldn't do any. Now my record is 3. I'm determined to do 10 by the end of July. Back to the stadium to watch the band, felt decidedly alone because everyone was having picknics out on the field with their families and, well, I didn't have one there.
So I went back to my apartment to eat chocolate cake while listening to harry potter (talk about comfort eating/emotioal safe zone/reality escape) and eventually regained the social courage (because everybody knows me, everybody looks, points, says something to their neighbor about who I am, why I'm alone and what I do (I am starting to relate to Harry Potter, except I don't have two friends)) to go back out and see the fireworks instead of just falling asleep in my apartment. Glad I did, found some of the soccer team (they were completely drunk) to watch the fireworks with and then danced for a few hours with the English teachers. The band on the roof of the lockerrooms played an interesting mix of Ukrainian folk music, European disco and American pop while virtually the whole city danced in the dirt parking lot of the stadium (I was glad we weren't on the other side of the lockerrooms trampling the grass).
Today my achilles is especially sore, probably from dancing, and I am hobbling around school getting ready for the summer camp which starts tomorrow. Played games with my 6th form for a few hours this morning. Now time to get some actual plans written up. #1, capture the flag...
