25 September 2013

25 September 2013

I woke up this morning warm, as I put an extra layer on before bed. Breakfast was Kasha, which host-Mom made and had left on the stove for me. She left around the time I got up. I had a very relaxed breakfast, and left with plenty of time to get to class. I wore my sneakers, which don’t look very professional, but everyone takes their shoes off at V.’s apartment, so it isn’t as bad an idea as in the US – wearing brown Gor-tex cross-trainers with black dress pants… We all got to class, where we went back over all the phrases we learned in the last few days. Then we were put into groups, where we made up a dialogue using the phrases we’d learned in the last few days. Then, V. had us take turns using our phrases with everyone. We learned a new one, “teaching English in Ukraine,” as we aren’t supposed to answer “PCV” to “what’s your profession?” We also learned “how many languages do you speak?” and how to say that we are learning Russian.

After we presented our “families,” we had a break for a snack. After that, we got to present our homework, our host family, to the cluster. We then took turns making up names and professions for pictures of family vocab, and names and relations for job vocab. After we did that, we paired up, got a picture of a family, and had to describe the people in it.  We needed names, relations, and jobs. After that, we learned some hobbies, and we practiced them by saying that we liked or didn’t like them. We were given homework, and then we broke for lunch. After lunch, there were three individual tutoring hours, so I was done. One PCT and I went to the supermarket while the other 3 had lunch. I bought lunches for the rest of the week, and returned to V.’s to put them in her fridge. We’re required to supply our own lunch, and V had allocated us some space for us to keep it in her kitchen. I had a quick lunch and returned to my host-Mom’s apartment.

There, I did most of my homework, and updated some things. Host-Mom’s son came over for about 30 seconds to drop off a packet of milk. Much later, host-Mom came home, and started heating dinner. We had Ukrainian Borsch, which differs from its Russian counterpart as it has chicken, but no beans. After dinner, host-Mom made the same cheese, sour cream, and raspberry jam dessert, which we shared with tea, and then went to see her son and grandson. She brought some of the dessert with her. She was back shortly, and I asked her my questions, to finish my homework. She looked over what I’d written, and seemed to like it. When her granddaughter called, she told her to tell me that she was impressed that I could write a paragraph in Russian, as I had had my first Russian lesson less than a week ago. It was a very simple paragraph, but a paragraph nonetheless. Host-Mom and I had some tea, and I discovered what appeared to be a leaking pipe. Host-Mom called her son, who came over and looked at it. They ventured outside to check it out, and it was discovered to be condensation. We finished our tea, and I wore yet another layer to bed, to make sure I would be warm when I woke up.