02 October 2013

02 October 2013

Yesterday, I got up, had a breakfast of Kasha, and went to Russian class. The cluster played a quick-fire game, went over hours and minutes in Russian, and practiced our new vocab. Then, we broke into teams for Pictionary, before learning a new case.

I’ve learned several cases, can use them properly, but I’m not quite sure what a case is. We’ve been using the Nomative (no changes) and Accusative, which has only one major change. Now, we learned the Genative, which is complicated… It’s used with “no” or “not” (same word – “Nyet”), after a quantity (a lot, a few, etc), after without (I take my coffee without milk), after all cardinal numbers (except 1), and after “how many/much?” We took turns practicing this, before taking a break.

After our break, we went into learned the words from the section of our manual about being at a bazaar. We learned how to ask if a product is fresh, how much does it cost, I would like ___x___ amount, it’s cheap/expensive, among others. We were also given a few phrases that would help us if we wanted to barter the price. I can also now say the Russian for “thank you, thank you very much.” We were going to head to the bazaar today, but none of us felt very comfortable with our Russian, so we rescheduled it for today. After going over our dialogue (in rotating pairs), we broke for lunch.

I had a bit of a rushed lunch, as the first break went over (so our second 2 hours of Russian started late and ran over) and I had tutoring in the hour between lunch and our Tech session. After lunch, V. and I worked on my pronunciation (going over various things that I will have to be able to say by the end of training, if not much sooner), and worked on the genetive case (which so far makes the most logical sense in how/what is changed). We also practiced conjugation. We had to cut our tutoring a bit short, as the cluster had a Tech session.

The Tech session was on running an English club and/or other electives. As PCTs and PCVs, we are required to run an English club, both at our internship school and our site school. We went over the challenges and opportunities effecting our decision to run a club or two or three. We discussed the what? why? who? how? and where? of running a club. We also thought out some ideas for what to do at an English club meeting. Our meeting went very fast, and soon we were discussing tomorrow (today), and what we were doing. We would be observing a Ukrainian teacher’s lesson, then having another Tech session, and then meeting our counterparts. We decided to buy a box of chocolates for our counterparts to share. We learned who was teaching a tech session next week (another PCT and me), and what we had to do next week. We will be teaching a lesson (for real; can be co-taught) next week!

After Tech session, the group went to the store, where we got the box of chocolates for our counterparts, some chocolates for our TCF and LCF, and what we wanted for the week/next day. I got some little notebooks, where I can keep my TELF notes, and my Russian homework, to stay more organized. I got more than I need at the moment, as I’ll always use them later (for lesson plans, on site, recipes, etc).

Host-Mom wasn’t there when I got back, so I started on my homework. First, I transferred my TEFL notes (the most important ones) to my new TEFL notebook, where I will also keep my PST lesson plans. Then, I got my TELF assignments as up-to-date as I could. The next-door neighbor came over to let me know that my host-Mom wouldn’t be back for over and hour, and not to wait dinner. I checked what was for dinner (borshch sans beets), and kept working on my homework.

I transferred important information to my new homework notebook, which now About me, about my family, pronouns in important cases, when to use those cases, a basic conjugation table, a few important verbs in full conjugated glory, tables with important case endings, verbs that require a noun in that case, and lots of homework. I took a break from doing homework, and started heating borshch and some water for coffee. I lit both burners on the first try. Struck the first match perfectly; had to try a few times on the second. I had just served myself when host-Mom and host-sister got back. They had been in Kyiv (host-sister goes to University there), so host-Mom could get a new winter coat.

After dinner, I worked on my pronunciation, going over the words we had learned, as well as important phrases, with my host-sister. After more than 30 minutes (likely closer to an hour), she had to go work on her own homework, so I got to work on my written homework. When I next looked up, it was well over two hours later, and close to 1030. I decided that there was no way I could do the next 2 exercises (good idea – they took me about an hour today) before falling asleep, so I stopped my homework, and got ready for bed. I spent sometime online, chatted with my Dad, and went to bed.