Hotel California and Bazaars and Tchaikovsky

11 June 2015

Music

I’d forgotten just how much my students love to sing (and dance, when not required). I’m sitting and watching the final dress of the Summer Camp final presentation, and I’m kicking myself for not bringing along the Tom Chapin or Raffi CDs. Or at least ripping them. Any chance you can DropBox them to me? [kidding!] :)

Hotel California

Each act gets musical clips (“Timber,” the Captain America Theme, etc). The fifth formers are singing along to Hotel California – as they are talking about how they want to go to California. Side note, the 8th formers were kinda-sorta line dancing (they were from the Cowboy day) to “Timber.” Wow. Just. Wow. Easy to dance to, yes...

After-party

The English department had a lot of help putting on the summer camp, from a lot of teachers, most of whom don’t speak English. They did an amazing job, as the camp went beautifully. The teachers who helped were given certificates as thanks.

After the program, the teachers gathered in A’s classroom for a party. Champagne was passed around, and we toasted to the team. After a few minutes and several toasts, the teachers had to go back to their classrooms. In Ukraine, you can’t leave poured alcohol. An extra glass of champagne had been poured, so one of the English teachers had to drink it. He joked that he was going to “end up dead drunk” because of the extra champagne (granted, it was 11am).

Birthday Party

After lunch, one of the teachers passed around ice cream and coffee because the day before (Thursday) had been her birthday. The coffee was the standard 3b1 that is ubiquitous around Ukraine (3b1 means that the package has instant coffee, powdered milk, and sugar; it comes in basically every single combination of how much of what, and how much caffeine). The ice cream was… tasty. No, really. The ice cream was strawberry and vanilla. It was in a heart-shaped pie-tin, and the top was decorated in roses. Strawberry ice cream roses. There was a thick layer of strawberry over a thin layer of vanilla. You slice it like a cake. I haven’t had ice cream in Ukraine. No, that’s not quite true. At the end of the Transition to Service Conference, the PC gave us ice cream (in mid-December) and coffee. Our CPs put their ice cream in their coffee (as long as the ice cream is vanilla and the coffee espresso). It’s very good.

Secondary Project

I got a few minutes to talk to A about next school year, and she said that there was some interest in the students for reading English language materials, but no materials for them to read. She also said that the teachers are hoping that I will restart my English club for teachers, as they are eager to learn. They are also interested in reading in English.

15 June 2015

Instant Oatmeal

I was at one of the stores near my flat, and I made a discovery – packets of instant oatmeal. I had always assumed that instant oatmeal was a very American thing. It tastes pretty good, and has dried fruit in it. It comes in the standard flavors of strawberry, mixed berries, raspberry, and apple, as well as pineapple and… mushroom! There’s a fungus among us. But, hey, all I’ll need is a packet of this, a bowl (and spoon) and some hot water for the next few weeks – they are doing repairs to the school kitchen and they aren’t going to be feeding the teachers. Or I can bring a few packets along when I travel to camps.

Bazaar

On Sunday, I went to the bazaar with A, where I was looking primarily for shorts. I wasn’t successful, as the only options were distressed, or over-the-knee, or Daisy Dukes. Or some combination thereof. I should have packed mine, but I didn’t see anyone wearing shorts in Paris in summer, so I assumed that shorts were a no-go in Europe, like other parts of the world. Big mistake.

While I struck out on the shorts, I was able to find cherries and strawberries. The bazaar has two main sections, the market and the village. Most of the market section are pretty well established, and sell everything not food, from wallpaper to lightbulbs to watch battries, to French presses (but no Le Monde) to mobile phones to…. you get the idea. After wandering through that section, one ends up at the bus station, where the villagers sell their products.

The villagers, the home gardeners, the farmers have set up shop here. You can find various types of fresh meat, raw milk, in season fruits and vegetables, cheese, beans, etc… If it is in season, or can be cold-stored, you can buy it from a villager at the bazaar. Last year, I helped A buy a rooster. A dead and plucked rooster. A was saying that her mother wanted her to buy the rooster, but that she was horrible at choosing them, so I got to choose. I chose well, as she told me that her mother thought I’d found a great rooster. Not bad for a city girl. There were babushkas selling milk in water bottles, so I think it was very fresh, non-homogenized, raw milk.

We wandered around, A asking prices. We saw someone selling cherries, and I was able to get about 200 grams. The cherries looked like someone crossed a sour cherry and a Bing cherry, and taste like neither. Small, and perfect color mixture of sour and Bing, they really don’t look like much. They are really good, though. They are ubiquitous around Ukraine at this time of year, as the babushkas sell them near the stores, which don’t sell them. Yeah, the grocery stores don't seem to sell strawberries or cherries... They are sweet, but not super-sweet.

The strawberries are much the same. They look like the Quebecois torpedoes: small, light red, and not “American” sweet. They are sweet, but not in the too much so way that the huge dark red ones can be. They also aren’t watery. I got 200 grams of them and ate the whole bag in one sitting, as soon as I got back from the bazaar. Tasty.

The babushkas sell them near ATB. I’ll have to remember that the next time I walk up there.

Transliteration

How many possible variants of Tchaïkovsky are there? I’ll give you a hint: that’s the French one (the English one takes the umlaut off the ‘i’). Because the Cyrillic letters have different sounds than the English ones (the French variant is closer phonetically), a name can and will be transliterated in to many possible versions, all being right. The same issue arrives when going in the other direction.

I have two type D visitors visas for Ukraine. They were issued to the same person. They were issued by the same government. My middle name was transliterated differently on them. On the first one, they simply translated it, and gave me the Ukrainian equivalent. The new visa transliterated it. Now I know how Tchaïkovsky feels every time someone writes his name…