If my life were a Doctor Suess story..

This past week I have been horrible at blogging. There is just so much to do! I hardly have time for anything, so I will try to compile all of my recent happenings into one post and hopefully you will get the drift. 

My Kids. 

Teaching elementary boys is still the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I team teach with Anna but I am having problems always coming up with ways to keep them entertained, speaking and hopefully get some spelling in there too. It has been chaos but there has been little glimmers of light in the silliest things. 

In my level one class, I have three boys. Illiah #1, Illiah #2 and Big D.. (Daniel). They are all nine and full of energy. I think I like them best though. They are at the age where they still think I’m cool. I defiantly earned brownie points with Daniel when we talked Star Wars. This kid is brilliant and all he talks about is StarWars. He asked me to call him Annikin last week, but I told him I would settle with “Big D”. He is so determined everyday to get his homework done in class so he can go home and watch StarWars. He said he has watched every episode 15 times. He sounds a bit like my brother:) 

I love my little Illiahs’. They are my thing 1 and thing 2, and just as much trouble. Illiah ,  ( I feel bad for numbering them, but I have yet to figure out how to pronounce their last names) he is so curious, about everything. He is always the first to ask questions and I love it. He is so innocent, except when conspiring with his counterpart. The other Illiah, just makes me laugh. I’m pretty sure he is a little old man in a 9 year olds body. He is so cute with his button down shirts that he is constantly tucking in and complaining that he needs suspenders. They may drive me up the wall, but I’m really starting to love them. 

I’d love to go off about my level 4 boys.. but I don’t have much good to say unfortunately. This week another teacher is coming in from Utah. His name is Derrick and Anna and I are giving this class up to him, figuring that the boys might respect him a bit more. They are a lot of fun, but sad to say that they are all mostly just rich stuck up little brats.. I know I shouldn’t say that, but I really don’t like them that much.. except Bogdon, the one who gave me the tin heart. He is also the one everyone picks on. I feel bad for him. Hopefully Derrick will be able to whip these boys into shape!

When I am not teaching elementary, I am teaching Kindergarden and Pre K (the fun stuff). It is still hard, but they are just so cute, it doesn’t seem to matter as much. Here are some of  my girls. Sophia and Melissa. They are only five and speak fluently. Sophia  has such a little attitude and has very dramatic facial expressions, remind you of anyone?:) I love her. Pre K is a blast and super easy. As long as you sing “Tiny Turtle” and make stupid faces, they love you. 

This is really the hardest thing I have done. I feel like I need to switch off posts between school life, and everything else. So much has happened. I can already feel myself and perspective changing. This was not by chance. 

PS. Ill post pictures when I get to school on Monday. My internet at home is not very good. 

Tin Foil Hearts & The Wrath Of Oksana. 1/17

Today was my first day of teaching. I’ve never felt so unprepared. Basically my daily routine is as follows; wake up at about 7am to the sound of Natasha cooking and yelling at Anya (my room is right next to the kitchen). I hurry off into the bathroom across the hall and get ready. After that at some point, I am called to breakfast. One thing I am realizing is that, you never serve yourself. For some odd reason, at every meal so far, they serve me twice as much as everyone else. Of course I feel horrible if I don’t eat everything.. so I try my hardest. Then Natasha asks me if I am ready to go, well I am assuming.. its in  Russian, but my guessing has proved right so far, so I’ll stick with that.  The drive to school seems to be taking about a half hour, even though I’m pretty sure its just a few blocks away, but because of traffic, we go around town. 

I got to the school and met up with the other girls and we began training. A lot of it was review and we spent most of our time just chatting. I love these girls! It was decided that Anna (abba) and I would be teaching elementary level. Elementary is basically real school with planned lessons, not like with kindergarden, which you basically just play. This scared me. Anna and I had no idea what to do. Our school did not have all the books and teacher manuals required so finally we decided just to wing it the first day. Oh boy, was that a mistake. 

Class started at 3, the kids started coming in way early, so that put more pressure on us. I was teaching first. I was hoping that my hidden “teacher instincts” would kick in at some point.. if I had any.. I was hoping countless hours in my mom’s class would instill SOMETHING in me..

My first class was level 4. All boys, ages 10 & 11. Needless to say it was rough. Slavic is the kid I can already tell that I am going to hate to love and love to hate. He is so stinkin cute but has an attitude. 

Here is where we meet Oksana; our native coordinator. She is over our program at school and helps out with our host family situations and well, she is basically out tour guide. She is also over all of the discipline at school. These kids fear her. Oksana is one of the most gorgeous Ukrainian I have ever seen. She is about 5'9, long blonde hair, and always equipped with a mini skirt and six inch heels. Looks are deceiving. This woman can stop trains and make grown men cry. She is kinda my hero;)

 Anyway, Slavic's cell phone went off in class..  What ten year old has a cell phone.. well, iphone, in Ukraine! So on my first day of teaching I unleashed the wrath of Oksana and made a ten year old boy cry. Awesome. 

The rest of the class was not horrible, but after they saw what I could do to one boy, they were much more clam. Lets hope they stay like that. I have a good feeling about it now. After class, Bogdan came up to me and told me he had made me a present. It was the sweetest thing! I almost felt like crying when he held up a little tin foil heart, just for me!  Rough day, turned sweet. Well, we are off to find the institute so we can go to fhe!

Toodles! 

Hard at work..hahah

Which way to the kitchen appliances? 1/15

As we began to drive around Kiev in the dark, we were so lost and all sorta began to panic.. this was when we would be dropped off at our host families homes. I don't think I have ever been so nervous in my life. I had known nothing about them before I came to Kiev. My friends and I would joke about the slight chance of me getting lucky and getting paired with a super rich family and all would be good, but it was a very small chance.. For all I knew, I could end up in a sketchy flat in the middle of no where! 


Soon enough, our girls were being dropped off, what seemed like, all over the city. I was one of the last to be dropped off. As our big ugly green bus/van thing pulled into a parking lot, one of the girls said "Look Britney, you live in a 4 room furniture store!" My heart stopped. Full on cardiac arrest. No joke. I can just imagine, would you like a sleeper sofa or lazy boy? Of course, it would be my luck to live in some bizarre situation.. But don't worry! 


I got out of the bus, van thing with Oksana (our school coordinator) and walked over to a very nice new Tuscan.. A woman got out of the car, Oksana said her name was Natatsha.. and then she rumbled something in Russian, left me alone and walked back to the van.
So here I was, getting into a car with a woman I assumed was my host mom. I get in and introduce myself. "Hi, my name is Britney"......... I got a quirky smile and silence.....
Great. She did not speak english. 


Ok, I can do this- I kept thinking to myself. After about a fifteen minute drive, past the furniture store (thankfully), we arrived at a gated community near an outlet of the river. I was really surprised, considering the girls before me, had been dropped off at high rise flats. No, I was in an actual house! This was relieving.  The house was rather big. Three stories... maybe I did luck out! I was escorted in and there, I met my host sister, Anya. Anya is 9 years old and has a never ending amount of energy, she also speaks very good english! They showed me to a den area and brought my suitcases in. It took me a few minuets to realize, oh, this is my room. I looked around, a couch, a computer, entertainment center, and a glass door. Oh boy. I kinda started to freak out and thought to myself, what an interesting semester this will be.

This morning I woke up (Saturday) and hurried to the bathroom, across the entry way by the kitchen, to take a nearly disastrous shower, but all worked out fine in the end. My host family then drove me to the Metro to meet up with everyone else. It's not hard to spot a group of American Teenagers here. I could not wait to get to the school to start training and get internet! I called my mom last night but I feel so horrible for running the phone bill up. I was excited to tell everyone I had made it safely. 


Today we spent the whole day training..not my favorite thing. 
Anyway, I've calmed my very worried mother, read my little heart out, made some great friends and now it's time for lunch! Papa Johns Pizza baby! (It sounds pretty legit)
I can't wait to go to church tomorrow! 

Please Excuse Our Big Ugly Green Van. 1/14

I know, I know I have not wrote since I got here but I only get internet at the school right now so I don't really have much time to be on, so Ill post when I can but they might be a bit delayed. I will write most of them on my ipod and post later. 


ANYWAY.. I wrote this blog Friday the 14th (the day I arrived). 


Well, after a much needed all nighter of watching bones in Salt Lake with my best friend, I'm finally done with my what seemed like a week of travel. 24 hours ago Derek left me at the SLC airport to start my adventure. I never thought saying goodbye to my family and friends would be so hard. On the way to Germany, I had to ask myself multiple times why in the world was I doing this....Well as we landed in Kiev my nerves disappeared... sorta. I actually slept most of the way on every flight. Landing in Kiev was so wonderful. In the dead of winter, for the most part, everything is so green and beautiful. After gathering our luggage, me and the other three girls headed out to the bus van thing with our driver.. Who does not speak English but it was nothing we could not handle. 
So in training they told us that Ukrainians are not so pedestrian friendly.. But who thought I'd experience this first hand, within my first 16 minutes of being in the country...of course, right!


 As we were hurrying out to this lovely green beast of a green van, which is where I'm writing this...  a car decided that Anna and I were moving too slowly. I heard it speed up and suddenly there were five inches between us and the car... There was no where else to go because we were walking through a barricaded corridor... so we just ran. My luck of course. I hit a rut in the road and there flew three bags and a stuffed penguin into the road! But don't worry, our luggage was not damaged, we made it out of the airport safely and Perry is a bit dirty, but alive.
Anyway, I am sitting here, waiting for the rest of the girls with the radio on in our big green nasty van thing. Oh boy, the radio.. is just great. They play a mix of Ukrainian pop stars and old school American Christmas tunes. It makes for an interesting drive. 


We are about to leave to take everyone to their host families so I probably should stop writing. Wish me luck! 
Ill try to update as soon as I can.