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