Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Learning to roast marshmallows

To the left is one of our Summer Intensive evening activities ... campfire and roasting marshmallows. In the picture, one of our American helpers is teaching the art of marshmallow roasting and smore-making - since marshmallows can't be found here in Ukraine, roasting them is quite a foreign idea. On Friday the last batch of students will graduate and we'll be done for the summer. On Saturday, I'll fly home for my sister's and Dave's brother's weddings. Dave left yesterday to catch a friend's wedding in Kansas this weekend. It's been a good Summer English Intensive session overall, but I am quite ready for a break and am counting the days (along with the rest of the staff who organized this summer's activities) until we're done. Dave and I will be in the States until August 24, then we'll head back to Ukraine to start the school year at DCU.

Laura

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Apricots and other delicious fruit

We’re in the midst of summer in Ukraine and enjoying it – the sun, the mild temperatures, green trees and grass, but especially the fruit. I think I’ve mentioned before that all fruits and vegetables are very seasonal here – besides fruits imported from far away like oranges and bananas, all other summer fruit is generally only available (at a reasonable price) for a few weeks when it’s in season. As soon as I’ve gotten accustomed to seeing a certain type of fruit at the market, it’s gone and another has replaced it. So far this summer we’ve enjoyed a couple weeks each of strawberries and cherries, then raspberries, now apricots, and I think pears are coming soon. Although the fruit in season seems to disappear so quickly, the flavor of fruit ripened on the plant, picked and sold the next day is so much better than the brightly colored but tasteless raised-to-travel fruit found in American supermarkets. Here you just have to eat a lot and enjoy it while it’s around.

There are quite a few apricot trees on DCU’s campus, so the other day I asked Dave to pick some so I could make something apricot for our guests. Apparently the apricots suffered in a late frost this year, so only a few choice trees are producing, and they are frequently sought after. Dave took the advice of a friend and climbed up on the roof of the cafeteria, by means of a ladder he found leaning against the building, in order to reach the apricots on one of the few trees producing. He was promptly caught and scolded by the cafeteria manager who told him walking on the roof would make it leak. Since Dave spent so much energy and grief gathering the apricots, we decided that they tasted even better. However, yesterday another friend told Dave he had broken the roof because he was too big to be up there. Dave thought it was quite unlikely that he had single-handedly “broken” the cafeteria roof, especially since he was only up there once for a short time, so he plans to investigate today.


Laura

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Sviatagorsk


Saturday we took our group of American visitors on an excursion to a local tourist attraction, Sviatagorsk. It is an Orthodox monastery built on the side of a cliff and nearby is a recreation area for swimming, picnicking and boating. On the site are catacombs where monks were buried several hundred years ago, but although our group left early in the morning, but didn’t arrive early enough to get a tour of the inside of the churches and catacombs in the monastery. But we still had fun hiking to the top of the hill, taking lots of pictures, picnicking and souvenir shopping. A friend from Donetsk helped lead the group, since I had never been there, so Dave and I had fun being tourists as well. There aren’t many tourist attractions in the Donetsk area, so Sviatagorsk was a nice change. The monastery and churches in the complex are still functioning, so women had to wear head scarves and skirts and men long pants when on the grounds to show respect for the holy site. On the way home we stopped at a roadside produce stand and people had fun buying apricots and honey to take back to Donetsk. I enjoyed the scenery on the drive to and from ... most of my travel outside of Donetsk has been by train or marshrutka (taxi van), neither of which offer a very clear view of the landscape. It was a long day but nice to take some time to see the local sites that we hadn’t seen yet. And on our way into Donetsk we stopped at McDonald's to make everyone who was tired of eating cabbage and kasha happy.

Laura

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Summer English Intensive

I’ve been somewhat delinquent in my blogging during the past few weeks. Now that I have a few minutes – an update on what’s happening in my life. DCU’s Summer English Intensive program is in its second week and so far everything is going well. We have around 80 students, age 12 to 50-something. During the mornings our students have English grammar classes, and in the afternoon more active practice that includes sessions that focus on themes such as travel, food, manners, etc. as well as listening, reading, writing and conversation practice. Several evenings a week we have evening activities with games, skits and movies in English.

Right now we have around 20 Americans (and a few Australians) helping with the program. They come from all over the U.S., and are here for two weeks or the whole month. It’s been great to see all these people come together and work to make our program go smoothly. Its been tiring, too, since there always seems to be something to do from morning until late evening, be it answering helpers’ questions, planning a weekend excursion for our guests, or hunting down more toilet paper for our dorm residents. I’ve realized that for the month of July, I’ll be eating, sleeping and breathing English Intensive. But as long as things go well, I don’t mind too much.
Dave and I are also enjoying the company of visitors – our friends Dierdre and Ben Shetler from Phoenix are here for two weeks, teaching and helping with the English program. Some days it doesn’t seem like we see much of them, since we’re all running in different directions with different responsibilities, but we’re looking forward to a weekend of being tourists together and showing them a bit more of Donetsk and life in Ukraine.


Laura

Thursday, July 07, 2005

France Retreat


Although our MCC France retreat already seems like a long time ago, we haven't yet done it justice on the blog. It was a great time of relaxing and meeting our fellow Europe MCCers. Gathered were about 25 MCCers from across Western and Eastern Europe, most of whom we hadn't met yet. We stayed at a monastery just outside Lyon, so enjoyed the peace and fresh air of the country, yet had access to the city through the bus system. Most of our time was spent meeting together and reporting on our work, but we made it into town several times to tour some points of interest and wander in the city. Another highlight of the trip was the cheese. After every lunch and dinner we were served several different kinds of cheese, as they do in France. (I think we should start such a custom in Ukraine). The rest of the food was good, too. Dave and I had fun eating in an outdoor cafe with one of our co-workers, and ordering by randomly choosing items on the menu. Neither of us speak any French, so we didn't really know what we were getting, but it ended up being delicious. We had fun being tourists and were happy to encounter friendly natives who forgave our ignorance of their language. It was a much-needed break for me, as English Intensive planning had been consuming my thoughts for weeks. We even found ourselves happy to hear Russian spoken on the plane on the way home - and realized that we have learned some language since we've been here.

Laura

Monday, July 04, 2005

Retreat Highlight

Last week, we were in France for the annual MCC Europe summer retreat. Since Laura is better at writing about serious things, she will write more about what we experienced there and I am going to write about my own highlight. I brought my two baseball gloves because I knew that Liz would be there and I never miss an opportunity to play. On the first evening there, I found out that there were 2 more people that were really interested in playing. One also said that he really misses playing in Bosnia. So we played as often as possible.

Personally I find that playing catch is the best relaxing, social experience. It requires so little focus and therefore allows for great conversation. And there is something about the snap of the glove when the ball hits the catch pocket that just can’t be described. I have tried to teach a lot of the kids here at DCU how to play, but they are a bit young and always try to basket catch. Due to the language barrier, it is also difficult to instruct them, but I haven’t given up. They are making progress, but there will never be quite the same level or type of conversation (about life or especially about American sports) with them. My goal is that someday it may almost sound intelligible. Anyway, that part of retreat was awesome.

Dave

Friday, July 01, 2005

Furniture

We are pleased to say that we have furniture. This is not to say that we didn’t have any before, but in the words of our coworker Liz, we were living an “ascetic lifestyle.” We now have a couch, two armchairs, a desk, and a few schkafs (movable closet/wardrobes). We hardly know what to do with ourselves. Our bedroom and living room definitely seemed to get smaller, but also more comfortable in the process.

It was quite an experience to move the stuff down from Andrew’s 5th floor apartment and then up to ours on the 4th floor. We fit all his stuff into 2 vanloads and when they were full Andrew rode in the little leg space of the desk. Some of it will go to Zaporozhye, but we decided to keep about half.

We experienced what I would suppose is an MCC tradition: scavenging through workers’ stuff when they leave. Oh what fun. Due to the fact that MCC worker’s terms are only 3 years, people are coming and going rather frequently. Now, to make a blanket generalization, workers are generally frugal and when we see something that we can get for free, we jump at the opportunity. The list of items that we scavenged is quite large, and our apartment feels much more like home.

Dave