Internaut Basketball

Yesterday I had the privilege of participating in a basketball tournament with the kids from Our Home. The tournament was organized for the government internauts (Ukrainian orphanages) in Makeevka. Good Shepherd Charitable Fund (the organization that Our Home belongs to) seems to have a good relationship with them, so they are also able to participate. Four of the five internauts were represented (so there were 5 teams including us). From what I understood, internauts have between 200 and 350 kids in them at all times, which is a pretty strong contrast to the 30-35 kids that live at Our Home. It was an interesting experience and I will write about some of my observations.

First of all, with such large populations, these internauts have a larger number proportionally of taller older kids. Most of our competitors’ teams were comprised of 17- and 18-year-olds. Our oldest two boys are 16 and the other kids were 14 and 15. Combined with the court being so narrow that there was only a three-point line at the top of key, this provided for some interesting basketball.

In the boys’ first game we were down 20-0 at halftime and not able to get the ball past mid-court much. Being a rather positive person, I was still impressed at halftime as I thought they had done a really good job on defense. And things only got better from there. We only lost 38-12, and most of the boys were in rather high spirits. For our second game we played the eventual champions and were able to keep it close, only trailing 15-14 at halftime and eventually losing 25-18.

The girls won their first game 20-8 on the shoulders of one of the older girls who is one of the best players (boy or girl) at Our Home. In the second game, they couldn’t get their shots to fall, and lost 8-2. That was a little sad, but all in all I thought they did a good job and could easily have been champions. They had won the championship last time, and it was unfortunate that we couldn’t bring Our Home its second athletic trophy.

The referees were an older couple and I thought they did an excellent job. They let the kids play and called the obvious calls. They had to raise their voices several times and call a couple of technical fouls, but they kept the games going and there were no fights. This was no small feat, considering the players they were dealing with. There is a stereotype in Ukraine that the only kinds of kids in internauts are thieves and drug-addicts. It is possible that I appreciated the referees because they seemed to call things our way more often than not. For the most part, our kids treated the referees and other teams with respect and I was proud of them for that as well.

It was interesting to note the contrast in the bleachers between our kids and the rest of the kids there. I know that I am sounding like a proud parent who sees his/her children as little angels; some of the kids from Our Home will probably develop problems with the drugs and crime (and some may have already). But knowing their hard life stories and seeing them sitting in the gym, smiling and joking around with each other and the adults that accompanied them, really makes one feel like Our Home is taking an active approach in making a difference.

The tournament was a really positive experience for me. Some of the kids were a bit disappointed and thought they could have done better. At the same time, several of the boys said that they hadn’t ever done that well before. As I mentioned above, I have always felt that I have a positive outlook in life, but it seems that some of these kids are mentoring me to be even more so. Life has been very difficult for most if not all of them, yet they keep on smiling and goofing around. It was interesting that several of the kids asked if I was going to go to the next tournament. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Dave

Farewell to long underwear

The coming of spring in Ukraine is a long-awaited event for everyone, for a variety of reasons. The most obvious ones include sunny days, green landscape and warmer temperatures. One of my most important, and probably less common, reasons for anticipating spring is the banishment of long underwear from my daily wardrobe. And I’m happy to say that, three weeks after the “official” first day of spring in Ukraine, temperatures have risen high enough that the long underwear has been officially banished to the closet, not to be seen until next November.

During the winter, long underwear is an essential item of clothing for me, worn every single day. Since we don’t have a car, I spend lots of time getting from here to there by walking and waiting for public transport. And once I get to where I’m going, warm indoor temperatures aren’t guaranteed. Few places I know are warm enough that I don’t need the extra warmth reinforcement provided by long underwear. And although I couldn’t do without the extra warmth, the day I can throw them in the closet and forget about them for half a year is a day of celebration. Why? They are bunchy, they make my clothes fit worse, they’re an extra skin that stifles me. Here I suppose I should say that long underwear has come a long way. My long underwear isn’t the thick, waffly-looking, baggy cotton stuff that old men wear for pajamas. Technology has come a long way, and my long underwear is fairly thin, smooth and stretchy. “Cuddleduds” is the cute, modern brand name. Still, without my extra layer of clothing, I’ve felt quite liberated the past few days. Spring is truly here.

Laura

Our Home Reflection

I was asked to write a short reflection on coaching basketball at Good Shepherd Childrens Center (which is also known as "Our Home") for MCC. I also included a couple of pictures. Unfortunately several of the kids were not present, but the attendence is typically 10-15 of the 30+ children. Anyway, after writing it I thought maybe some of you would also enjoy reading it. It is a bit more informative than my traditional blogs, and I thought it needed a disclaimer. Here it is.
Dave

Before we came to Ukraine, I was a high school math teacher and girl’s basketball coach in a large public school in Phoenix, AZ. Coaching was one of the highlights of my teaching experience, and I thought it could be similar for me here. The first several times I went to Our Home, Andrew Geddert was there and he was able to assist and translate for me. It was enjoyable since the kids really respected him and his language ability made it easy to run a basketball camp. His term ended and, in September, I began traveling to the center twice a week to try to coach on my own.

It has been a difficult adjustment. My language knowledge is not at a place where I am able to explain drills and correct things when I need or want to. And it seems that these kids are a bit less motivated to develop their basketball skills than my players were in Arizona. The 2+ hours have evolved from rather intense skills development into doing a random drill, then forming teams and playing until everyone is too tired to play anymore. This has been a difficult adjustment for me as skills development was the focus of our practices in Phoenix and that is the way to get the most improvement. But the kids seem to be a lot better players now than they were a year ago.

Sasha Gritzenko is in charge of evening sports/activities at Our Home. He is also an assistant pastor at Light of the Gospel church in Makeevka and his pastoral responsibilities usually occupy him on Monday/Thursday nights, so it is fortunate that those two nights I am able to help the kids burn a little energy by playing basketball. During my own childhood I remember some (typically winter) days when I would drive my parents crazy from being cooped up in the house too long. My father’s favorite solution was to assign me to run laps around the house. The more annoying I had been, the more laps I had to run. I would usually return to the house with a new sense of peace/calm. I can’t imagine how crazy the house would have been with more than 30 kids in it. But I hope that some of the kids are a bit calmer after an evening of basketball.

I know that the basketball efforts are appreciated. Even though the kids continue to make fun of my Russian pronunciation and lack of vocabulary, my trips to Our Home have become the highlight of my job here. Breaking up the occasional fight or sometimes halting the game for a technical foul is still difficult, but watching the kids interact with each other and comparing this interaction with what I sometimes see on the street makes me never want to miss an opportunity to interact with them. When I have missed a practice or two several kids never fail to ask: “Why haven’t you been here for so long?” It makes me feel like my limited efforts are appreciated. The other day Stas proudly told me that his teacher told him that he was the “best basketball player in his class as well as the class above him.” And Tolik, Christina and Vova rarely go a full evening without telling me “basketball is my favorite sport” at least once each. Just last Monday in a rather intense game, Nastya made the first two baskets that I have ever seen her make. Joy was written all over her face and after the game she told me that she had never been on a winning team before.

I usually arrive at Our Home around 6:00 p.m., which is about an hour after the daytime employees have left. Oftentimes Valentina Chernova, director of Our Home, will still be working in her office and will come to check on how things are going. Even though she admittedly doesn’t know much about basketball, she listens intently to my instructions and repeats them, while encouraging the kids to participate in a way only Valentina can do. One day she found me and said I needed to come to her office because she had something to show me. I almost had to run to keep up with her and, upon arriving in her office, she showed me a small trophy. The girls had won the biannual Makeevka internaut basketball tournament. I could even see a hint of pride on the face of one of the most humble people I have ever met.

Skiing the Carpathians

We went to the Carpathians in western Ukraine to relax and do some skiing. We knew that as long as we were successful at “getting away” we would be able to relax. We had our doubts about the skiing prospects after skiing a couple times in Colorado had turned us into ski snobs. But we knew it would be an experience.

There was a snowstorm the night before our arrival and most of the roads were covered in about 10 inches of snow. We wanted to ski the following day and were told it could be arranged, but we would have to pay a driver $10 an hour to take us there and back. We were told that the trip would take approximately an hour in each direction, but that it was less than two miles to the slope(s). I was a bit confused because I thought I could walk that far in an hour, probably even carrying my boots, skis and poles. But not being ones to protest about something we knew nothing about, we agreed.

The next day we walked out of the hotel to see a one-horse open sleigh sitting in the road. Later we saw why our ride was a horse and sleigh - no other car or even four wheel drive vehicle could've made it through the snow on the way up the mountain. It was an enjoyable ride, but the incline and the weight of the passengers proved to be too much for the horse, so the driver and I ended up pushing the sleigh for the last couple hundred yards. I’m sure it was quite a sight.

We arrived at a small house in a village in the foothills. We walked into the backyard and found a 200-yard run which reminded me of my grandpa’s pasture back in Minnesota. It was equipped with a homemade lift and chain-smoking operator (the owner of the yard). At first I was a bit disappointed, but it turned out to be four hours of fun as we were the only ones there and neither of us had ever skied in so much powder before. We entertained ourselves with a nice rustic view and several rather amazing falls. We skied the slope about 25 times each and enjoyed a traditional Western Ukrainian lunch of mushroom soup, shashlik (Ukrainian shish kabobs), marinated mushrooms, and mulled wine (prepared by the lift operator's wife). We took the sleigh home and, even though it was not reminiscent of our skiing back home, it was a great time.

Two days later we went to Bukovail, which is, according to the Internet, the “most European” ski resort in Ukraine. We went wondering how closely it would resemble the backyard experience, but were again pleasantly surprised. Lift tickets cost $24 and for use of 5-6 modern lifts. There were some nicely groomed runs and not too long of lift lines. The skiing ability of those on the slopes with us was a bit lower than in Colorado, but I decided that was a positive thing - I could keep a little more pride since there were no 5-year-olds whizzing by me without poles while I sat on the slopes and wondered how I was ever going to get down to the bottom.

Both places were great, and we are glad we were able to experience a bit of the Carpathians and western Ukraine.

Dave

Train Travel

This morning we returned from a getaway in the Carpathian Mountains. It was a spur of the moment trip that we both felt we needed and both found relaxing and enjoyable.

We took the train and that is what I will focus on in this blog. I went to the ticket office wanting to buy tickets on two overnight trains (the Donetsk--Kiev and the Kiev--Ivano-Frankovsk trains). As I was standing in line for the tickets I glanced at the schedule and noticed a train that went “direct.” There were words I didn’t know in the information column, so I asked a lady next to me in line what they meant. I took her explanation to mean that it only went every other day, which was fine and I bought the direct tickets in a rather excited state.

I returned home and I was proudly showing my find to Laura, when we noticed something interesting. The train left on the 5^th and got in on the 7^th. Instead of the anticipated 17-hour trip, we had 41 hours to look forward to. For perspective, Ukraine is about the size of Texas and the trip from Donetsk to I-F is a bit longer than traveling from Houston to Amarillo. How could such a trip take so long? Several times the train left the stations traveling back in the direction of wherever it came from. This morning I looked at a map and tried to remember the cities we went through, but it doesn’t really make sense as to how or why we went to some of the cities. We did a lot of backtracking.

We got in to I-F on Tuesday morning and, even though we were rather greasy and groggy, we had both enjoyed the train ride. We had played cards, read, done word find/crossword puzzles, and slept a lot. But I guess I was in no state to be buying our return tickets. We were trying to decide whether to begin our return on the 9^th or 10^th. We had tentatively decided the latter (depending on ticket availability) but for some reason, when I was talking to the ticket lady, I bought tickets for the 11^th.

In Ukraine, there are three classes of tickets: lux, kupay, and plotscar. Normally we try to travel middle class, but there were no tickets left in this class, so we traveled back plotscar on the two overnight trains (the “indirect” route) and spent a day in Kiev in between. Surprisingly, both rides were rather enjoyable.

The most amazing thing (to my mathematical mind) is that the two of us cumulatively spent 132 hours on the train and paid less than $60. That is economy travel, even if we didn’t cover much ground.

Dave