Summer English

This month has been a blur of English Intensive. Six teachers and 20 assistants from the U.S., Australia, Canada and the U.K. came to DCU and have been teaching English all month for six hours a day during the week, plus evenings twice a week. On weekends, we've toured Donetsk, taken them to church and on trips to a monastery and the sea. My job has been to coordinate the teachers and assistants time here, from the meals they eat to the activities they do in class to the places they go on the weekend. It's been fun, but also quite tiring. I've been living this program every day, and now we are in our final week. On Sunday, everyone leaves and the DCU will be quiet again. It's been a good Summer English Intensive.

Laura

Camping

This past week I went to the Sea of Azov and helped lead a camp for the older kids from “Our Home” children’s home. It was great to be able to interact with them for a more significant amount of time than the typical 2-hour block twice a week.

Twelve kids and four adults went to the camp, where we slept in tents and cooked our food over the fire. Our campsite was located about 500 yards from the sea, so we spent a lot of time there. We swam a lot and played a lot of soccer, ultimate Frisbee, and Rook. We also had a lot of quality hangout time on the beach and around the campfire. It was a really good time.

We were advised to always keep a close watch on the kids because they may try to sneak away periodically for a smoke break (which is VERY forbidden in the Baptist community here) and I was surprised how few times this seemed to happen. I won’t go so far as to say that none of the kids were able to sneak away for this, but I was very impressed. The kids at “Our Home” (also called Good Shepherd) are a bunch of really great kids.

Even though Our Home isn’t formally written into my job description, I find myself wanting to spend more and more time there, and maybe wishing it were my full-time “job.” I remember how impressionable I was in my teenage years and am so thankful that I had great role models to look up to. It is my hope that by spending my time with these kids, and especially the boys, I am able to be a role model for them to look up to. The nationals who work there are doing a great job and I am so glad that I have found a place where I can plug in a bit and really believe in what is happening there.

Dave

Coalition politics

The other day Dave went to buy train tickets for a quick trip to Kiev, and found that train tickets had almost doubled in price. A one-way ticket used to cost $12.50, now it costs $21.50. We went to our Russian lesson directly after buying the tickets, and broke the news to Marina, which provoked an outburst of political frustration. She said she heard the minister of transport say in an interview that Ukraine’s tickets are the cheapest in Europe, so that justifies the price hike. That may be true, but Ukraine’s salaries are also probably the lowest in Europe. She went on to vent about the political “circus” currently taking place in the government. March 26 was parliamentary elections. Three parties got significant chunks of votes, so they have to form coalitions. That was supposed to take a month, but at that point they were still fighting about who will align with who. Meanwhile, not much got done in the government. Marina says it’s because most of the politicians are really businesspeople who got into politics simply to gain some influence in order to increase their profits. So no one could agree, because everyone is out for himself. Since then, however, we’ve learned that there has been a coalition formed with the West-leaning parties, including the current president’s “orange” party. Maybe now some progress can be made.

By the way, we’ve since learned that the government has been meaning to increase train ticket prices for a long time – prices haven’t gone up in six years – and has just now gotten around to it. One reason given was the March elections. Last year the Ukrainian railroad company lost nearly $500 million dollars, because they were subsidizing the cost of train transport. Tickets are expected to increase another 30 percent next year.

Laura