Ringing Bells and Raging Bulls.

At the end of August, my mom and brother Luke came to visit me in Ukraine. We walked around L'viv, watched a football (soccer) match in L'viv, hung out in my town, and other neat things. It was great to see them and have them visit. These photos are just two of the many we took.



The first picture is taken in my apartment. I had to take an important prank call. Luke was offering his Zoolander-esque pose. My mom thought it was a normal picture.
The second photo is of Luke and I in the Lychakyvs'ka Graveyard. It's a huge graveyard full of statuesque tombstones. Like a museum. I don't know whose grave we're sitting in front of. I had an umbrella because it had been raining.

School has begun. The day of knowledge, September 1st, came and went. There was a large ceremony in front of the school. The eleventh grade students and the new first grade students lined up in a square much like the square from graduation (see Pomped and Circumstanced). All of the other grades were there as well, but they didn't really take part in the opening "first bell" ceremony. The town's population had come out to watch the ceremonies. It was a really cold morning.

We started off by singing Ukraine's national anthem. I know a few words and usually just hum along. I've noticed that the Anthem sounds a lot like the St.John's University Hymn. I pointed that out to several of the other English teachers and they suggested that the person who wrote the SJU song was Ukrainian. I agreed, because it's easier that way.

The Director of my school spoke about the students and the new school year. Then two priests spoke. Then a deputy mayor spoke. Then several second graders sang Ukrainian folk songs. I kind of zoned out for a while, but I came back just in time to see the actual "first bell":
An 11th grader (a boy) takes a 1st grader (a girl) on his shoulder. The little girl has a bell and she rings it as the two of them walk around the square of people. Then, after that, the 11th graders all take the hands of the 1st graders and lead them into the school.
So the bell was rung and the hands were held and they went inside.
The day was kind of over after that.
I sat in the English teachers' room and we drank coffee. The students had a class on Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Franko) because this year, 2006, is the 150th anniversary of his birth. And then the day was over.
Really. The first day of school wasn't really even a school day for me.

But I have had 2 weeks of school now. It's going well. I've started giving more homework, which was a parental request. I also gave them lists of "American" names to choose from ( I thought we would use names in class... since most of my students all have the same name). I now am teaching, to name some highlights, a Cosmo, a Buzz, a Prudence, a Leon, and a Chandler. Cosmo is probably my favorite.

I'm teaching mostly the same students, so I don't have to accustom them to my voice and style of teaching, which is a plus. And the new students I have are really bright and eager to learn. So that makes it a little easier to get them going.

I've been in Kyiv the paast few days for a meeting of the TEFL PAC(TeachingEnglish as a ForeignLanguage Project Advisory Committee)(PC loves acronyms). We talked about the state of the TEFL program in Ukraine as it relates to volunteers. It was a good meeting. We met with members of the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science. I guess someone is convinced that I'm doing my job well enough to be named to such a committee. That's nice to know.

L'viv is 750 years old. L'viv's city days are at the end of the month. I'll have been in Ukraine for one year on October 3rd. It's like things were fated. Yeah, fated.