QUARANTINED!!!

My school was quarantined.

Twice.

February 15th thru 20th and February 21st thru 26th.

They said it was because of the influenza, but I don’t really think so.
My diagnosis? A case of pupils and teachers who just want to take a week off of school. And really, who can blame them? It’s cold outside, but not too cold. It’s wet outside, but not too wet. And the sun is staying up in the sky for longer and longer each day. Plus, there’s nothing in the way of days of between January 15th and the end of March, when we have our spring break.

Now, far be it from me to actually accuse my pupils of cutting class and faking sickness, but Ukrainian pupils are huge wimps. They will go home from school if they have a headache. They won’t come back to school for a week. They go home from school (if they even come at all) if they have a runny nose. They won’t come back for a week. I think you get the picture.

Two weeks ago the school began to empty out. There was talk of quarantine in neighboring towns and oblasts (like states). Teachers were “ill”. Even my director came down with something. But our school refused to quarantine. The assistant director said that there were not enough absent students to necessitate a closing. Each day he would visit each classroom and take a head count. The count fell daily.

My pupils, ever the cunning plotters, realized how they could bring the school to a close: just stop going.

Seriously. I had a class with two pupils. I saw most of the others wandering the streets of my town. I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but when these kids skip school, they don’t avoid the school. They hang out in the yard, they buy beer, soda, and candy from the store directly across the street (and therefore in plain view from all of the school windows), and sometimes they even come into the school to find their friends. For pupils who are “ill”, they sure don’t act like it.

But their plan worked. The school closed. And I suddenly had a lot of free time (yep, even more than I already do.)

So I went downhill skiing in the Carpathian mountains.

It was my friend Larry’s idea, actually. Larry’s school was also quarantined and he had nothing to do. So we caught a three hour train from Lviv and went to a skiing town called Slavske. Slavske is in the southern part of our oblast. The Southern tip is technically Pre-Carpathia, but who’s keeping track?

The Carpathians are much like the Appalachians, but, having never been to the Appalachians, that’s just a guess. They’re not too big, but certainly larger than any lumps we call hills in Minnesota. Plus, in relatively flat Ukraine, they offer a great view of the countryside.
The skis were only 10 dollars for a full day’s rental. And the lift pass cost another 10 dollars. The hill we went skied at had only one chairlift and it scaled the entire mountain. All of the runs began at the top (as per usual) but none of them went all of the way to the bottom. They stopped midway down, at which point the skiers grabbed onto several T-bars and were pulled back to the top. The snow was pretty good, considering that the hill had no groomers (at least none that I could see). The lines for the T-bars were longer than I would have liked, but the Ukrainians compensated for this with shashleek. Yep, that wonderful fire-cooked meat was being roasted and sold by, seemingly, random people near at the bottom of every run. I helped myself to several servings of grilled sausage and potatoes. They also sold hot wine and shots of cognac and vodka.

There were no lights on the hill, so the lifts cut out at 4:30 in the afternoon. At which point Larry and I loaded ourselves into an old military jeep and took off toward the town of Slavske (yeah, I forgot to mention that the mountain was a good 7 kilometers from the town.) The jeep paid no heed to the fact that most of the road was washed out and pot-holed. We bounced a lot. I’ve given up looking for seatbelts, since most vehicles here either have none or they are broken.
Overall, it was exactly what one would expect from a quaratine ski trip.

I also found myself in Kyiv. Peace Corps gives us a mid-service medical check-up. That included a TB test and a physical. It also provided a dentist appointment. My teeth were cleaned. I’m cavity free. I’m healthy. I don’t have TB. And my doctor told me that my ears were exceptionally clean. I attributed that to the fact that my mother, the nurse, impressed upon me the need for clean ears: “You wouldn’t believe how many gross, dirty ears I see every day”. She also impressed upon me the need for clean underwear everyday. As of arriving in Ukraine, that one has fallen slightly by the wayside… But those ears: clean.