Jess no Less

Looking back: first summer in Ukraine!

2022-03-12T06:30:00.001-08:00

June to July 2008

The summer for Peace Corps volunteers was a completely different entity from the rest of the year. We were free from classes and could travel. We were allotted a few weeks a year to assist fellow PCVs with summer camps, could organize our own camps, and had the opportunity to attend various conferences and language camp refreshers. We could also use our cumulative two vacation days a month to visit other countries.

For two weeks after school ended, I led an English camp. I invited pupils from the other schools in the city, and several Americans to help me on the different days.

I met a student, Julie, on the second day. She was enthusiastic, outspoken and precise. If I passed out papers and was waiting for everyone to stop buzzing so I could explain the activity, she was quick to point out that they didn’t understand what we were going to do.

We played Red Rover-Red Rover, Red Light Green Light, Mother May I, Charades, Hangman, relays and enacted a scavenger hunt.

I developed a camp plan that I followed both years. The second year, I invited more teachers to be involved. I taught the song, “Do your ears hang low,” one verse a day, because it turned out there were like eight verses to that song. Those ears hang low, high, wide, and come right off, and then we move on to tongue, nose, and eyes popping out. I didn’t realize that until I downloaded the song off iTunes and the thing kept going on and on.

I implemented three new English words a day. I taught them three words that I thought we’d be using that day like bounce, brain, sky-dive, round, and touch. We practiced spelling the words and listening for the wordsd. If they heard me or the other teachers say the words during the camp, they could shout out and I’d throw them candy. This worked great for about 30 minutes until we were immersed in another activity and forgot all about it.

I gave them a daily mind game/brain teaser. “I’m going to Grandpa’s house and I want to bring a… gorilla.” Another teacher said, “I’m going to Grandpa’s house and I want to bring a rabbit.” Then, “I’m going to grandpa’s house and I want to bring an apple. There was a pattern to the things you wanted to bring; in this case, the items brought must begin with the letters of the word “Grandpa.” The children were asked to bring something and if they couldn’t figure out the pattern, I said, “Sorry, you can’t bring that” until they figured it out. I played other such pattern games with them and after the first time, they started to get the hang of it.

We also played indoor and outdoor games and my friends Katy and Peter came for a couple days the second summer. They both had creative ideas and were able to jump in when needed.

We played a great station game where the children had to go to different stations, manned by a teacher, and perform a task to get a clue.

Katy and Peter stayed in my apartment. Peter had a miraculous habit of discovering things for me. He walked in the first day he arrived and looked up at the rafters above my hall cabinet, and said, “Interesting that there’s a knife up here. That where you normally keep it?”

This is the knife I'd been looking for for months.

Later, Peter said, “Hey, could I use this pad for my floor bed?” about a thin rolled mattress that was stored in an open ceiling compartment in the hallway that I may or may not have been aware of. Those tall guys, they notice things.

Friday morning before I got out of bed, I could hear Peter in the kitchen trying to use my lighter on the stove and I thought he might be having problem so I stumbled out of bed and then I saw the right front burner merrily lit up under a kettle of water and I said to Peter, “Interesting because I’ve never used that burner seeing as how my landlady said only the burners on the left work.”

***

My friend Michelle, who had lived in the village with me, did a two-week summer camp and invited volunteers to help her. I got my first glimpse of the mountains and it made me very, very happy to know that places like this existed in Ukraine. Antonella, Michelle and I traveled from Kiev together to Michelle’s village. It was a 14-hour journey.

We had three end seats on the aisle and we were in a car with about 1,000 children on their way to summer camp in the mountains. Which meant that they moved up and down the aisles, giggled and talked until the lights turned off at 10 p.m., then were up again at 3 a.m. when the lights turned back on. Why the heck the lights turned on at 3 a.m., I had no idea. I slept in my narrow bed off the aisle, second bunk, so narrow that I couldn’t roll over without falling off. And I woke up every five minutes. It was possible they were laughing at me because there were instances of me waking up to find my butt hanging out into the aisle, or my head leaning off the bunk with my mouth open. The children got off the train at 5 a.m. and it was finally silent.

Michelle’s village was beautiful and friendly. She had a large house with two floors and three bedrooms. She invited so many volunteers that at one point, two people slept in her room; two were on the living room futon, two volunteers were on each of the two beds on the second floor, the guys were on mattresses in an empty storage room and she and Antonella were sleeping in the hayloft.

We made homemade bread and corn bread and pizza and macaroni salad and 20 eggs’ worth of scrambled eggs and scratched our heads daily to think of meals to prepare.

At camp we played games for three hours with the children; kickball and capture the flag and Frisbee and “Human Knot.” Then we swam in the river if time permitted. Kickball was always amusing. The children didn’t understand the rules. They hung around on base when they should be running, while all their teammates shouted at them, or they took off at a dead run for the wrong base because they had no idea what was going on.

Every day, we were invited by Michelle’s neighbors somewhere for lunch, or to milk a cow, or for tea and cake, or on picnics, or to go mushroom hunting.

Michelle said that this was how her life was on a normal basis and the rest of us wondered how she did it. We had so many invitations coming in that it was like the president had come to town.

I stopped off to visit my village host family for a few days that summer. They invited me to go camping by the Desna river. Sestra and her cousin didn’t want to go so it was all the adults.

We left the village at 6:30 p.m. or so. Drove 10 minutes, then stopped by a field. My host mom stayed in the car. My host dad grabbed a bucket and told me to come with him. “Take a stick,” he said, or something to that effect. He said words and picked up a stick and I got the picture. He pushed aside dead brush on the ground and dug into the dirt. He began plucking worms from the ground and tossing them into the bucket.

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “This is what we are doing?” Using two sticks, I helped.

My contributions consisted of lots of clods of dirt until he looked at the bucket and said, “The dirt is not needed, only the worms.”

“But I can’t just pick up the worms,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I don’t want to touch them,” I said.

He smiled. “Use the sticks then but dirt is not needed.”

We drove to the city and picked up his sister and husband from the train station. Then drove to the river.

The men set up tents and built a fire, and the women prepared vegetables, sausage and potatoes with pieces of salo (pig fat) in the middle. My host dad's sister learned about my involvement in the collection of the worms and laughed when I described it.

“You were his slave,” she giggled. I mostly stood around, at a loss as to how to help. We drank beer and vodka and in my head, I toasted America’s Independence Day. Just before we went to bed, it started to rain. On the second day, it rained to mid-afternoon. The men set up fishing poles on the river. My host dad propped up four fishing rods sticking out of pieces of pipe in the ground along the shore. Each line had a bell on it that would ring if the line was pulled on. Then he sat in his chair on the shore and ate sunflower seeds.

The men built another fire under a big table umbrella they had brought. My host mom roasted Shashliki (shish kabobs) and potatoes. We ate in the rain. We adjourned to the van to talk. Well, I listened. I did a lot of listening. Then we went back to sleep because there was nothing to do. Mostly, we did a lot of sleeping and eating because of the rain.

We swam a little on the afternoon of the third day before heading back to the village.

Looking back: Cooking in Ukraine

2022-03-11T06:30:00.001-08:00

February 2, 2008:

I was a timid cook in Ukraine. Every woman in the country went to the same cooking school and can make soup, Borshch, ravioli, cabbage rolls, dumplings, pie and potato pancakes from scratch. I figured they spent more time in the kitchen than anywhere else. Whenever I cooked for other people I wondered, would they like it? Would they eat it? What were they thinking when they ate it?

One day while my second host family was out, I decided to make cookies. The family was at a birthday and I had stayed home to rest, so I could talk to myself in English. Sometimes it was exhausting trying to understand everything.

I used a toll house chocolate chip recipe and the small electronic timer I’d brought from America. I found flour and sugar in my host family’s cupboards. My host parents bought it in the one-ton bag variety. I mixed in baking soda and a little vanilla and went to look for eggs. I opened the refrigerator and realized we were out of eggs. “Oh,” I said, and called my mom in America. She told me to substitute oil and a little water for eggs. Then I checked the fridge again, no butter. No butter except for a chunk of chocolate butter sitting on a plate. My host mom excitedly introduced this to me the week before. It was like regular butter, except it was sweet and flavored like chocolate.

I dumped it into the mix but it didn’t seem like enough so I added some kind of fatty, homemade Crisco-like substance that I found in a jar in the back of the refrigerator. I added white chocolate and walnuts and mixed everything together. The mixture was dry so I added more water and oil until it looked like cookie dough.

I giggled as I mixed everything together because I was pretty sure these cookies were going to taste like crap.

I lit the oven. It was a gas stove and oven so not only did you have to use a lighter to light the stovetop, but you had to do the same to light the oven fuse from underneath. This was my first attempt to work the oven on my own and I was successful on the first try. I baked the cookies and felt triumphant when I pulled out the first batch and they looked like cookies. They were a little flat and they tasted a little strange from the fatty stuff but my host family liked them.

“These are delicious!” they said when they ate them. I felt mollified. I baked in Ukraine!

When I moved into my own apartment, I made pizza more times than was strictly necessary. You know how when you're living in a foreign country, and nothing makes sense, and you can't go shopping in an English-speaking store, and that one cashier wasn't very kind, and you can't order a pizza, and you start to wonder if you can really do this?

Then you make pizza.

I was asked by Sestra's family in the village, “What do you eat there where you're living alone? Sandwiches and ravioli and pizza?”

“Haha, no,” I said. “I make many things! Eggs, and potatoes, and bread and apples and... um... I don't make pizza EVERY weekend... Haha...”

I liked to experiment and simulate American dishes from raw ingredients. It made me joyful to make something that tasted like home.

One day I made compote by myself. My Koziatyn host parents had made it all the time. When I first heard about this, it sounded like some old-fashiony thing we had done in America when everyone wore bonnets and traveled in covered wagons.

It was usually water, apples with some kind of berries, and sugar. The fruit juice boiled out of the fruit and made a light juice.

I made apple compote and it was pretty tasty.

Then the next day, I made burritos. From scratch! That was a word I taught my ninth form English class. I tried to explain what a tortilla was during our discussion of American foods and even Natasha was lost.

I made tortillas and then I cooked up beans, rice and ham. I piled that into the tortilla and added cheese, a spritz of lemon and a line of Ranch dressing. It was amazing. Like the best thing I ever cooked in Ukraine. When I showed my host mom from the villlage how I made tortillas, it was difficult to convince her to make them without oil.

I also made homemade tortillas, and then fried them into chips, and made nachos.

Occasionally I tried to make Ukrainian food. I made borshch with beets, cabbage, potatoes, tomatoes, a little tomato sauce, water, carrots, beans and spices. Svyeta had copied down the recipe for me in Ukrainian. It was really great. Especially when I added crushed red pepper to make it a little spicy and it tasted like chili.

Once, I went to Natasha’s house to study Ukrainian and she said she had a surprise for me. She gave me something that looked like gunge on a piece of bread. I was afraid of it until I finally sniffed it. Peanuts.

She made me peanut butter. Because she wanted to please me and she was awesome and I had once told her that peanut butter didn't exist in Ukraine. And when she couldn't find any, she made some herself. And then she had to ask me what awesome meant.

“Really, really great,” I said. “Like super ‘klasno’” (which means “cool”).

I made a feast for Anya’s family, my Ukrainian best friend. I found out avocados in my town at a little vegetable shop. Anya invited me over so I made salsa, bought avocados and chicken and went over to their house to make burritos. It was a big production. I made guacamole (and used Italian seasoning mom had sent me), rice, beans, chicken (also marinated in Italian seasoning salad dressing), cheese, salsa and tortillas. The tortillas were homemade, rolled out and cooked without oil in a skillet. Anya helped me. Her sister-in-law filmed the whole thing with my new digital camera. Sasha, our other friend, grated cheese. I told them that in America, I don’t have to make tortillas, I can buy them right at the store! I felt very home-makery.

Her parents looked on with wide eyes and tentatively tried the avocado and lime. The avocado ‘didn’t taste like anything’ and the lime was sour, according to Dasha, Anya’s sister-in-law. “I said it was like lemon,” I said. She didn’t like it. Later, her dad saw the pit from the avocado and asked where it’d come from. “It’s a seed?” he said in surprise.

“Yes, it came from the avocado!” I said.

When I went to any kind of celebratory gathering in Ukraine, I brought a gift for the hostess, usually chocolate or candies. It was called “konfeti” in Ukrainian. I took off my shoes at the door. This was the custom in Ukraine because the roads were messy and dirty, not always paved. The table was already set with large saucers of Ukrainian dishes; open-faced sandwiches with fish and butter, holodets (jello meat), halubtsy, fried chicken with the bone still in, assorted mayonnaise-based salads, mashed potatoes, sausage and cheeses, potato, salo (pig fat), maybe shashliki (kebabs) if it was summer, wine and vodka.

The hosts were eager to welcome me, to treasure me, to make me feel part of them because I was American. I was an exciting thing to them. They gave me house slippers, they told me where to sit, they gave me wine. We sat and toasted the hosts, took our first shot of vodka of the night. The third toast was to women. The men stood and clinked their glasses together for us. We ate and talked. I tried to understand everything. They ask about me, why was in Ukraine, did I like it here. That was usually the first question. “Do you like it here?”

“Of course,” I said. “The people are warm and friendly and the country is beautiful.”

“And the food?” they asked.

I smiled. “I like it usually,” was my answer.

“Usually?” they asked. “Well,” I said. “I don’t like fish, and I don’t like holodets, or salo.” I shuddered when I said “holodets” and they laughed.

“Why don’t you like holodets?” they wanted to know.

“Because it’s terrible!” I said. “We don’t eat meat in jello in America!” They were delighted by my reaction and begged me to try it.

“It’s just soup, only cold,” they said. “You like soup, yes?”

“Yes, but not cold soup like this,” I said. I stood firm to my beliefs.

We continue the meal, and when my plate was empty, they pressed me to eat more. More. More. More dishes were brought out and still they said, “yeesh, yeesh (eat, eat). You must eat more. Vodka, wine, what would you like to drink?” they asked.

“I have had enough!” I tried to say, but it was not enough. I had to eat. I had to drink more. They were my hosts and they didn’t want me to go hungry, I must eat. I was bursting but still I ate. I picked at the food, dolloped another scoop of cheese and garlic salad onto a slice of bread. There was so much left on the table.

Then we had tea and coffee with chocolates and cookies. We sat around the table for hours, talking. Maybe someone started to sing. My second host mom loved this, to play a song on the piano while we all sang. Except I’d listen, because I didn’t know the words. We drank and drank and they talked and talked.

There was no possibility of finding a TV dinner in a Ukrainian supermarket. The best I could come up with was a couple boxes of “chicken cordon bleu” meals tucked behind the raw fish. And I was all, whoa there! How long had these been sitting here and were they ordered just for me? Hard to imagine any self-respecting Ukrainian woman picking those up.

“All Jessica likes to eat are potatoes, chicken and eggs,” Sestra liked to joke. She was not far from the truth because I wasn't used to cooking this much and not having any ready-made meals. Tricia helped me find a few things that were premade, like different types of varenekiy (dumplings or large pasta with fillings of potatoes, cheese or meat).

Looking back: Teaching English at School No. 5

2022-03-10T06:30:00.001-08:00

January to February 2008:

When it was nice out, I walked to school every morning about two miles away. I walked from my apartment down a pathway, across a street, over a bridge, down to the railroad tracks, through the train station, along the tracks to the distant side of the station, across some more tracks, up another path, across a street and arrived at my school.

I was happy to start my first semester of English teaching in January and get that hurdle out of the way. I taught four to six English classes a day in forms 5 to 10 (fourth grade to ninth grade). I taught each class group twice weekly, once with their regular teacher and once alone.

It was like teaching in an American school except that the grading system was different, the children’s first language was different and the class schedules and plans were in another language. It was terrifying. Grades, or marks, were taken daily and recorded in a special “journal” that I, as a volunteer, was not allowed to touch. It was a sacred Bible that allowed one color of ink and no white-out.

I taught fifth form to 10th form. There were about 15 to 20 children in a class. Teachers called them pupils in English because ‘student’ refers to university students. Just like school refers to elementary/high school rather than university.

The children love me. I'm new. I'm not their regular teacher. They brought me treats and they said, “Hello Miss Benes!” every time they saw me.

However, they only behaved the first time they saw me. At the next class, all bets were off.

It was a tricky thing, getting up in front of a class when they didn’t know a lot of English. It was overwhelming for both parties. I was completely out of my element and they had no idea what was going on.

I said, “I need a volunteer. Who will be my volunteer?” And I raised my hand and looked at the students expectantly and they looked at each other and at me with wide eyes and then a girl said in Ukrainian. “What do you want the class to do?” So I pointed at a student and said, “Come on up here. You are my volunteer. This is a volunteer.” Demonstration was key. Everything step by step. Later I learned that “volunteer” was a cognate and it was probably my pronunciation that threw them.

I worked with several of the classes for the full two years but I knew maybe six names in each class. Especially the larger classes, it was impossible to keep names straight. They were all Dima and Lena and Olena and Serhiy. It was all in Ukrainian and sometimes the names were difficult to pronounce or they laughed at the way I pronounced them. In the names Ilya, Alya and Olya, the letters ‘lya’ has this extra special emphasis on the way the ‘l’ sound hit the roof of your mouth. I was safer going with acceptable alternatives like Alla or Olga.

I taught the ninth form about America for two weeks. I felt particularly capable of teaching this topic. The ninth form textbooks were by the same author as those we’d first seen in the village. While the nationally-mandated curriculum demanded that teachers spend about 10 lessons on the U.S., the book was lacking. It had short paragraphs titled, “New York,” “The Grand Canyon” and “National Holidays.”

The information on our holidays were two paragraphs and read, “Americans believe that if they work hard they can have what they want and be what they want. This is a part of what they call, ‘The American Dream.’ That is why Americans are so hard-working. They do not take many vacations and there are only five national holidays that are celebrated in every state. These are New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day… There are other holidays, but they are not celebrated in all the states.” It was interesting to read about us from a Ukrainian perspective. All true though.

I wanted to start with a little history so I drew some lovely pictures of a red-haired Columbus with sideburns and three ships that looked like walnut halves with triangles stuck in them. We moved on to history, food, fast food, American customs (I suppose that we like to eat hot dogs at baseball games?), habits (we are a smile-y, handshake-y kind of people), holidays (I played up Halloween and Thanksgiving. Ukrainian children were always anxious to know about Halloween).

A vocabulary word in the ninth form textbook the first week was “haberdashery.” I had heard the word but had no idea what it meant. “Oh, haberdashery.” It sounded like a grandpa thing to say. I gave a lesson on small shops and supermarkets, and this was one of their vocabulary words. After class I asked my counterpart teacher, “What does this mean?” And she explained that it meant accessories like handbags and gloves.

Another time I asked her if the cursive letter in front of me was a cursive F or T. Most of the children were taught to write English in cursive. I have formed the habit of never writing in cursive, so I didn’t even know how to do all the capital letters correctly. It was these little things that made me feel like I should go back to third grade before attempting to teach in a Ukrainian classroom.

Teaching was great at first. The students continued to be wonderful and sweet, and the other English teachers were ready to crack the whip if any of them got out of line. “Many classes want to work with Jessica,” they warned. “She doesn’t have to work with your class.” Which puts the fear of God in them.

My regional manager from Peace Corps came to visit on occasion. Every area of Ukraine was divided into a region by Peace Corps and every region had a manager, so we had someone to take care of our needs, questions and concerns. She traveled to every site to visit school and make sure apartments were suitable.

She sat in on one class to observe me but there wasn’t much to see because the pupils were taking a test that day. At the beginning of class, I did the introductions the way the Ukrainian teacher always did them:

"Good morning class”

“Good morning teacher”

“Who is on duty today?”

“I am on duty today”

“What is the date today?”

“The date is ... the fifth... I mean first of January”

“January?”

“Uh, no, Febr…uary.”

“Thank you, you may sit down." Then I did some warm up questions about the weather. For the start of the test, I read a text in English and they wrote down the days of the week corresponding with the pictures on their sheets of paper.

My manager met with me and the other English teachers, and we discussed everything. They said I worked hard and was a good teacher. Sometimes they would break into rapid fire Ukrainian and I'd be left hoping they were saying only nice things about me. My manager said they were.

She visited my new apartment and wrote down a list of things that should be changed. When she looked around to sit down, I smiled. All I had was one stool and my bed. No chairs, no sofa. I had a bucket, though, which I used sometimes as a second seating place. It was comfortable when you draped a dishtowel over it. She sat on the stool and wrote down that I needed chairs.

At the beginning and at the end of the school year, Ukraine schools had a first and last bell ceremony. The first bell ceremony was to welcome in the new first-formers, and the last bell ceremony was to say goodbye to the 11th form graduates, although they also had a separate graduation ceremony. On Saturday after the last day of school, we gathered at the school for the ceremony at 9 a.m. The 10th formers emceed. The 11th formers paraded out after everyone was assembled. The 11th formers wore huge, puffy pom-pom bows in their hair and the traditional Ukrainian graduation garment. They looked like large 5-year-olds. The first formers also wore these bows when they started school. The director and 10th formers spoke. The director handed out certificates to teachers and pupils, and younger students performed dances.

Looking back: seeing Americans again and traveling alone.

2022-03-09T06:30:00.001-08:00

March 2008

An hour further west from me by train was a large town called Vinnytsia. It was the central city of our oblast. A volunteer lived in the town and the rest of us were scattered around it within an hour or two. PCVs conducted an English Club in Vinnytsia every other Saturday with local teachers and Ukrainians who wanted to practice English. It was also a great opportunity for the Americans to meet up.

When a volunteer who had been in Ukraine for a year invited me to the city for the English club, I was thankful because it was the first time I would be around other Americans in a month. I went by elektrichka to Vinnytsia to visit the club. My host mom was worried about me getting there but I was just overjoyed to escape. Matt came, too, from Nemiroff, where they make famous vodka.

We met with about 10 English-speaking Ukrainians. At that first meeting, the topic was on the Iowa Caucus, election and U.S. government. One gentleman at the club brought up points about the various caucuses and why the system is still used and the electoral college and generally displayed that he knew a good deal more about my government than I did. He seemed so knowledgeable of American sports and politics that he could probably debate my father on it.

Getting together with other Americans was comforting. Despite being from different sides of the United States, we understood each other. We got the same jokes and could speak naturally about things without extensive explanations.

We made American food together and reminisced on American pastimes. We were able to use Ukrainian and English interchangeably and be understood. It was comfortable to say, “Ya nesnayu” (I don’t know) and “shcho?” when an American asked a question, because it was such a habit and everyone understood.

We made fun of each other because we had all developed a habit of enunciating, using small words, omitting articles like “it” and “to her” and saying phrases that the Ukrainian children learned at school such as “It seems to me” and “I will go to you at this time.”

“I know English,” I would tell my friend Matt, who was notorious for sounding like a Ukrainian English-speaker. “You can speak to me normally.”

-----

Traveling was such a Thing in Ukraine that it had it's own title when I blogged about going somewhere. I called these stories "Poizd Parables" because poizd or поїзд means "train" in Ukrainian. (pronounced po-yeezd). Here's the first one.

No one at the train station spoke English and none of the train schedules were ever in English, except for some in Kiev.

While people strove purposefully past, and I avoided eye contact with taxi drivers and one-legged bums on crutches, I would stare stressfully at a train schedule to decipher the Cyrillic letters and figure out which track I should wait at.

The first time our language instructor gave us a tour of the train station, he explained the schedule board to us and moved on quickly like we all understood. I understood the schedule as well as I understood my dad when he started going on about testing a product at work using a fancy equation. I stayed behind and the foreign letters swam before my eyes. It was very clear that the next time I took a train, I would probably end up in Russia or Poland.

After training, I had to get used to traveling by myself. It was easier when there were five of us and we were always going to the same places and could help each other. Now, I had to be independent.

There were several different types of trains. Simple Elektrichkas were the slow crowded, economy trains and stopped in every village and town. We also had faster elektrichkas – called schivdky electrichkas – that were slightly more comfortable and quicker. The platzkart trains had sleeper cars and were more expensive. They were fast and didn’t stop at every tiny village. Kupe was the next step up and were private compartments of two that often had plug outlets. That was like being in the lap of luxury on a train. Peace Corps Volunteers could usually afford up to a platzcart train, but not for every journey.

I didn’t know about all the trains at first. After English Club Day, I had to get home. Tamara, my host mom, had written down two times of elektrichkas that would be available at the train station. One was at 2 p.m. and the other was 6 p.m. We were still on free Internet at the English library at 2 p.m. and, while it made me a little nervous to miss that train, I figured there would be something else available before 6:22 p.m. I would just ask. Since I knew the language and all.

I took a trolley bus back to the train station, and went into the main building. I studied the board of daily trains but it only listed the end destination; not what towns the trains would stop in.

I got in one of the shorter lines with the intention of asking the woman behind the glass about the trains, but since I was unsure, people kept pushing in front of me. In Ukraine, a queue is more an idea than a practice. Finally, I stopped a woman and asked her which window I should go to if I wanted a ticket to my town. She took me outside and pointed to a smaller building.

So I went in there. “When is the next train or elektrichka?” I asked. Next one was at 6:22, like my host mom had said. That was over two hours away. Depressing because I’d gotten up at 5:30 a.m. to catch the train that morning and I was exhausted and grumpy and nervous because I was by myself, and I just wanted to be in bed. Not in a train station waiting room for two hours.

I waited 20 minutes, trying to have a good attitude, and finally called my counterpart teacher. “Is there any other way to get back?” I asked.

“Go to the kasa (ticket window) in the main building and ask if there are any trains that will stop here on their way to another city,” she said. “Usually there are some, although they’ll be more expensive.”

Side note about kasa: I wrote “kaca” in a blog one time because that is literally how the word is spelled in Ukrainian since the “c” is an “s” sound. My family members had a field day with that one.

I went to the window, purchased a ticket on a train that would be stopping at my destination, found the correct track line by asking several different people, checked with the conductor to make sure it was going to my town, and was on my way 20 minutes later.

After we’d been moving for a few minutes, I asked the woman sitting across from me where she was going and she said “Krem,” Crimea. White-hot knifes of fear pierced through my stomach and I felt the most awful panic. Because I was pretty sure Crimea was way east and way south. And I should be going north.

I spent the next 10 minutes internally freaking out, going over the map in my head of what little I knew about Ukrainian geography. I knew of friends who, during training, tried to go to Chernigiv and ended up the opposite direction in Kyiv. And they knew Russian. And if I was on the wrong train, who knew when it would be stopping next? It was a platzcart train with compartments for sleeping and maybe it wouldn’t be stopping for hours and I’d be trapped on a train overnight going the wrong direction and end up in Crimea. I’d have to call Peace Corps, which meant every American in all of Ukraine would soon know about it because that’s how rumors were. “Did you hear about that volunteer from group 33 that tried to go home an hour away and ended up on the other side of the country?” And I’d have to call my host parents, who got nervous when I traveled alone as it was, and they’d never let me travel by myself again, and I should really learn more Ukrainian quickly so I understood what the heck was going on.

And then I got up the nerve to ask the woman again, “I’m sorry, I have a question. So you say you’re going to Crimea now?” She nodded and I looked wild-eyed because she asked me kindly, “Where are you going?” I told her and asked if it was the correct train.

She nodded and checked with her son and nodded again. “It stops there,” she said. “Yes.”

“Oh good,” I breathed in Ukrainian. “Oh thank God,” I said in English.

I learned later that my town is a large enough station that most trains stop there and that the train was going to Kiev first, and then on to Crimea.

I got to town in an hour and 5 minutes instead of the two-plus hours the electrichka takes.

Looking back: my apartments in Ukraine

2022-03-08T06:30:00.001-08:00

February 2007

I had three apartments in the first three months of living on my own. The first two apartments were owned by the same landlord. She moved me to the second one because she wanted her newly-married son to have the first. I was moved to the third apartment because my school didn’t like the landlord.

I moved into my first apartment in early February. I had no hot water and basic amenities. It was typical of a starter-Ukrainian apartment. According to Peace Corps, a strong door and lock as well as a bed and stove were necessities. Hot water was not. My host parents and my counterpart helped me move. My host dad and his nephew called me a taxi and helped me transfer everything. I had two large suitcases and a couple of small bags. My host mom promised to give me potatoes and beans. Tricia went through her cupboards and loaded me up with pots, pans, utensils, linens and another table and chairs for my apartment, and offered the help of her friend’s son if I need anything fixed. She told me she’d shop with me for other things I needed.

The apartment was one large room with a separate little space for the kitchen and bathroom. My bed was a narrow futon thing against one wall while the other wall was filled with the wall unit. The thing was full of dishes and glassware left by the owner, and I had to rearrange everything to make room for my clothes.

I loved being on my own and cooking for myself again. I missed both families and the fact that they cooked for me and fed me and took care of me, but I loved having my own area.

I started to feel more comfortable and confident in the town once I was in my own place. I could listen to American music and watch movies on my laptop without bothering anyone.

Because I didn’t have hot water, I washed my hair the first week with cold water. It was like taking a bath at the North Pole. The water was made from ice cubes. I knew I was in the Peace Corps and what was the Peace Corps if not mud huts and arctic baths in the river, right? But Peace Corps said we should live at a moderate level, like our neighbors. And my neighbors, here? They had hot water.

When I visited my host family in the village, Sestra and Baba and asked me several times when I would be taking a shower. Finally, I smelled my armpits. "Do I smell or what?" I asked my sister.

"You have no hot water so you need to take a shower here!" she said.

I bought two metal devices I found at the outdoor market to heat my bathtub water. I had never seen such things before. They were simple metal coils attached to plugs that could be plugged in to heat up cups of tea. I figured if I bought two, it might be enough to heat up my bath water. I plugged them in at 4 p.m. in a metal bucket in my bathtub. By 9 p.m., the water had become tepid but nowhere near warm. At this rate, I knew that I’d be bathing sometime early next year. I unplugged everything and washed up in a foot of tepid water, all scrunched up because the bathtub was short. I shivered but was glad the water wasn’t icy this time.

Saturday morning, I went to the market again – bazaars they called them – and bought a much larger coiled metal device suitable for heating a bathtub. I used this several times, even though it usually blew my circuit breaker and I had to keep flipping the switch. And then, my regional manager read my blog and told me I had to stop this dangerous practice because it was a safety hazard.

I washed my clothes in the tub, scrubbed them, rinsed them, and hung them on laundry lines above the bath. I talked to Oksana about these things and she laughed and said, “I can imagine the situation.” I bet she could. Me, the American, bathing in cold water and washing my clothes by hand.

One day my new friend Sasha stopped by to show me stores in town to buy things for my apartment and I went to unlock the door for him. The locking mechanism used a big skeleton key and I had to lock myself into and out of the apartment.

The key wouldn’t turn.

“Interesting,” I thought to myself. I imagined Sasha standing on the other side of the door, listening to the five key chains attached to my one key scrabbling with the lock.

“Don’t hurry,” Sasha said from the other side of the door.

I finally said, “I think the lock is broken. Or the key. I’m stuck in here forever.”

“Open your balcony door and throw the key down to me. I’ll try it from the other side,” he suggested. So he went around the building and I threw the key down to him from my third floor window because the windows didn’t have screens. He didn’t have any luck, either.

He went to Natasha’s house to get her copy of the key to see if that would work.

It didn’t. I was imprisoned. “How about I throw one of the keys back to you and you try it again,” he said.

“Oh, that’ll work,” I said and thought about my great hand-eye coordination and the probability that the key would become lodged in some crevice of the building instead of my grasping fingers.

“Can you catch?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. I went to the window and he tossed the keys up, and I caught it on the second try. I was quite pleased about all the key chains at that point, making it an easy and large target.

“I think you’re going to be in there for the next two years,” he said after we’d worked at the door some more from both sides. “I’ll go get my tools. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”

He was also a comedian.

He came back and took the lock apart. Once freed, we went to buy a new lock.

It took me awhile to figure out the trash situation. When I lived with my host family, I noticed that periodically, my host dad took the trash out. But I never understood the pattern of days. I thought maybe there was a specific day of the week like in America but he seemed to go out randomly.

Later, I found out it arrived daily, at 6 p.m., for five minutes. We were to bring our bags down to the street and wait for the truck. The garbage truck arrived, the man lowered a big trash container, and everyone threw their trash in. It was a good time to socialize and catch up with friends.

Michelle, the fifth member of our cluster group from the village who went home over Christmas, returned Jan. 9. and brought us gifts. I got peanut butter, a Nutty Bar, Ranch salad dressing, a chocolate chip cookie mix, Andes mints and a hot chocolate packet. Pulling out each item was like a birthday party. Peanut Butter! Ranch salad dressing! Chocolate chip cookies! I baked the cookies immediately to celebrate my move. I burned them only a little because I wasn’t used to the oven.

The Ukrainian hospitality took getting used to. They were used to going over to each other's houses without warning to visit, and expected tea and cookies. Usually they brought the cookies. One day, my host mom Tamara came to visit with a friend, which was unnerving because if I wasn’t expecting company, then my house was generally a mess. So I felt embarrassed and put on water for tea. They found seats in the clutter of my one main room with my messy bed and papers all over the floor because I was lesson planning. And then I had to try to carry on a conversation and understand them in Ukrainian because they didn’t speak English. People also expected me to drop by. My host family asked me, "Why haven't you come to us, why haven't you come to us?" And I was like, “Well, you haven't invited me. I had no reason to come to you. I want to go home and relax after work. What if you're busy?” Obviously I couldn’t translate all that so I said, "I'm sorry, when would you like me to come to you?"

In Ukrainian, that's how it translated. "I'm going over to Tamara's house" was "I'm going to Tamara."

After a month, I was spontaneously told I needed to move from my apartment to a new apartment within the week and could I move on Saturday? No, I was out of town Saturday? Then could I move the next Monday? I moved to a new apartment that had hot water and more space in the kitchen.

My second apartment didn’t have Internet access. To get the wireless access I had enjoyed before, I went down the street and sat on a porch across from the antenna. People stared at me because you don’t sit on a porch in Ukraine, you’ll get sick! I brought along a towel to sit on, because my bottom often did go numb from cold, and ignored the stares.

A month after that, I moved to my third, permanent apartment. I continued to go down the street to use Internet, even while old babushkas chastised me, until Sasha found a company to install it in my apartment. I paid for it, because this wasn’t a Peace Corps-deemed necessity, but it was worth it. I was connected to the world again. I could email, I could Skype, I could blog! I felt alive again.

Looking back: first weeks in my new town

2022-03-07T06:30:00.000-08:00

December 2007 to January 2008

We were sworn in as official Peace Corps volunteers in December and moved to our new sites. The new town in Vinnytska Oblast was large and I was anonymous, at least at first. I could walk down the street and unless I opened my mouth, no one noticed me.

In the village, people knew who we were. I didn't know all of them but they all knew me. They shouted my name on the street and when Matt and Mike went into the disco, the girls screamed like they were rock stars. The guys looked sheepish but they loved it. It was different in this larger town.

I lived in a second-story apartment for a month with two host parents. My new host mom had a small concession kiosk near one of the schools, and my new host dad was a radio deejay or “radio journalist” as he called himself. He gave me a book of poems he had written in Ukrainian. He liked to make jokes and point out things. He was a Ukrainian teacher and offered to be my Ukrainian tutor so I could continue to learn the language.

I had a hard time letting go at first. It was January and winter. I hadn’t seen the sun in weeks. I wrote home about each dark day and about how miserable I was. Antonella and I called each other daily to share our misery.

There was more mud than grass in Ukraine and the roads became wet and muddy in the winter. I suddenly understood why taking off shoes was so important to Ukrainians. I bought Ukrainian black winter booths that were very stylish. Because everyone else in Ukraine took such good care of their shoes, I learned to wipe mine off with a rag after stomping through the mud. I even polished them with black shoe polish when needed. I had never shoe-polished anything in my life.

I wrote my real mom emails full of angsty text I was embarrassed to read later like, "I'm not sure I'll ever be happy here," and "How dare you allow me to move here. What kind of mother are you?"

My mom wrote me an email after a few weeks of these sappy letters and said, "You might not want to hear this, but you can't focus too hard on the past or you won't enjoy the future."

I felt dark, dark, dark. I stayed in my room a lot and moped gloomily around. I cried in the bathtub. I went for long walks and called Antonella. The dead of winter was a bad time to move to a new place.

My new host mom liked to ask me all kinds of questions while we ate and I was always slow to respond as I paged through limited vocabulary words in my head.

I loved my counterpart teacher (my school liaison), Tricia (name changed). She seemed to understand that I was worried and nervous. She was sweet and patient and liked to tease me. I attended classes with her that first week in Koziatyn. I was at lessons on Dec. 25, and the children from fifth from came in and decorated the classroom and lit sparklers to wish me a Merry Christmas. Her classroom was one of the nicest I had ever seen in Ukraine. The desks were smooth and new. Posters, obtained from a volunteer two years previously, hung on the walls and the rear of the room was filled with English textbooks and picture books.

In two of her English lessons, I read dictations for the students, which the kids were both pleased and worried by. We didn't have "dictations" back home. When Sestra back in the village mentioned the word, I was not sure what she meant. "Dictation," she said. "It's an ENGLISH word." It meant I read a paragraph in English to the students and they wrote it down word for word to practice spelling and recognizing the words. Sometimes I'd pronounce something different then the British way and they'd look at their teacher for help. Sometimes my teacher would correct my American pronunciation to sound more British English. As I have a terrible British accent, this was comical. The children were taught not to pronounce the ‘R’ on ‘car’ or ‘bar’ and that one should say, “I shall head to the theater after supper,” instead of “will.”

This meant the Ukrainian children all spoke like little British kids with Ukrainian accidents.

I also fought with Sestra over “supper” versus “dinner” for the evening meal.

I was just in time for the last week of the semester for the students at school in my new town, which meant I didn’t really do much. I walked to school most mornings with Tricia. It was a chilly and peaceful 30-minute walk. The teachers were busy with paperwork and recording grades and the children were eager for the holiday to begin at the end of December.

For my first New Year’s Eve, I got permission to go to Kiev and meet my previous host family. Tamara walked with me to the train station and put me on a train under the care of her friend, who worked one of the cars. New Year’s was more important than Christmas, probably because it was a big non-religious holiday that they were allowed to celebrate during the Soviet Union. People dressed up and lit off fireworks.

I went to the circus with Oksana and Slava, and later we went to a wax museum. I got my picture taken with Stalin, Lenin, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Britney Spears.

In the evening we walked around Independence Square and admired the huge New Year’s Tree. Before I came back home on New Year’s Eve, Tamila ordered pizza for lunch. She laid the table with a plate of fish, holodets and pizza. I smiled at the picture it made of Ukraine and America/Italy on the table. Holodets is a dish made of meat chilled in a bowl of jello meat fat. It’s a traditional Ukrainian dish and many Ukrainians tried to convince me how tasty it was. I was not moved.

Back in Koziatyn, my host family had supper at 11:30 p.m. and toasted the New Year at midnight. I had the thought that the New Year wouldn’t begin for another nine hours in Colorado.

Looking back: Transition from village to town in Peace Corps Ukraine

2022-03-06T09:07:00.002-08:00

Ukrainians don't usually smile in photos and Americans smile "too big" so we had to demonstrate this.

December 2007

I have seen where I’m going to live for two years! We attended a mid-training conference in Kyiv last weekend, where they revealed our permanent sites to us. This was a Big Moment for each of us volunteers because the next two years of our lives were being determined. We were going to visit the place where we’d meet our friends, gain new acquaintances, hopefully make a difference however small, learn so many new things… My cluster mates and I were all assigned to the same ‘oblast’ (region of Ukraine), except for one. She was assigned way west in the Carpathian mountains, about 18 hours away.

I visited my new site for a few days; met my counterpart; attended the classes of students I will be teaching; and met the host family I will live with for one month. The city has a population of over 25,000 – very different from the village of just over 5,000 people that I live in now.

I will live with a host family the first month; then move into my own flat. It will be nice to be on my own again, although I’m pretty sure I’ll miss my current family’s food.

I leave my village here, right before America’s Christmas, and move to my new city, which will be my home for the next two years.

Interesting fact: I say America’s Christmas because we celebrate Christmas Dec. 25, while Ukraine celebrates it January 7.

The final week of our involvement at the secondary school in our community, we conducted an English week program and ended with a talent show. English week went well. The children of the school performed various singing and dancing acts and we Americans ended the festivities with a traditional Ukrainian song. They loved it.

Sunday was my birthday. What might have been a sad and depressing day for me was definitely not. My host family spent part of Saturday and all morning Sunday making food for a big dinner at noon. When I woke up and went downstairs, my host mom wished me a happy birthday and tugged on my ears. Then later my host dad shook my hand and tugged on my ears. My sister said it was tradition but I'm still not sure why.

My friends came and two of my host sister's friends, and the whole family. They presented gifts to me and kissed my cheeks and we ate a lot and drank a lot. My (American) mom called and my friends from America called and a couple friends from here, as well, including my counterpart teacher where I'll be teaching for two years. I felt loved and happy, even far away from everything familiar.

I leave here Dec. 17 for my permanent host site. Fear, anticipation, excitement, fear. Oh, I better make this quick. My host sister is just now telling me to stop writing emails and go learn some Ukrainian words so we can talk in Ukrainian because she just told me two words to remember and I now can't for the life of me remember them. She should be used to that. She'll remember words from the day before that I've taught her but it doesn't seem to work the same the other way around.

"That's because English is just easier to remember. The words don't have 25 letters," I tell her but she doesn't like that excuse.

Here in the village, I took classes in Ukrainian daily, interned at the local secondary school teaching English to children, took technical training classes on how to teach, and implemented a community project with the four other Americans in my cluster group in a small village not far from Kyiv. Which meant frustration and anticipation and downright fear all coincided with eagerness to see what I'd learn next. I lived with a large family; mom, dad, grandma, grandpa and sister. I love them dearly and am sad to leave them Dec. 17. It's impossible to believe that the training is over. In my village these last couple months I ate pig's ear and learned how to make ravioli from scratch and drank too much on my birthday and taught English to seventh formers and learned how to read and speak a little of the language and taught my host sister 'awesome,' 'mean,' and 'cool.'

I might have had one of the best host family experiences ever in that little village. My host sister became like my own sister. My host mom admonished me when I didn't wear a hat, and she made me lasagna (that I had taught her how to make) when she thought she had upset me. On my last full day there, she made me pizza. She once said she doesn't like to drink water and then, a month later, she was sitting at the table drinking a glass of water. "Look," she said in surprise after a minute. "I'm learning to drink water." (in Ukrainian,-- she doesn't speak English). I laughed and laughed. My host dad teased me and liked to ask me things about America that I usually knew little about. How much a repairman makes and what does a house cost and how much did I make at my job. My host grandma and mom often joked about my first night there. How I don't like fish and mushrooms, and the only things I like are potatoes, eggs, and cheese. Not true. I just don't want soup for breakfast every day!

I studied Ukrainian on my host sister's bed and would bother her while she was playing 'The Sims.' "What does this mean, how do I say this...?" She filmed me with her video camera while I stood in front of a green piece of fabric, and then replaced the background with film from outside to create the effect I was flying - just like in the movies. I will miss her funny jokes in English, and her exasperation with me because I could remember how to say "I want to fart" or other inappropriate words, while I could never remember words she'd taught me like "lid" and "tree" and "road." Don't even get me started on "road" and "deer." It sounds exactly the same. We also set up the video camera to film an instance when my sister was trying to get me to say a particular Ukrainian letter that is equivalent to a combo of "H" and "G" in English. Difficult for Americans to say. Like rolling the 'r's. Apparently, only little children can't roll their r's. Little children and me.

Transition is hard. But that doesn't mean I should stop myself from experiencing new things and connecting here. It's good to realize this. So. On to meeting my new community.

Looking back: Learning Ukrainian

2022-03-05T08:39:00.003-08:00

Ukrainian phrases:

Мене звати джесіка. - My name is Jessica.

Я з америки, штат колорадо. - I am from America, the state of Colorado.

Our lessons took place at our language teacher's house. His living room was our classroom and he filled poster sheets of paper with verb tenses, conjugations and charts. He started each lesson by asking us simple questions about our state of being, what we did in our free time and if we liked the weather outside. I later used this same technique in my own classroom.

I often confused “Yak tebe svaty?” (What is your name) with “Yak cpraviy?” (How are you) and answered “What is your name?” with “I’m doing very well, thank you, although I didn’t sleep well.”

We played matching games and board games that Serhiy created himself to learn the many and varied tenses of the verb, "to go." I hated that verb. Slightly different letters added on to the verb meant you were coming, leaving, going around, returning, or that you had been or would go. We learned that the noun ending changed depending on the context and conjugation of the verb.

I was able to start having simple conversations with my host family. In one conversation, Baba said the family would be sad when I left and I couldn’t go very far away so I could visit. I said I would like to stay close and would definitely come visit. Well, that was the point I wanted to get across. Because of my limited language, it sounded more like, “yes, yes, not far away, not far away. I’ll tell the Peace Corps. (laughter) I will visit by mashrutka or bus or train.”

I asked Oksana if I could use the Internet and she said, "Ask me in Ukrainian" so I said "ok, можна … iнтернет?" (Can I... Internet).

I didn't know the word for 'to use' so she said it went like this, “(insert word that is seven syllables long)" and I said, “Say what?”

And she wrote it down, використовувати. I glared at her and said, "Why does that word have a million letters?"

"Huh?" she asked.

"1,2,3,4...15." I said. “The word 'use' has three letters and that word 'vikoristovoovaty' has 15 letters. Why?"

She giggled at me.

I came home from my Ukrainian lessons one day and my host mom Svyeta tried to ask me why I was home early. But she didn’t speak English and my Ukrainian was still awful so she tried to ask me this with a dictionary. Something about how Oksana was at school until 2 or 3 p.m. and I was home earlier than that.

What I got out of it was that I wasn’t learning the language very quickly and I should be working harder like Oksana, and I was home early because I hadn’t studied very hard.

My insecurity might have played a role here. So I burst into tears.

“I’m doing the best I can and I’m far away from home and I miss my family and I study every night and it’s not like I can learn a language in three weeks! It’s a hard language and it’s confusing and I just don’t get it!” I said, in a speedy rush of English while she stared at me, bewildered and wide-eyed.

Oksana came home then and asked, “What is going on?” She translated what her mom had been asking me.

“Oh,” I said. I was so embarrassed I didn’t want to tell them what my interpretation had been.

The next morning I found out from three different people in town that everyone knew I had cried. Thank you, small town.

Looking back: breakfast and travel in Ukraine

2022-03-04T06:30:00.001-08:00

Nov. 7, 2007

I have had many discussions with my host grandma and sister about how I do like soup and borscht and chicken on the bone; I just don’t like them for breakfast.

Yesterday when they gave me soup and I picked at it and ate the boiled eggs and sausage instead, they told me that soup would start my day out right. There are many vitamins in soup. It is good for me and will not make my stomach feel bad. “Yes, that’s true,” I said, still skeptical.

“When you go back to America,” Baba (Grandma) said, “You will tell your mom, soup for breakfast!” I laughed and laughed.

The other day when Baba and Mama were upset at my host sister for not eating enough, they pointed at her and said “Jessica!” and pointed at me and back to her. Teasing both of us because I don’t eat enough.

I just want to eat something light like eggs or cereal for breakfast, I try to tell them.

“You can eat anything anytime you want,” my host sister says. I think she feels I’m limited by these rules I’ve imposed on myself. “Where is this book that says you can’t eat lasagna for breakfast? I have not read that anywhere.”

“It is how we do things in American. We have certain things for breakfast and other things we eat for lunch and dinner,” I said, giggling.

“You are wrong, we are right,” she told me.

I made my host family lasagna for supper the other night. I had to find the ingredients in Kyiv, and they were startled by the flat noodles. They all liked the meal and said “very good” over and over in Ukrainian, so I was pleased. There was some left over and Baba said, “Tomorrow. We’ll eat it tomorrow.” I started to smile and shake my head at the same time that she said, “in the morning. You can eat it in the morning.”

“Not for breakfast,” I said and laughed. “I’m not eating lasagna for breakfast.”

“What do you want?” she said in Ukrainian.

“I want eggs and malincy (similar to pancakes with berry jam) and Muesli,” I said, and even responded in Ukrainian. “I will eat lasagna for lunch.”

“For lunch,” she agreed.

------

I went to Kyiv with my host grandmother last week to visit her daughter and daughter’s family. They live in a nice apartment in Kyiv.

Her daughter – we’ll call her Tammy – and family took me to the center of Kyiv to see some of the main points of interest. We went to Shevchenko Park and saw the university named after the famous poet. They pointed out to me many of the historic buildings, and we saw the Golden Gates memorial. They explained how much of the city was destroyed after the second world war and there are not many ancient buildings left. We went into the underground mall in the Center and my eyes rounded at how modern it was. And I was excited that there was a McDonald's food. American food! Sometimes I miss fast food. I know that we eat too much of it in America but I still miss it.

“I like McDonald’s,” said Tammy’s daughter, Jane.

“Jessica, maybe you want Verenicky (meat dumplings) or something else? Tell Jane that McDonald’s is not healthy,” Tammy said.

“McDonald’s is not healthy,” I said to Jane in a small voice. “But I really, really want it. Like really, really.” So we had McDonald’s. It was wonderful.

The train ride back to my village the next day was two hours. I pulled out my Ukrainian flashcards and discussed them with Baba. Pretty soon, the older ladies nearby were watching me, interjecting a comment or two if I pronounced something wrong. A young lady on the train came up to me afterwhile because she had overheard me speak English. We talked for awhile in English.

Meanwhile, a drunk young man was very interested in me and our conversation and would try to interject comments or talk to us. His mom hushed him up sometimes. He’d walk by in the aisle and tried to talk to me or grab my hand and I’d gently push him away, or just ignore him.

Finally, he stood up and tried to touch my knee. I shoved his hand away and instantly there were about five babusyas on their feet, shouting at his mother to control her drunk son. My new friend translated. “She’s saying she hasn’t done anything wrong and her son is just fine, they’re the ones who are wrong,” she said. “They’re saying she shouldn’t take him out in public and that they’re going to call the police …” Then she added. “This doesn’t really happen that often.” The two got off at the next stop.

It was very exciting.

Looking back: learning to live in Ukraine

2022-03-03T06:30:00.004-08:00

October 2007

We had a crash course in all things Ukrainian during those first three months. We learned how to teach in Ukrainian classrooms and had four hours a day of language classes.

Our training teacher taught the English class and we observed her. I felt like an exotic bird. Before class, the children giggled and clustered around the desks on the other side of the room. They stared at us and whispered like we were a particularly interesting exhibit at the museum. Most of these children had never seen Americans before and they acted the way I might if Brad Pitt or Ewan McGregor stopped by to hang out.

“Who will have the nerve?” I wondered, amused. Finally a student ventured forth from the pack. “How old are you?” she blurted at us. We answered and she went to report back to her group.

During a break, Antonella and I walked across the street to get a snack from a yellow kiosk. It was the closest available food and a hot spot for the students to buy snacks.

We waited patiently for our turn while children around us pushed in and placed orders. It was a free for all and we would have been standing there into next year if we hadn’t started thinking like Ukrainians. “You just have to get in there,” I muttered to my friend. “You’re going to be next. Go, go, go!” And I pushed her forward. We learned that lines, or queues, are not widely used in Ukraine.

The village school used a series of old, pictureless textbooks by a Ukrainian author who had purportedly been to England and had a well-rounded grasp of English and American cultures.

The map of North America at the front of the book was a basic outline and placed “Washington” somewhere below Lake Erie, and Niagara Falls across the arm of the U.S. under New York. It took some doing to convince the students that there was a Washington D.C. and a state of Washington, and that they were in two separate locations.

The books’ technique for teaching English was to memorize and recite vocabulary words and paragraphs of text. Often for homework, the students were told to retell a text. This meant the kids memorized the paragraph and recited it in class.

It was rare that more than three or four students actually completed the assignment. Most of the students would stand up, stutter through a few words, and then sit down after the teacher wrote down their low mark (grade).

We wrote lesson plans and used the tools we’d been taught in our technical training sessions to teach the children. The first day that we were to teach, Michelle was the only one who taught. She had a third period class and the rest of us were supposed to teach fourth period lessons. However, all classes after third period were canceled because the students helped clean the school. I had stayed up late planning a lesson that never happened and I was upset at Ukrainian last minute schedules.

We asked Michelle how she did as the first veteran among us and she only muttered, "I don't want to talk about it."

My first official day of teaching went well. The seventh form students ate up what I said and thought I was pretty awesome. I taught food vocabulary. I taught the words for "breakfast," "lunch" and "dinner" and cut out pictures of food from magazines. In the United States, we have a different idea of food. We eat definite things for different meals. Eggs, pancakes, juice and fruit are for breakfast. Sandwiches are for lunch. And hot things like meat and potatoes are for dinner (that is, depending on where you live in the states). In Ukraine, they eat everything for all meals. Borshch is the only thing that is considered a lunch or dinner item.

Sestra asked me if I would come to her class some time to teach. She was in ninth form and I didn’t have her class as one of the ones I was scheduled to teach. She arranged with her teacher a time for me to come.

When I arrived at the class after my Ukrainian language class, the teacher told me I had the students for the whole hour and she'd be in the Teachers’ Lounge.

I had to extend the 20-minute presentation I had prepared to 50 minutes by going slowly and then thinking madly for other things to say. I asked them everything they knew about American and pointed to popular states on the map. After class, the students told me to come back and teach English every lesson.

The toilets at the school were in back. They were small round holes cut into the ground inside four stalls. The female pupils waited outside for their turn because there were no doors on the stalls.

***

On Saturdays, we met with another American cohort in a nearby town. It was 30 minutes away by bus. The first week while waiting for the bus, Michelle walked over to a kiosk to get a bottle of water. A few minutes later, she returned empty-handed.

“I failed,” she said, downcast. “How?” I asked. “I have no idea,” she said. “I asked for Voda (water) and she said ‘nee’ and I said ‘tak’ and she said ‘nee’ so I said, ‘fine’ and left.” (She had probably asked for vodka because the words are almost the same).

When the small bus came and the door opened, it was packed and I had to stand next to the driver.

The driver stopped to let someone off and two more people got in. Then it stopped again and three more people got in. Then it stopped and the driver argued with the waiting people, obviously letting them know we were full. That didn’t stop two more insistent people from shoving their way on. I found myself sitting backwards on the dashboard almost on top of the driver, hunched over with my hand on the driver’s shoulder so I wouldn’t fall into the sardine-in-a-can passengers.

Michelle muttered when we got off, “The man behind me got to third base.”

Looking back: First days in a Ukrainian village

2022-03-02T20:53:00.001-08:00

I thought it might be nice to look back and remember some great experiences in Ukraine. I lived in a village for 3 months in October to December 2007, before I moved to a larger town where I worked as an English teacher from January 2008 to December 2009.

Oct. 4, 2007

(Names and places have been changed)

Sestra (Ukrainian word for sister) later liked to tease me that the first thing I said when I walked in the door and met her parents and grandparents was, “Where should I put my shoes?” This was something we’d learned in orientation. Ukrainians take off their shoes when they enter a house and they bring candy or chocolate. I was nervous. I didn’t want to offend anyone.

Of course, that’s when they led me into their kitchen and we crowded around the table and they beamed at me and served fish.

There was that fish with the eyes sitting on the plate and sardines and caviar on bread. I ate the potatoes and bread and bravely nibbled at the fish.

They kept pressuring me to eat more, more, and eventually I just couldn’t because it was all too fishy and I could see that they were discussing it. Sestra looked at me helplessly like she didn’t want to translate so finally I said, "I don't really like fish ... but it's okay, the potatoes and bread were delicious." This distressed them and Sestra said, "We didn't know, we'll serve something else tomorrow."

I said, “No it's fine!”

They served an apple cake and chocolate and coffee for dessert.

Sestra didn't really understand the concept of my pickiness. "There's not many things I don't eat," she said.

I never realized just how picky I was until I started traveling, because I could be choosy with my selection in the states. I only like six fruits, I love meats, but not their organs, and I’m also relatively selective with vegetables.

They served me borscht, a famous Ukrainian dish of tomato, beets and cabbage. I’m not usually a fan of beets but had to let that one go since the soup was tasty.

The first night, I blew their electricity twice. I had plug adapters but my surge protector didn’t have the proper electrical adaptation. I tried to plug it in, there was a pop and the lights went out. My stomach dropped and I thought, "Nice, I just murdered their electricity."

Her father knew what to do and the lights came back on. Then he examined the surge protector and my other appliances, and finally took it away with him. He did something to it and got it to work with their electricity.

I lay in bed that first night, wide-eyed, lying in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar house with strange electricity and food, in an unfamiliar country, and I was gripped with panic again.

I spent a lot of time over the next few days buying prepaid phone cards after I had purchased a cheap mobile phone, and calling my parents and friends back home. I needed the connection and the village didn’t have good Internet, which meant I wasn’t able to send emails or get on Skype.

The village I lived in had a population of 5,000.

There were lots of trees and a few stores, factory, hospital, couple of cafe-slash-bars, a school and a “culture” house, which is where their disco nights and concerts were held. One street went through town, which was paved in the middle and turned to mud along the sides. It split near the school and a statue to the "Unknown Soldier." My house was to the left, by a deep gulley of overgrown brush and skeleton trees, which Oksana said was haunted. She and her friends told me about the ghost they’d seen there. They also liked to stage filmed episodes of the TV show, “Charmed,” which ran as reruns on an English channel.

My host family had a very nice house because the father was always making improvements. They had a western toilet and a shower that rivaled mine in the states. The shower stall had a radio and water came from a spigot in the ceiling, which was the only of its kind I ever saw in Ukraine. Usually, the showers were nozzles attached to hoses, and weren’t always anchored to the wall. It was a process of washing with one hand while holding the nozzle with the other.

I lived with a complete family; parents, grandparents and one 14-year old daughter, Sestra. They were open and welcoming, although also disapproving of the general sloppiness and obesity of Americans. Sestra had been learning English in school and picked even more up as we communicated. The rest of the family knew nothing. They were eager to point at objects and get me to say them.

I lived on the second floor in a small bedroom across from Sestra's room. The stairs up to my bedroom were so steep it was almost like a ladder. I had a stand-alone wardrobe and a desk with a lamp.

The family had pigs, a cow and chickens. They grew grapes along wooden posts outside their front door and had two nearby fields where they grew potatoes, beets, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, strawberries and onions.

Let's never talk about this year again

2020-10-19T14:53:00.005-07:00

I like all the memes. They make me feel better. Like the one that says, "On Dec. 31, let's all have a shot and then never talk about this year again." I would hope that the effects of this year do not carry beyond Dec. 31, but sadly, that will not be.

I think I stopped writing because I got busy doing online school, then enjoying the weirdest summer ever, then doing online school again. So here are some highlights.

We were all sent home and had to figure out how to online teach! 15 percent of my kids participated.
I hiked more this summer than ever before.
I learned to paddle board and went to Boyd Lake more than ever before! (once it opened).

If you can call riding the board like a fat canoe "paddle boarding..."

I also hung out with close friends more than usual (I guess I travel a lot in the summers...?)
Gracie turned 1 on Aug. 31. She learned to crawl. And wave. And point. And stand up. All those cute things babies do. Also, she's the cutest baby on the planet.
I went back to school, unpacked my classroom and set up, learned that my FTE was reduced and I was joining the virtual academy, repacked my classroom, and brought it all home to my storage unit.
My AUNT decided to move to Colorado from Nebraska, hunted for a place with us all summer, bought a house in August and moved in at the end of September!
Then I started online teaching.

And THAT.

I did volunteer over my counterpart teacher at my middle school to join the online school because I drive an hour to work, and live with a baby and my parents. So the idea of all that being a little easier sounded nice.

Then reality set in and I was mildly bitter at first because I was told I'd be one of four ESL teachers teaching about 400+ K-12 students. And I was assigned K, 1, 2 and high school. And we had daily scheduled Zoom meetings. (I cried a lot) I had not expected the challenge set before me.

However, then, as one friend says, I put on my "big girl pants" and set to work making the best of it. I rotate with my CLD team planning for the littles. And I learned all about how awesome Loom is when making instructional videos. I think maybe 40 percent of my high school students are doing the work? About half that comes to Zoom meetings and the others just do the work in our online learning system. So I plan weekly for synchronous and asynchronous instruction. There's other little teachery things we have to do - paper work and learning plans. My biggest struggle is how to reach all those kids doing nothing.

It's a lot of work and sometimes it gets overwhelming but then I take a break and decide that it's OK to take care of myself and only do what I can do! I get to run up and kiss Gracie between classes, and have lunch with my mom. And I go for walk around the block between classes so I keep my steps up. So it's a give and take of work and some rewards.

But holy crap, who could predict a year ago that this is where we would be! Last year was weird enough for me having Gracie, being on maternity leave, coming back for like two months of classes...

Now I wear masks in the grocery store and recoil when someone sniffles near me and walk 10 feet to work and, and I have a BABY!?!?

The pandemic has allowed me to spend more time with family, and not feel stressed out if I'm not making enough time for other people because it's just not a good idea to get together anyway! But I pray for the people who have suffered from it physically or been affected by it - lost jobs, salary cuts, housing issues, emotional tolls. This pandemic is leaving deep and lasting scars.

Corona Virus

2020-03-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

Well. Two months after my last blog, which is almost as long as I've been teaching since maternity leave, and I'm back to working from home.

A lot happened quickly in the last few days. Yesterday as I sat in my room, conducting my first day of online teaching to middle schoolers, I felt a sense of... like I was reeling just a bit. The whole country shut down in a matter of days. Stores are out of everything and we can't go shopping or to restaurants. People are scared. Others are buying up all the hand sanitizer and gouging customers online. Memes on Facebook joke about the rarity of toilet paper. Leaves anyone? Too bad it's winter here so we can't actually go pick some leaves. I guess dead grass? Will probably itch. ;)

Mom said something good that she heard in an online sermon, you can either be scared, or pray. I liked that because in times like this, we should be thinking of others and praying for our relatives and older family members who might suffer.

Two weeks before school actually closed, we started preparing for that eventuality at school, although I didn't think it would really happen. Our principal asked us to assign each student a chromebook in our "home room" class (called Academic Enrichment or AE). We wrote their names on labels and used silver sharpies to write "property of..." the school district on each computer, so the kids could take them home. I kind of thought this was a lot of work for a plan that might never happen.

I started doing "silent classroom" practice with my students where they would log in and find instructions on what to do for classwork in a Google doc. Then they could also use the message feature in docs to ask me questions. Turns out that middle schoolers have a REALLY hard time with self-motivation and reading instructions without a teacher holding their hands. So it was good practice.

And then last Thursday night, March 12, we got the official announcement that school would shut down on Monday. Friday was a flurry of activity, making sure all students had a computer to take home and preparing them to learn online. On Monday, teachers came to school one last time to get any resources or last minute supplies, and to clean up rooms for a deep cleaning while we're gone.

We have gotten emails nonstop from various organizations offering free premium services to their educational products like Zoom, Loom, Kahoot, etc. That part has been amazing and I'll have to experiment with some of them.

Students checked in yesterday. I saw about 15 of 40 kids or so. They asked me questions and attempted to do their work. I made a whole bunch of calls this morning through a translator to get the rest of the kids to log on.

My school had its first staff meeting this morning through Zoom.

This whole thing is a lot! Parents teaching their kids, the whole nation suddenly homeschooling, people layed off or working from home. It's left us all reeling and it will be challenging to recover from this. I pray for everyone and whatever they're going through. Leave me comments here about what it's been like from your end... Sticking together is how we get through this.

Two weeks back at work

2020-01-20T15:04:00.001-08:00

So, I was nervous to head back to school. It was nice hanging out at home with Gracie and my mom, going to exercise together and play with my nephews when they came over. The boys both fawn over Gracie and it’s so cute to see! But a girl’s gotta work.

So I headed back Jan. 6. Everyone was very warm and welcoming and happy to have me back. The first day was a work day and our boss had sent us an email that the morning would be “teambuilding” and “prepare to get messy.” I figured it was going to be some collaborative thing involving teams and shaving cream or something. Instead, we got to paint! He invited someone from a painting studio to guide us! Only thing missing was the wine. I told him later that it was like he had planned the activity just for me, because it was the perfect way to start back. I also got to visit with teachers and get my mind back in the game, and it was a nice easy transition. My sub had made me copies for my newcomers and told me where the other classes ended up and by the end of Monday, I felt prepared.

And then the kids came Tuesday. I have great kids. They’re sweet and excited. My first period “homeroom” class (we call it Academic Enrichment) are a group of sixth graders that seem to enjoy whatever I give them! Or at least go along with it. One of the activities we do is a community-building thing where we toss a ball to each other and take turns answering a thought-provoking question like “When is a time you have felt rejected?” After the first couple of times doing it, the kids have asked every day since if we can do the “ball throwing thing.” Which is adorable because try asking a group of eighth graders to stand in a circle and be serious about answering a question about themselves!

I’m starting to get my “sea legs” under me where I’m getting used to getting up at 6 a.m. and getting home at 5 p.m., and not seeing my baby all day…! :( I value the weekends all the more now where I can spend all day with her. She has been waking up once during the night since I started back to work. This means I might get up with her at 2 or 3 a.m., and then go back to sleep for a couple hours. If I sleep! Sometimes my mind starts racing, knowing I have to get up soon.

However, over the last two nights, I’ve added a tablespoon of rice cereal to her bottle, and she slept through the night until about 7 or 8 a.m.! So this week, we both might be getting more sleep! I worry about my mom watching her all the time, wondering if she’s doing OK. However, mom says she LOVES it and I shouldn’t feel at all guilty. Which is just nice because mom is amazing and so giving. And she loves this time spending so much time with her granddaughter.

Last week, Mom texted me as I was about to leave work and said, “Look, Gracie is starting to reach for things!” And I shot back, “Stop her until I get home!” That’s the annoying thing, missing milestones. We’ve had a talk - Gracie and I - about how she’s not allowed to say her first word or start crawling or walking until I’m there. She tracks toys with her eyes but it’s not been until recently that she actually reaches for things and interacts with them. Yesterday, she actually moved a toy ring to her mouth! Which I found exciting.

Oh, also, everyone in my family is getting into the Keto/fasting thing. I find it great and horrifying. We’re all cutting down on carbs and sugar but also, I don’t want to be one of THOSE people that always orders bunless burgers in restaurants! But also, it’s good, because it’s healthy.

Livin' with the parents...

2020-01-05T13:00:00.000-08:00

I came into the baby’s room the other day to find that mom had put a giant comforter over the entirety of the crib because Gracie keeps scooting out from underneath her little pink blanket and mom was worried that she was “cold.” Sleep sack, mom! And I’m all, “but she might suffocate!” and Mom’s all, “She won’t. You kids never got SIDS, my mom’s kids (there were 14) never had SIDS, she’ll be fine.” But she MIGHT NOT BE, MOM. The nice thing is that when I do say, “Well, that makes me uncomfortable, I need you to let me be a first time mom on this one,” she smiles, pats me on the head and says, “Okay, Jess” while thinking about how there were a lot less parenting rules when she was my age.

Mom likes to stay up really late at night. She’s a night owl, like I would be if I didn’t have to work and didn’t have a baby now. I love staying up late and sleeping in! So the printer will go off at random hours like 11 p.m. And mom comes clattering down the stairs to make copies and something crashes to the ground and I roll over in bed like, “whaaa…?”

Or when she wants to put things away! And I’ve said, “Night, mom, going to bed,” and I’m lying in bed reading and starting to doze off, and suddenly she’s traipsing down the stairs, turning on lights (because she can’t see!) to put things away in the closets in the basement right next to my bed (which are a communal space).

Also, everything sounds loud and echoey in my basement room. Let’s not leave dad out here, like at 4 a.m. when biking shoes are clomping across the kitchen floor (right above my bed) and it sounds like he’s rearranging the entire upstairs furniture. Or if I’m trying to take an afternoon nap, it’s usually my nephews storming through the house playing cars, knocking things over and I’m like, “OK. Never mind. I’m not tired.”

That was the roast; here are the nice things:

I help mom cook a lot and she never fails to say how much she’ll miss me when I go back to work.

Whenever I’m trying to leave the house with the baby, Mom’s always there to help, making sure I have a bottle and burp clothes as I’m putting the baby in the car.

My nice pea coat had holes in both pockets and in the lining, and Mom spent a couple of hours one evening sewing them up.

Whenever I have something to hang, even though I can operate a hammer, Dad takes the projects on, pulls out his tools, and makes it look just right on the wall. :)

Dad will come home some evenings, wordlessly pick Gracie up, and carry her around the house for an hour or two. The best sight in the world.

There have been many times when I've been up with Gracie in the night, that I hear her wake up in the morning and, groaning, I roll out of bed... only to hear mom gently close my bedroom door and go to get the baby up. My parents are the best.

The holidays!

2020-01-04T15:52:00.000-08:00

Christmas and New Years were amazing. We did our traditional fondue as a family with Danielle’s family on Christmas Eve and attended a candlelight service. Then I put Gracie to bed and we opened presents. I gave Gracie her storybook on Christmas Day and she adored it. She also got clothes and toys from friends near and far. Christmas is WAY MORE FUN with a baby.

I visited my friend Jo for New Year’s and was enraptured by all the fun I have to look forward to as Gracie gets older (Jo has a feisty two year old boy). Getting into everything and needing your attention constantly and just having those really grumpy days. But also. His sweet toothy grins! He's not one to like people other than his family. But for the first time when he saw me, he had a reaction other than fear and anxiety. He saw me, quietly took my hand, and led me into the living room to watch Sesame Street. Then, as I tried to tickle his feet, he leaned into me as if seeking a hug, so I obliged.

So I’m not doing resolutions. We all know they don’t work. I had to circle the parking lot at our recreation center Thursday morning to find a space and when I got inside someone said, “It’s the resolution keepers!” Oh right! Those guys! But I am excited for a new year! Last year involved my third year of teaching, being pregnant, buying a house, moving houses, renting out a house, helping my parents renovate their basement, moving home, coming to terms with moving home, having a baby and getting to know my remarkable, beautiful Gracie. This next year I expect to lose weight, find a boyfriend, make a lasting difference in the lives of each of my students (or at least a couple of them) and watch my darling girl start turning into a real person. But if none of that happens, at least I have my good nature, my sweet daughter, my wonderful family and a loving God.

Gracie turned 4 month old on Dec. 31. She smiles at everyone and I’ve gotten her to giggle a few times. The other day she giggled uproariously at Benjamin as he jumped around saying “water bottle” over and over, because him acting like a clown while saying a nonsense word was TOO FUNNY. She’s now working on her screaming and spitting skills, as she likes to alternate a light “I’m not crying but maybe I will soon” scream and burbling juicy raspberries. She loves getting her diaper changed and is still calmly accepting of baths. She slept through the night, 11-12 hours at a time, for about two weeks and then decided, no thanks, 7:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. is plenty of time before it’s time for food. After her last bath I just COULDN’T help it and tried out a ponytail and later, pigtails. Oh my, I almost died from the cuteness.

Getting ready to go back to work!

2019-12-23T09:00:00.000-08:00

I visited school again on Wednesday and brought the staff homemade marshmallows and went around visiting teachers and finding out where my substitute teacher left off with the kids.

The words still bouncing around my head are my principal saying to me with a teasing smile, “Are you ready to come back? Your vacation is over!” Thanks, man. Thanks. I have two weeks left. Let me enjoy them! But yes. Then. Back to work. It’s always hard for me to get back into the right mindset after a long break. I sometimes get depressed. So I’m already coming up with ideas of what to do with the kids this semester to prepare myself mentally. Grading again and… getting kids to listen to me… and teaching. I can do this, I can do this. Plus time managing so I can spend time with Gracie at home and still get enough sleep! Deep breaths.

It was also important to make myself talk to the sub about what to start with in the spring semester. Because that also helps with the mental preparedness. She has left me in a really great place with my all my classes, especially my newcomer group. She knew exactly what curriculum to use and how to get going with them, and it seems like she worked the students hard and kept up with recoding grades in our online system. A couple of my students saw me while I was visiting another teacher and said, “Our teacher says you’re strict? Are you strict?” Apparently, the three weeks I spent with them at the beginning of the school year is long forgotten. “YES,” I said. “SO STRICT.”

Birthdays and exercising!

2019-12-20T09:00:00.000-08:00

My birthday night in Estes was AMAZING. Two of the girls didn’t know each other beforehand but it was like we had all known each other for years. We laughed and talked and didn’t notice that it took about 40 minutes to order our food for dinner, and another 30 to actually get it… and then we talked and laughed in a hot tub. A bachelorette brought us leftover tacos from their party (she was getting married in the morning) and we conversed with a man and his nice 6th grader son. Bree enjoyed messing with him a little and asking him her new favorite joke, a pickup line that someone told her at school. “Did you fart…? Because you blew me away.” While we giggled our hearts out, the kid looked at her blankly and then said to his dad, “You’re the one who usually farts…” Then we drank and talked and laughed and finally fell asleep in our lovely hotel room. It was amazing.

The kickboxing challenge ended and I lost almost 15 pounds. Then I had a birthday celebration and people gave me treats so I’m trying to get back in the mindset of healthy eating. :) I didn’t want to quit exercising so I signed up at our local Chilson Recreation Center for a 10-day pass to check out some of the classes. The daycare there accepts babies who are over three months but you have to call in advance and grab a timeslot because they only allow one baby at a time (which is nice to know that they cap it). I went to a step class Tuesday morning. There were maybe 10 people in the class on a Tuesday at 9:10 a.m. And they were all regulars except for me and this one other guy.

When I arrived, other participants rushed to show me where the steps are, and how to put pads underneath so it doesn’t slide. The instructor after the warmup came over to shake my hand and ask for my name. “Don’t get frustrated, just keep moving,” she said. It was funny and sweet because I HAVE been to classes where I don’t know what’s going on, everyone. But it was incredibly heart-warming to have that nice a welcome to an aerobics class. During class, she kept checking in on me and the other guy, “How are you doing, Jessica?” Thumbs up, Cindy! By the end of the class, she was adding so many twists and turns that all I did was shuffle around awkwardly so she was probably right to heap on the encouragement. :) Another lady told me that she teaches a class on Thursdays at 6:50 that goes over the basic steps. “In the morning?” I thought but didn’t say. “Um, nope.” I kind of like the challenge of the Step II class anyway.

On Thursday, Mom and I went to a “Power Pump” class where we used weights and did strengthening exercises. It was OK. Then we went swimming on Friday and I convinced her to go in the outdoor hot tub with me. “But it’s so cold,” she complained. But then she enjoyed it. :) I love swimming. Also, my baby? SHE IS THE CUTEST.

Baby milestones

2019-12-17T20:41:00.000-08:00

Gracie is 15 weeks old and will be four months at the end of December. Two milestones so far this week.

She has slept through the night, 11 hours at a time, since Friday, Dec. 13 (weird, on Friday the 13th!). That was the night Mom and Dad watched her while I had a girl’s night in Estes Park for my birthday. And I told my mom, “Remember, you have to listen for her because she’ll get up at 3 or 4 a.m. to eat!” And she DIDN’T. And I was like, hey, no fair! But then she has continued this habit ever since (knock on wood - now she’ll probably wake up every two hours tonight). On Saturday night, I woke up at 4 and couldn’t fall asleep again for the next few hours because I’m so used to getting up with her. And I kinda missed our little middle of the night bonding sesh where she stares up at me adoringly. But then I was like, no, guess what, you get more deeper sleep now, which is good, because you gotta go back to work soon! Enjoying it while it lasts because who knows if developmental leaps will cause her to relapse!

Gracie laughed for the first time at around 8 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 17. I was changing her and about to put her in pajamas and did what I always do, blew a raspberry on her tummy and made goofy noises at her just awaiting the moment when she genuinely responds. Usually, she just stares up at me, maybe smiles because she’s staring at my face and she likes it. But THIS time, she did a hiccupy giggle, hih-hih-hih, where she inhaled quick and successively. It blew my mind so I repeated the same action another dozen times while yelling for mom and dad to come in, and she did almost the same reaction every time. You’d think by my reaction that she had suddenly learned to walk and say “Mama.” But still, she GIGGLED, instead of just staring at me blankly, she RESPONDED APPROPRIATELY. Gracie, you are the best.

(Yes, yes, I know I’m not the only one to have ever had a kid. But I’VE never had a kid before so I’m enjoying my joy).

Maternity Leave

2019-12-13T15:42:00.000-08:00

The first few weeks of maternity leave were TOUGH because I didn’t feel well, I was sleeping on a couch sitting up because of c-section stitches, and I was getting up several times a night to feed Gracie or try to pump. It’s a blur of surviving and getting to know my new baby. I had this overwhelming sense of impeding doom/fear/excitement/worry/trepidation. I had thoughts of: life is so brief and my parents will die some day and I love them so much and they’re so supportive so how will I bear it and will they get to see Gracie grow up? And will I be alone forever? Will I have to do it on my own forever and will Gracie have siblings? And is Gracie going to survive or will I wake up one night and she’s not breathing? And it would be nice to go on family vacations with a husband! Etc., Etc. Thoughts exacerbated by hormonal upheaval and sleepless nights.

I survived all that by praying quite a bit and coming to the conclusion to live in the moment and enjoy what life is giving me now and not worry about the future and everything that could possibly go wrong. And God sure has blessed me so I thank him for that and am just enjoying where my life has taken me. A year ago I had just started taking steps to TRY to have a baby. And look! WHAT? I have one! And she’s the most marvelous thing I’ve ever made.

After about six weeks, I was basically completely healed and I felt GOOD again for the first time in like a year! I wasn’t pregnant anymore and I was suddenly realizing how AWESOME that was. I could eat uncured meat and drink alcohol again! And I could move around without every muscle in my back and hip aching for days. Since I wasn’t working yet, I had time to do things!

So I restarted a blog, and I designed a children’s book for Gracie. I’m going to read it to her as soon as she is able to comprehend things and tell her the story of her birth. I don’t want it to be a surprise that I spring on her one day, I want her to know how she came to be from the very beginning. So the story has simple language when she’s a baby, accompanied by my crude illustrations, and then along the sides or bottom, it has the complete story full of details, which is basically what I wrote here in this blog.

Also, I looked in a mirror and was like, “Enough is enough!” so I responded to a Facebook ad for a kickboxing challenge in Fort Collins. The challenge went for six weeks and this is the last week. I was supposed to lose 25 pounds or six percent body fat. I’ve lost about 12 pounds so far so I may not make it by Friday. However, I feel good that I’ve taken the stepping stone of exercising and getting in shape again. And that I made SOME progress.

Now it’s December and I have just a few weeks until Jan. 6, when I return to school. THAT will take some getting used to again! This has been a glorious time of bonding with my adorable daughter and spending time with family. I have to get my head back in the game of commuting to work and making a difference in middle schoolers’ lives and not being able to take mid-day naps! While still possibly attending to Gracie in the middle of the night!

Front and back page of my book for Gracie:

A few inside pages:

Kickboxing:

It's my birthday

2019-12-09T08:30:00.000-08:00

Today is my birthday. I am 40. As each birthday has passed, approaching this day, I’ve dreaded turning 40 more and more because I hadn’t started a family, I hadn’t met a man to enjoy life with. I tried to tell myself that I didn’t need to wait for life to start until I had a family; that a man wasn’t the end all to life, that children are sticky and messy and keep you up at night. And for the most part, I’ve had a great life. I love my family and my nephews and my friends and my job. But you know, I WANTED children! I got sad when I saw moms and their cute kids at the store, when I saw my friends on Facebook getting married and having kids, when I watched my sister with her family, and all the special little moments with her boys (and I’ve enjoyed some special moments with them, too!). It’s just that envy I think one gets because of social media, and how perfect everyone else’s lives look! So I constantly reminded myself that I had a great life, and also I stayed off Facebook. :)

So I’m turning 40. And it’s still annoying because I still feel like I'm 25. But I couldn’t feel more lucky that I’m starting a new adventure with Gracie.

Starting the holidays!

2019-12-08T14:54:00.000-08:00

Gracie is 14 weeks old, and just turned 3 months! Her sleeping has settled into a routine for the moment. She goes to bed around 7-8 p.m. and sleeps eight hours before she starts making noises to be fed around 3:30-5 a.m. After that feeding, she sleeps another three to four hours until 7:30-8:30 a.m. Mom used to take her for part of the night when she woke up multiple times a night, but now it’s all me. I feel like I get a pretty good night sleep, as long as I go to bed by 9 p.m.! I continue to be blessed by Mom and Dad being willing to get her up sometimes, or watch her while I run to the store, etc.

Gracie seems to love getting changed and hanging out on her changing table while I change her diaper and dress her. She only gets mad about it in the middle of the night when she’s hungry. A few nights ago, she slept for 11 straight hours and I woke up a few times, petrified and checked on her like three different times.

She talks at me a lot right after she wakes up, cooing and making “o” faces and being absolutely adorable. That lasts about 30 minutes and then it’s a downhill spiral to her next nap. :).

Emmet likes to include her in everything going on. Like when we played a game the boys invented where one person was Santa while the others pretended to sleep upstairs, and then “Santa” would loudly proclaim he was leaving, and all the “kids” would race downstairs to find out what toys Santa had left them. When I got there, Emmet was all, “So when Gracie is Santa, someone will have to hold her,” automatically including her in the proceedings like it was obvious she would be playing. Both boys also like to get super close, touching her face and hands until she gets annoyed.

During Thanksgiving week, we went with Danielle’s family, Mom and Dad and Nathan to Steamboat Springs for a few days before Thanksgiving Day. It was nice to hang out with the family! Benjamin and Emmet immediately got absorbed into the condo we rented, and we didn’t hear from them for hours as they played in the various rooms. We took two cars; Danielle and Ben’s large Flex Ford, and Nathan’s Tesla. Gracie and I got to ride in the Tesla and it was amazing, although Gracie was fussy most of the way.

We cooked meals in the condo and swam two different evenings at the hot springs. I got a 6-9 month swimming suit for Gracie at my baby shower, and it fit okay over her size 3 swim diaper, which was the smallest size I could find (she just turned three months and has just started wearing size 2 diapers). Gracie is tolerant of water and accepted being in the hot springs, which was a moderate temperature for all the kids (like bath water). She seemed to accept the experience but not particularly love it.

Nathan always seems to have an interesting experience on road trips with his Tesla. On the second night we were there, he plugged his car into a handy plugin that was next to his parking space (in a garage door wall). The next morning, he came out to find the plug had been yanked out of both the wall and the plugin port of his car. The cord was missing and the port was damaged, so that it was unable to be charged again. The Tesla recorded some video showing the cord lying in the middle of the road and a snow plow running over it. Our theory is that a black bear (which we saw the night before!) may have messed with the plug and pulled it out of the wall, leaving it in the street, and then the plow yanked it out of the car, damaging the port.

Wednesday morning, with about 78 percent power, Nathan, Mom, and Dad drove straight to a service center in Denver, about 3.5 hours away. They made it with 17 percent power left!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner on Thursday at my sister’s mother-in-law’s house. There was a table filled with appetizers, and three differently-prepared turkeys! I made my signature mashed potatoes and chocolate mousse pie.

Sleeping

2019-11-16T12:00:00.000-08:00

Emmet and Benjamin are completely in love with their cousin. Emmet likes to say, “Can I hold her, can I hold her?” every five minutes, which is a hassle because it involves a boppy and a couch with an arm. Benjamin likes to jump up and down and make silly faces, which sometimes, she responds to by stopping mid-cry in surprise at this new development.

Gracie has the widest, prettiest eyes in all the land. Sometimes, after her middle-of-the-night feeding, she’ll look up at me with those large, soulful eyes as if to say, “Well, we’re all up now, what should we do? Maybe a craft?” Cooing and smiling and my heart melts, even as I’m thinking, “Go back to sleep, child.” I’ve learned that I can rock her and put her back in her crib and she’ll cry a little bit and then go back to sleep.

Sleeping is that thing one strives for as a new parent. So far (KNOCK ON WOOD), she's a great sleeper. Which makes me SOOO happy. Especially since this isn't always the case! My friend's daughter didn't sleep through the night until she was four! I told Gracie early on that she had to be a good sleeper. So far, she's listening.

Baby and I co-slept for the first couple months. Yes, we co-slept! While I’m normally a pretty athletic sleeper who will find myself on various sides of the bed in the middle of the night, I slept still as a rock every night she was in bed with me. I think it’s instinctual, the knowledge that there’s a tiny human next to you so the body tells itself, “don’t crush the tiny human!” I found that we both slept better when she was next to me because I could reach over and pat her if she fussed, and I could easily sit up and feed and change her. Occasionally, I'd put her on my tummy to cuddle her and help her fall asleep, and then I'd wake up a couple hours later, surprised that time had passed and she was still there, a little bundle on my tummy with her hands curled at my collar bone.

A few weeks ago, we started putting her in her crib to sleep. I didn’t sleep as well the first couple of nights, but now I sleep better because I’m not waking up every time she makes a tiny noise. I do have to tiptoe in to check that she’s still alive sometimes, though. Like when she slept for nine straight hours and I shot out of bed, completely terrified that she wasn't breathing. (She was).

Also. Shhh. She sleeps on her tummy. Her head is strong and she’ll whip it from side to side to get comfortable, but she sleeps really well on her tummy. So. Don’t tell anyone because this is against the rules.

Sleeping has gotten so much better and it’s no longer a matter of getting through each night and dreading them as they approach (knock on wood). So that’s nice for now. However, I hear tell that she’ll make a developmental leap at four months and will suck at sleeping well at night again so. I have that to look forward to. :)

I was supposed to go back Dec. 2 to start work. However, due to the fact that it’ll be really hard to go back to school three weeks before Christmas break when I’ll have to get the kids used to my routines only to start over again after Christmas, and the fact that my sub really wanted to finish the semester with the kids… I asked to extend my leave through Christmas. Which means I don’t go back until Jan. 6. Which is just marvelous because I get extra time with my kid and a little more sleep before I have to start making the commute to work again!

Also, apparently people at work are nervous about me and my commute. It’ll be fine. I love what I do and who I work with, and I love where I live. So I have to deal (with a 55 minute drive to work and back each day). People in California do it. I can do it. And I get lots of breaks as a teacher! I can do this!

Breast feeding... or not

2019-11-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

Gracie is 10 weeks old now. She makes me feel happy and full and terrified and overwhelmed and at peace and petrified. You know. The feelings of being a mom. She’s in a tentative routine now that could change at any moment. She has been going to sleep these last couple of weeks between 7:30 and 9 p.m. and sleeping 6-8 hours before waking once and sleeping another 3-4 hours! The Internet says babies often sleep better when they’re bottle-fed. Oh yeah. She’s bottle-fed. It’s not because I didn’t want to breast feed. It’s because after she was born, I found out that my boobs were broken.

I had a breast reduction at age 25. Not that you would notice because they got HUGE during pregnancy. Just so, so big. I remember the doctor who did the reduction saying she thought she had saved my milk ducts pretty well. I think maybe she saved like five of them or something (the Internet says each breast has 15-20 ducts). I wasn’t producing much colostrum and also, my nipples didn’t want to play nice. Gracie just couldn’t latch while in the hospital so the nurses made me pump every couple of hours to keep the milk flowing.

Then began the saga of trying to breast feed. I tried getting her to latch, which involved many a session of me wrestling a screaming infant to my breast while mom assisted with positioning her on a pillow (did I say that my boobs were HUGE). I tried using a nipple guard, which is placed over the nipple that the infant should be able to suck on and through, but it always slipped and got dislodged. When I went to the baby’s first doctor’s visit after the hospital, the pediatrician asked me the same question every doctor liked to start with, “So how is breastfeeding going?” I told her I had had a breast reduction so it wasn’t going well so far. “Oh,” she said a little grimly. “I’ve been in this field for over 15 years and I have to say that only a handful of mothers who had surgery produced very much milk.” I teared up because it was heartbreaking to think I wouldn’t be one of those normal moms that breastfed and gave all their nutrients to their kids and decreased the risk of viruses and infections… All those things you learn about why you have to breast feed. She rushed on to say that it was OK to not breast feed, that my baby would still grow up perfectly fine and healthy, and she was sorry she’d put her foot in her mouth. Then she sent me home with about five cans of infant formula.

Two days after leaving the hospital, I attended a lactation support group. All the other moms sat there, their babies serenely suckling away in various holds at regular, modest sized breasts. Meanwhile, Mom and I wrestled a screaming baby to my pillow boobs, while trying to work with a nipple guard and a little tube of milk attached to my shirt, so that the baby would be sucking on something and learn to latch. The doctor walked around to check on the others, and then sat with me most of the time offering tips and advice. Mom and I were both sweaty and practically panting at the end and I left, traumatized and determined NEVER to go back.

I continued to pump for the next few days (and put away the nipple guard and the stupid little tube thing). I only produced a couple tablespoons each time, which I added to Gracie’s bottle. There finally came a day when I said, “It’s OK to stop.”

I had to come to terms with not feeling like a failure as a woman and mother. And somehow not feeling guilty that I wasn’t giving my baby my life-giving milk. Then I talked to many women who had found that breast feeding wasn’t for them, or that they weren’t producing enough for their baby so they stopped. And I had to tell myself that it was OK to bottle feed. Plus, there are many benefits. My nipples aren’t sore. I can bring a bottle anywhere with me and not have to whip out a boob. I get more sleep at night.

When Gracie woke up every couple hours, my mom routinely came to get her at 5 a.m. to give me a break and do her last feeding of the night, which made me feel not alone and safe because I had support. She’s better than a husband in some ways!

That first night out of the hospital, my parents went to bed and I sat there on the couch where I slept for the next couple of weeks (because I couldn’t sleep lying down yet due to the c-section). I stared at my newborn infant, who stared back at me with wide eyes, and I started crying because I was freaked out and scared and felt very alone that there was no one to share the burden with me, who had ownership in this with me. I wondered for the first time if I had made the right decision. Then my mom came down at around 2 a.m. and said she would take Gracie to bed with her and I worshiped at her feet in gratitude. I wasn’t alone. I have the best family in the world.

Hospital stay

2019-11-08T11:37:00.000-08:00

Aug. 31

Saturday evening, Marla noticed that my urine was very dark brown. My blood pressure had also spiked a bit on the two readings they took. Two evening nurses, Lindsey and Danielle, came in to tell me that I had preeclampsia, that I would have to get magnesium through my IV for the next 24 hours, that I could not get out of bed because of a risk of seizures, and that I could not eat anything for the next day as well. I burst into tears. I had just eaten toast and soup earlier after not having been allowed to eat once I had the epidural, and I had already been confined to bed for 24 hours.

Nathan had just walked in with a chicken sandwich and fries for me.

“Can’t she have a quick bite?” Mom asked.

“No, we have to start right away,” they said. The nurses were apologetic, because they had thought the doctor had already told me this information. I also had to stay an extra couple days, meaning I spent a total of five days at the hospital until the next Tuesday,

Later, Lindsey came to tell me that after the first heavy dose of magnesium, if I did OK, the doctor said I could eat something. I threw up later and wasn’t interested in food until the next day anyway.

Danielle stayed with me during the day on Sunday, and Mom slept in the room with me at nights. It was so nice to have their support. Lots of people visited me. Danielle and her whole family came in, Tricia came from Westminster to see me, Johanna showed up, Chloe came to see me as well. I had a nurse named Molly that day who said she was going to boss me around a lot. She got me breast pumping regularly and made me breathe into the breathing apparatus that makes sure you don’t get pneumonia.

Early Sunday morning at around 5 a.m., I had Lindsey help give me a sponge bath so I would feel a little human. Then that evening when she was back, I had her help me to the edge of the bed and I waited until 8:30, which is when they stopped the magnesium and I was allowed to get out of bed. She and Danielle took out my catheter, then Lindsey had to help me up; my legs were crazy wobbly, and she helped me to the bathroom for the first time in two days.

Danielle wanted to get back to work, so she arranged several friends to come visit me on Monday! Jenny Sparks came for a few hours, followed by Chloe and Saja Hindi. It was amazing. When Jenny showed up, Danielle arrived a few minutes later. They started making my bed and pulling out baby clothes. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Surprise!” Danielle said. “I thought we could do baby photos so I told Jenny to bring her camera!” We dressed you in different outfits and posed you while Jenny took the most precious photos.

When Saja and Chloe arrived, I was still sleeping, but they sat and held the baby while I slept for awhile. Emily was my nurse this day. She was another very special lady who took good care of me and even asked to re-wash Gracie’s hair. (Someone had given her a bath the day before, but she still had matted blood in her hair). Emily washed her, changed her, and put her hair in a mohawk style that lasted all week until I finally gave her a sponge bath.

On Tuesday, I had the day to myself while I waited to be discharged. My nurse, Amy, did the paperwork and loaded me up with supplies, formula and bottles and diapers and wipes. After one last check from the doctor around 4:30 pm., I took Gracie home!! And I can’t believe she’s mine! And now our adventure together begins.