I've decided there's something wrong with American vision correction. I discovered this today while I had the easiest eye exam of my life and bought the cheapest glasses of my life, in Ukraine. While I was vacationing in Spain, I mysteriously broke my glasses while I was sleeping. I took them off when I returned from ...
Tag Archives: peace corps
Spainish Photos
I was gone for two weeks because it's Spring Break. Get off my back already. I took a trip with a couple friends to Spain. Eight days split between Barcelona, Seville, and Granada. Eight days a week is expensive. But I enjoyed it, for the most part. Instead of rewriting what I already wrote in one ...
Deciphering Government Documents
I've been MIA for the past few weeks, but I'll get to that later today or later this week. Right now, I want to tell you how much I hate sifting through government documents. Okay, hate might be too strong of a word but finding the exact information I need and then interpreting the wording is ...
Phat Money
I forgot to take a picture, but today I was walking around with 9,300 UAH (~$1,162.50). I emptied out the ATM to get this much. I needed to give Yulia the money so she could pay for our first shipment of books while she's in Kiev this week. I had ~15 200UAH bills, ~25 100UAH bills, ...
Varying Mentality
Maybe I'm off my rocker, but students in Ukraine today tend to have a different mindset about school than I did when I was their age (cue fade into flashback). I had a thought-provoking chat with one of the teachers at school today after our class decided they could collectively show up ten minutes late to ...
Why Today was Oddly Awesome
So I'm sure I've made it clear, but to reiterate, I'm a big Song of Ice and Fire series fan. So naturally, when I heard two girls in the 8th form saying things like "Winter is coming" and "Family, Duty, Honor", I perked up. Turns out, the two girls are in the middle of reading the ...
11th Form Ladies

Here's a great picture of me with some of the 11th Form girls in the foreign languages department. They're wearing the traditional school uniform (though most are missing the very poofy white hair ties, even the ones in the photo aren't poofy enough) because they were getting their picture taken for official class photos. I ...
Things Ukrainian Students Say
Quote
"Books help us understand the soul of a country." -Anya, 9th Grade In other news, today I talked to a student from a group I worked with all last year and she asked me to come back and teach their class. She said they miss having me as a teacher.
Spending Money

I sat down in the teacher's room today during my break to get some reading done, but I was interrupted almost immediately by my school's director, Yulia. She beckoned for me to follow her to her office (which was weird because she has excellent English). She wanted to show me this: That's right, the books we ordered ...
Konotop Witch
Image

This might be my favorite image I've seen representing Konotop (originally seen on a fridge magnet and I've recreated it from that). It's of the Konotop Witch. I really want to get this in a patch form to sew on my messenger bag, but I'm having trouble finding a place to do this. Does anyone know of ...