Phat Money


Peace Corps

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 […]

March 21, 2012

Varying Mentality


Peace Corps

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 […]

March 20, 2012

11th Form Ladies


Peace Corps

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 […]

March 17, 2012

Profiled


Blog

I do this thing where I only update my profile pictures on social networking sites once a year, if at all. I find it helps people associate my face with, well, me. It also makes my life easier because I’m not constantly thinking that I have a better picture that I could post of myself. […]

March 15, 2012

Tech Tips – Google Fight


Tech Tips

This week we have a guest submission for your Tech Tip. It comes from Katherine Axelsen (Group 42). She directed me to a website, http://www.googlefight.com/, and suggested some great uses for it. The site is simple to use, enter two words, terms, or phrases and it will tell you which one garners more hits on […]

March 15, 2012

Spending Money


Peace Corps

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 […]

March 13, 2012

Authorial Intent


Writing

I had a conversation with one of my students this week about the meaning in literature. We were discussing how we hate reading texts like teachers want us to read texts because we prefer to see the story as the story was written, word for word. A tree is a tree, a clap of thunder […]

March 10, 2012