Cherkasy Oblast

What could be more cute than to have these kids present you with traditional Ukrainian bread? This was my welcome to the village of Chornobai in Cherkasy Oblast. It's about three hours from Kyiv via a combination of metro, "mashrutka" (a type of mini-bus that picks people up at designated stops), and car. I conducted a workshop on interactive methods of teaching polite phrases with a group of about 32 teachers from both Chornobai and smaller outlying villages.

As village teachers often do not have a lot of contact with foreigners and have varying levels of English, they can be a bit afraid of attending workshops. At the beginning of my workshop, I announced that it would take about 90 minutes. A handful of teachers immediately announced in Ukrainian that the last bus was leaving in an hour. I assured them, in English, that they could leave early if they needed to. Well, we moved into a circle for the first "get-to-know-you" activity and threw a teddy bear (well it's really a stuffed dog) around, "Nice to meet you; nice to meet you too" as many of the teachers had neve met each other. We moved to a dictation activity, and then a pair-work speaking actiity.... well 11 o'clock rolled around and I asked, "Does anyone have to leave now?" No one moved a muscle. All the teachers who had said they needed to leave early stayed till the last group-activity and then excused themselves thanking me. I asked the organizer how they were going to get back to their villages considering they had missed the bus. She said, "They will hitchhike along the road." Wow, I felt honored that they had stayed and enjoyed themselves enough to hitchhike back home! They had even used a phrase we had practiced during the workshop, "I'm sorry I have to go."

I also was treated to meeting the 7 and 8-year-olds, university students, the flute-playing ensemble, and the organizer's daughter-in-law and grandchildren. While at the school, I had asked why the older girls at the school were dressed up in such fanciful clothes (school play? celebration? dance?), I was told that this "uniform" (the boys wear suits) is the one that 10 and 11th grade girls choose to wear to school. Apparently, these particular uniforms are modeled after the ones worn in the 1960's. My Ukrainian colleagues concurred that they used to wear uniforms just like these back when they were in school.