I’m writing this way after I meant too, but I’ve been really busy lately. There is lots to prepare for my classes at school, lots of emails to send, and people to catch online at wee hours of the morning. We have also been pretty involved in the AIESEC chapter here, going to their meetings and a couple festivals where they were promoting their program. So it’s been over 2 weeks since I started work here. My first school was pretty good. I was supposed to be working with older children with higher English levels, but everything always changes and you have to be flexible.
My first school was only one metro stop from the flat, and a short walk. I was with the Polish girl and we had 4 classes a day each with kids from about 10-13 years old. We were there two weeks before we changed to different schools. The staff spoke very little English, but the director of the program was awesome and usually worked out an issues we had with the students or the staff. He also took us to lunch every day after the lessons at the university nearby. Lunch was usually Borsk (traditional Ukrainian soup with potatoes), and a meat covered in batter, and a salad, very typical. Lunch is also usually the biggest meal here.
The kids were really fun, but some were really bad. The amount of talking, hitting, not sitting, shouting, etc. that they did was considered normal here, but it was very tiring for me. We played a lot more games that we talked, and the goal was more to just have fun and help them with confidence in English than actually have a programmed leadership camp. The children were really interested in Canada, especially the celebrities, food, and randomly how much our Parliament looks like Big Ben. We also practiced singing a song with them and at the end of the two weeks there was a small “open house” for the parents to come in and meet us, learn about our countries, and see what the children have been up to. We also got to go to a museum of miniature Kiev with the children too. I think I was way more interested than them.
Right now in the project there are 6 other interns. They all live at our flat with me except for one, who lives with her boyfriend in the dorms. They all work at other schools as well. Some have older kids and some have younger. One guy is at a school for tourism and gets taken to museums and sightseeing almost every day. The kids are learning a lot about other cultures, and so am I. Just like in Northern Ireland, the children are a really good way to learn about the culture. They are smarter than you think and they are pretty honest about telling you about their country. This is the 5th year of the World With-out Borders project. It’s still not that organized, but the host committee tries to do a good job of coordinating many interns at many different schools. There are always surprises, like size of the class, or English level, or age group, or how long we have to spend with the children each day, but we manage okay I think.
Now I’m at a new school with older kids, finally, and it’s really good. I’ll update on that later after I’ve been here a few days.
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