I love to... BAKE

A couple weeks ago, the girls and I had a baking party over the weekend.  Now that I have a slightly new toaster oven (4 months old now), it was a great way to spend the weekend when we had nothing else to do.   I taught them how to make some good ol’ American chocolate chip cookies and butter-cream  yellow-butter cupcakes (lots of butter).  They had a blast doing it and I had a blast watching.  I sat back, told them step by step instructions, and voila!  Out came magic.  The cupcakes were delicious and the cookies were superb! 

 

We jarred up some of the cookies to give to 2 of the teachers and we ate the rest ourselves (we shared with the other kids who didn’t help make them, of course).   The teachers absolutely loved the cookies and all asked for the recipe.  Sasha and I worked together to translate the recipe from English to Ukrainian, and we wrote on cute scrapbooking paper the chocolate chip cookie recipe and gave it out to who wanted it.

The girls and their decorated cupcakes

The jars for the teachers

The girls and I have decided to work together to make a recipe book of all the things that we end up making together.  They will help me translate and we will then work together to scrapbook all our delicious treats!  This also gives them a good reason to practice their English!   I missed baking so much, I am so glad to be doing it again.  Plus, I am learning about so many substitutions for all the things I don’t have; like cupcake pans, bread pans, cake flour, brown sugar, etc.

 

 Baking is fun, and it is a great feeling to see the girls love doing what I love to do, too.   

Us having a ton of fun while baking

The Art of Fine Cheating

Now, I grew up being taught to not cheat.  And yea, I always tried to cheat in Monopoly or those other silly (but super fun) board games when playing with the siblings, but I was sneaky and smart when I did it.

I know it is not ok to cheat, but if you are going to do it, at least make an attempt to be good at it.

Sasha, the star pitcher on Kremenets.

Once known as a cheater, always known as a cheater.  Unfortunately for me, I learned that some people in my school like to cheat! … No surprise there….  But now I will always know them as a cheater, and sometimes it is hard to trust people who cheat.

 (*** I just want to clarify, that I do not in any means cheat anymore… not even in board games****)

The craziest thing that got to me was that the cheating took place during Little League baseball… I mean Come On!!  Little League?  Are we for real here?! 

Their idea was so lame, that at first I thought it was a silly mix up.  I then realized that it was on purpose when after the game I got a whole bunch of sarcastic “Thanks a lot Morhan”, and fingers pointed in my face.  Now, if anyone knows me well:  1. I cannot stand fingers moved around in front of my face and 2. I am all about fairness and honesty  (now, after long hard lessons learned as a child…) 

Me just doing my job with doing "the book"

Well, long story short, this whole little scheme went a little too far for my personal liking, and as one anonymous person said “don’t F** with the F’ers”,  I do have to say, this just makes me laugh, and is rightfully true.  In America, if you are a bad sport, you get kicked out of the game, and if the whole team takes part in bad sportsmanship, they can get kicked out of tournaments, leagues, etc.  Since this was not a possibility, they just lost a whole lot of respect and their little goody bag at the end of the tournament.  It would have been unsettling but fine if they cheated and admitted to it rather than denying it and then getting mad at me for just doing my job (I was the good ol’ hardworking scorekeeper).     

One of the main points of sports teams for kids is to teach them how to work together on a team, good sportsmanship, and simply the art of the sport.  If everyone is taught how to lie, cheat, and play dirty, well…   I don’t think I would want to know what this world would look like! 

Now, you have to remember, cheating unfortunately happens all over the world, so this isn’t simply a Ukrainian thing.  It is just that much more difficult to handle when there is a language barrier and when everyone seems to be ok with it.  It would have been nice to get more than just 1 teachers back, and it would have been nice to see the elders give a little lesson about playing fair and honest.  But there was none of that…

Misha, from Lutuhene MVP Catcher

On top of this frustration, that will slowly blow away in the wind of time, is I then hear my kids telling me that their English teacher says that I write their homework and they just copy what I write.  Not only do I spend HOURS sitting with them each day teaching them how to read and write, and helping them with pronunciation, to hear that we are both accused of cheating from the teacher just blows my mind. If she only knew how long they spent each week on the homework assignment she gives… I asked the girls if I could talk to her, but they all said no because they will then get yelled at.

BLAAHHHHAHAHA.  Sometimes life is frustrating.

I know this isn’t the most positive blog post ever, but I just can’t refrain from posting it.  I think it is important to share this.  It is a huge problem in the world, but especially in this country.  I don’t even think they have the same definition as Americans do on “cheating”.  It is the norm, and sometimes, like right now, I can't handle it...  

But on a positive note, the baseball tournament was an absolute blast regardless of the little incident.  The kids were punks (in the sweet little “you better watch it” type way), and hanging out with some fellow PCVs at my site was just a nice breath of fresh air.  One night we showed The Sandlot dubbed in Russian to all the baseball kids which was so great!  I enjoyed watching it with them simply because they reminded me so much of the characters.  The kids improved so much from the previous year, and it was exciting to see my boys slug those balls!  (Their catching and throwing can still be improved … a lot)

I love baseball, even little league is fun for me.

So it was a great round 2 of Little League baseball in Ukraine for me, and I will sure miss it…

All the kids with their gifts from the lottery!

Year 2 Week 2

I know it has been a long time since last posting, and I promise to write an update about my summer adventure that took place from June 22- August 29th.

It is the 2nd week of school and it is so obvious that working and living in a boarding school/orphanage is thrilling, fulfilling, 24/7 work, and sometimes really tough.  It has been such a blessing getting to know the kids who live in the dorms on such a personal level, and we all most definitely created a family bond. Each and every one of them is full of life, energy, and character and it only breaks my heart to see when they are upset.

On a day to day basis, the kids and I go about our days with nothing too exciting, same ol' morning exercises, classes, eating, homework, and hangout time.  You can never really see a difference between kids that live in the school compared to the kids who are from town, but every now and then, you will see slight differences or sad faces appear when talking about parents, houses, vacation plans, etc. Most kids have explained to me their family dynamics, and some of their stories are heartbreaking.  I thought my family was dysfunctional when I was younger.... Boy was I more than wrong!

Kids who come from "Internat" schools in this country automatically statistically have a harder chance at getting in to Universities, finding jobs, finding a place to live, etc.  So this year, I am encouraging and trying to push the kids who live in the school to attempt to learn English.  Though I am not one to be like "my language is better than yours", I think it i important for them to have this skill, and I mean come on, they have had English class since 2nd form and they don't even know how to say "what are you doing?".   Last year I accepted the fact that they didn't know any English, but this year no more miss nice girl! They are all super intelligent and they have the potential to actually learn the language, so why not push them?

 Today in their English class, they were given the assignment to describe their rooms.  So this evening I was with the girls helping them write about their rooms. Sasha who is so smart, wants to learn English, and who I tutor once a week was the first one to start the assignment (no surprise there)  Once Sasha was fine without my help, I went over to help Nadia.  While Sasha was writing about the dorm room (4 beds, 1 desk, 2 nightstands, and 1 little closet shared by 4 girls- absolutely nothing special or personal), Nadia started writing about her "awesome" room at her grandparents house.

Well, before I knew it, Sasha had stopped working on the assignment and decided that she wasn't going to finish her homework.  Mamma instincts first kicked in and I told her that she didn't have a choice and that she had to finish her homework. She just kept saying no, no, no.  I told her she was being lazy (oops)  but I went on telling her that she was smart trying to make her realize that this assignment is easy for her.  She kept refusing, and after pushing her some more to do it, she broke down and started crying. Once I saw that she was balling, I had a thought that it may not be English that she didn't want to do, but  the assignment of having to write about a room that in her mind didn't even exist.

My heart sank... I knew I had to come up with something to 1. make her feel better 2. make her complete the assignment, so my quick instincts kicked in and asked if she would like to do the assignment in my room looking up Paris Hilton's room on the internet and write about that room instead.  Sasha loves Paris Hilton, and at times I think she pretends she is Paris Hilton (kind of like how my little sister thought she was Britney Spears when she was younger, singing in front of her mirror, dancing, and dressing like a "slushy"-- Sorry Halia <3) She said OK and I was more than thrilled that it had worked!  We ended up looking up pictures of really girly rooms that were huge and most likely not Paris Hilton's bedroom, but we all enjoyed it OOOing and AAAWHing at the walk in closets, the giant fluffy beds, and the full length/ closet mirrors (oh how I miss those).  Though she was still upset, her smile and laughter came out a couple times after miss Nadia, a.k.a. the clown threw some jokes in comparing my future tree house to Paris Hilton's mansion.  In the end, she was not crying anymore and had finished her English homework!!!


My point is, ... I don't really know what my point is.  I am learning so much working and spending time with these kids. I may never really have a full understanding on what they have gone through, but I can show that I care and love each one of them and am hopeful for bright successful futures for them all.  I really hope that one day these kids will be able to have a room to call their own and a full length mirror where they can sing and dance in front of it.

Until Next Time,
be patient, kind, and understanding