Settling In

Wowza, have the past few days here been Slavic whirlwind of new people and experiences.  I had my first grocery shopping experience, filled with a delightful assortment of dairy products and surprisingly wholesome produce.  I made my own borscht, that really doesn't live up to my mom's.  I even snuck in an intense conversation on politics and religion with the conservative fellow who will soon be moving out of my room.  I've certainly hit the ground running on this trip.

On Saturday night I went out with the other English teachers I'd been training with.  We went to a bar by Freedom Square, one of the most salient landmarks of Kharkiv.  This particular bar boasts meter-tall, ice-core, beer-... glasses?  dispensers?  But that was the least interesting part of the night.  Much more entertaining were the locals dancing wildly on the lack-of-dancefloor between the tables and the musicians/comedians/m.c.  One man in particular more than made up for his lack of physical charisma by his equal lack of inhibition paired with staggering (literally) endurance.  Hopefully I will have a video for you soon (I still haven't found my camera cord :P)........

In other news, I have started teaching!  It's been a pretty intense couple days.  I've started eight of my classes, and will have more starting on Sunday.  I was doing great with remembering names until my fourth class, and by my sixth class I stopped remembering anything that happened altogether.  It's really exhausting to be so extroverted for such long periods of time as well.  A couple of my students have attitude problems and will sit there rolling their eyes and sighing, which makes me worry that I'm teaching badly.  Many, though, are really positive and hard-working and encouraging.  I definitely have a lot to learn in all aspects of teaching.

In other news, here's a short guide to orienting yourself in unfamiliar places.  You know you're in Eastern Europe when:

• you have to run the bathroom sink and shower head simultaneously in order to have a hot shower
• there are no fat free dairy products in the grocery store
• your school's bathroom stalls don't have doors (and forget about toilet bowls.  Toilet paper?  What would a toilet want with paper??)
• your school registers students by hand
• you can buy condensed milk in a squeeze-out bag
• children are allowed in bars
• 1 degree celsius is SO WARM
• the elevator of your 7-story apartment building has buttons for ten floors...
• street food is AMAZING even when it's cold and no longer fresh