Our schedule just blew up

I had my first day of teaching today! I taught with James and I think it went really well. We talked about ancient books and the use of the passive voice. It wasn't perfect, but I think we did a good job and next time will be even better. The classroom is definitely very different from what I experienced in school. Some of the kids just knew every single answer and had no problem just yelling it out (even when you asked somebody else) and some of the kids seemed to not understand anything. Apparently this is a problem that we will learn how to handle while we're here. 

So, they have most definitely upped our schedules this week! We are insanely busy. Today was a 9-5 day for us! It sounds like a normal work day, but when you include homework as well as being forced to practice what you learn because your family speaks the language, its more like a 16 hour day! Here was our schedule today:

7am : Wake up and run to the outhouse!! Oh, and its FREEZING and it has been snowing......AGAIN. 

8:15: finish up breakfast (potatoes and cabbage) and leave for school

9:05: James and I teach our first English class!

9:55: Observe the other Americans teach their class and we do a debriefing session

11:30-12:30: lunch at the canteen (we have 3 course meal: soup, sausage (2 kinds), salad, kashi, and pickles tomatoes, and finally awesome cookies for dessert and its all served with a yummy apricot compote. this costs us 10 hyrivna per person, which is a little over $1!)

1pm-5pm: Ukrainian lessons

6pm: dinner! chicken soup, great ukrainian bread, meat and cheese

7pm: update my blog! and then go study more Ukrainian

Not only do we have lessons to teach and observe, we have language classes, lesson planning tutoring 2x per week, one hour of language tutoring per week, technical group training, and two group projects to plan for. So intense!!! We will have a brief respite this Wednesday as we have "health day," where the doctor will come out and teach us....about health? Not really sure!

I'm really excited about our lesson tomorrow because its cooking day! We get to spend 1/2 of our lesson (2 hours) cooking borscht and halupki (stuffed cabbage). We can only speak in Ukrainian so who knows what we'll end up actually making. It should be fun though! 

Nothing else much is new besides that. I am still being harassed by angry geese on the way home and I don't know why they hate me. Ok, well I'm off to study more Ukrainian and then pass out!

P.S. We should be doing a chapter about sending letters/going to the post office, so once we do that, I'll try to have some post cards out to you all!