accomplishments

I haven't been good at taking pictures or posting or much of anything this entire week.
Talk about culture shock. I had a tough past couple days, but today I finally have felt accomplished.
Getting around Kiev is so complicated, unless I just am directionally challenged but I know I'm not. Nothing makes sense, the bus system, the metro, and it doesn't help that everything is in russian. But this morning I made it to school BY MYSELF. I walked from my house to the bus stop, alone. Got on the bus, alone and got off at the right stop and made the walk to school. Accomplishment #1.
I started teaching on tuesday. That was / is one the hardest things I have ever done in my life. It is nothing that I expected at all. These kids are smart! They know their english and some can have a pretty decent conversation with me. I'm having a hard time planning lessons; teaching them math, science and social studies. When was the last time I studied any of that..? But guess what. I just finished my first week of teaching. Accomplishment #2.

 [ this is the street my house is on, nothing too exciting ]

[ our school is in that white building. ]

The kids are way cute. Some of them are the sweetest kids I've ever met, and others are the craziest kids I've ever met. But I really like them all. They're seriously so smart and absorb so much, and love to sing and play.

Every day I teach from 3-7:10 exactly. So I usually have the whole morning to do whatever except for this week. I had to continue some training, go to a bank, and plan lessons so I had to meet at the school early in the day. 

Luckily one of the girls in the program lives right next door to me, Kim, so she has shown me how to get to and from everywhere necessary. Since I've already gained 400 pounds since I've been here I've been wanting to go running, so we went one morning this week. 

Once we're done with school we usually take a while to clean up and lock up and I don't get home until after 8 most nights. Gma piles food down my throat then I crash in my room, exhausted. Until Vova comes in to play. That kid loves attention. So last night when I was trying to plan a lesson I had a book open to a page about pinwheels. He saw it and said "make this?" ran and got some paper and scissors. We made pinwheels together, but they weren't working when we blew on them so he ran out of the room to get something. Comes back with a huge fan. That didn't work either.

We literally played in my room for two hours. While I was absolutely exhausted. He is really funny.