Emily Teacher!!!!

This morning I woke up in a slightly bad mood, that most likely steamed from me getting woken up from a deep sleep by my alarm clock at 8am. I got out of bed, had breakfast and made sure to have my morning coffee hoping that at some point my mood would clear.

On my walk to school I listened to Brand New and an odd thick fog had settled in our village over night, I could only see a few feet meters in front of me at a time. It added to my mood and made everything seem a little creepy. I am sure the American English teacher, living in a village abroad getting attacked out of no where on her way to school would be a great film or maybe something with ghosts. I do enjoy a good ghost story.

Once I got to school I made my way to the teachers room and sat by the wood stove with the other teachers and warmed myself before going to class in grade four. One of my unofficial favorite students, seemed completely unfazed by my bad mood. Academically speaking she isn’t one of the best students, but she does give me a card about once a week telling me how much she loves me, in Georgian of course. She never wants to sit down and always has to be doing something that she shouldn’t be. She doesn’t have books, because she will destroy them I’ve been told, so she always borrows mine. I personally think she is super smart, but doesn’t apply herself. (I am positive my mother is reading this right now and thinking Hmmm, now who does that sound like Emily?) She has a desk right next to mine in class and is always jabbering along to me in Georgian which makes me laugh, because I would think by now she would know that I have next to no idea what she is saying. Today she had bread in her desk and would eat some when she thought I wasn’t looking and when I would catch her she would just give me an innocent smile mid-chew and make me smile, even though I was trying to look stern. (Students aren’t suppose to eat in class in Georgia.) By the end of the class my mood was much better.

We had grade three next and I went to go set my bag in there, and I took out my camera and headed outside to go take some photos. It was too cold and not that many students were around so I went back into my classroom. I went to go sit down at the teachers desk and wait for my co-teacher to come in after the break and I tried to photograph some of the students without them seeing me. I failed and they noticed right away, but they were over joyed to have my attention. This grade seriously is great. I just love everything about them. There is only one girl in the class, which I feel makes the boys try more because they know that they won’t be out shined by a bunch of girls, so they have a chance to impress the teacher. I just want to take all of them home with me and photograph an ad campaign for Gap Kids or something. They are a bunch of goofballs.

My last lesson of the day was in grade two. Again these kids just adore me. I even had coffee this past weekend at one of the their houses after their grandmother kidnapped me on one of my walks. There is one girl who just smiles at me for the whole lesson, every time. Today in class they were working in their workbooks, coloring so I took out my camera. I wish I could say that I was more sly, but again it was an epic fail. (I could never be a spy.) They too were over joyed to have me taking photos of them and even asked for a class photo which I indulged them in. After all it was just a small break from coloring. 

After that lesson I started to walk home and my certain unofficial favorite student from grade four started walking next to me. I kept my pace to match hers as we walked in silence, while she pulled a handful of sunflower seeds from her pocket and started eating them. The sun had come out during school and she would stop at the edge of a puddle and put her foot on the ice to break it. Having my trusty Bean boots on, I just stepped in the middle of a puddle and broke it with a huge cracking sound and then the splash of my foot hitting the water. She enjoyed this quite a bit, I am going to assume it is because no adult here just steps in puddles making huge messes. I always laughed at for having snow and mud cover my boots. They aren’t nice fashion boots, they are utilitarian so its fine. We made sure to crack every puddle between school and my house. When we reached my house she said goodbye and watched to make sure that I made it in ok, which is hilarious that ten year is making sure that everything is fine with me. I really should be the one walking her home.

I went up to my room and it being a Wednesday meant that I got to indulge in Glee. It is my 43 minuets, of musical bliss every week. I prefer to watch it in private, because most of the time I turn into a fourteen year old girl, this week was no exception. I think I almost cried at one point I was so full of emotion. I need a life.

After I went down to our kitchen and had lunch and did other random things. Making an attempt to connect and share culture with my family I let them in on my Glee addiction, by showing it to my fourteen-year old host brother. He knows next to no English, but my host mom said that he had to sit in watch it with me to learn English. I felt a little bad about having him be forced, but he did laugh at a few parts and I only made him watch half of it. I’m going to keep showing it to him every week, I’m sure if I can find it with Russian subtitles he would be completely into it. I know I am forcing things on him, but I am his older sister right now for all intents and purposes so I am going to treat him, like my little brother in the States. You are going to watch Glee and like it damn it and if you don’t I’m telling mom! 

-Also here are some photos from my first grade class that I didn't really have a blog for:

Ukraine Christmas

I’ve written about Christmas Eve morning and how I got the most awesome Christmas present ever, but I have failed (until now!) to write about Ukrainian Christmas.  Orthodox Christmas takes place on January 7th, so around two on Christmas eve the roommate and I set off in high spirits to meet our friend Olia in the center of Lviv and then take a marshooka to her village for the night. Chad and I both dressed up like the good little orphan children we are to be taken in and adored by our friend’s family. (I would like to note that we both have living families who love us but sadly they are currently not located in Ukraine.) We met and chit chatted on our way to the marshook stop over random minor things. 

It took us about 40 minuets to reach our stop where Olia’s brother picked us up in his car and drove us to their village and house. I was asked what I thought about the village and I said it looked nicer then the one in Georgia I had lived in. My friend joked that she was sorry that the toilet would be indoors and hopes that was ok with me. I said I would try to manage the best I could, but if she found me outside squatting I apologized right then.

I was nervous about meeting Olia’s parents. I always want to make a good impression with people, especially parents. I had gone into full good roommate mode the night before and had made sure to buy wine and chocolate for our host. I was quite proud with my selection of Georgian wine as it came from my new “home” region. I would have thrown in a live Maine lobster too, but the grocery store was out of them. 

My worries about meeting a new mother were unneeded as always. She was a cute short woman who put us to work as soon as we had put our things in Olia’s bedroom. She and her daughter share the common trait of being able to order people around and you can’t help but always giving in and doing their bidding right away and not feel any resentment at all and enjoy the task.

There was plenty of food preparing to be done for the Christmas ever fest that was to take place after dark, when the first star appeared in the sky. Traditionally twelve dishes are served and none of them can have meat in them. Our Ukrainian mother gave us tea and let us have some of the traditional Christmas pastries, that were either filled with jam or poppy seeds, even though you were suppose to spend the day fasting. (Good job to the three mid-twenty year olds who didn’t think to eat before coming. I know personally it was because of how excited I was over my present and perhaps because I had drank copious amounts of vodka the night before. Oops.)

After it was work time. Chad helped with anything that Ukraine Mama could throw at him. She has met him before and it is clear to see they are both smitten with each other. I was given a task to drain jarred mushrooms and put them in a bowl. Something that I could safely do, without blowing up the kitchen.  

We were then sent to set the table and I started playing the Glee Christmas soundtrack. (I love Glee and I don’t care who knows. There will never been enough Glee in my life. I am really regretting not conning someone into buying seasons 1 & 2 for me before coming to Georgia. It’s happening when I go back to America this summer so someone put a fund together. I’m a poor teacher.) Setting seven places didn’t take too much time for the three of us so we were allowed to go back up to Olia’s room for a bit. I made them watch the Daily Show, which they didn’t seem to think was nearly as funny as I did. The normal TV got turned on and was flipped through by someone else and I lost interest and went on Facebook most likely, until we were called down to help make vareniki.

This was beyond hilarious as Olia’s mother AND grandmother repeatedly showed me how to make them properly. I got the hang of it after awhile, so the edges were closed properly so when they were boiled the potato filling wouldn’t burst out. Olia also explained to me that she learned how to make these in school when she was younger. I honestly do not remember being taught how to cook anything useful in school. I know we made gingerbread houses. 

Chad kept sneaking mouthfuls of the filling, when none of the parental figures were looking. He had been doing it all day with different food and it was quite funny to see him stuff a whole piece of bread in his mouth at once, for risk of being caught. His vareniki edges we’re not full pushed together and I kept fixing them while shaking my head. It was really amusing looking at a finished tray and being able to point out which ones were done by which person. 

We were then instructed to put the food that was ready on the table while Ukraine Mama finished up in the kitchen. The dishes were counted and recounted to make sure that we had the twelve we needed. There was also a huge amount of hay bundle wrapped in a table cloth under the table that was suppose to have some religious significance, but I forget what it was for. 

We all sat down with our first course of soup after praying and saying grace. The men were each poured shots of vodka and the women got wine. A feeling of being slightly left out over came me and perhaps my independent feminist alcoholic side came out. I wanted vodka and wasn’t offered it because I was a girl (or maybe I was and said no and was not offered it again.) Looking back now I feel foolish for feeling this way. I was offered more wine and I joked with Olia that I needed it because I was having alcohol withdrawal and the shakes were about to set in if I didn’t drink. I was horrified when she translated this into Ukrainian for her parents. Her mother gave me a concerned look. Awesome. Her mother thought I was an alcoholic, but it’s ok because I am sure my mother feels the same way. Only in Ukraine people!

Over dinner I was offered so much food. I felt like it was it was a test and I had to pass, except for when it came to the fish. There were three different kinds and I just looked at it with detestation. I do not eat cold blooded animals. It is just not natural. I explained to Olia after her prodding to eat it that I would be more then happy to do so, if she felt like cleaning up my vomit after. She stopped. 

After we stopped eating, we listened to Ukrainian Christmas carols and I highly enjoyed in my wine and food induced happiness. I also believe being in the presents of such a loving family and with two of my great friends played into it too. I tried singing along to a few of the songs which I am sure was amusing, because I am always amusing. They wanted to hear some American Christmas songs so I put on Wham’s Last Christmas and I was politely told that this was what was wrong with America. Christmas produced songs like this one, instead of ones that were religious the way they should be. I just shrugged because I knew they were right. After four and a half Christmas seasons spent in retail saying Merry Christmas out loud to people that I was not close to, just didn’t seem right. “Dear God please don’t fire me for saying Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays,” was a thought that plagued me all threw out my first year in retail.

After a bit more singing, we went up to Olia’s room and all pilled into her bed and watched the great Christmas classic Gridlock’d with Tupac in it. It was a good movie I must say and we all enjoyed it. I was mostly happy that it was in English. After it was over Chad and Olia’s brother all went to their separate bedrooms. I slept in Olia’s room and it was nice to have a girls sleepover. 

We had set our alarms the night before to get up and go to church early in the morning and by we I mean Olia and I. The alarms were turned off and we passed back out. Around eleven I wondered into Chad’s room to wake him up. He asked me how church was. I asked if it looked like I had been to church, with a smile. He knew I hadn’t been.

The day was pretty uneventful, just full of eating and hanging out with everyone and watching another movie The Running Man, which reminded me of the Hunger Games. Chad and I set off around dusk for Lviv, ready to get back to our city life.

Abandoned Factory and Lviv Holocaust Memorial

This morning I set off from my hostel on a mission to get some great shots today for my photo project. Today it was in the high 20s so I put on all my cold weather gear. Basically I felt like a super big Maine hick with everything on. One big issue I am facing right now is that my thermals for my bottom half are ridiculously big. I do not know how this has happened, but I am dealing with it the best I can. I also had my lovely plaid flannel shirt on along with my Sorrel boots, and my L.L.Bean coat.
I trudged to the bus stop and and decided that today I would take whatever one seemed like a good bet to me. I ended up on number 45. The plan was to ride it until I saw something that looked like a good subject to shoot. The bus ended up going to same way I go on my way to the grocery store and we went passed some old and abandoned factories. I quickly reasoned with myself that I had wanted to shoot these for a while and that I should just do it now. This bus could end up going passed no where else of interest and I had no idea how long the sun would hold out.
I got out at the next stop and walked back towards the complex and encountered a wall. I started to walk along it, coming across places that I could maybe get in through, but kept walking thinking that there had to be an easier way. I came across drive leading in and walked passed some businesses that were still open in the complex. Some people looked at me, but no one said anything to me. I formed a plan in my head that if someone tried to question why I was there I would say that I thought it was a short cut to McDonald’s. There is in fact one really close by so it would be believable. I can play the stupid fat American card really well. Some people wouldn’t be proud of it, but I feel like it has some advantages here so I have embraced this, and I am also not really a stupid fat American so I enjoy playing one.
The ground had a thin covering of snow, that I wasn’t really sure how I felt about this. It added to my photos in some cases I feel, however people could also fallow my tracks. Clearly the old Soviet notion of the KGB fallowing people had gotten a hold of me today. I could also look for new human tracks too, so it made me feel a little better when I just saw bird and dog prints. One good thing about the people near by is that they clearly kept the kids and bums out of drinking in the buildings, keeping them mostly intact and not full of broken vodka bottles.
I took out my camera and starting shooting and playing my game of trying to figure out what this use to be. The first two or three buildings I only photographed from the outside and one I leaned through a window that had been broken in, and photographed the inside from there.
For those of you who don’t know me that well I am a complete scardy cat. I can barely go in my basement or attic alone at home. I’ve had my moments of panic attacks due to being scared, so shooting in old abandoned buildings is an interesting challenge for me. I have to focus on the task at hand, taking photos, and making sure that they come out right, not forgetting everything I have ever learned about photography, and not get too freaked out at the same time. I like to think with all my senses on high alert that I shoot better, just do what feels natural.
The first doorway that I went into lead into a decent sized room with frosted glass all over the floor and these four concrete rectangular mounds with pipes next to them coming out of the floor.

The room lead no where so I went back outside to the next door that was in the same building that had a long hall way with rooms off from it. The floor still had the black and cream colored checkered tiles on it and a sky light with most, if not all of the glass still intact. I entered the first room in swat team style like you see on TV, which clearly my camera was filling in for my gun. I do odd things when I am a little scared ok? The first thing that struck me about this room was a lone boot that was against the wall and up right. It looked almost new. There were multiple binders and papers and it looked like the room might possibly have been an office at some point.
I went back out into the hall and into the next room and the only thing that stood out really was a poster still on the wall. This room looked like it might have been used as an office too. I entered the hall again and this time I saw a broken sign on the floor that was relatively still intact and this excited me, but I needed to continue on with my swat mission.
Room number three looked like it was used as a work room of some sort. I found jugs, jars, and cans scattered on the floor. There was also a sign on the wall that said something about ventilation and there was remnants of one on the wall. There was also some red stuff on the wall that had dripped down. First thought in my mind was that it was blood. I then convinced myself that it could not be blood, using my skills I’ve learned from CSI, that the splatter patter was wrong and also there was other colors of paint on the wall so there for it was paint. If a forensic expert would like to prove me wrong on this conclusion feel free to do so.

Back out in the hall I continued on ward and ended up passing dark bathrooms that I practically sprinted passed trying not to look in, I failed at being a swat team member right there. I came to a thresh hold of the last and final room that was bigger then all the others. To get into it I had to step on insulation that had fallen from some where. I didn’t care what I had to step over as long as I didn’t have to go passed those bathrooms again. The room was filled with a lot of rubble and on the wall there was one old tile still up. Once inside I realized that there was no door out. It was a dead end. Awesome I thought. I looked and the three big windows that had long lost there glass and decided that I would climb out that way. It was basically like a door, except I have short little legs so I couldn’t just step over, I had to sit on the sill and swing my legs over. I ended up in a strip of overgrown land that was between the building and a brick wall. I carefully walked around, continuing to shoot, looking for my next way in that wasn’t a window. I rounded a corner and heard a sound. I thought that I had been caught and it was just a door blowing in the light wind.

I went into this huge room that had rubble littering the floor. There was part of a gas mask, some rubber tubing, tires, and other little odds and ends. This seems like a good time for me to talk about my ethics as I shoot. I do not believe that anything should ever be taken from a site. Also when I am there I try to not touch anything, like the binders on the floor in the first room I would have loved to have seen what was written inside, but one I can’t read Ukrainian, two I feel like that is disturbing history. Its not my place to go around messing up the past, I’m just there to document it. So I walked carefully around the big room and kept peering through the holes in the wall to the room next to it. I had to leave the inside and go outside again.

I felt like the best room was saved for last. The first thing that caught my eye was the pictures of scantily clad women that still clung to the posts in the room. I went up to investigate further I saw that the pictures looked relatively new. There was no date any where that I could see, but I did find out that some of the pictures came from a Playboy. Can we just take a moment and here and talk about who brings this in? Is it one guy who gets to decide, or do they organize a bring in your favorite porn day? Are there rules on how graphic it can be? I mean this is a place of work, not your man cave.
Anyways moving on, I love all the texture and colors on the wall. There were doors that lead to no where as the floors above the ground level had long gone. Pipes were coming out of the wall. There was an old warped wooden ladder in the corner on its side.


I then decided that it was time to wrap up this shoot and head home and when I came out of the building the there were some containers that looked like they honestly should have been in a toxic waste dump.
I put my camera away so when I went passed the people it wouldn’t give them a reason to hassle me. Again I got some strange looks as I walked out. I headed back to the main road and breathed a sigh of relief that I had, had another successful shoot. I stood there for a little bit and thought about if I wanted to take the bus back or walk. I decided to walk as I hadn’t in reality spent that long shooting and wanted time to digest what I had just seen and experienced.
On my way home I passed the Holocaust Memorial for Lviv. I had seen it many times on my bus rides, but had yet to stop and look at it close up. I had always admired the beauty of the cubist sculpture that has his agonized face towards the sky as if to ask God how this possibly could happened to his people. I went inside the gated place to get a closer look and there was a plaque in English that read “Through this “Road of Death” in 1941-1943 were passing 138,800 Jewish victims martyred by German Nazi-Fascist occupiers in Lvov Ghetto”. Part of the sculpture is a road leading up what appears to be two Jewish grave stones and the road abruptly stopped and there is a pit type trench that has boulders and huge hunks of glass and then out of the pit the giant man stands on a mound of boulders at though he has risen out. My interpretation of the monument is that people walked down this road and ultimately most of them ended up it pits like this. On the side of the road there were also plaques of remembrance to people who died during the Nazi occupation. Over all I found the monument extremely moving, even if there was a bus stop, factory, a busy road, and train tracks all right next to it. Perhaps it is because I have really become attached to Lviv and a lot of the same buildings are still here from the time period. It is really kind of eery to walk by places like the Opera House or City Hall and know that people suffered so much right there and it looked the same as it does now. Also between the last time I was in Lviv and know I read a book called “The Girl in the Green Sweater” and it was about a Jewish family and how they lived in the swears under Lviv for over a year to escape from the Nazis. It is a really amazing story and if you are looking for a good read and faith in human kind you should read this.






I left the monument and continued on to my hostel and thought about what I should do when I got back. I was pretty drained emotionally and physically so I went and got that McDonalds that I was supposedly looking for. When I got back to my hostel I got my laptop out and watch last nights episode of Glee and ate my food. When traveling I have found that it is very important to take care of yourself emotionally. It is important to educate yourself on things, but I find that some travelers don’t always allow themselves the small joys in life and I feel that by doing some American things I don’t miss home as much and over all I am happier. I am now going to eat some chocolate, re-watch Glee, and drink my water so I stay healthy.