Takin' Care of Business

     Occasionally over the past year, trying to think of something to write here has felt like business. It wasn't always fun like a hobby. Sometimes it felt like doing taxes or homework. Usually that happened when I was too busy, tired or distracted to feel creative. Coming up with a good post on a regular basis, for someone who hasn't done that sort of thing before, can be a chore. I find that again I'm writing a post that feels like it's "just business." And that's not because I'm finishing this three days after starting it. Standing on the sub-two-week mark, I'm thinking more and more about the things at home. But there is more to my life at the moment than moping around the apartment waiting for my flight to leave.
     Last week was a good week. After feeling bored the previous week, it was good to have some things to do. Monday I got to hang out with the McLanes. Bananagrams, Dr Quinn: Medicine Woman, and playing with kids goes a long way towards giving me a good change of pace. No, I didn't like Dr Quinn when it was on TV the first time. But the McLane kids wanted to watch it and I obliged them. The real reason for going up was Bananagrams and that was fun.
     Tuesday evening found me up at their apartment again. This time was to observe Maya's Bible English group. I've known for a while that she had group meetings. But it took me until now to get time (and motivation) to go up and visit. For a while, her group and my Thursday Bible study happened at the same time. Recently she started the Tuesday group. The lessons are very similar to the lessons from Liberty and Big City English. The main difference is that Maya chooses Bible passages to read from in a simple translation. After reading through it several times, there are questions for the students to answer for homework. I think I'll be up there again tomorrow, this time to help if there are enough people.
     Wednesday was more of a full day. It started with a message on Tuesday evening asking if I'd like to go with a group from X-Way camp to a park near Kiev. Feofania. It's about half way to where we were two weeks ago for Liberty camp. For those of you who have visited Longwood Gardens near Philadelphia, it's similar to that. It's a large, expansive park with paths, trees, bushes, flowers and ponds. After living in the city for a year, it's a good change of pace to visit a place like this. Tim (the short-term intern) and I were asked to come along as English speakers.

     Thursday night was the first night of Max's followup series. We've been trying to have activities to keep the students interested and coming back since camp ended. I missed Tuesday evening's game night but I did tell about the Frisbee event a week ago. The purpose of Thursday's meeting was to start speech series on the Bible and Christianity. We had twelve students show up to the first meeting. What little I could understand was about the general flow of history from Creation until now as well as paradoxes and contradictions in the Bible. Afterwards, we stuck around the office until well after 10PM playing games (including penny hockey).

     Friday was, what I think, my penultimate Walking English. And wow was it memorable. The celebration of Ukraine's independence is coming up next week. I was alerted by a friend that our walk might be interrupted by the practice for the parade. It was interrupted in the best possible way.
     We met at Poshtova Ploscha metro station around 6:45. Near 7PM, we hear six or seven loud bangs reminiscent of dynamite or high explosives. They were so loud that multiple car alarms in the neighborhood were set off. I started off in the direction of the sound after they stopped. The Dnipr River is very close and was in the same direction the sounds came from. Across the river, I could see at least eleven large artillery cannons. We didn't hear any more explosions but the lingering clouds of gunpowder-scented smoke gave a strong indication of what had been going on. Firing blanks to practice for next week.
     About thirty minutes later, we were walking through Padol and I hear another odd noise. Looking to the right, on the next road over I saw a line of tanks rolling down the street. We must have caught the front of the parade coming through the neighborhood. Later after dinner, part two rolled through the area. Here's a video I took of the festivities.

     Coming up on the 24th is the celebration of Ukraine's independence. It'll be marked by a huge parade through the city center. The parade from Friday was merely practice. I hope to go see it for a bit. Not sure though. The Liberty team is planning a get-together for that day as well.
     The walk was a lot of fun (as usual). We finished the evening off with pizza at Chelentano. It's a chain of restaurants here in Ukraine that serves mainly pizza. But they do other things as well. Tim and I shared a very tasty Mexicano pizza with beer sauce. The toppings included peppers, tomato slices, sausage, corn and the aforementioned sauce. The sauce reminded me more of teriyaki than beer. But dinner was a great time for conversation and discussion. Half of the group was involved in a deep argument about divorce and relationships. On my end of the table I talked about wide ranging topics including family and grammar.
     So that's all for now. Things aren't winding down slowly. I have a feeling I'll be busy up until the day I leave. Sunday was another big day. But since it was technically the beginning of a new week, I'll leave that for the next info dump blog post.