The abode.

My host family just moved into this apartment a month ago and it's brand new! Everything is so nice. They live on the fifteenth floor so the view is just grand. Here's a little tour of my abode for the next few months. PS I took these pictures with my tablet so that's why they are poor quality/so crooked. 

Front entryway

Lack of kitchen. They are having their real kitchen installed on Monday. So exciting! Tanya has been cooking everything in a rice cooker! When they get their real kitchen I'm going to try to cook them an American dinner. And by American I mean probably Mexican food.

My room! I share with 4-year-old Maria. She has the biggest room in the house.

Maria's kitchen. And vacuum, and little functional washing machine. I would have gone crazy  with this stuff when I was little.

Mine and Maria's beds. My bed folds out.

View from my room

Hello Kitty clock, so cute!!

Living room area, still with moving boxes!

Little office space

 View out the door in the office onto the tiny porch. I love it.

I am really lucky to live in such a nice apartment. Also some girls have to travel an hour and a half to get to their schools and I only have to travel about a half an hour. It's super great.

Fat kid day.

We are so exhausted from our first week of teaching. Oksana asked us if we wanted to go do something today but we knew that required effort of some kind, such as walking. So what do you do when you feel lazy as a bag of potatoes? You sit and eat food for hours. That's precisely what we did. To get our hands on some treats though we did go to the huuuuuge supermarket here called Ashan (it's really called something with Cyrillic letters but it sounds like Ashan). It's like Costco minus the bulk food but with added super strong fish smell. Cause there are giant piles of ice with fish of all sizes laid out on it. 

So. Much. Chocolate.

Seriously.. two walls filled with by-the-pound chocolates.

See how that entire wall is unrefrigerated eggs?? Ya. No eggs are refrigerated here. It freaks me out.

A sea of people 

It's so huge the employees wear roller blades to get around.

The result. PS those donuts right there? When I bought them they were still warm.

Then we came back to the school and sat there for literally 3 hours and talked about everyone's love lives. Let's be honest. If that and buckets of chocolate and sugar doesn't bond a bunch of girls, I don't know what does.

Gymnasium Premier.

We have plunged right in to our teaching adventure. This first week has felt like ten years but has gone by super quick at the same time. I teach four different classes. Four. It's insanity. Quick rundown:

-Every morning I do pre-k with another girl named Afton for one hour. Afton is wonderful, we work splendidly together. The kids are 2-3 years old and are adorrrrrable. They're starting to get over their shyness and show their little personalities. This week we taught them duck duck goose and red light green light, and how to sing I'm a Little Teapot and Three Little Monkeys. Cuter than cute.

-On Tuesdays and Thursdays Afton and I alternate half hour sections of teaching elementary 1 and basic reading. The elementary 1 kids are 7-9 years old and basic reading is probably closer to 6.

-Mondays and Fridays I teach elementary 6 for three hours. Those kids are 10-11 and they understand English pretty well so that's nice.

How is teaching going, you ask? Well. On Monday I taught my first elementary 6 class and the kids were out. Of. Control. They were screaming and making fart noises and grabbing my marker and writing on the board and I couldn't hold their attention for more than 20 seconds. For three hours. It was a NIGHTMARE. Tuesday elementary 1 was the same deal. I completely lost my voice on Tuesday night because I had been talking so loud trying to get their dang attention. So on Thursday, my head teacher Samantha and our coordinator Oksana were at my school so I went and talked to them about it. When I told Oksana what happened, she was livid. And it was Scary. She asked me which kids were being so bad and then pulled out their files. Then she called their moms. One of the craziest kids in elementary 6 is named Illia, and his mom works at the school as a teacher. So she actually came upstairs with Illia and had me tell her what he did. After I told her, she turned slowly to Illia with the scariest look of impending doom on her face and said "Oh, I understand." And she grabbed his neck and marched him out of the office. Oh man it was priceless. I felt bad for the poor kid, but he was absolutely out of control. Something had to be done. Later that afternoon, I had elementary 1, and it was just as bad again. So after several warnings I called Oksana. She came in and YELLED at the kids in Russian for a full minute. It was bloody terrifying. Then she made the kids come up to my desk one by one and say "I'm sorry Miss Mallory." Those kids were ANGELS after that. Can you believe how hardcore that is?! No wonder Russian teachers have such a tough reputation...I had to keep myself from laughing a couple times while she was yelling, it was like a movie or something. I'm a terrible person, I know. So teaching has been awesome these last couple days! I love teaching when the kids aren't being mental. Imagine that!

For warrioring through that huge paragraph, here are a few pictures for you of the school we teach at!

This was on the first day of school. It's a big deal here.

More first day of school festivities!

 The school is called Gymnasium Premier.

All the Nyvky teachers!

Here is the big room where we do pre-k and the other teachers do class in. It has nice squishy carpet that's good for naps. PS we don't wear shoes in the school! You have to take them off before you come in.

I teach elementary 6 and 1 in this classroom.

Another classroom. We do basic reading in here.

View out the window. They have a huge playground.

The great Simba mural.

Pretty cute eh?? I like it. It's very quaint, and we can pretty much do whatever we want with our space. Ukrainian schools are a lot different from schools in America because they are like houses. All the rooms have big rugs and curtains, there are staircases everywhere, you don't wear shoes, etc. The only thing different is that there are tables & desks instead of couches and beds.

So teaching = a success. The school = pretty neat. The kids = insane, but precious. And Ukrainian women = don't cross them.

City center.

Today turned out to be vairrr exciting. The sore throat has progressed and Tanya and her motherly instincts asked if I felt okay this morning. I said no actually, I've got a bit of a cold, so she promptly called Andre who was already at the store and had him get me meds. He got me this powder stuff that you pour into hot water and drink and apparently it's chock full of vitamin C. It tasted like really strong Tang. Also Tanya had me eat plain old honey cause she says it helps sore throats. Such awesome host parents.

Then a couple of Tanya and Andre's friends came over and we ate sushi, of all things. It made me miss Happy Sumo! The dad told me about how he has been to America several times and then started asking me questions about whether or not I think America won WWII and what about Japan and also if they celebrate Christmas on January 7 and we do December 25 then which church is right? It was  really kind of awkward. But other than that....they were really nice and asked me all about good ol' Utah! 

The other day I met Andre's younger brother Vova and he said he and his girlfriend Yulia would take me to see the cool parts of the city. So Andre called them and they picked me up this afternoon. I've got some sweet hookups, I tell ya. They took me to see a park full of really neat statues made of mosaics, to a couple of cathedrals, and to the city center where Khreshatyk Street is. Khreshatyk (I hope I'm spelling that right) is the huge street where only people can walk and cars can't drive on weekends. That whole part of town is really modern and there are really nice stores and restaurants. I loved it. Oh and they took me to a traditional Ukrainian restaurant and bought me lunch too. I had these amazing perogie/ravioli things filled with cherries, and I had borscht. BORSCHT. What did I say about the sweet hookups. It was such a nice Sunday. 

Amhazing buildings.

Love it. They were all weird like this.

It reminds me of the Beatles.

There's a huge water drop balanced on his face.

 Cool mosaic alley cat.

Alice in Wonderland playground.

Cool graffiti.

 So beautiful!!

 Queen Olga's cathedral.

Queen Olga and her sons. The cathedral is in her honor because she was the first woman leader in Ukraine.

At night, this lights up as a rainbow.

Beaute view of Kiev.

I start teaching tomorrow!!! I'm so nervy nervous. Wish me luck.

A little excursion.

For the past few days we have learned our teaching assignments and requirements and have been work work working on lesson plans and all sorts of prep. So today we took a break from all the stress and confusion before our brains imploded.

Apparently Kiev is just like the Hunger Games. Such as the city is made of 10 districts. And each district specializes in something different. And each year a young tribute is chosen from each district to compete in a pageant of valor in which they have to fight each other to the death. Just kidding about that last bit. But for reals, every year the districts make a huge flower display and they do a big show of it. I'm not sure which district we saw...it may have been the district that I live in called Nyvky, which actually specializes in flowers. It's like a garden kind of that you walk through and there are little street vendors everywhere kind of like a fair. So our coordinator Oksana took us to see that. It was neeeeat. Let's take a look in pictures, shall we?

We rode the metro all over town to get there.

This super cool statue is the Protector! It has something to do with WWII. There is a WWII museum inside it that we're going to do someday. The reason we didn't today is because Oksana says it's really sad and wanted us to have a happy day. Hah. Also it apparently stands taller than the Stat of Liberty!

Another WWII statue - the Unknown Soldier

Giant chucken. He must have laid the giant eggs.

Giant eggs.

Another giant egg and a neat view of Kiev in the background. (Fun fact: Kiev is ENORMOUS, but someone's host mom told us that compared to Moscow, Kiev is a puny village. CRAZY)

Lots and lots of people.

Yep. Those are goats.

Some of the girls! (Samantha, Kylie, Afton, Jenna)

Some cool buildings in the city.

Can't wait to see more of this cathedral.

Alas, the result of a lot of walking is a lot of pain.

Don't worry. The next one is worse.

Awesome day. Tomorrow I'll post some pics of our school! PS. I have the sorest throat. hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I can't believe I'm going to be sick on our first day of teaching. It was bound to happen. The amount of germs I've been exposed to the past few days is absurd so no wonder really.