Story Saturday

I'm almost never afraid anymore.  For the longest time it seemed that any task could instill fear in me when needed to be performed in Ukrainain.  I was always afraid I wouldn't know the right word, or I would mix up my cases and embarrass myself.

I still do all of those things, they just don't scare me anymore.

I get most of the way through a rather long paragraph of information and realize that I have no clue how to say suffocate in Ukrainian, and so I prattle on for a bit longer and finally mime out the rest.  Everyone shares a good laugh at my expensive and we move on with our lives.

I was visiting a friend's village - and his mother recommended that I go visit the school and speak to all of the students.  Now, in America we would never do this.  I can just imagine a Mexican immigrant coming to our school and insisting on speaking to all of the Spanish students.  I do, however, have some experience and a few titles behind my English Teacher desk; and I distinctly remember Nazar sharing story after story of the loons they invited to come and speak to his class - so I knew I would fit in.

One loon explained to Nazar's class why they should never add sugar to tea.  They should taste the actual herbs and spices of the blend of tea.  Apparently this was shared during an all-school assembly time, and apparently he used 45 minutes to convey this point.  And to whit, Nazar still refuses sugar in his tea.

And, so, it felt quite natural to march into the school and ask to speak to the director.  Of course I was well received and invited to speak to all of the classes.  The students cleaned each classroom before I entered, and were all wonderfully polite.  The oldest students were absolutely terrified to practice their English, and together we mostly spoke Ukrainian.

It was the younger students, the eighth class and younger who spoke fluently and confidently in English.  They asked me all kinds of questions that would be much to personal to ask a stranger in America - but fit right in here.

In Ukrainian school's it's altogether miraculous to find an intelligent boy.  All of the girls are regarded as bright students, but the entire male population is fitted with dunce caps in Elementary school and they wear them straight through their second doctoral degree.  Of course, in the village the boys miss a tremendous amount of school because they are needed in the fields - so girls do get much more classroom time.  There are other reasons, too.  Classroom time is neatly planned around rote-memorization and recitals.  Girls excel in these tasks, and girls are rewarded for excelling.

It doesn't seem to matter how naturally intelligent a boy is, the second he is put in a room of female students and female teachers he becomes an idiot.

Each classroom has an icon at the head of the room.  This fascinates me.  I remember my third grade teacher kept a Bible on his desk and reminding us occasionally that it was his right to do so.  When I began teaching at the University, I was given a small book of prayers of the saints to read at the beginning of lessons.  But, I was most fascinated most by the icons.  There really isn't any rhyme or reason for which icon to hang.  I guess it would make more sense to me if each room had Jesus, or even Mary - but some rooms had random saints, Ukrainian nationalist saints, or others I didn't know of.

It was the 11th form classroom whose icon fascinated me the most.  The icon was larger than life - it filled half of a wall, really.  The icon of Mother Mary breastfeeding baby Jesus.  Her ample bosom seemed to spill out into the room of pubescent students.  I can't imagine who was so inspired to buy this and hang it in a room filled with young men.  It was just so incredibly distracting.  The entire time I tried to talk about grammar and such, my eyes just kept going back to that icon.  The way it seemed that the eyes of both Mary and suckling Jesus followed you no matter where you went in the room.

And standing in front of a room full of students who wouldn't speak English to me, and being chased by more than the eyes of a couple of saints, I immediately remembered what it was like to be afraid again.