I think I’m going to try doing short entries and then backdating some later, probably over the winter break, but again, no promises.
Getting to Kherson is usually a pretty east thing for me, busses run about every 30min to the city, it’s pretty cheap to go, and it’s only an hour ride. I knew from the last time that I could get off the bus earlier than the bus station and be right at the giant Library, no problem just have to tell the driver to stop. I saw the giant monument on the river that stands in front of the library and ran to the front of the bus and asked for the next stop. However the next stop was not so close. Again, no problem I will just walk towards the river and then turn left and I should be able to see it. Wrong. There was a large factory of some sort lurking back there in a kinda sketchy area, luckily it was very much daytime, and I got a little lost. I asked a lady with a kid where the library was just to make sure I was in the right direction. Turns out she gave me directions to the kids’ library, so I looked for a baba instead this time to ask. I found one munching on sunflower seeds and politely asked her. She laughed at me, called me some cute diminutive name and told me how to get there. At this point it was 5 till 10 and I was definitely going to be late. It wasn’t too far, but still I was late, I asked the library ladies if I could fill out my form after the lesson and they said yes I dropped my coat off downstairs in the coat check area (cause they make you) and then ran up 3 flights of stairs of which I tripped on. Well, almost tripped, I started to fall but I was running so my legs stayed under me and I kinda tripped up the stairs. There were people behind me, but luckily they didn’t laugh. However I found that as I was panting and sweating coming into the English resource center, it was some of the kids behind me. Yay. Also, to top that off, when I entered, one of the ladies came up to me and said “I’m sorry but your zipper…” yup, my zipper was down. Even with all of that, we still had a good English club. I had only 6 kids instead of the normal 12 so everything went pretty quickly, so I had to improvise a lot of games with the material, but I I did get the kids to laugh and speak English, so I’m going call that a win.
I had to get get home pretty soon after that because one of my 8th graders wanted to go for a walk and show me some of our natural sights in Gola Pristan. She and 2 of her friends met me at my house at 2ish and we walked to the sanitory, taking some sketch slide behind the fences way. She was super excited to show me all the places she had taken pictures at and to also show me where her favorite hideouts are. She loves nature and to take pictures and to just be outdoors. It was wonderful, really. It was like when I was that age and I would go exploring through the woods. We looked at old soviet statues, found a gold Lenin and lots of Freedom statues. The best part was when we also went off the path to this tiny broken down building, room, not sure what you would call it, and we all climbed on top of it and looked over the salty lake and our village. We talked about travel and seeing the world, and what she wanted to do after school. It was a really good afternoon. I should have made her try to speak English, but meh, I think it was good just to spend time with her.
