BELETED!

I am going to start a different blog, this one is boring.
Thanks for reading, and don't check back. :)

getting better

My face's progression from the past three days.. (I decided I was bored of seeing my face looking pathetic, so I smiled in today's :)
I haven't been hurting at all, which is good. And props to mom for getting the stain out!!!!! She's amazing. Before.. and after!

a new experience

I got to experience a whole lot of new things yesterday.. I haven't decided if I will add the pictures or not, they are slightly graphic.. but here's the story.

I was driving to work (my second day!) and I was on Michigan. I was in the farthest right lane, and as I came up to the intersection of Memphis Ave, the light was red. I started to slow down, and then it turned green. So I proceeded ahead towards the intersection. There was an SUV just ahead in the lane to the left of me, and it was stopping in the middle of the intersection. I put my foot on the brakes at that point, and began to stop- that was when I saw why this was happening. A truck was turning across the street in front of us, and as I slammed the brakes, I realized it was going to hit me anyway.

A shriek (just like in the movies) of 'noooooooooooooo!' was emitted the instant before impact, and I remember this because there were two huge jolts before the car came to a standstill.. it interrupted my scream and I thought that was strange. It was all dark for a second (I assume that's when the airbags went off) and then it was really smoky and I couldn't really see or breathe. I heard myself saying 'oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh'. and I was really scared that I had hurt someone. I unbuckled and tried opening my door, but it wouldn't open. The window had shattered, and the windshield had a huge spiderweb of cracks in it. My car was at a 45 degree angle (maybe a little more) from the direction I had been driving in.

After I couldn't get the door open, I saw people coming out of the gas stations (luckily that intersection has a Circle K and a Citgo). There was still alot of smoke, and then I saw something drip off of my face. I looked down and I was covered in blood. It was all over my chest and arms. My first thought was that I needed to call my mom. So I grabbed my phone out of my bag, and this was when the people made it over to me. A lady had stopped her car and ran over, she had a pink tank top in her hand and she pressed it against the left side of my head, which I realized was where all the blood was coming from. She asked "Are you okay, baby? They're calling the ambulance, they're on the way" and I said I was okay. I had the phone in my hand still, and thank goodness I had the house on speed dial. I was holding down #2, and then it picked up to a message from T-mobile. 'Your account is low on minutes, remember to please refill soon blah blah blah' and I had to listen to all that before it started calling my house. The lady asked who I was calling, and the answering machine picked up as I said, "My mom.. Mom, I was just in a car accident down on Michigan.." and that's when she answered. I told her where I was, and she said she'd be there soon.
(there's the pink tank top.. and some blood)

This intersection is only 5 minutes from my house, so she made it there in 4. A lady from Circle K brought out a towel to replace the tank top against my face. I thanked the woman who continued to hold it there, she was just telling me I'd be alright and not to worry, baby. They asked me if I could turn off the car (it was still smoking) and so I managed to move the key enough to get it off, though it was stuck in the ignition. Then the ambulance got there, and they wanted to know what hospital to take me to. I told them my mom was coming, and to ask her. They couldn't get the door open at first, so they got in the backseat to put a neck brace on me. Then my mom arrived, and I told her I was okay. I am sure I must have looked really scary, apparently it was like a Phantom of the Opera mask of blood covering the left half of my face, with streaks going down the other side. I was a little frustrated that they wouldn't let me move my head, because I wanted to know what was going on out there. They were careful of the glass as they slid the board underneath me, and made me lay down on it. Someone was nice enough to put their hand up to keep the sun out of my eyes while they strapped me in, and they loaded me into the ambulance.


(my poor car..)

It was there that I noticed my left hand was hurting, I could see there was a flap of skin on the heel of my hand, and it hurt more than my head did. All I wanted was to be cleaned up, because the blood was so gross. It had that salty smell, and I had never seen so much of it. I was calm though through this whole thing, I never cried or even got upset. The worst was at the beginning the moment after it happened when I thought I might have hurt someone. But I was the only one injured! Megan was the EMT in the ambulance, she talked to me and asked questions like my name, what day and year it was, my address, phone number and social, all kinds of things. I was able to relate all of the information, which was nice. I remembered everything :) The accident had happened at 12:40, and I was admitted to the Navy Hospital at 1:22. It doesn't seem like it was that long in between the two points, it went by so fast.

My mom had beat the ambulance there, and so she came in with me and helped get me out of the bloody shirts and into a hospital gown. I was ready to be cleaned off, but that took second place to getting me stitched up. I couldn't feel any pain really besides my hand, I think it must have been the adrenalin still going. The doctor came and took a look at me, and he was dismayed when he heard the story. A state trooper had arrived to give us the report and everything. I guess the guy driving the truck ran the red light, after that it clipped the SUV, hit me and then careened off into a telephone pole. He jumped out of the truck and started running. There had been a state trooper in an unmarked car there at the intersection when it happened, so he was able to take him down before he got away. He is 20 years old, just like me, and he had taken his mother's unregistered truck with no tags, no insurance, and his license was already suspended. So we were informed that he is now in jail. (this is the truck.. )

The doc left for a bit, and I talked with my mom about everything while they cleaned my face a little bit. Then he came back to do the stitches. As they flushed out the cut, they told me how big it was (4 or 5 inches) and it goes from my forehead down my browline past the outside edge of my left eye. It was so deep that they could see a little bit of the bone, and the muscle that controls my eyelid. It wasn't until he was doing the stitches that I realized how close it had come to my eye. Another 5 millimeters to the right and I would have lost my eye, or at least the ability to move my eyelid. He did three layers of stitches, and said it should heal well, and nicely. He did give us the number of a plastic surgeon to see in six months if needed, but I am sure it will be fine. It is on the side of my face, so I don't think it will be very noticeable. Probably the most by the edge of my eye, but I can live with that I think. There were also a couple spots on and around my ear that got a stitches too.

By this time my wrist and hand had visible bruises and were swelling, so they wrapped it and put it in a splint to keep me from moving it and making it worse. I think it is just bruised though, possibly sprained. And then there are the cuts, a few on my forehead and left cheek, and then several little lacerations on my arm from the glass shattering. Luckily none of those are deep, and there was no glass in them. They did xrays of my head and wrist to make sure everything was alright, and then Beth (the nurse) finally finished cleaning me up. I was thinking I would have to wear the bloody hospital gown and jeans home, but Beth said that a few churches had dropped off a bunch of clothes for people to wear home if they didn't have anything. I had never thought of the need they would have for that! So I am very grateful to whoever donated the 'Don't Mess With Texas' shirt that got me home looking slightly better than I would have otherwise. My mom went to go get my prescriptions while I got finished, and she came back with my dad. They helped me out to the car, where I took a first look at myself in the little mirror. I didn't look so good :) My hair was a matted mess, and there was still dried blood everywhere. I have quite a shiner too, but I haven't taken a good look at it yet because of the bandages.

As we arrived home, I was reasonably sure that Joli at least would be crying her eyes out. They all were a little shocked to see me I am sure, and I had to take a respite in the restroom for a moment. I came out and my mom was showing them my bloody clothes, which of course freaked Joli out, she had her head buried in the couch, crying. (I need to get an after pic.. my mom can get any stain out! she even got this one :)
I went over and hugged her, and told her I was really okay! I would be fine soon. She calmed down a little bit and gave me the get well cards that they made. I was sorry that they had to worry about me all afternoon, not knowing what was going on other than I was in an accident and at the hospital. I staked out the couch and had some ramen (I had been starving all afternoon!) and rested there all evening, watching National Geographic. I took some medicine and decided to sleep with the bandage on my head, because I would supposedly look worse today anyways, with the bruising and swelling. So I figured if I only see the 'worse', it wouldn't be so bad. It came partly off as I slept anyways, so I just pulled it off, and I haven't looked yet. We're going to go take care of my car this morning, it is trashed so I'm going to sell it to the body shop it's at if they want it. I don't think I will try to pursue the job I had started, if you miss training you're automatically fired, and I don't want to try and reschedule the training. Maybe that just wasn't the job for me.

So all in all, I am fine! I didn't lose anything that wasn't replaceable. I'm not in pain, throughout the whole thing the worst was the burning when they numbed my face for the stitches and the annoyance more than anything of the pain on my hand. At this point, I am just a little achy :)
So keep in mind when you do see the pictures & video, it looks much worse there. I am alright, I promise! I am very blessed that I wasn't hurt worse, and that people were there to help me. Thanks everyone for the prayers and thoughts.

the kids

Now for those profiles I promised. (part one)
This is Evan. He was one of my favorites! (I will probably say that about all of them) At first we thought he was kinda slow because he never said anything, but he got over that pretty quick. He is such a mischievous boy! Also, he has a large head, which was so funny when we made crowns one day.. his kept ripping because his head was so big, I had to staple two sheets of paper together to make it fit!!! He loves to play duck duck goose, there is a video of it somewhere.. so cute. He ended up getting the chicken pox though, so we didn't get to see him to say goodbye :(


This is Little Bogdan (we had two, and he is the small one). Okay, so about him. Nobody liked him at the beginning. He never came to class, and so he didn't know much. He would always just speak Russian all the time, and his mother would stay in the class and translate for him. That was really frustrating because then he wasn't learning anything, and thought it was okay to speak Russian. But he grew on us. His mom finally stopped coming, and he was able to learn and open up! He's so silly, he tries so hard to get his point across, he'll just yell things like "YES, MY MOTHER I LOVE YOU, YES, MY MOTHER I LOVE YOU" (that means he loves his mom :)
His laugh is priceless, there is a video of that too..



Ah, Illya2. Or Rocket 26, or Naruto. He could never decide what his name was. He was a trip, such a deep voice and thick accent for such a little boy. He was one of the best speakers in the class, and never lacked for conversation. This picture features him in the 'strike chair' where you go after a warning. Illya2 was hilarious, and very naughty. One day he cut Lia's hair, and he liked to sing the opening songs rap style. He was always in the middle of the kindergarten love triangles, rectangles, etc.. But Katya was the only one he kissed (caught on tape! coming soon)
Teaching would not have been the same without this little rascal :)


Here we have Masha. She was the hardest kid to get along with, but we ended up loving her too by the end. Sometimes she would just lay on the floor and shriek, 'STRIKE!', but other times she would be so sweet you wondered if you just imagined the other behavior. When she wasn't stealing other kid's snacks, she would be sharing with the teachers, and she was always a 'big sister' to the newest kids in the class. She would take them by the hand and show them where to go, and help them with everything. She certainly made the lessons more interesting, one way or another..



This is the rest of my home group, except for Anthony, for some reason I don't have a picture of him!! We'll start with Katya. She ended up moving before the semester was over, but she was the reason I began to enjoy teaching at the start. The first time I taught, she grabbed my leg, and said "I love you!" I came to realize that it was a liberally used phrase, but that doesn't matter :) She was so cute and smart. She got bossy at times, and mad when Illya2 would say he loved Evanka instead of Katya. She would throw tantrums on occasion, and I'll never forget the time her mom was late and Katya cried so much! She lost her cell phone (yes, she is in kindergarten, and yes, she had a cooler phone than me) and then her mom thought we were making cocktails for the kids!! I think she just didn't know a more suitable word for it, they were really just milkshakes with kool-aid, I promise!!

Fedor was such a cutie. He also moved after about a month or so. He always wanted yellow clay, paper, everything! It was his favorite. He had a turtle named Tiny Tim that he would carry around. He was so fun, I was sad not to get to teach him more.

And finally, Biggy D!!! Actually named Daniel, (we had another one of those too) he acquired that name when he was the hero who smashed the St Patrick's Day pinata, strewing weird Ukrainian candy onto the waiting children (milk flavored gummies, for example). He would sometimes act up with the other boys, Andrey, Illya2 or Anthony. His favorite song was Purple Stew, and he would cry sometimes if something went wrong with his plans. He'd storm off to the strike chair, and throw his glasses on the floor. But he was always so excited to do the activities and very competitive!! I will admit that I didn't like him at first, with his girly purple and green glasses, and they way he acted up. But he became a favorite, and I missed him when he didn't come to class!

Anthony (no picture) was the sportsman of the class- blond hair, so tan and such a squeaky voice! He only came twice a week, and would be inseparable with Biggy D. They became an entity known as 'Dantony'. He actually lived in Colorado for a few years, so he could understand us better than alot of the other students. We (the girl teachers) were always excited when his dad would pick him up (he was really cute). We came to find out from Anthony's older brother, Illya, that their dad was on the Ukrainian Olympic team! In Athletics I think. He got hurt jumping hurdles though, so he's not anymore. We never were able to find out which Olympics he was in.. and their mom was a ballerina!! That's why they lived in America, was because her company was there for awhile. So needless to say, their kids were gorgeous.

And that was my home group! I will update later with a few of my other favorite kids.. and the videos :)

An Overview

I'd like to start relating my adventures in Kiev, I think. I find myself missing it and wanting more, but if I remind myself how much I have already had, I'll appreciate the time I have to be at home for awhile. This will just be a very small scratch on the surface of my experience. Thank goodness I kept such a good journal, so that I can refer to it now! I'd like to start a list of some of the things I liked/disliked about the experience in general.

Dislikes:

• Public transportation being my only means of travel besides my own two legs. This took quite alot of getting used to, and I often found myself frustrated by the hour(s) it took to get anywhere, and being at the mercy of the tram/bus driver. Though by the end of my time there, I had come to enjoy the time it gave me.. time to listen to my iPod, to read, to talk with whoever I was with.. it became something I appreciated in the end. Not to mention it's way cheaper than gas- $11.50 will get you a card that is good for the entire month, and lets you ride on the metro, city buses/trolleybuses, trams, and funicular. ---

(Lia and I on the metro one night.. we were alone. I didn't ever pull out my camera when there were other people around.. and so it never got stolen! I was either smart or lucky)



• Unwanted attention from men. Usually this was avoided easily enough- don't speak English and don't smile. Though it took us a while to discipline ourselves to do that.. I had an experience or two with guys trying to follow me home. Fortunately I was able to somehow talk the more persistent one out of it.. (no idea how I managed that!!) ---
  
  

(yes, that is mayonnaise you see on my 'fried' egg. also note the oil slick on my plate)


• Being forced to eat all the time. Okay, so they didn't ever literally shove it down my throat, but Ukrainian women are deaf to any refusals. The food was good, there are only a few occasions when there was something unappealing to me on the plate. But when you have large meals for breakfast and lunch, then a humongous dinner (all meals complete with bread, soup and cabbage) and ended with dessert and tea and chocolates or cookies or something.. you just can't take it anymore. I was hungry sometimes when I lived with the room mates, as I did my own cooking, and sometimes didn't plan my shopping trips very well. But when I moved in with the family.. my stomach never growled from that point on!! At moments it was positively painful! I will admit it was entertaining sometimes trying to communicate 'I'm full, no more please!' More on that later. ---
  


• The amount of people that smoke and drink. It's really really disgusting! I would be waiting for the tram or bus in the morning to go to school.. and the people standing next to me would be enveloped in a cloud of smoke and drinking beer. I didn't seem to see alot of outright drunk people though.. but the times I did, they were in bad shape. One had fallen over and someone helped him up, but he had smashed his nose on the cement and there was blood everywhere. Sometimes they might have white dust on their hats, from the metro tunnels. They are white washed, and as the drunk man would try to keep his balance, his head would slide along the wall when he moved forward. I even saw a couple completely unconscious, just laying on the ground inside the metro. It's so sad. ---
  

Now on to the likes, which is a far longer list:

• I loved hearing Russian and Ukrainian spoken around me. At first it was scary, because I couldn't understand any of it, and that made me feel really insecure about asking for things. For the first two months I was there, I had this fear about speaking English in front of people. Partly because of the attention it drew, and partly beacause I just didn't like admitting that I couldn't understand what they were saying. But finally I became brave enough to use the phrase, 'я не знаю по-русски..' (I don't know Russian..) and that helped me get around more. I always felt more comfortable informing them of that fact right off, and then trying to get around the language barrier afterwards- at least they had a warning. It felt rude to just speak English at them, as if expecting them to know it (which alot of them do not) Especially once I was able to understand more of the language, it became fun as I was able to puzzle out the meaning of signs and bits of conversation I'd overhear. I would practice reading advertisements on the metro cars, and it was very gratifying to be able to help people with directions a few times! One of the best moments of my time in Ukraine was on one of our vacations. We were down in Crimea, the peninsula of Ukraine that sticks out into the Black Sea. One afternoon, myself and a couple of the guys from our group went to eat at this little cafe we had seen before while exploring. It was called пелменная (Pelmennaya), and specialized in pelmeni (one of the country's specialties- similar to ravioli, usually filled with meat or cabbage). I didn't realize this until after we left, but I had gone in, ordered, and paid without speaking a word of English!! I was able to read the menu (written entirely in Cyrillic), and know exactly what I was getting! It was a huge moment for me to see that I was capable of something like that. ---
  
  

(Making shaving cream paper.. I'll have to share how to do that later!)

• I really enjoyed teaching (the reason I was there in the first place!) At first it was hard, trying to make sure I had the lessons planned and then trying to get kindergardeners who can't understand you to sit down and speak English. It became alot easier to be patient with them when I put myself in their shoes: How scary would it be for some Ukrainian lady to come in and talk at me for three hours, trying to get me to repeat her all the time? I would probably get a little defensive :) But I really loved planning fun things to do with the kids. They are all just so sweet and funny, and they all have such cute accents! My class contained Masha, Evan, Katya, Daniel (Biggy D, a nickname acquired during our St. Patrick's Day Pinata Bashing Party, there is video to prove it), Illya 2 (also quite a character), Little Bogdan and Anthony. I will do profiles on them all later. Very rarely did the whole class show up on the same day, so it was never really too much to handle. I rotated with the other two primary level teachers at my school though, so I taught each of the classes twice a day, except the Basic Reading kids, who spent the last hour of class time learning to read. I got to know and love all of the kids, and I am so glad I was able to teach them for a little while. ---
  
  

(This is kasha.. buckwheat porridge. Usually prepared with lots of oil)

• School lunches. It is really funny how excited we would get about them. I should probably introduce my friends, the other teachers at my school. Our school happened to be located inside a real Ukrainian one, a private school by the name of Gymnasium Pre'mier. Most of the other ILP schools in Kiev are just in rented office space. So we were lucky. We got fed lunch with all the kids, and snack besides. We got to see the funny cleaning ladies all the time, and spy on the hot gym teacher, Andrey, whose gym windows just happened to be across the courtyard from our kindergarden windows. We learned that the lunchladies liked to listen to the radio very very loudly to drown out the noisy kids at lunch, and that they yelled at anyone who didn't finish their food. Anyways, the teachers in my group were Lia, Alison, Bear, and Ryan. Christine was there a few days a week also, she was our Head Teacher (someone who had been with the program before, who supervised, helped us and kept the relations good between us and the Foreign Coordinator) Oh, and our coordinator.. her name is Oksana, and she deserves an entry all to herself!! SO anyways, back to the subject at hand. Lunch. It was us girls who were always so excited for lunch. The guys appreciated it also, but we were much more vocal about it. Counting down the minutes until 1:30 was a favorite pastime. Soup was unfailingly on the menu first, borscht more often than not. That is the famous Ukrainian dish, you know. Beet soup. It became a favorite of us all (besides Lia, who couldn't look at the cabbage without turning green.. this brough on some funny moments later on..) The lunch ladies supplied us with baskets of rye bread (who likes rye bread anyways??) but we grew to love that too. Then would be some sort of meat, chicken on the bone or a 'meat roll' (unidentifiable meat pulverized and formed into an oval, with a chunk of hard-boiled egg in the middle.. covered in bread crumbs and fried of course..). Sometimes pasta or rice would accompany it, but usally buckwheat kasha would be the side. It's more strongly flavored than you would expect, and at first I thought it was gross.. but it's an aqcuired taste, and before the end, I acquired it :) On several occasions we had fried fish.. and it would invariably taste like dirt, and would be left untouched on our plates. Personally, I like to think it had something to do with the Dneiper River, and how it's still polluted with radioactive silt from Chernobyl (you know, that nuclear reactor that blew up in '86?? Yeah it's about 90 miles north of Kiev..) I mean, where else are they going to get their fish from?! But we adored lunch, every day it was anticipated with much joy. Probably we were all just so hungry because we cooked for ourselves there at the beginning.. ---
  
  

(Maidan Nezalezhnosti, one of my favorite places in the city)

• Kiev itself. Most people think that Ukraine came from Russia, but it's actually the other way around. Kievan Rus was founded around 880 AD, and was an early predecessor of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. So people have been living in that particular spot for over 1200 years! It's incredible when you think about it. I just love Kiev, it is the capital and has a population of 4 million people. There were always things going on, especially on Kreshchatyk (the main road running through downtown Kiev, leading to Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square). Free concerts, political demonstrations, souvenir shopping, break dancers, musicians, acrobats, etc.. there was always something to see, and I loved walking around in that area anytime of day or night. Even rain or shine! The rain can be endured if you're with the right person and have an ice cream cone in your hand. ---