Tuesday May 10th, 2011 - Blog #3

Today was our first day at the University for our language classes. All of our host mothers helped us find our way to the University by taking a VERY crowded bus ride and then showed us to our classroom where everyone was invited for an introduction session. Here we got to meet our professors as well as the dean and all those important people involved with the program from Ukraine's end of things! This was then followed by 2.5 hours of Ukrainian language class where we found out the format of the next month and also that Jessica and I would be in our own classes seperate from the others as they would have a differnt structure for different credits. This ended up being great because it was as though we had a one-on-one professor! In our first class we learned how to say the alphabet and learned what the alphabet looked liked! This is VERY different from our English alphabet as theirs is more symbols based, and yet some of these symbols look a lot like some English letters, so trying to wrap my head around that was an experience in itself! We began to learn some very simple Ukrainian phrases like "Good Morning" and "Thank-you" along with some others.

We then went and had lunch at a cafe that is in the University, they had a special room set up for the 4 of us (this is where we will be eatting everyday while we are at the University!) The food at the cafe is amazing of course and full of flavour! Today we had red brosch, these delicious mashed potatos, and an omlette made with chicken and veggies!

After lunch we had some free time where I actually got access to the Internet for the first time!!! This was VERY exciting as I was able to tell everyone that I made it here safe and sound! Following our free time we had our first tutor session for an hour. Jessica and I's tutors are Alla and Olesya... they are both very awesome and seem as though they will be very fun to be around! We then went to our first cultural activities class where we began to make taditional Easter eggs. We were told that we were to make 'clothes' for our eggs out of string and beads. They showed us what seemed like a very hard process for making these 'clothes'. However once we got under way it was easy enough!! They are sure to turn our amazing, and look my first souvenior!!

When we were done school for the day our tutors came on the bus with us to make sure we got home safe... We did a lot of walking as Chris and Jessica were not 100% about how to get home, but once we dropped off Kalyn I was able to get myself home no problem. **This one is for all of you whom I have called because I have been lost - I'd just like to say that I am in a country I have never been (which is very maze like) and I got myself home after only making the trip once (in the dark)... I may just come home some kind of directions Super Star!!**

After this very long walk around all the apartment complexes I came home to a hot dinner of pasta and chicken and boy was it Amazing! Somethings so simple with SOOO much flavour! Following dinner I needed to do some homework, so with the language barrier Slava did her best to help me with my homework! It is interesting that we are able to still understand one another with knowing no Ukrainian at this point... We do a lot of looking things up in my little phrase book and making a lot of hand gestures!!

Something I noticed this morning when Slava gave me a HUGE omlette for breakfast, and I went out and got some bananas, organges and apples from the supermarket to have for breakfast... Slava asked me what I wanted for breakfast and I told her this fruit chopped up in a bowl and she thought this was very strange... she believes I should have bread, butter, cheese, and salomi for breakfast because fruit salad is for dessert. When I told her that this is what I wanted she shrugged her shoulders and laughed!!

We will see what she actually comes up with in the morning for breakfast!

xoxo