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At the start of the third week, we all returned to Dnipropetrovsk. Sean left for Canada on the Sunday evening, and Gary was to leave for his summer job in Switzerland on Tuesday morning. So Monday, Gary and I went for a little tour of DP, which turned out to be a much nicer city than we were expecting. We had been told it was the "industrial heartland" of Ukraine, which we interpreted (with encouragement) to mean "ugly". But it's actually quite a nice city. Vitaliy showed us around for a while; we were hoping to go into the WWII museum, but it was closed, so we had to satisfy ourselves with looking at the old relics outside.
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After seeing the war machinery, went for a walk down along the river. We crossed over a pedestrian bridge onto an island that had a petting zoo and an aquarium, which is apparently the largest aquarium in Easter Europe. I have to say, it wasn't all that impressive, and they seem to be trying to save money by not turning on the lights. That makes it a little hard to see things, unfortunately. We came back to the mainland and stopped at a riverside cafe, where I had a very interesting vodka martini - the martini came out bright yellow. When I asked the waitress "vodka martini?", she just said "da". Rrrrrriiiight. It didn't taste anything like one.
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Tuesday, I did some relief teaching for Mark Souvenir, who's been partying far too hard with the students at DP Agra. I taught the Hovey & Beard case, which went well, but not spectacularly.
The students are scared of me! Yes! Tuesday during the break when I was teaching Hovey & Beard, one of the students came up to me and said "I hope you excuse us for being nervous. You see, the two other teachers are always smiling and laughing and joking with us, and...we're a little bit scared of you." Bloody cracked me up. First, that they're scared of me, and second that a student would actually TELL me that. :)
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Wednesday, I subbed for Alison and taught Greaves Brewery. The classes at DP Agra are quite young; Rishi and Mark's class is a bit more mature, but Ewen and Alison's class is full of giggly young girls. A photographer came in to hand out class photos he had taken earlier, and at the end of class everyone swarmed around Ewen and Alison for their "autographs". I was asked for my share as well, since I had sat in on the afternoon class and spent a few minutes talking to them about my background.
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Today was the final day of teaching for me. I spent the morning teaching Greaves Brewery for Alison and Ewen's class, and it went fairly well. We managed to get through all of the major teaching points in an hour and a half, which was quicker than I expected. Afterwards, the translator Anha told me that she really liked the way I handled the class. Coming from a professor at the university, it made me feel very good, indeed.
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On our last day in DP - Thursday evening - the students from DP Agra and Rail all showed up at the Kiev train station to say goodbye to us. It was a very nice and touching farewell. I hadn't spent too much time with the students, but the other teachers were quite upset to be leaving, as were their students.
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They escorted us right to the train, with the students carrying all our luggage for us. I couldn't believe how wonderful they were. As the train was pulling out of the station, many of them ran alongside, waving as they ran until we were out of sight. I can't wait to go back again next year.
But for now, it was on to Kiev for a one-night layover, then on to Prague for the side-trip.
©2004-2005 Kamal Gautam