languages and research

Monday night, we had a very international evening. Natalya and Olgert, my host parents, have friends visiting from Poland, and those friends had invited friends of theirs from Germany to come stay for a few days. This brings the total number of people in the house up to eight, with me being less than half everyone else's age. More interesting is the fact that we all speak a slightly different set of languages, with six languages total between the eight of us. Everything that gets said has to be translated for someone, but we're doing pretty well. The breakdown is as follows:

German man: German, English, French
German woman, German, French, some English
Polish man: Polish, German, Russian
Polish woman: Polish, Russian, some German
Natalya (Ukrainian): Ukrainian, Russian, Polish
Olgert (Ukrainian but of Polish ethnicity): Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, French
John (American): English, rudimentary Ukrainian and Russian
Me: English, Ukrainian, and Russian (and I'm surprised how much Polish I understand)

As you can imagine, it's quite something. Everyone's here until Thursday, when we all leave (our program is going to Kyiv for a few days), and Natalya said she's going to pretty much collapse at that point.

Language classes are going pretty well. I've decided that partway through a grad program in learning how to teach languages is a horrible time to take language classes, as I've spent a year developing opinions how it should Be Done Properly, and while this isn't at all how I would teach grammar, I can tell that it's paying off, at least in how I write. My oral language may be fairly fixed by this point, and I have a few Russianisms that my teacher continues to comment on that I can't seem to shake loose, but the classes really are helpful.

What's most frustrating about the program is that I feel like I primarily speak Ukrainian in class. It isn't like Balaklia where I did basically everything in Ukrainian (except teach, I suppose, although I ended up using a lot more Ukrainian in class by the end than at the beginning). Here, I spend time with the American students, or we're going on trips to museums and everything gets translated (which makes sense, as we have some beginners in the group), or I'm wandering around by myself and can order things in cafes in Ukrainian. But I don't have a social life in Ukrainian, and I miss that. Or perhaps I just miss having a social life in Ukraine. I'm not quite sure how to meet people here. I asked about getting a conversation partner, but that's difficult right now because it's summer vacation and there aren't many students around.

However, I did get to speak Ukrainian this afternoon, and it was directly connected to my thesis! An English professor at the university who I had been introduced to connected me to the head of social programs at the university, who called the head of the teacher recertification institute (for all subjects) for L'viv Oblast, who introduced me to one of the people responsible for running the English recertification program, who said (slightly condensed), "You only have 9 surveys with you? I'll take those now, and can you please bring 35 copies on Monday, as we're getting in a new group of teachers? And would you please speak to the teachers about your life and what you're learning about TESOL and how people teach English as a native language in the U.S?"

Not to mention, I got several surveys turned back in to me today already from other sources and have an interview scheduled for next week! I'm really impressed with people's willingness to be helpful, and it's nice to be going through the university, as that gives me access to contacts I wouldn't otherwise be able to get on my own.