librarians and Ukrainian roommates

I've always gotten along well with librarians, going back all the way to my pre-school-aged days, when I couldn't see over the counter but brought my invisible pet dinosaur to Story Hour. My rapport with librarians has gotten me out of study hall in middle school, found me a Quiz Bowl coach in high school, and helped me get a private tour of MSU's Special Collections in undergrad.

So today I found out that this isn't just something that happens to me in the U.S. I had to go to L'viv Post-Graduate Institute today to drop off a stack of questionnaires, and I decided to stop by their library to see if a lesson plan that Nelya and I submitted to a Ukrainian pedagogical journal for English back in fall 2007 ever got published, so I could know whether or not I could put it on my resume. The librarian was very helpful, and found me many, many bound volumes of the journal. Unfortunately, it looks like our lesson plan never got published, but the librarian, who is herself a history teacher and apparently has a lot of things published, assured me that what I should do is submit the same lesson plan to a Kharkiv publisher (instead of Kyiv), because they aren't as backed up. She even gave me the phone number of the publisher and told me to mention her name. I don't actually want to publish anything right now--I just was curious what had happened to our lesson plan, and I'm not even sure if I have the files for it--but I was amazed at how helpful she was.

After that, I told her about my thesis, and she bustled around finding me journals in Ukrainian with articles on Communicative Language Teaching, let me check them out to go make copies, and even told me where the closest copy center was (of course the library wouldn't have a copy machine...). I was pleasantly surprised at how willing she was to be helpful, and she told me to come back again if there was anything I needed. I've experienced this level of helpfulness several times this summer, but usually when I was introduced to the person by someone else who had some level of authority. This was just me going in and asking a question.

~*~

Yesterday, I visited Zhanna, a woman I met at church. Zhanna immigrated to the US in her early 20s and got a degree from Fuller Seminary, but now she's back in Ukraine doing seminars in schools on drug and alcohol abuse. She and I, along with her roommate Vira and their friend Tanya, hung out all afternoon, eating homemade pizza and cherry coffeecake (Lisa, if you remember my blueberry cake that took forever to finish baking, they had the same problem) and talking about life, religion, and randomness. Lots of fun.

I particularly enjoyed watching Zhanna and Vira and realizing that roommates are roommates the world over. (Zhanna told me before we got there, "Vira and I get along well. But sometimes we even argue." I believe I have 3 former roommates and 1 roommate-to-be reading this blog, and I doubt this surprises any of you.) I asked Vira, "Does Zhanna ever mix things up and speak English by mistake?" since I occasionally do so in Ukrainian, particularly when startled. She grinned and said, "Yes, and then I tell her I have no idea what she's saying." Lisa should appreciate that. :)

Kracow this weekend, barring unforseen circumstances (such as no train tickets available when I go buy one tomorrow, which seems unlikely).