Sorry for the delay in updating; following the intense and super long days of traveling to Odessa we hit the ground running and really haven't had much time to stop and update!
So, here is your quick synopsis of the 2015 Ukraine Missions Trip so far! Our team, Shawn Knauts, Conrad & Debi Hake, and Andrew Noble, left Columbia at 9:30 am Friday morning. After arriving in St Louis, we realized our flight out of St Louis was delayed, thus causing us to miss the next connecting flights. After working hard to find alternate flights, the best option (to arrive in Odessa by Sunday) included flying from St Louis to Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emerites) to Moscow, then on to Odessa. With flight times and 4-5 hour layovers at each airport, we ended up living on planes or in airports for almost 48 hours. Needless to say, we were excited to actually walk out of an airport!
Sunday evening was the night the Ukraine Campus Crusade team had planned for us to all go to see the Swan Lake ballet at the "third most beautiful opera and ballet house in the world." It was indeed beautiful, and a great experience! Unfortunately most of us were so exhausted after not sleeping in the plane that we had a difficult time staying awake.
The following day, Monday, began the English Clubs. Clubs are from 6:00-9:00 pm, and this year there were 140 students that signed up as interested in attending the clubs, with 110 accepted after the interview process. We began Monday with 28-32 students in each class; Conrad teaching the beginner class, with quite a bit of tranlsation involved. Andrew is teaching the advanced class, and although there is a CRU helper, there is no interpretation at all occuring. Shawn is teaching the Intermediate 1 class, requiring some interpretation, but not all the time. And Debi is teaching the Intermediate 2 class, requiring no interpretation.
It was great to see how some of the students had VERY good English, and communicating was quite easy. Most understand and and very well, and the responding or verbalizing is the hard part. But even so, the level communication was awesome!
English Clubs are structured in a 2-part format, with the first 1.5 hours consisting of introductions, an ice-breaker game, vocabularly sections, explanation of idioms, pronunciation or usage of words, with 1 or 2 extra activities as needed.
1 comment:
For me, Kiev is the dream city of romance, adventure and inspiration. At the first time in the Ukrainian capital, I was lucky enough to visit it in 2010 and the first days of stay I fell in love with this amazing city. With the help of http://touristclub.kiev.ua/ travel company a had a great tour.
Post a Comment