As with every month with the Access English Program here in Lugansk (which gives under-privelaged high school students an opportunity to improve their English and American cultural knowledge all while interacting with a native speaker), it's time for our December cultural event! Hmmm...December cultural event...what could we possibly do for that?
Yup, American Christmas madness (with a few Ukrainian goodies and touches thrown in) was the theme of the evening!
In Ukraine, all of the "Christmasy" stuff that we're familiar with happens for them on New Year's instead (thanks to the atheist Soviet regimen basically outlawing actual Christmas back in the day, and instead pushing for the more secular New Year's as the time to party--today, New Year's is the biggest celebration in Ukraine). Now that the country is no longer under the Soviet's Scrooge-ness, Christmas has regained it's popularity (although it's celebrated here on January 7th), but has yet to surpass what New Year's has become here. Interesting!
To start off our celebrations, I gave a Power Point presentation on a ton of Christmas traditions that we celebrate in America: Christmas card writing, candy cane and gingerbread men eating, hanging stockings and trimming trees (of course, it's a New Year's Tree here), decorating houses with lights, Christmas shopping, family dinners, Christmas morning, etc. For each tradition, the students had to tell how it is similar or different from New Year's/Christmas traditions in Ukraine so that I could get a little cultural schooling as well!
Afterwards, some of the kids had a brilliant and dramatic oral interpretation of a Christmas poem in English! Talented ones, they are:
And I surprised all of them with some genuine candy canes straight from America (thanks to Jacob's Aunt Elaine for the thoughtful shipment). Can you believe that it was their first time gnawing on a good 'ol candy cane? I told them that when they grow up, they are personally responsible for getting candy canes imported into Ukraine! Major homework assignment.
Finally, it was time for that most traditional time of the evening when we all make psychedelic paper snowflakes:
Armed with Christmas goodies, chocolates, and ornaments, we're very merry:
Another event, another reminder that it's only T-minus one day until my Christmas awaits me in Germany, and then again back in Ukraine!
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