Global Lenses: Seeing the World in New Ways: On American Soil!

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine

Today, we spent the morning learning about the school system in Ukraine. It is very complicated because they have made the transition over time from the Russian system to their own system. Students start school at seven and go until they are 18. The last two years of school, they can choose a path to go to college or to get other training in things like working in a preschool or becoming a mechanic. They have compulsory testing like we do and entrance exams for getting into college. Parents must pay for some things, and will often pay to get their children into better schools!
After we have our morning classes, we had lunch in what is called a pie shop. Everything that they sells is in pies and you can get meat or sweet pies. I had a potato and mushroom pie. It was very good! Then I had a sweet raspberry pie for desert! YUM!!!
We then went to the U.S. Embassy. This was the second time that I have gotten yelled at since I have been here. The first time was at the airport when I tried to take a picture of the bathroom sign, which by the way is a triangle with the small point up for girls and down for boys. It took a minute to figure out!! Anyway, the second time was when we arrived at the embassy. We tried to take a picture of a sign right at the gate but they wouldn't let us. I had taken two and the guard stood there and watched while I deleted the pictures! The guards are not American but are hired Ukrainians which really surprised me. We had a tour of the building and spoke with people from the political division and the economics division. Ukraine is still struggling to get ahead and corruption seems to be a hugh problem but many of the people that we have talked with seem optimistic that things are improving!
We then headed back into downtown for dinner and went to a ballet at the Kyiv Opera House. The building is very old and very beautiful. I enjoyed the ballet, the music, and all of the wonderful costumes. It was raining but some of us decided to walk anyway. We stopped at a bookstore along the way to see the Twilight and Hunger Games books in Russian. There are some pictures below!!