I went to the city center, to the MTS outlet where I had purchased the plug-in modem. They weren't able to help me there, so they sent me to the main MTS center on Fedyntsya Street, not far from there. I had thought that I had bought one month of internet access, and that the month was up. The people at Fedyntsya MTS told me that there was no set calendar limit; they explained that under their system, I started with an account of X hrivna (whatever I had initially purchased). Any day on which I used the MTS device to access the internet, I used up 5 hrivna of the amount in my account. Only on those days I actually used MTS internet service was my account charged. The salesman explained that I still had 20 hrivna in my account; since I was there, I decided to add another 100 hrivna. The salesman showed me how all I had to do was go to a machine similar to an ATM, enter the phone number associated with my device, and put whatever hrivna I wanted into the slot. I had much better service at the Fedyntsya Street location than at the store in the city center.
I had some time to kill before Maryna's 5:00 class at the English School, so I went to the "Old Cafe" for a small beer and apple strudel. The Old Cafe is becoming one of my favorite places; their strudel is "duzhe smachno"!!!
In Teatalna Square, there were several booths set up by political parties. One woman from Julia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchenka Party offered me a pamphlet. I explained that I was an American, and couldn't vote. One kid in his early twenties overheard me say that I was American, and came over to talk to me. He introduced himself, his name was Artyum, and he was with the Svoboda Party booth. I've read a lot of negative things about the Svoboda Party, that they are xenophobic, anti-Semitic, fascistic, etc, but Artyum seemed to have none of those qualities. He was very friendly, interested in me and what I was doing here, welcoming me to Ukraine, shaking my hand and actually hugging me! - he just thought it was the greatest thing in the world that an American with Ukrainian (Rusyn) ancestry came to visit Ukraine.
Maryna's class today with teenagers - 13 to 16 - was very fun and interesting. First Maryna had the class make a fruit salad, assigning various tasks to everyone - peeling oranges, slicing apples and banana's, etc. This gave them practical experience in following directions in English. After the fruit salad was prepared, Maryna had each of the children go to other classrooms, offering fruit salad to the teachers and students in those rooms, and serving them.
The majority of the class time was spent role playing, with different scenarios. In one scenario, one student had to be a ne'er-do-well grandson asking his rich grandmother for $300,000 to start a business; another student played the grandmother, who was tightfisted and stingy, and who had not had a visit or phone call from her grandson in 3 years.
In the second scenario, one student was a homeless person, who had been staying with a friend for the past month. The other student was the friend, who had to tell the homeless person that he was kicking him out.
In another, a student who was going away on vacation, had to ask her neighbor (who hates cats) to look after her cat while she was gone.
In the last scenario, a fiance had to tell his bride-to-be that he lost the wedding rings on the day before the wedding.
Some of the things the kids came up with was really imaginative and hilarious. It was also a good way to get the two very quiet girls to participate.
After class, back on Teatralna Square, there was a mini-version of tomorrow's Nite Ride. The theme for this bicycle ride is "Charlie Chaplin", so everyone is encouraged to dress like Chaplin. The police block off traffic along the bike route, there's music, singing, food, prizes, and I think even a movie. The prize for tomorrow's Nite Ride is 2 tickets to a vacation in Romania.
The weather for tomorrow is supposed to be beautiful - nice Indian Summer day, sunny and warm, but not hot. Should be a nice day.
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