12 Sept, 2015
I was met at the train station in Ternopil by Iryna Kokol’, the Director of the school and Mary, an English teacher who serves as my translator, and John Stepanovich, who is the driver (and a jack of all trades). As is the custom, the women dressed in very nice clothes to greet me, which in this case included tight, shiny clothes and five inch heels (and three inch fingernails!). They are incredibly beautiful and I tried hard not to laugh as I watched them struggle to manage a suitcase between them, stepping carefully over the broken concrete and dirt that serves as the sidewalk. In an act defying the laws of gravity, we somehow managed to get all four of us plus my enormous mound of luggage into the tiny car. I was delivered to my apartment where they took me step by step through all the features (“Here is how you light the cooktop…okay, now you try”….”Show us how you lock your door and how to check the little hole for strangers”). Once the basics were covered, we walked together to the Center where I will be working. It’s very close (less than 10 min) but there are many, many tall apartment complexes in the area and the paths are confusing. So, I say it is 7 minutes as the crow flies, but 25 when Kathleen tries J
TOCER
Ternopil Oblast (Regional) Center on Education and Rehabilitation – TOCER for short, sits in a former elementary school building and it looks like an ordinary school. Maybe not an American school, but nonetheless you would recognize it as a school as soon as you walked in. From all I had read, I was expecting a bleak environment with few resources or compassion. I could not have been more wrong. First, this is not an orphanage but a school and nearly all of the children live with their families at home. Those who live nearby sleep at home and attend school during the day. Those who live further away sleep in the dorms at school during the week and then go home on the weekends. It is similar to how state schools for children who are deaf or blind run in the US. The building itself is bright and cheery. Because it was the weekend, there were only a few children there – kicking around a ball and looking shy. I’ll meet the whole school on Monday.
We had a nice lunch together at school, and then they walked me back to my apartment and (at my request) I was given Sunday off to unpack and settle in.