LIFE IN ODESA, March 3-9, 2013

                                                          LIFE IN ODESA, March 3-9, 2013

                                                                                     

                                       
I received some emails with questions about the blog, what I do, when do I have fun, so I thought I would write about my out of class activities. (After the last post, you may have gotten the idea that there is a lot of time when I am not in class.)

Q: Hey, Sam, where are the pictures of guys? (anonymous) 

OK, look above. These 4 guys took me to "Our Pub" as they called it, one Friday night. The pub is a restaurant on the square that surrounds City Gardens, one of the key gathering places in Odesa. The pub makes its own beer, serves authentic Ukrainian food, has an English menu and is pretty good. Turns out that these guys are like most of the students I either met or saw outside of class, they just don't drink much. Each of these students had one .05L of beer, except Oleg, the guy one from the left, who drove. He drank tea. Ukraine has very strict drinking and driving laws, I was never in a car with anyone that I suspected had been drinking; as far as I could tell, drivers know about and make sure that they don't run a foul of the tough sanctions imposed when you are caught having had too much to drink. In order, Victor, Oleg, Sergei, Valerie. I think the evening was her idea. Sergie and Valerie were class monitors. That means that they carried around an old fashioned class enrollment book, with the names of student in their section, the monitor took the book to each professor at the end of class and the space for that class period was  initialed by the lecturer. I never found out if the monitors check off who attends each class or not.
Anyway, that was a fun evening.

Q: What do you do for fun? See above.

No, seriously; every day is fun! It really is. Too confront a very different culture and learn how to function in it, is fun.

Q: What else do you do besides have fun?

In January I read all five books comprising Game of Thrones on my Kindle. Quick review--First one was dynamite, second very very good, in the third I started losing track of the characters, fourth and fifth became to fantastical for me. (But then I am a very serious lawyer, scholar, who has come to Odesa to convert Ukrainian law students in to exponents of Democracy and The American Way of Life.) But, during those long cold nights in my little apartment, when I had no Internet, Game of Thrones was a wonderful companion.

Q: What are you eating? 

To start with, not very much. I have Fiber One (1/4C) and Ukraine Muesli like stuff (1/2C) with 1C, 0% fat yogurt, a grapefruit, 1 oz of cheese. If I eat lunch in the school cafeteria, it could be excellent steamed salmon with rice, or a serving of also excellent mashed potatoes, or maybe a serving of OK only spaghetti. More often I have a cappuccino and a cookie or slice of cake around 2:00 or after class if the class meets from 1:20 -2:40 that day. At night, I developed a one dish meal made of a package of frozen vegetables, cooked in my skillet, flavored with soy sauce, with the lid on so it steams more than fries. Sometimes I added salmon or an egg. Sounds much worse than it actually was. But I usually ate cheese and Rye Wasa crackers or cheese and bread.

                                                                             

                                                                ROBIN BOBIN CAFE

Q: How about eating out?

 I burned out on Peoples' Cafe/Bar/Sushi/Games Restaurant in February when I went there almost every night to use the Internet and make Skype calls to the USA. (Odesa is 7 hours ahead of the EST and 8 ahead of CST)  Robin Bobin is on the street that runs beside the Academy. (See the photograph of the side entrance, blog entry) It is pretty good, they have a year or two old English menu. When I pick out my dish the waitperson compares the price with current ones and makes sure I understand if there is a difference. Smoking inside public places was banned in Ukraine last year, but for some reason uknown to me or the students that I have met at Robin Bobin, customers are allowed to smoke in one inside room. There are several Robin Bobins  around the city, each has different decor. This one has been updated to American West decorations. There are saddles, spurs, prints of the Grand Canyon. It is very lovely with tasty food. (Any time a Ukrainian described food that he or she liked in English, the words used were always "tasty" or "very tasty". I do not take the bus to the city center to eat during the week as it is a minimum of thirty minutes each way.

Q: Do you have a daily routine? 

Funny someone asked that, because I did. I got up every day at 6:30 or 7:00 a.m., went for an hour walk, came back, had a cup or two of instant coffee, ate my grapefruit, followed by cereal, and my oz. of cheese. Showered when necessary (tried to avoid showers as I never knew when the hot water would become cold water) and was usually at the school by 9:30. Every Friday, I took a hundred dollar bill to my local Diamond Bank branch and turned it into 811 Hrvina. Unfortunately, the weather turned very cold the third week of February, and I did not walk for about a week. When I started again, I found that I had lost significant condition and walking  very far was difficult. But I knew that I would walk each day within a few weeks I would be back in walking condition.

Any problems with buy food and other sundries? 

Not really, except that although I could tell fish from fowl and fowl from meat, I could not differentiate between meats. One night I cooked what I thought was beef and it turned out to be pork. I have learned that if you can remember to speak a few words of the language, "please, thank you, good morning, hello, good bye", it helps tremendously when paying for items. I also always have my money or credit card ready in order not to hold up the line. Just like grocery stores in the states; Ukrainians become upset when they have to wait in check out lines for people who did not get their fruit, vegetables or cheese priced or can't seem to find the correct amount of money.

                                           
                                                  ANOTHER UKRAINE  CHAIN RESTAURANT
                                                    (ON THE CORNER, SEE THE BUNTING)

Q: What are the laundries and dry cleaners like? Do you spend much time in laundromats? 

No, I don't because I have a washing machine. I believe that almost all apartments have a washing machine.
I was shown, incorrectly, how to use it by Barskyy the first day I was taken to the apartment. His wife visited on 15 February, the Friday, when the Internet Provider Company had two "engineers" appear to
fix the Internet, and showed me the correct way to use the machine. It worked extremely well until mid-March when it started acting strangely. The last month or so, it never shut off. One morning I started the machine at 9:00 and when I came home that evening around 8:00 p.m., it was still dutifully cleaning my clothes. Another time I put it on at 8:00 p.m., went to bed around 11:00 and woke to hear its cheerful hum as it went in and out of the rinse and spin cycle.  So, I learned to just shut it off after four hours, and let my clothes drain over the bath tub before hanging them on the clothes rack for complete drying.

Q: Is it extremely cold?

No, Odesa is on the Black Sea and is much warmer than inland Ukraine. It is cold in February and March, with temperatures in the high 20's at night and high 30's to low 40's by day; but there was not a great deal of snow; no snow banks to walk through and very little ice on the sidewalks. There is a very strange phenomenon regarding the weather. In the morning, the temperature might be quite temperate and then become cooler, even cold as the day went on, even when there was a bright sun. Each day, the wind would shift from coming out of the sea, to blowing from the interior and dumping  very cold air into the city. Just the opposite of what I thought would happen, the day would cool down, instead of warm up despite bright sunshine.

Don't miss the next installment, which which will discuss my agreement to prepare and give eight lectures on American Law, report the results of my film series and contain other scintillating information about Odesa. (The Russian and English spelling is Odessa, but in Ukrainian the word is spelled Odesa. Although Russian is the lingua franca of the region around Odesa and the Crimea, the Ukrainian spelling is  always used with the Roman alphabet.)
                                                                               -30-

Test 5

                                                           FEBRUARY 16-MARCH 1, 2013
                                                                                         

                                                              MY CLASSROOM

This is the Academy auditorium. The curtain in the background divides the room into two parts. I am taking the picture from the right side aisle near the stage. This hall is used for all kinds of things, on Saturdays and Sundays the community stages talent shows. Students from different faculties put on shows as well. The Academy is divided into faculties which teach subject areas and institutes. The three Institutes are: Prosecution and Investigation, Professional Judges Training, Intellectual Property located in Kyiv. (I think it ironic that the Academy has an Institute of Intellectual Property Law as the Ukraine Government has used pirated software since its inception. It announced this year that payments would be made for software being used but as of today's date, there has only been the announcement, no payments!) The nine faculties are: Judicial and administrative Law, International Legal Relations and Legal Journalism, Civil and Economic Justice, Social Law, Advocacy, Legal Political Science and sociology, Police Investigators Training, correspondence and Evening Studies and Correspondence Studies Faculty No. 2 "(for persons obtaining second university degree)".  I teach in the Faculty of International Law and Journalism. The largest Institute and Faculty is Prosecution and Investigation.

The students are really young. Many are only 16 when they start at the Academy of Law. The students in the photographs  are 4th year students so most are 19 or 20 years old. There are no legal fraternities or sororities and each faculty provides extra curricular activities similar to Intramural. In the fall there is a beauty pageant and the "Most Beautiful" Student is crowned. One of my former Estonian students told me that such practices are common in former soviet block countries. Unfortunately, my photographs of the display boards from previous pageants were lost when my laptop crashed in London on May 9th.

As you can see from their faces, these students are absolutely fascinated by whatever comment I was making when taking the photograph. I found it very difficult to teach in this room, as it was so large and I had to sit on the stage in order to connect my laptop to the projector. I believe this room was the only one in the entire school with laptop to projector capability. Had I known that, I would have brought my own as a visiting Professor from the University of Bologna, Italy did in April. Every other school in which I have taught in Eastern Europe, Estonia, Latvia, Russia,  had its own portable projector.

Additionally, this class is really large, over 50 attended, and I was never given an actual role of class members. I was provided with a list of all students from various faculties who could take the class or signed up for the class, was never sure which. This roster was divided by faculties, not in alphabetical order, and over half of the people listed never attended a single time. When my student assistant called role, it took over three minutes and I could not understand her. Coupled with the fact that the class met 4 times the first two weeks and then only 4 times the next 4 weeks; I had great difficulty learning the names of my students. Learning and pronouncing their names correctly is a huge part of my presentation effort, so to not be able to do so proved very very frustrating.

                                                                         

                                           Two Clearly Enraptured Students, Ilona and Olga

This is not a "wired" school, unlike the other institutions in which I have taught. At St. Petersburg State University, Faculty of Law, the entire first year courses and all reference or reasearch material that is thought to be needed has been scanned and available over the school's Internet. The library had over 160 Apple computers when I taught there in the spring of 2011, that were available for students and every student in my class, about 30 individuals, had laptops or iPads. Whenever I wished to send out course materials, I put them on a flash drive, took it to the International Office and it was dispatched post haste. In Tartu, Estonia, my class had its own webpage with all students listed. I posted assignments and class information on it. Not so here in Odesa, after about a week of asking, I was provided with a list of the possible students' email addresses, then the next day a list of all emails for students who might be in the class. Thereafter I would send out an email addressed to about 110 people with class information.

I was also told, and it makes a lot of sense, that visiting professors were not encourage to have things printed and handed out because of the waste of paper. That reminded me of an American attorney who taught in a former Soviet Bloc school and shipped his "course" materials which included 50 notebooks for students. Each notebook was about 250 pages, the cost of shipping was $650 and the receiving nation's customs duties were an additional $300+. So thumb or flash drives is the way to go.
After the first four class meetings, I had given a lecture about alternative dispute resolution, what it is, the different avenues disputants may take; a lecture about basic principles of negotiation and the students had seen a DVD which depicted six different sets of attorneys, negotiating the same problem with six different results. It was a good start, but very different from what they were used to when taking a course taught in English.
                                                                         

                                                                Daria and Marina

Note the dividing curtain with a blonde student standing in front of it. I think that is Anna, who had long hair that had never been cut. Her mother's had been cut once, and her mother's mother (grandmother) had also had only one or two cuttings in her life time. Oh, beind D and M sits one of my favorite students, Kristian, she was in both courses I taught, was a third year student, and invited me to a concert where she danced. (You won't read about that until we get to March. At the rate I am composing that will be in August?)

The Academy is trying to establish an American Law Department. As a result, it readily invites visiting professors who will lecture in English. The Italian I mentioned earlier gave two lectures about basic structure of Italian corporations in English. Many courses are also taught by Ukrainian faculty members in English. I lost an entire class period in March when the students were asked to fill out a long questionnaire about the Ukrainian professors who lectured in English. It took over an hour for everyone to complete the survey. These courses are usually taught every day for two weeks. Almost all courses taught in English end by the third week in April, this year Friday, April 19.

  I had been invited by the Academy to teach from February to May, so I planned a course which met once a week for three hours and submitted a syllabus to both the school and the Fulbright selection committee utilizing that scheme. Only when I got to the Academy was I informed that I would be teaching six times every four weeks,  that each class period would last eighty minutes, and that my last classes would meet on April 18.  So I spent the first ten days or so  modifying the course, removing quite a bit of material, and giving it a general over haul to comply with the different parameters. (I am stopping here because my laptop is acting up on me. 26 May.)

  (30 May, continuing this blog entry) My class first meetings: for February and March;  February: 12 (Class No. 1, 10:00-11:20), 14 (Class No. 2, 11:50-13:10), 19 (C;ass No. 3, 10:00-11:20) , 21 (Class No. 4, 13:20-14:40), 26 (Class No. 5, 13:20-14:40);  March:  05, (Class 6, 13:20-14:40) 14 (Class No. 7, 11:50-13:10), 19 (Class No. 8, 13:20-14:40) 28 (Class No. 9, 11:50-13:10).  My class has a great deal of student participation. It was difficult to keep up a good  rhythm with the continual change, although we did always meet in the large auditorium as mentioned previously. The length between class meetings threw me for a loop, however, as I found that I forgot student names when I didn't see them for nine days (note gaps between  March 5-14 and then March 19-28)   I did learn that meeting in the morning at 10:00 was the best  time for class, the 11:50 to 13:10 time was OK, but quite a few students missed the lunch break period from 11:20-11:50, so were restless and hungry, while others were sort of sleepy from lunch. But the absolute worst time was 13:20-14:40 as people were either hungry, tired and cranky; or full, sleepy and cranky. Still we all perservered and kept pushing forward.
                                                                               -30-

TEACHING FEBRUARY 11-15; 18-22

                                                      TEACHING FEBRUARY 11-15; 18-22


                                                                                   

                                           SIDE ENTRANCE TO THE NATIONAL
                                              UNIVERSITY "ODESA ACADEMY
                                                                    OF LAW"

Well finally, I am writing about what I came to Odesa, Ukraine, to do; teach Alternative Dispute
Resolution to law students.
ADR: When I visited Odesa, Ukraine in May, 2011, to determine if I wished to apply for a Fulbright fellowship and teach here, ADR was a very hot topic. A national commission had finished its work at the end of 2010 and sent a proposed draft law to Parliament. The European Union, Ukriane is not a member, had ordered all member states to adopt a mediation statute and most had complied. But by 2012, the momentum had died. Ukraine had not adopted an ADR statute; mediation was not being widely used in many European nations. UK is probably the leader. Estonia, where I have taught three times, adopted a statute but no lawyers had been trained, the judges did not order it and "conciliation" as mediation was termed in the Estonian statute was just not used. With that background, we will turn to the Academy of Law in Odesa. (Odesa is the Ukrainian spelling of Odessa.
THE ACADEMY: In 1997, the current President of the Academy came to Ukraine and took over a barely functioning school. Since then he created an academic monster. The school has 17,000 law students in Odesa alone and has campuses in three other cities in Ukraine. Not only is there this facility, but the school also operates out of a ten story building in the Odesa city center.

                                                                            

                                                       ACADEMY MAIN ENTRANCE
         (Yes, that is a giant TV screen which shows various scenes of Academy life and many pictures
          of the President in various activities. The Orthodox church behind is on the campus grounds.)

                                                                                

                                                    ACADEMY SPRING HOUSE
                One may not drink tap water in Odesa (or in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kyiv) so access to
                 spring water is very important. The Academy has tapped a spring and here a line of people
                 wait their turn to fill water bottles.

                                                                               

                                        SIDE VIEW OF CHURCH NEXT TO ACADEMY

THE CLASS: On Tuesday, Feb. 12, I held my first class. It was in a very large hall (pictures will be shown in another blog) and there were about 50+ students in attendance. Classes are for 80 minutes. The first
and second weeks, I taught on Tuesday and Thursday in the "great hall." The classes meet 6 times a month, so I would only meet once a month for the rest of February.
It took Ilona, a student who works in the International Office, about 4 minutes to call the roll, as it listed not just the students who came to class, but rather the 110 students eligible to attend my class. I never received a list of the students who were taking the class. I did receive the same list she used and an electronic list I could use to send out 110 emails with class schedules, topics and assignments. I usually learn all the students' names within 2 or 3 class meetings, but it was impossible to do that in this class because many did sit in the same place; attendance was uneven due to many scheduling conflicts and my brain had trouble connecting the names with the faces when I would only see them once a week.
I sat on the stage at a table. (Think back to high school and your cafeterium, that is what this room is like without the food and movable tables and chairs.) An electric curtain had been lowered from the ceiling dividing the auditorium into two parts. I gave my first lecture feeling very removed from the students. I had been asked if I needed a projector before arriving and this room is the only one that has that feature. Had I known, I would have brought a power point projector; however, the class rooms have non movable chairs which would make it very difficult to have role plays, which are an integral part of my course, so actually this auditorium turned out to be one of two rooms which accommodated what I do.
LIVING ACCOMMODATIONS: Showed the apartment in the last blog post, it was adequate but I the Internet connection would not work. Barskyy actually did not come over to hook up the wireless router until Tuesday, Feb. 12; and though it worked for five minutes, after that it did not. On Friday, Feb. 15, he arranged for an "engineer" from the provider to visit the apartment. Turns out that two actually came inside with Barskyy and his wife. One worked on it for over an hour, then announced that my laptop was the problem and it needed to be taken to a "service center" where Windows could be removed and re-installed. I said to Barskyy, that doesn't make sense because I can connect wirelessly at the Academy in the Admissions' Office, at Peoples' Restaurant in the evening, at two different hotels in Kyiv. He responded that it must be my laptop and he would be happy to take me to a service center. I declined. So for the next two weeks, I had an Internet connection in the Admissions' Office at the Academy, where I started staying until 7:00 p.m., and at Peoples' Restaurant and Bar, which was a 5 minute walk from my apartment.
Unlike the universities in Tartu, Estonia; Riga, Latvia; and St. Petersburg, Russia; wireless was not in every corner of the Academy. Only the Admissions' Office had it all the time and I became a fixture there. I am not certain when the director offered me this hospitality  he expected me to create a permanent office in the room but I did. Each time I would go online in the apartment, the Internet would work for up to 45 minutes then go out. Finally, one night in the last week of February, I did what we all know to do when our wireless router goes out in the states; I unplugged it, waited 5 minutes and plugged it back in. Eureka! I had wireless a again. My nightly visits to Peoples stopped.
I can not explain the magnitude of not having reliable Internet connections in the evening. Peoples was OK, but there was a continual loop of techno music playing that after a few nights became extremely annoying. Odesa is 8 hours ahead of Austin and 7 of the East Coast, making Skype phone calls really could not be done until 5:00 p.m. for Odesa time; I needed the Internet to conduct any business and to talk to family and friends. What was initially annoyance the first week or so, by the end of February was a slow burning anger at Barskyy for putting me in the apartment and then not trying a different router to see if the router was the problem. His doubt about my laptop's capability was so great, that one afternoon (the only time that this ever happened) he showed up in the admission's office to check if my laptop really could access the Internet by wireless as I had told him it could do.
But, I am over emphasizing a discomfort, this week established that I had students, they were interested in the course, and the teaching at the National University "Odesa Academy of Law" would be fun.

Odesa,Ukraine 9-14, February

                                                                 Odesa, 9-14 February

     After the orientation, Valera drove me to Borispol for my 8:50 p.m. one hour flight back to Odesa. He personally walked me into the airport, past the rip off coffee bar and up a flight of stairs. Before we were half way up the stairs, a young man grabbed my suitcase and led us to a traditional Ukrainian food restaurant, long a part of Borispol but now hidden by the very modern addition to the airport. It was heaven sent. Valera even had a restaurant card that gave me a 10% discount. He stayed for a cup of coffee then left, feeling sure that I could get on the plane all by myself. I did. Flew home to Odesa and back to my little apartment. (This paragraph was written on March 20, before a number of problems that you will have a chance to read about delayed further blog entries.)

                                                                           

                                                    APARTMENT LIVING ROOM
 This photograph was sent to me by Professor Vadymm Barskyy, head of the International Office at the
National University Ukraine  "Odesa Academy of Law". I will describe Professor Barskyy as the blog entries continues. No spoilers now. (NOTE I JUST PREVIEWED THE POST, THE LINES ARE OFF IN WHAT YOU SEE, WHAT I SEE HAS PERFECTLY ALIGNED SENTENCES. I am way too late in posting, so will just do so as is, if I can remember how I emailed the first posts.)

                                                                         

                                           LIVING ROOM SHOWING COUCHBED,
                                         COUCH FOR SITTING, TV, TURKISH RUG
Another Barskyy photo. Note width of room as guaged by the couch bed. Reality is very good paint job, but floor covering, though pretty new,  when seen in real life is rather ugly.

                                                                         

                                           
                                   FOR A LEFT HANDED PERSON THE SINK PRESENTS
                                   PROBLEMS, EVEN BEFORE ITS SIZE IS CONSIDERED

The photograph really shows the kitchen in the very best light possible, believe me it is not this nice. The hot
water heater is above the refrigerator, slightly to its left. One sets the temperature, then opens the hot water
valve, hot water flows forth for awile; then cool, then warm. Works for washing dishes but.......

                                                                               

                                                                 BATHROOM

Showering with intermittent hot, then warm water is not so much fun. The large white object is the washing
machine. It seems all apartments come with either a washing machine or free clean clothes service. I wish I
had been offered the latter. Tight fit, well I have lost weight, but it is a bit like using an airplane or train bathroom.

                                                                           

                               
                                                   KITCHEN TABLE AND MY DESK

The apartment has a standard set up for Soviet period constructed apartments: no bedroom, a small bathroom with washing machine, kitchen. This one also has an enclosed balcony for sitting or hanging clothes. The clothes line does stain clothes because of its dirt, but it brushes off. I also have one of those nifty drying wracks that one sees in NYC apartments and European Art House Movies.
Bob Hynson, my suite mate at Sewanee: The University of the South,  insisted that I post photos of the apartment. He visited me from April 14-18. He did wonder why I had not bought a sheet and covered the living room sitting couch as it seems rather risky when seen and smelled up close.
I had not looked at these photographs in over a month, amazing how good they  make the place look. It isn't very nice at all. Oh, I didn't show the Internet connection. It sits on the floor next to the wall at the foot of the couch bed. The Internet cable is only a 12"-18" from the wall so there is no moving the wireless router around. Oh, my coffee table is not shown in the photographs, will have to include that too, gives you a better sense of the width, or lack thereof, of the room.
Now had the Internet worked from the start, it actually still doesn't, but I sort of fixed it by learning to unplug it when it goes out every 40-60 minutes, then plugging the router back in (it is irritating but  better than going to People's Cafe each night) and the washing machine worked correctly and if there were hot water for an entire shower, the apartment would have been fine.
Next chapter will be about my first two weeks of teaching.