Arts Lab 5.0: Olha Popova, Ukraine - Month 2

To be completely honest, I am writing this report very late. First thing to notice: It's getting colder now, so we finally winning the battle against flies in our home!

I am teaching beading classes at a local school. I have the youngest students, all of whom are girls.

I really enjoy teaching them, and I mean that with all my heart. Of course, some of them are not very interested, and one girl left the lesson in the end, but I am not upset at all. This is a good opportunity to learn how to teach.

By the way, don't they drink black tea in Romania? I saw herbal teas on the shelves and only two kinds of black tea. It's really strange for me because, in Ukraine, I always have a choice of 6+ varieties of black tea from different brands and flavors. Immediately, the girls saw me drinking black tea in the WhatsApp group and started asking me what it was. I even took a couple of screenshots of such comments like "Tomorrow I'm going with my mother to buy black tea."

Speaking of communication, everywhere we go, except in rare cases, we use a translator. This complicates communication, and it is frustrating. But when children don't use a translator and just imitate their peers or try to figure out how to write in English on their own, funny situations happen. For example, for a few days, my students wrote "Tanks" instead of "Thanks," which is quite ironic considering where I came from. Or now, a group of Romanian teenagers think that my name is spelled "Oliha," which is a kind of Frankenstein between "Olha" and "Olia."

We started heating the house. Now it's... difficult. There is no central heating here; we use the stove. So the knowledge of how to do it right is passed from one person to another, like in the old days. But the new problem occurred... Before it, we had a cold room, because the window is not done. And by the cold room I mean A FREEZING one. It`s small and when you enter it the breeze hits you in the face. Our room was colder than the big main room. But now... Now it's very hot. In this situation, I`m just laughing nervously.

I am thinking about what I will do as my own project for the exhibition. It's a complicated question because I'm not really used to exhibitions, especially interactive ones. I'd like to collaborate with someone in the house, but I'm not sure if it's possible. We'll see.

We had our first exhibition here. I can't say that I liked it very much. During this month, I digitized the sketches I mentioned earlier, and Mihaela printed out postcards. I also showcased the masks that my students made at their previous school. But that's about it. We didn't have a lot of time to prepare to show our work. We didn't get together to discuss whether we could put it all together. Everything just happened very quickly.

Because of the language barrier, it was difficult to explain to everyone what your work meant, if it had some symbolic meaning, and no one at the exhibition wanted to wait for you to manage with a translator. Also, it is frustrating that the public needs clear instructions. I will understand if you want to give them creative freedom, but from this experience, I will say that this is not the smartest move.

How difficult is it to understand that you should leave your fingerprint on an embroidery pattern from your region? It turns out to be difficult. I won't say that it was very, very bad. In the end, some of the workshops were quite successful, for example, the memorization game that Dajana developed.

To end on a good note, I got my "temporary protection" in Romania. (Sorry to all my friends who got the "I'm in the police" message. And especially those whom I convinced that I had stolen a dog).

Olha Popova is from Ukraine, and she is participating in a six-month volunteering program within Arts Lab 5.0, a project co-funded by the European Union through the European Solidarity Corps.