Ukrainian Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was an ordinary workday, although a couple of American parents brought in pumpkin pie and talked about "things to be thankful for" to the uncomprehending sons and daughters of local millionaires and rich ex-pats. "If you have food, shelter, and clean water, you have more than 75% of the rest of the world! If you have all that and a few kopeks in your pocket, you're in the top 8% of the world's population!"

Any local kid who goes to the school is from the stratosphere of the Ukrainian economy---the average income here is $4,000/year, while tuition is $15,000. I've never taught rich kids before, let alone rich kids who live in a poor country, and who are possibly the children of the Ukrainian "mafia" (as the gossip goes).

Very early I identified the phenomenon of the "evil local Dennis"---three of the Ukrainian/Russian kids in my ESL classes are behavior problems, and they're all named Dennis. The ESL classes are full of kids who speak Russian. Most of them want to learn English, but the Dennisses seem to know they're already set for life. Why bother learning English? So they spend all of their time trying to distract their classmates by talking Russian to them. I anticipated a lot of problems, but not this one!