Brigid finally found a way to do a radio story about Ukraine’s mind-boggling footwear! She realized that we were watching a kind of Winter Olympic sport right here on the streets of Kyiv.

So: Here’s a link to the piece that ran on The World.

Now, I spent a lot of time and effort gathering visual material that The World couldn’t use. So here’s a slide show version, too! Hope you enjoy it.

How’s this for a fine group of young aspiring journalists?

These students are in the master’s level journalism program at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. They took a class on radio production that I co-taught last term. (My co-teacher, the fabulous Tanya Lockot, is on the far right in the green sweater.) If you understand Ukrainian, you can listen to their final projects here. I was quite pleased with the variety of their reports. Some looked back at history, others examined current social problems or cultural developments, and one climbed to the top of an abandoned building in downtown Kyiv.

I’ve also given a couple of lectures at other places, including the journalism departments at Zaporizhzhia National University and Kyiv’s National Aviation University, where this picture (below) was taken. The gentleman with me is Volodymyr Vladymyrov, who invited me to talk to his students. Vlad, as I call him, spent a year at the University of Missouri as a Fulbright scholar in 2003-2004.

Lecturing generally has gone pretty well. I’ve been very impressed by how well the students here understand English. They do their writing in Ukrainian, though, and my language limitations prevent me from doing much of the kind of teaching that I think is most valuable: Acting as an editor, and giving specific feedback to students on their own projects. I hope what I’m doing is still worthwhile!