Children’s blog

Hi, I’m Kristina

For 7 months now, I’ve been studying English with my friend Stuart. He is in England and I’m here in Piski. We talk over Zoom.

I love learning. We have been through all the numbers. I can count up to one million.

Stuart helps me do my homework with my school textbook. This is great fun and interesting; the lessons go quickly, and I start waiting for the next one right away.

Then I tell him what I’ve been doing, how my exams have gone and what the day was like. All this takes place in English, because Stuart doesn’t speak Ukrainian.

He tells me about the latest events in England. He told me that they have a new prime minister now.

When I grow up, I want to be translator. I’ll be a very good translator, if Stuart continues to be my teacher up to the 11th class. I’ll learn everything about English.

I told Stuart that I love making videos on Tik-Tok. We made a video together, which was much fun and very cool!
/ Kristina, 12

My name is Stuart, I’m from England and I have been supporting Children’s Embassy for over 10 years. Both as a sponsor and as a photographer.

Since the coronavirus pandemic it has not been possible to make my regular visits so when the opportunity arose to help one of the teams children learn English I was eager to help.

I have been giving Kristina 30 minute Zoom English lessons 6 days a week for 7 months now. As I don’t speak any Ukrainian Kristina has had to learn English but luckily she had enough English in the beginning to allow her to understand me (with a lot of help from Google translate).

I have been using her school text book as the basis of the lessons and she has learnt enough now for us to have conversations about her day and life in Piski.

She is a keen student and clearly very intelligent which makes it very rewarding for me and it is nice to be able to use my time in quarantine to help Kristina in a way that money cannot.

I hope we will be able to carry on with the lessons long after the coronavirus pandemic is over. /Stuart