Today I lectured in the early afternoon at Київський міжнародний університет (Kyiv International University). I met Olga a little after noon on the platform at the Universityet Metro station, and we continued on to the Schulyavska Station. From there it was a short walk to the campus on Lvivska Street. It was snowing moderately during our trip, and the sidewalks were still unplowed from the weekend snowstorm, and the walking was a little labored at some points. I pressed a young man into service at the entrance to the main building to take this picture of me and my "handler," Olga Kupriyevych.
This was a day when Olga's expert guidance was especially appreciated, as we had to traverse a bewildering course to get to two far-flung campuses.
We had a brief power outage after we had arrived at the University and as I was starting to set up for my lecture. For a moment I thought we would have to move to some windows at the back of the classroom to proceed, but the outage was soon over and we were underway.
The students in this class are very sharp, and their English is excellent. I thought that there were a few members of this class who showed outstanding promise, particularly a young man named Oleg, who is standing second to my right wearing a light blue pullover sweater. Afterward a few members of the class stayed behind to ask some very insightful questions, showing an excellent comprehension of both the jury system and the tensions related to its imple
mentation into the Ukrainian legal system.
There was much good humor in this group, and teaching them was very enjoyable. For example, I made a comment about the fact that most of the young Ukrainian women I had seen were wearing high heels in the snow. This brought a laugh, and one of the young women, Helena, showed us her very narrow steel high heeled boots (she is second from my left in the photograph, wearing black with a knotted pearl necklace, and if you click on the picture you can see her very interesting heels). As a reward, I gave her the narrowest American pen that I had in my gift bag. I understand that the teenage daughter of one of the previous judges was so impressed by the variety of leather boots with high heels worn by Ukrainian women, that she said she was going to the bootshop around the corner and buy herself a pair.
This group seemed to me to be the most open and outgoing of all of the groups I have taught thus far, which bodes well for their comfort "on stage" as advocates in the courtroom. After their presentations on Thursday we will see if this early assessment holds up.
