My favorite time of day

Like most grade-schoolers, my favorite time of day is lunch time. 12:00 in the canteen (cafeteria) at school. But I take a more passive role in this treasured moment, as this is the time when the 1st form comes in with their teacher. They burst through the doors in a chatty pack and without real regard for their surroundings, go about preparing themselves for lunch. The form teacher carries a bottle of liquid soap and a towel, which she distributes to each child after they've hung up their coat and puts on the table, respectively. The kids wash their hands in the sinks, then dry them, then find a seat at one of the tables already laid with food by the canteen ladies (whom I also love). Lunch is always home-made in the kitchen, and is usually soup, a kind of porridge, sometimes meat/cheese/hardboiled egg, bread, and tea or hot chocolate or compote. Continuously oblivious, the kids eat and talk and swing their legs on the stools just too high for their feet to touch. By 12:10, I have to leave for my next class, but I always leave with a smile from this little scene.

One thing I've treasured about Ukrainian people is how organic they are, how much they'll act like one contiguous family, even when they're not related. That form teacher no doubt buys the soap with her own money, and the towel, too. The canteen ladies are at school well before anyone else to get the sweet buns in the oven, to get the potatoes peeled and the soup started. We eat off real dishes with real forks, which another canteen lady washes, after sorting the scraps for the compost heap. It's a different world for sure, and one I'm delighted to be learning from.