In the fall of 2000, and again in 2002, I made puppets for and performed in a home video series for teaching Ukarainian language skills to kids. Honest. There are four tapes now.

The purple monster I performed, above left, named Boomchyk, speaks nothing but Ukrainian -- which oddly enough, I don't speak. So I was lip-synching to pre-recorded dialogue in Ukrainian to me it sounds a bit like Russian, but more brittle). The tan monster above right, named Milya, speaks mostly in English. There were four other characters, three kids and a teacher, that all spoke Ukrainian, too, so we did alot of lip-synching -- which, in a language you're not familiar with, is harder than it sounds.

Olga Halaburda, the series' creator, has a website for it. Check that out HERE.