time to play catch up!

Alright, let’s see if I can remember what all has happened this week. I know it has been a fun week, but it has also been an absolutely exhausting week! [Just a side note…this was written September 23, so these events took place about two weeks ago. Sorry I’m behind!]

I taught my kids at school Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. From what I do remember Cherish and I didn’t really give out any strikes, which means the kids were fairly decent. Don’t get me wrong, I am really starting to love the little ones, but they can definitely be little rascals sometimes. On Wednesday for one of our activities we did freeze dance. It was hysterical. First I had to show them what dancing was, so I had to dance for them. They got a kick out of that. Then I played the music for them and at first I had to help them dance by moving around their arms and stuff, but then they finally caught on to dancing and watching them was great. They all did their own thing and it was adorable. Next I explained to them that when the music stopped we needed to freeze. That was a little more difficult concept for them to grasp. They like moving around. After a few more times of me playing the music then stopping it and the kids practicing how to freeze I taught them a little dance. The funny part about teaching them this dance was that Cherish had to use the same music for an activity that she was doing later, and as soon as she turned on the music the kids started doing the dance that I taught them! That must mean they are learning something, right?!

I think my favorite part of the day when teaching is snack time. The kids always share their snacks with us and we don’t even have to ask. It’s pretty awesome. We end up eating some pretty delicious treats.

On Tuesday Cherish and I went to another school to talk to the kids and that was fun. We played hang man with the seventh graders and they got a kick out of watching us struggle to figure out the word. The second graders were a little harder to talk to, but we somehow accomplished talking to them for 40 minutes. Wednesday we went with another girl in our group, Taia, to another school to teach and it was fun too. I talked and played games with the 2^nd, 4^th, and 6^th graders. Being with the 6^th graders totally took me back to my year in 6^th grade. It was such a fun year. That was 7 years ago. Oh my goodness I’m old.

One thing I have come to realize since being in Ukraine and watching people on the streets interacting with each other and seeing kids in class interacting with their peers is that all people are the same. We have very different cultures, but when we get right down to it, everyone acts the same. We all laugh, we all cry, we all get mad. The people here just do it in a language I do not understand.

Speaking of the language…we started Russian classes this week! Yay! Our native coordinator, Oksana, is teaching us and she is pretty much awesome. I now know the alphabet and I can count to 10! I can sound out most words although I am very slow at it. Now I just need to know what those words mean! Hahah. I also learned a few sayings that are definitely going to be helpful when getting around and meeting new people and buying stuff from the small stores.

Oh and that’s another one of my favorite things about Ukraine! All the small stores everywhere! It’s so easy to buy things. You can walk down the street and go into the small fruit store, meat store, or mini grocery store. It’s so nice. I love it. And the women who run the one’s we normally go to know Cherish, Alexis, and me and they like us and play along with our game of charades when trying to buy something. They are super nice. They probably make fun of us, but that’s okay.

Friday night Cherish, Alexis, and I all ventured off to find FHE (Family Home Evening) somewhere in Kiev. We took the metro to where the green line and blue line intersect. I don’t know what it’s called on the blue line…something long and confusing, but on the green line it’s called Palats Sportu. It took us awhile to finally find where the building was, but we knew we were in the right place when we found the Ferrari dealership. Yes, the institute building/FHE is above the Ferrari dealership. It’s basically amazing. We were late to FHE so we missed the lesson and the treat, but we ran into Hanna, Taia, and Erika there so we all decided to hit the city together. We walked around and found a place called Stop & Eat to eat. The sign and menu were both in English, so of course we had to eat there. They actually had really good food! It was tons of fun. Then we got ice cream and walked around the streets. We adopted the new phrase “document it” because Cherish and I take pictures of everything, so whenever we did something funny or saw something cool we had to “document it”. I just shared an inside joke, so yall better appreciate it. I love those girls.

Saturday Cherish and I got locked in our house. Seriously, locked in. Our host family left and took the keys with them. We tried looking for spare keys and couldn’t find any. There were keys in one of the back doors but we couldn’t get the key to work. We aren’t good at working with keys.  There was a doggy door though, so we escaped through that. Well, we got out of the house and into the backyard. Then we tried to find a gate or a place where we could hop the fence. Yeah, no. There was not a gate and not a place to hop the fence. They have barbed wire and pokey bushes all alone the tops. We went back inside and were devising a plan to go out our second floor window and jump onto the scaffolding being used to work on the house next to ours Then we were going to shimmy down the poles and onto the ground. Then go to the front where we saw an opening where we could get down. Luckily, right when I was climbing out the window we heard someone come in the door. Our host mom finally came home! Oh and if you’re wondering why we were so desperate to get out of the house, we were supposed to be meeting Erika, Taia, Hanna, and Alexis at 1, and it was getting dangerously close to that time.

Well, we were finally free and we went off to go find the girls. We met them at the metro stop and went to the Roshen chocolate factory! Finallllyyy!!!! We got some good sweets then took the journey back to our house. They definitely agree with us that our stairs are super sketchy. We had a ton of fun at our house eating chocolate, talking, and watching movies. Later we even ordered a pizza! Well, Galya ordered the pizza for us, but we had to find the pizza men because they kind of got lost. Hahah. It was interesting. We had a ton of fun that Saturday.

On Sunday morning I went on a run for the first time since I’ve been here. I thought I would have a nice little jog to by the lakes. Well, remember the baths by the lakes for the crazy naked people? I thought that the crazies came out at night. But apparently that isn’t true. They come bright and early. I was treated to an eyeful of two naked old men. Fantastic.

We went to a Medieval Festival later that day with our host family and it was pretty fun. I found a knight in shining armor. Too bad he wasn’t attractive. Hahahaha.