SPRING!

Life freakin rocks. Yesterday was seriously a blast and I just feel so happy. So, I wanted to share some of the latest events as much as possible with everyone. Here is a lil blip on what I've been up to:

For a couple Friday nights now, the Pozniaky girls have been taking advantage of our school kitchen. We have made balsamic viniger chicken fajitas, Mary's secret lemon chicken salad, apple crisp, and teryaki stir fry. YUM! Don't get me wrong...the cabbage and gallons of oil is a "супер" way to get the Ukrainian experience during the week, but it is nice to have a good flavorful meal every once in a while.

I LOVE MY KIDS! All of the kids are great of course but I feel like I got the best home-room classes, and definitely the most entertaining. You probably noticed Dasha in the middle. Pictures say a thousand words but here are a few more tid bits. She wishes she was a unicorn, plays with hand animals, and when told we will be making a special treat for kitchen she responds in unbelievable excitement, "CABBAGE!?"

Normal ice cream here doesn't tempt me in the least. However, "Gelato Italiano" at the Midon Nezalezhnasty Mall is heaven on earth! This is Kim and I enjoying our much-too-small $4 cup. I opted for two flavors of course: dark chocolate orange and some rich creamy dulce de leche goodness with little mierangue (possibly) dissolving crunchies in it. YUM!

Yesterday Hilary, Stacey, Mary, Kim, Alison, and I spent the day mozy-ing about parks and Krechatyk Street in the beautiful April weather. A few of the girls found padlocks at the three greevna (equivalent to about 60 cents) store, so we made our way to Kyiv's quaint "bridge of love." Who's name did I write on my lock? In the words of my darling Maria,"mmm...SECRETS!"

My Ukrainian friends! I LOVE the people here. As we were stree-vendor shopping on Kreshatyk, Anton (right) and Andre (left) randomly came up and started talking to us in relatively good English. It was so much fun just spending time with native people my age. Interacting with the people is scary sometimes but always makes the best memories. They ended up coming to stake conference with us and actually stayed for the first half hour. It was an awesome experience.

I am on a mission for best Ukrainian style and best (meaning nappiest) mullet of Ukraine. Here is a measure of my progress thus far. The pic was taken from quite a distance so the detail is blurred but when I checked this girl's hair out as she was skateboarding, I noticed the true beauty. 

Bag Tag!

I know it was a while ago but Buff tagged me with, "what's in your bag" and I fianlly have a chance to make the post. Well, I had just returned from my 8 day tour around Prauge, Czeck; Dresdin, Germany; and Krakow, Poland so there were all sorts of treasures in my backpack. Since there is way too much to tell about my trip in a blog, I figured this would be a good way to tickle your taste buds while you wait to hear the full account of my adventure in person.

So, the first thing in my bag was my small selection of readings. When I was packing my 7 year old host sister asked her mom why I was taking so many books. This made me laugh because, after talking with some of my friends, it has become apparent that our host families think we Americans take a ridiculous amount of stuff with us when we travel. I didn't want to run out of material, given our 60+ hours on the "son of perdition" bus (another story for another time). I might note, though, that Ukrainians are not without their own ridiculosities...they are funny, and hopefully I can share later.

These are the pamphlets from a few of the different museums I went to. Really, I didn't spend much time at all in museums because the cities themselves were beautiful and there was plenty to see and plenty of fun interactions with the people there. The armor museum was my favorite. It had some awesome pieces of old Knight armor and weaponry and such. The blacksmithing detail on some of that stuff amazed me...very intricate. The Museum of Communism in Czeck was a real eye opener, and it also made me realize how very little I know about recent history. We as Americans are very blessed that all the terrible wars in the last century have been fought outside of our homes and lands. The chaos these people endured everyday while fighting for their freedoms was horrific to watch (they displayed a video clip from the late 80's), and I am humbled and grateful that I have only known peace.

So, everyday we had the pleasure of a continental breakfast at our hotels. Before we even got off of the bus, however, our extremely prejudice tour guide made an announcement over the speaker. Our translator informed us of his direct statement, "Tell the Americans they must not take food from the dining area. This is a very serious thing." Needless to say we were all sorely disappointed as we had planned on stowing away our free lunch from breakfast leftovers. In the end, the temptation was too much for us and we managed to slip a few bagguets and "dzem" (there is no J in slavic languages) packets into our coats everyday. Shh.

The whole exchanging currancy thing is by far the biggest pain when traveling to three different countries in 8 days, especially when the country you left from isn't your native home. I never knew how much to get out for each currency or what to exchange to what of rhte best value and Wells Fargo charges $5 a transaction. By the end of the trip I had 5 different currencies in my bag: American quarter; old soviet coin (random...it was a souvenier from Odessa); Ukrainian kopek; Czeck crown; and Polish zoti (or something like that); unfortunately I didn't save a German euro because I ended up just borrowing from a friend. I choose that the world picks one currency and call it good.

My host mom sent me with a whole bag of my favorite Russian treat: Praneek!! Of course there were none left in my bag when I got home but I needed one more item to fulfill my "tag" so there you go. Don't worry, I plan on bringing at least half a suitcase home of praneeky so you can all try one.