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.