A weekend away :o)

Dennis, Amberly and I just got home from Tornovka, Dennis’ home: a small town located in the region of Dnipropetrovsk.  Dennis’ youth group was having an outreach party and it was called “American Style.”  Basically, we were invited to be the American freak show :o)  Amberly, unable to remember the Russian word for ‘party,’ was telling her Russian teacher who does not know English about what we were doing the weekend and she said “kak tsirkv”  “like a circus” which her teacher laughed about for a long time.  Maybe we were the freaks for the weekend, but that’s no different than every time we get on a marshootka and speak English and the whole bus is turning around to look at us.  Besides, during this ‘freak show’ we were able to talk to the kids and tell them why we were here and spend time talking to them about life in America versus life in Ukraine which led to a whole other discussion about life in Kiev versus life in a smaller town, like theirs.  They were shocked to hear that our towns in America were not big like Kiev either.  They made us play this game where the kids would pull a paper out of a hat and on the paper were question like “how many brothers do you have” or “how often do you clip you fingernails” only they were written in Russian and the kid who pulled the paper would have to read the question and then help us to understand what it said by actions or drawing or whatever.  Then we would have to communicate back to them the answer.  It was really funny.  Dennis’ fabulous mother fixed us tons and tons of yummy food (I think Dennis must have told her that we live off of frozen pelminni and she felt bad for us)  and lots and lots of tea. I rode on my first overnight train and I felt like I was in the middle of a Harry Potter movie.  I loved it.  Dennis and Amberly and I stayed up talking forever on the way over, but on the way back we all slept basically the whole trip.  Good times.  Have I mentioned lately that I love Ukraine?  It’s true.  I love Ukraine.