September 1, 2009

Hello Everyone!

After being in Ukraine for a week, I have decided it is probably time to update you all on my adventures!

I arrived in Kiev, Ukraine on Tuesday, August 25 after near 18 hours of airport/airplane hopping.  Barry, Eli and I flew into together, met with our driver, and drove to the Seventh Day Adventist Conference office in Kiev, where we waited for another 12 hours for Emily’s flight to arrive. I was very relieved when she got here, and we were told that we would be staying together.  On Wednesday evening, Emily and I arrived at our final destination, a little town about an hour away from Nikolaev called Kherson. 

We are staying with the pastor, Ruslan, his wife, Tatyana, and their three children, Stas, Ira, and Lena. After only a week, I am coming to love them all and think of them as family.  Ruslan speaks fairly good English, and Ira (pronounced Eera) says “good morning” to me every morning before breakfast.  The kids are very willing to help us with our Russian, for which I am grateful.  Learning the language is a slow process, but I can already pick out a few words and phrases.

The first week here, Emily and I didn’t have a lot to do. I think Ruslan and Dima (the youth pastor) wanted to give us a chance to get settled in, but we wanted to be busy! The excessive amount of dead time gave me a lot of opportunities to be homesick. The first couple of days, I was in a near-constant state of homesickness. I was stuck in the apartment all day, with nothing to do except think about home and sleep. Finally, Emily and I decided to ask if we could do a little exploring.  Our host family was very hesitant to let us go alone.  The streets are safe during the day, but if we got lost, we wouldn’t even know how to ask for help. So, Dima took us on our fist tour of Kherson. It is a beautiful town, but I think more than anything, we were just glad to get out of the apartment! We found the supermarket, and place to exchange currencies.  The town has everything we need; now we just need to figure out how to get to places that are not within walking distance! Buses run all through the town, but we are still learning which ones go where…

On Sabbath, we experienced our first Ukrainian church service.  Thankfully, we had a translator, Olga, who also told us of some opportunities we might have to hang out at the orphanage, or to even teach English at a university nearby.  We will have to see first how much time we’ll be spending teaching English for the church, but I am really hoping to at least be able to spend some time in the orphanage! The church service (other than being in Ukrainian) wasn’t much different than a church service in the States. They did, however, have a lot of music, which I was thrilled about! Emily and I will be doing a special music next week for the service.  We also attended a service in the evening at another church, where we met Anna, another translator.  She is 21, and very very bubbly and friendly.  We are looking forward to spending more time with her, learning Russian and hopefully doing a little touring in Kiev and Odessa. I think I will become very good friends with her while I’m here.

Yesterday (Monday August 31), Emily and I went with our family to the black sea! We are about an hour and a half away, and Stas wanted to go to celebrate the last day of summer.  He started 2^nd grade today! We had a great time at the beach. It was a very different experience from those I’ve had in the past.  I could look at the sea on my left, and then as soon as the sand stopped on my right, there was a huge sunflower field. There were no buildings anywhere! It was very nice and secluded.  We saw a ton of dolphins and a sea horse! I’ve never seen a sea horse in the wild, so I was very excited!! I hope we can make another trip there sometime before I leave!  

As for what we will be doing here these 9 months…we know we will be teaching an English Sabbath school, and that we will be teaching other English classes during the week.  We won’t know how often the classes will be until Dima and Ruslan find out more about the interest level (which they presume will be high). I am excited to start doing something!!! It still feels weird, knowing that I won’t be going to school this year.  I don’t remember a time when a majority of my time has been spent doing something other than furthering myself…whether it was school or work, my life has pretty much been all about me. So I am very excited to spend time focusing on others for a while. Thank you all for your prayers and support! I will keep you posted!

Stacy