A good record.

Look! Another post! I am so proud of myself! :)

First and foremost, I wanted to post a few more pictures of Odessa. It really did have charm at times. I just had a really bad attitude about the weather and of course my foot. So please don't hate Odessa just because I did. Here they are:

 I saw tons of homeless animals for some reason. Idk why.

 This was called the "love bridge". People just go and write their names on a lock and lock it somewhere on the bridge. It was pretty cool.

 and at the end of the bridge they had this huge heart full of locks as well.

 This is called the witch's house or something like that. 

 I straight up felt like I was in a Pixar movie. There were just a bunch of old men playing chess and dominos in the park when we walked by. It was awesome.

 Odessa train station.

So, yeah. Odessa. Still not my favorite place but it was definitely an adventure. So it was worth it I guess..

In other news, yesterday I went to the doctor again for my foot. I have been 2 times now. The first one was a little sketchy and done completely under the table No receipt or anything. Haha. The next one was much nicer! I guess the church has donated a bunch of money to it and so as soon as you walk in and look behind the receptionist's desk, there are totally church paints hanging up. Proof:

I found it funny. Anyways, here is what I have to keep my foot wrapped in all day and all night. I put some special gel on it during the day and during the night some sort of special liquid mixture. Not really sure what they are but I don't really care as long as they're healing my foot!

I am so happy to write that teaching is going so much better! I am so grateful! Today I played Bingo with 3 of the classes I visited and it was a hit. They were obsessed. The winner got one of those little rubber popper things that you turn inside out and wait for it to pop and then fly in the air. They all wanted one so bad so they really payed close attention to the lesson. It was grateful. I am going to play it with 4 more classes again tomorrow. It should be good. 

Tonight I went to institute with 3 others and then we headed to my favorite place in town to take more pictures. I will probably end up having like 100 there by the time this semester is over.

So as my host mom and I were going home from the doctor's office (she is seriously the very best. Taking such good care of me) we had to go through the sketchiest tunnel ever. Haha. I had to snap some pics. This was in the middle of the day and check out how dark it was underneath.. 

Last random side note: a kid in the school I teach at has the shoes below. My little kids WILL be rocking these some day...

I think that's all for now. Please feel free to ask questions so I don't blog about the same things over and over. I know I am leaving out some detail but I just don't know what my readers want to know about! So please, ask away!

Odessa and such

The past week and a half has flown by so fast. I can't believe I have already almost been here for 3 weeks. Tomorrow will mark that day. It blows my mind. This whole thing is already going by way too fast!

My 2nd week of teaching was much better than my first. & I hope that that pattern will continue. I hope it'll just get easier and easier with time. My head teacher taught a whole day of my ELE classes with me and it went so much smoother than the week previous so I am grateful for that.

The 2nd group of Kiev volunteers got here since the last time I wrote. Here is a picture of my friend Rachel and I at the mall in Kiev. We waited for that day for such a very long time...

We plan on making weekly (if not daily) trips to the mall so I know we're going to have a blast together here in Kiev.

Something hilarious happened to me the other day. There was this guy playing his guitar and singing and I thought he was really good. So I wanted to video him and then afterwards I wanted to give him some money. So I just walk up to him and start videoing and watch what happens....

He thought that I was with the kinds that spilled the Fanta on him so he started yelling and me and got super angry so I just threw some money into his guitar case and booked it out of there. Haha. Just my luck right? Of course that had to happen the moment I decide to start recording him...

Here is a picture of the class that is "my" class. They're such a great group of kids. I am with them every Wednesday and Friday for 3 hours.

Here is a picture that I sneak of another kid. I just thought that this mullet was too voluptuous not to capture.

Some Ukrainians just rock the craziest hair-dos. I love it because they honestly just don't care what people think.

As the title of my blog post states, we went to Odessa for the weekend. It was probably one of the worst decisions I have ever made. I hated it. It didn't really have anything special about it and I thought it was just a huge waste of my money. It rained the entire time and was freezing cold. It's just beyond me why some people (like us) pay money to go and tour the city. I wasn't very impressed. But maybe I am just being a spoiled brat because of other pretty places that I have seen. Anyways, here are some pictures:

Riding in the sleeper trains was the worst thing ever.

Me at the Black Sea.

The opera house.

Me and a jumbo juice box. Ukrainian juice = <3

Lindsee, Megan, and I found the coolest little restaurant ever.

Inside the opera house. We went to an opera. It was forever long and we had no idea what was going on.

The aftermath of a super crazy market that they have 7 KM from the city. It was a mad house. 

Us in the hallway at the hostile. It was disgusting. 

A group of us at the opera.

Funny story about this little guy. Megan, Lindsee, and I were on our way back to the hostile when we kind of got lost and ended up in a really sketchy part of town. Next thing I know my foot is killing me and throbbing with pain and I feel around with my had when I touch this. It is an old, rusty plate with screw sticking out of it. One of the screw went through my shoe and into the heel of my left foot. It stayed in my foot for like 30 min because I couldn't pull it out. I was pulling as hard as I could and it wouldn't budge. So we had to call my head teacher and he came and found us, yanked this thing out of my foot and carried me back to the hostile. It was quite the experience. I am still limping everyone and I am going to go to the doctor in a few hours to get a tetanus shot. Of course it had to happen. Odessa hated me. 

On the way home this guy slept RIGHT next to me. His feet were so gross and he smelled of urine. Lucky me.

The lady below him snored louder than I have ever heard anyone snore. It was a trip that I will never forget. 

Sorry if it seems like I am doing nothing but complain but I just had an awful time there. Haha. I will never go back and I am so grateful to be back in Kyiv. I love this city so much! It's so awesome and the people are so much nicer here. Everyone we met in Odessa was a huge jerk. Just glad to be home.

Far past due.

So I decided before I came to Ukraine that I was going to try and blog every day. Yeah right. My life has been so hectic and busy that I haven't even been able to THINK about writing this post until now. So much has been happening and I really want to write more frequently so I don't leave out all of my favorite details.

This week was my first week of teaching. Ouch. Teaching is much harder than I even imagined that it would be. The kids really don't have a desire to learn English which makes it even harder. They just go crazy. So I teach 10 ELE classes all together and then I have my one little class of Elementary students that I teach twice a week for 3 hours. ELE is my least favorite. It's so difficult. I just have to get up in front of a real school class and teach. The school teacher is supposed to stay in the room but for some reason they think it's okay to just leave me alone with the kids this semester. The kids go crazy. For example, I was teaching 1st graders the other day and the teacher just left. & like 2 minutes after she's gone a kid in the back of the class takes his pants off and runs around. Everyone starts dying laughing and pointing at him and I don't understand what they're saying. It was impossible to get the class to focus again after that so I just played hang man with them. The classes here also echo so badly. Every little noise makes tons of noise so I have a headache after 5 minutes of trying to yell over all of the distractions. & there is also that ONE kid who has to goof off and ruin it for everyone else. I just really hope that it will get easier. I just need to get into the groove of it and figure out my routine. My elementary class is fantastic though. It consists of 4 boys: Artem, Vova, Ivan, and Tima. Tima hardly speaks ANY English so it's really hard because the other 3 are practically fluent. The other day we were even able to have a conversation about why the coat color of wolves is different based on the climate they live in. If they stay in this program they're going to speak better than me. We eat meals at the cafeteria of the schools that we teach in. It's always really interesting food. & there is ALWAYS a soup and always some bizarre flavor of compot which is like boiled and then cooled berry juice. Not my favorite. But the soups on the other hand are amazing. I love them and there are like a gazillion different kinds. Here is what we ate one day:

Delish. Love me some beet root soup errrrrday.

The Kiev 2 group got here today! Shout out to my home girl Rachel! I can't wait to see you!

We had 2 birthday parties that we attended this week. One was for a little boy in the ward and the other one for my 6 year old host brother. They were so much fun. I just loved celebrating the Ukrainian way. I just felt like I was in a movie or something the whole time.

This was AFTER we had all eaten. Haha. They party hardy. Mostly with fruits and veggies though.

Backyard volleyball. This backyard was seriously magical. So nice and so green.

Some other random shots from around town:

This is at the metro closest to my house.

One of the schools I teach at.

The never ending escalator. This was after like 30 seconds of already riding it.

Random market.

The churches with gold roofs are all over the city. They catch my eye every time.

This poor stray dog stole my heart. I was so sad for him. He even followed down into the metro

A famous library I guess? That's what someone told us at least. Haha. 

Walking from one of my schools to the metro.

One of the hallways in my school. Aren't these curtains absolutely ridiculous? Haha.

The metros are reppin' the country colors. Love that!

The little slippers that I have to wear around my school. I got the ugliest ones I could find.

Some weird colored "cold soup". I will probably never try it thought just because of the way it looks.

My first real purchase in Ukraine! Thanks for convincing me to buy them, Abbs! Love you!

Speaking of Abbs, me her and Megan went out on the town the other night after a Young Single Adult activity at the church:

Abby, Megan, and yours truly.

 I love Kiev this much!

There were some awesome painted whatever these are by this church that we found.

BFFs in Kiev.

Sorry this post kind of turned into my week in pictures. Not much else to say. I just still can't believe sometimes that I am here. I have just looked forward to this experience for SO long and it's already here and I am almost 2 weeks into it! It's already going by too fast! I love it here and this experience is so amazing!