Venturing In Ukraine

I know it was been like an eternity and a half since I have written late. & SO much has happened. I really don't know how I am going to be able to fit it all into to one blog post.

So the last time I wrote was October 1st. That means you guys all missed out on every happening from the month of October! But don't worry. It wasn't that exciting. It was towards the end of October that things really got awesome.

As part of the requirements for our Ukrainian visas, we had to leave the country. So why not go all out? We took a bus tour that guided us to four different countries on the vacation of a lifetime! We went to Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, and Germany. It was so awesome. But being on that bus for like more that 60 hours in one week was so awful. I literally watched 3 entire season of Survivor JUST on the bus. It was awful. Here are some shots from the countries that we visited:

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY:

VIENNA, AUSTRIA:

(I am down there somewhere)

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC:

Being back in Prague was obviously my favorite part. It's apparent why.

(One of mission apartments!)

DRESDEN, GERMANY:

(This is Max! He was one of our foreign exchanged students! Dresden is his home town!)

Amazing, right?! I had the time of my life. It was beautiful!

A few other shots from the past few days:

This is Alya! She is one of my students! She dressed up in traditional Ukrainian clothes for some holiday. She is a wizz kid!!!

Homeless man washing his hair in the mall. Hahaha.

BEAUTIFUL night view of Kiev. One of the prettiest cities of my life.

Ukraine vs France World Cup qualifier game. IT. WAS. AMAZING.

Graffiti in Kiev. It's everywhere and I love it!

Me at the game. Look at that smile. I am freakin' happy!

That is my life in a nutshell. I hope to be writing more soon. I don't want any of you to miss any more moments from my Kiev experience. Bye bye for now!

So I just got back from my most very favorite weekend ever. Me, Abby, and Lindsay Despain went to a city in Western Ukraine called Lviv. It was seriously so magical and we had such an amazing time together. We saw and did so much so we are still pretty exhausted from it all.

It all started on Friday after our last classes of English. We got to the bus station pretty early so we made camp in the near by McDonald's. The workers there were the worst. They hated us. Even though we kept buying stuff. They were just so mean to us until they finally told us to leave. Haha. But we didn't care anyways because we were done being around them. So we went back to the bus station and waited for our bus to come. It was a double-decker bus and we were all on the top. Abby and I had front row seats. Which was amazing because that is where the most leg room was on the entire bus:

Our bus left at 21:40 and we got to Lviv at about 7:00. Once in Lviv, we went straight to our hostel to see if we could check in early. Nope. So we went and go some pastries for breakfast and ate them outside in the freezing cold. Then to the local McDonald's again so we could use the wifi (we are all pretty obsessed with McDonald's because of the wifi). We planned out our weekend and then we were able to check into our hostel. It had quite the entrance:

It also had quite the view from our window:

I didn't know that my Czech and Slovak would come in as much handy as they did in Lviv. It's close to Poland so a lot of the people speak Polish as well. So between Ukrainian, Russian, Slovak, Czech, and Polish I was able to have a conversation with anyone. It was so awesome. Our hostel was okay. It was very old. The only bad part was that the entire floor only had one shower to share & the hot water ran out pretty fast. I had to unthaw every morning after my shower (I used Lindsay's blow dryer). After we checked into our hostel and showered, we went on a huge walk around the entire city and saw lots of cool things such as the following:

Great location for wedding pictures, right?

It was so amazing to walk around with 2 of my favorite peeps and see all of these beautiful sights. I loved it so much. It was just pure bliss. After our walk we went and visited a restaurant that was Harry Potter themed. It was dreamy. I seriously loved it. They let us try on cloaks and hold some sweet wands. I just all of my Harry Potter nerd friends would have been there with me:

On Sunday we woke up and went to church. They have the prettiest church building ever there. There was just such a warm and cheerful feeling at church. The missionaries were great and the members were so friendly too.

After church we went and visited the coolest cemetery ever. Pictures just don't even do it justice. But I am going to post some so you all can see what it was kind of like. It was so awesome.