Monday, May 28

Greetings from Ukraine.

Greetings from Ukraine! I don't have time for a long post- I'm planning to type on up on my personal laptop and transfer it to the computer with internet, maybe tomorrow- but for the time being a quick post will have to do.

My travels went well- we arrived here in Ukraine on Saturday, about 2pm local time and we've been at camp ever since. Our day in London was extremely blessed, our hosts were fantastic. We got a quick tour of London and got to eat at a restaurant caled Belgo, which was Belgian food (delicious, if you were wondering). Campers will arrive next week which will hopefully give our days much more structure. For the time being, we are basically doing odd jobs, preparing for campers, forcing our bodies to adjust to this time schedule, which is +8 hours from Fort Worth.

We are here at the campsite with the residents (Andrew and his family), and some other short term help, called the World Race team. If you've never heard of World Race, you should definitely google it or something, because it's fairly cool. Basically, you go to 11 different countries in 11 months, and it age ranges from 21 to 35. Right now (although it's difficult to tell sometimes with everyone that comes and goes here), there are 10 World Racers, and 6 of us Interns from World Wide Witness. Everyone is acclimating well, if we can only get our bodies to get used to the time difference. This morning we all woke up around 3am, and just could not go back to sleep, so instead we watched movies and had a good time.

I'm definitely looking forward to the campers being here next week. I definitely don't know much Russian or Ukranian, but I know a few words like "nyet" which means no, "da" which means yes, "die" which means give, and "priviet" which is a way to say nice to meet you to peers and those younger than you. I'm sure I'll work on it some more this week so I can at least introduce myself to those around me, and I definitely need to learn greetings to those above me- because offending a Babushka is the last thing I want to do.

Other than that not much is going on- our days aren't packed with work yet, just a few tasks here and there to organize and prepare for campers- mostly just adjusting and getting our bearings. I think I can finally find my way around the camp without getting lost- except when someone sends me to the "red bath house". This is not my fault however- because there isn't actually a red bath house- they are all green. Aparently, one used to be green and got a facelift by a team of workers this past week, but there is no way to tell which is which unless you've been here before and just already know.

Anyways, I need to get off, this has been longer than I had planned, and I've now been holed away in the office on the computer for an hour writing this post and skyping with my parents. Time to rejoin the society here and learn a few new Russian phrases. Blessings and Peace be with you.