Finally, here are some Ukraine updates!

I finally have a minute to sit down and update people at home as to how things are going over here in the Ukraine. It's quite the experience over here. I don't even know where to begin with all that's happened since last time that I wrote on here. I will start by just posting some pictures and telling some experiences.

When I was in Chernivtsi I ran into 2 of the 4 elders who are serving in the city. For anyone who is interested, ask me to tell you about this experience because it wasn't by coincidence. This picture is meaningful because the Elder on the right is a Utah fan and he's holding one of his tickets to the football season last year and the one on my left goes to BYU. GO UTES!!! They might be going to do some service with us tomorrow.

So there was this random restaurant called Utah. I couldn't resist getting a picture with my Utah flag and representing. I didn't have this flag in all my pictures. Just a few, but randomly they're all the ones I'm putting on my blog.


So the place I'm at (Chernivtsi) and Salt Lake City are sister cities. So they have a little thing in their town center representing all the sister cities. I had to represent with the Utah flag by the Salt Lake City one. GO UTES!!!

The Sunday we got there, we went to a Ukranian Orthodox church. All the women have to put a shawl over their heads. I didn't have to. :) It was an interesting experience. I put my hands in my pocket during the service and one of the Ukranian men came and chastised me and yanked my hands out of my pocket. Apparently it was bad. I wasn't told that. I learned my lesson.

This is my sad face during the 16 hour train ride we had to take from Kiev to Chernivtsi. They packed us in there like cattle. I felt like I was on a train going to some concentration camp. I have pictures of the nasty bathroom and the rest of the living conditions. It was quite the experience to say the least. I'm not looking forward to having to do it again in a couple days to go back to Kiev.

So at one of the places we went, they offered us some of Ukraine's finest liquor. As a custom, the man is supposed to open the liquor and pour it for everyone. Well, with my luck, I've NEVER opened one of these and didn't know how much to give everyone. They laughed and laughed and laughed and tried their darndest to get me to drink it with them, but I didn't give in. They understood it was because of personal and religious reasons and the old grandma (who was a kick in the pants) kept making fun of me for it.

Little Oksana. She was a cutie. She has cerebral palsy and we visited her twice. We gave her that ball and was showing her mom some exercises she could do with her to stretch out some of that EXTREMELY high muscle tone she has going on through her body. She had a little crush on me and would smile at me and start to giggle. She is 5 years old I believe.



Nicolas (Cola). He too had cerebral palsy and was way fun. We did similar stuff with all our cerebral palsy kids cause they have very high tone in their arms and particularly their legs. His mom was incredible! We visited him twice too and between visits her already had improved a TON. It made me excited to see that within a few days he was already starting to loosen up a little bit.

Olga. She has Spinal Muscle Atrophy. She was 100% cognitively there but her spine was wrapped all around her back and had a lot of pain. But that did not stop her having all the sass in the world. She was so cute and her grin was to die for. I fell in love with this little girl. She stole my heart. She is 11. Since their health care isn't the greatest over here, I realized that she wouldn't receive great treatment even though she had such a serious condition. It made me grateful for what great health care we have.

Olga #2. This fireball of a girl was a cutie. She had a traumatic brain injury about 3 years ago and she's 12 now. She got hit by a car. We saw her twice. She had a little crush on me and told me that the second time that we came that she'd get dressed up and do her makeup for me. So I decided that if she was going to get dressed up like a princess that I would treat her like one and so I bought her a rose. I have a video of her reaction when I gave it to her. Let me know if you want to see it. It's pretty cute. She was fun to work with. We did some good stuff with her.

This is me on top of the town hall. Isn't Chernivtsi beatiful?

We got to meet with the Mayor of Chernivtsi. We talked about what we were doing there. It was pretty cool.

Well, I will be home on Monday and would love to tell anyone stories about my trip. I am loving it here but I think I will be ready to come home on Monday.